First off, my flickr account is apparently full, so I have posted some new pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/kellykay1
Other than that, here is an update: I went ziplining and it was SO SCARY! When I went it was pouring rain, so I could barely see as I flew through the rainforest! The rain made it really hard to stop, too, so it was like I was flying a half mile or so at a time, hanging by a thin cord, and wondering if I would actually be able to stop myself! I don't think I will ever do it again, but it is recommended if you are looking for a serious adrenaline rush. Also we rode horses on the way back down the mountain, which was really hard in wet shorts and I got some minor irritations on my thighs from the saddle. It's all part of the adventure, I suppose.
Also, yesterday I witnessed a toucan battle to the death. I walked up to these two fighting birds and they were so engaged in battle that they didn't care that I was standing just inches away from them. Later Steven told me they were fighting for dominance, but one had it's feet around the others' huge bill and they were screaming and pecking each other. It was a very National Geographic style moment and I didn't even have my camera!
Speaking of National Geographic, I entered Luna Nueva in a sustainable tourism contest they are having and also simultaneously entered myself in a contest to win a trip to any sustainable tourist destination in the world. As far as I can see, not very many other people have entered, so maybe I will win! As for work, the busy season is quickly approaching which is tiring and exciting and hopefully I will able to rise to the challenge. Take care, guys!
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Hello blogosphere!
I recently learned about the blogosphere, the complex web woven by blogging. If you'd like to see a picture of it, you can do so here: http://brandingme.files.wordpress.com/2007/06/blogosphere.jpg
Aside from contributing to the blogosphere, I have been doing other things too. We finally have guests which has meant a lot of entertaining! Throughout my young life, I have gotten pretty good at entertaining and hanging out and cooking people food and making them coffee is so nice! We have an Irish actress staying here right now and she's a vegetarian so we picked rainforest greens and I made us a great salad and later today we are going to take a canopy tour. This means we are ziplining through the canopy of the rainforest, and since most of the biodiversity is located in the canopy, we will see lots of monkeys and snakes and other cool animals that you miss from the vantage point of the floor.
Also, we took four elderly botanist women on a tour of the medicinal plant garden yesterday and they all knew so many cool things about plants! And lastly, Fabien (our hotel manager) had his entire extended family staying here, so his girlfriend and I made them and all our other guests lots of pizzas in our outdoor clay oven and everybody went in the pool together.
Life is pretty nice, is basically the point of this entry. I never sleep anymore and I feel pretty bad that I barely see Walter and Giselle anymore, but I have been so busy. Amber the Irish actress told me that if you're doing what you love, you'll never work a day in your life, and lately I haven't felt like I've been working at all. I obviously have a lot of life to live but at some point I think I'd be really happy building a big ecofriendly house and opening a vegetarian bed and breakfast somewhere in the distant future.
As for today, wish me luck as I am hanging hundreds of feet above the ground in a harness searching for wildlife!
I recently learned about the blogosphere, the complex web woven by blogging. If you'd like to see a picture of it, you can do so here: http://brandingme.files.wordpress.com/2007/06/blogosphere.jpg
Aside from contributing to the blogosphere, I have been doing other things too. We finally have guests which has meant a lot of entertaining! Throughout my young life, I have gotten pretty good at entertaining and hanging out and cooking people food and making them coffee is so nice! We have an Irish actress staying here right now and she's a vegetarian so we picked rainforest greens and I made us a great salad and later today we are going to take a canopy tour. This means we are ziplining through the canopy of the rainforest, and since most of the biodiversity is located in the canopy, we will see lots of monkeys and snakes and other cool animals that you miss from the vantage point of the floor.
Also, we took four elderly botanist women on a tour of the medicinal plant garden yesterday and they all knew so many cool things about plants! And lastly, Fabien (our hotel manager) had his entire extended family staying here, so his girlfriend and I made them and all our other guests lots of pizzas in our outdoor clay oven and everybody went in the pool together.
