There will be thunderstorms sending me out of Costa Rica (I leave next Saturday and it will not stop raining before then). I am reminded of the tiny holes that existed in my roof in Hone Creek, of a rainy walk in Barcelona, of being in a permaculture forest and forgetting a raincoat.

"those who have money spend money, dont play into their game." "why buy vegetables when you can grow vegetables." "the mind is a garden, let it grow." "dont become preprogrammed. "the youth are soil." "there is one constant, and that constant is change."

luis rodgriguez.

leaving

baile baile. i thought there were gunshots, but there were fireworks. i thought i wasn't going to get in, but then the guard gave me a free ticket, fifth row. it was beautiful.

on saturday i leave and i cannot wait.

to grow

isn't it weird (that i think it's weird) that all of our food comes from.. food? from the earth? i never thought about it. i never knew what a rice plant was. what a mango tree looked like. that there was more than one type of cilantro. that a yucca can grow so large. that clamming is difficult. that trolling is so bad. that there are many types of sugar cane but they all taste the same (once processed). that shrimp are so bad for the environment. that duck eggs are edible. that cows here have bigger ears. that their grazing can prevent forest fires. that watermelons grow best by the water. that unorganic bananas are so sad they make me cry. how a pineapple grows. that each tree only produces one bunch of bananas. that it's not really a tree. how bad the side effects of pesticides can be (ie nemagon). how hearts of palm are cultivated. that onions and potatoes were excluded from cafta in costa rica. that they can all grow together.

that we eat three times a day. that i knew so little. that i`ll keep learning so much.

mujeres fuertes

rice farming, clamming, women's groups, UN money, eco-tourism, wildlife reintroduction, national parks, migration and immigration, education, wildfires, bugbites and mangrove scratches and flat tires and ocelots.

this country is so immense. it's so diverse. by tuesday i need to chose my idea for my independent study but i feel like there's so much (and so little i can do in under 4 weeks!) and everything is so different.

i am much too interested in the thing that i just learned. too fickle to pick something. it's why i love everything. i love the women who drink coffee and patrol their waters to make sure that outsiders don't come to catch their fish late at night. i love the man who realized that letting cattle walk the wetlands during the dry season will prevent forest fires. i love the girl who wants so badly to go to high school but who can't because her mom is scared to let her go. i love the sunset in guanacaste and the busride listening to 80s music. i love cutting mohawks on people who should not have mohawks and i love the fact that in a week i will be setting out, to pause my ADD, to focus on something, to get to know some people doing some amazing things.

fight the good fight

some things in the world are beautiful. this bug, for example.

other things are way more scary, more ugly. minimum wages, herbicides, pesticides, monocultures, corrupt governments, racism in the planification of this country, banana plantations, boredom.

there are lots of festivals here in san jose, which are full of hippies and unicyclists and music and art.

there is a lot to costa rica. everything is new. this could be the most simplified thing, but i think it's the only way to sum up my past two weeks of traveling, interviewing, seeing and smelling and tasting, birding and coral reef monitoring, of sloths and monkeys and toucans and planes spraying pesticides above.

in a city on a mountain

i really don't know why i went to barcelona, or why i go to school in ann arbor. suburbia life doesn't cut it for me, and i am definitely not metropolitan. no, i'm starting to think that i'm more of a mountain-type. a fire ant, roosters at dawn but i still got my 8 hours of sleep, mot mot, farmer's market type.




today on our field trip to collect bugs and identify them, and to measure tree sizes and forest canopy, my teacher stopped the car on the road to pick up roadkill.

in addition, the weather has been wack here (rain in the dry season, super hot days, super cold days). as i write this, the sky is a scary pink color, and while this picture doesn't capture it, here it is.