Naturally Curious Education
Hi friends! It's Ruby. We had great day today! My head is buzzing with a ton of information. We started out the day by doing a get to know you game that Cindy described like Speed Dating. After that we got some free time. A small group of us decided to do some exploring. After that most of us played cards in the classroom. I partook in a game of giant B. S. which we decided stood for Bug Spray on this trip. We used Cody's giant cards. Next was the chocolate tour. We are on a cacao farm so we got to see all of the different stages of chocolate making and taste them all! In the picture above, we are tasting some pure and spicy hot chocolate that originated in Mexico. It had blended cacao and water, local vanilla, local sugar, and some cayenne pepper. These are cacao nibs that we broke out of roasted cacao beans. The fat in them smells like a good chocolate. Pablo (the man leaning over the beans) owns the farm. He gave the tour. The two in the last picture work here and are getting the beans out of the fruit. Pablo let us taste the sweet sugary coating on the outside of the beans in the fruit. It has a mango-like taste. We got to try some of the purest and best chocolate in the world. Pablo prides himself on the quality of his product. It was incredible. Pablo used a machete to cut us some fresh heart of palm for a salad. He put the hearts, olive oil, lemon juice, black pepper, salt, cilantro, some liquid curry (in the green bottle closer to the camera), onion, bell pepper, tomato, and vinegar. After lunch and before our first intro to the science part of the trip, I got to spend some time with the farm dogs. There are three of them. The black and white one is Fico (I'm pretty sure that's how you spell it) and the white an tan one is Dr. Bombay. The one that is not pictured here is Aretha Franklin, the puppy. If you see her in later pictures, she's black. Dr. Adrian Pinto and Allen (a graduate student of Pinto's) gave us an intro to the science. It was mostly what we learned in preparation for this trip. The are both very nice. We got to go through the scientific method with our groups (the groups are random and consist of three to four students) with the general question, "Where are bacteria most abundant on the farm?" My group focused on the water. There is a large variety of different hypothesis and predictions so the results should be very interesting. After dinner we went on a night hike. The ant that Allen is holding is a leaf cutter. Great ending to a great day!
-Ruby P. S. Love you family!
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After a very early morning start and a long day of traveling, we have arrived in Costa Rica and our home away from home - Finca la Anita! We stopped for lunch in Liberia before heading on a long drive to our final destination. As we soon discovered, even in Costa Rica we cannot avoid road construction and getting stuck behind a slow hauling truck going uphill. The slow drive just meant we got to enjoy more of the scenery! Here are few photos from the drive. And I saw Howler Monkeys from my van. Your children were in a different van and did not see them. Here's the photo of what they missed. I'm hoping that at some point they will have the chance to see these monkeys. Another busy day tomorrow!
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AuthorsEach day students will have the change to write about our experiences in Costa Rica this summer. They can upload photos and share what they are learning while they are away. ArchivesCategories |