Life is pretty nice, is basically the point of this entry. I never sleep anymore and I feel pretty bad that I barely see Walter and Giselle anymore, but I have been so busy. Amber the Irish actress told me that if you're doing what you love, you'll never work a day in your life, and lately I haven't felt like I've been working at all. I obviously have a lot of life to live but at some point I think I'd be really happy building a big ecofriendly house and opening a vegetarian bed and breakfast somewhere in the distant future.
As for today, wish me luck as I am hanging hundreds of feet above the ground in a harness searching for wildlife!
Monday, January 21, 2008
Lately I have started doing my work outdoors on my laptop which I think has led to me feeling a lot happier and less cooped up but also less self-conscious about doing things like updating my blog during work hours. Today I have a million resumes to read; we are hiring a new hotel manager and I am in charge of paring down the applicant pool for interviews. Steven has also given me a laundry list of administrative work that needs to get done which means I will have to leave my machete in the shed for awhile. I don't mind too much.
In other news, I am constantly being offered jobs here. We had these absurd American jacuzzi repairmen staying here and trying to fix the solar heating on our jacuzzi and they told me that if I ever wanted to come back to Costa Rica they needed more Americans to work at Solar Costa Rica. I don't think I'd want to work for them but it was a nice offer. More importantly, I just had a really pleasant phone conversation with somebody who at the end of the call revealed to me that he was the CEO of New Chapter and that he was very excited to meet me and needed a new intern. He also just got back from Portland where he was spending some time with his good friend, the CEO of New Seasons (a quickly growing local organic grocery store chain), and mentioned the prospects of work for me in Portland as well. I knew this job could lead to some potential job opportunities, but I have plugged into a crazy network of environmentally friendly corportations, the owners and CEOS of all of which are old friends of my boss!
And, on a personal note, I made a birthday cake for Walter and Giselle (they have the same birthday and it was yesterday) and we had a really nice birthday party where lots of their family members came to visit for a few days and we ate a lot of food and played cards. Emilie and I caught some tadpools and she is very excited to watch them for proof of the fact that they are baby frogs and not fish. My family took me to Fortuna, where there is an awesome active volcano that you can see from the tower at Luna Nueva, and I saw it up close and also got to spend some time in a popular tourist area. I got a phone call in the office a few days ago and Daniel, the younger brother of an old friend, is living to Costa Rica and moved to Fortuna this weekend for work. It is the closest big city to me and I can take a single, short bus ride to visit him. I am honestly a little nervous about traveling alone, but the trip is short enough and I am going to make sure to do it during daylight hours in both directions. I will probably go next weekend.
I hope everybody is doing well and I have started taking a new batch of pictures (we have some really cute baby chickens right now) which I will get up within the week.
Kelly
In other news, I am constantly being offered jobs here. We had these absurd American jacuzzi repairmen staying here and trying to fix the solar heating on our jacuzzi and they told me that if I ever wanted to come back to Costa Rica they needed more Americans to work at Solar Costa Rica. I don't think I'd want to work for them but it was a nice offer. More importantly, I just had a really pleasant phone conversation with somebody who at the end of the call revealed to me that he was the CEO of New Chapter and that he was very excited to meet me and needed a new intern. He also just got back from Portland where he was spending some time with his good friend, the CEO of New Seasons (a quickly growing local organic grocery store chain), and mentioned the prospects of work for me in Portland as well. I knew this job could lead to some potential job opportunities, but I have plugged into a crazy network of environmentally friendly corportations, the owners and CEOS of all of which are old friends of my boss!
And, on a personal note, I made a birthday cake for Walter and Giselle (they have the same birthday and it was yesterday) and we had a really nice birthday party where lots of their family members came to visit for a few days and we ate a lot of food and played cards. Emilie and I caught some tadpools and she is very excited to watch them for proof of the fact that they are baby frogs and not fish. My family took me to Fortuna, where there is an awesome active volcano that you can see from the tower at Luna Nueva, and I saw it up close and also got to spend some time in a popular tourist area. I got a phone call in the office a few days ago and Daniel, the younger brother of an old friend, is living to Costa Rica and moved to Fortuna this weekend for work. It is the closest big city to me and I can take a single, short bus ride to visit him. I am honestly a little nervous about traveling alone, but the trip is short enough and I am going to make sure to do it during daylight hours in both directions. I will probably go next weekend.
I hope everybody is doing well and I have started taking a new batch of pictures (we have some really cute baby chickens right now) which I will get up within the week.
Kelly
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Machete
I have been doing such difficult labor lately and there is only more in store, as I can tell from the fact that today I got my very own machete. I hope we start having guests so I stop having occasions to use the machete and just get to carry it around with me places instead. We had a tour yesterday for the first time since I got here and the hotel was buzzing with such a nice of feeling of people getting things done and cooking big meals and practicing their English. The guests were a couple from Washington DC who traveled all the way here to see our garden because they are really into the company that buys all of our organic herbs and sells them in the United States, New Chapter.
After four hours of cutting and moving and digging and planting, I am off work for the day and my weekend starts momentarily. I don´t have any plans, as usual, but will probably get in some good reading and spend some time with my family. It is getting pretty hot out and I might take the opportunity to swim in the resort´s freshwater pool.
Things are still really lonely here but next month we are booked solid with conferences and the month after I have slowly but surely assembled an amazing cast of visitors to keep me company. Furthermore, this morning my parents changed my ticket home, so I will be returning home on May 7, 2008 instead of June 1, 2008. Changing the ticket makes me feel sort of cowardly, but it is still a very long time to be in a foreign country and I haven´t decided to give up and go home immediately. I just don´t think I will want to be here for all of May once it rolls around. I guess even if it makes me a little bit of a coward, the prospect of my newly changed ticket has eased a lot of my anxiety about living here.
I hope everybody is well,
Kelly
After four hours of cutting and moving and digging and planting, I am off work for the day and my weekend starts momentarily. I don´t have any plans, as usual, but will probably get in some good reading and spend some time with my family. It is getting pretty hot out and I might take the opportunity to swim in the resort´s freshwater pool.
Things are still really lonely here but next month we are booked solid with conferences and the month after I have slowly but surely assembled an amazing cast of visitors to keep me company. Furthermore, this morning my parents changed my ticket home, so I will be returning home on May 7, 2008 instead of June 1, 2008. Changing the ticket makes me feel sort of cowardly, but it is still a very long time to be in a foreign country and I haven´t decided to give up and go home immediately. I just don´t think I will want to be here for all of May once it rolls around. I guess even if it makes me a little bit of a coward, the prospect of my newly changed ticket has eased a lot of my anxiety about living here.
I hope everybody is well,
Kelly
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Photos!
I have uploaded my first batch of photos to my Flickr account, and they can all be found here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22642622@N03/
I like the ones of the pigs, the new piglets are very cute.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22642622@N03/
I like the ones of the pigs, the new piglets are very cute.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Littlewood´s Law
I think that syncronicity is pretty cool, and today I stumbled upon something about Littlewood´s Law. Statistically, when dealing in very large numbers, like seconds, probability says that once a month it is normal to experience what would be deemed a miracle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Littlewood%27s_law. Totally sweet, right?
I guess that means I can expect a couple miracles while I am here. With luck, one of these miracles will be making friends. I live in a tiny town, almost two miles uphill, in the rainforest, and then from there, on a farm with a small community of farmworkers. This is really cool for the work side of my trip, as well as the biological side (I am getting really asorbed whenever there is work to do and seeing lots of amazing things that wouldn´t exist if there were a ton of people around). Unfortunately, there is not a high probability of my making friends while I am here. As my Spanish improves, I am beginning to notice that people don´t really like me around here. The only Americans they experience are tourists, and to them, I am just like all of those people. Additionally, almost everybody I encounter here are married couples, and my presence seems to be causing problems. All of the women who work at Luna Nueva are really cold towards me because their husbands stare at me all the time. I don´t want to talk to their husbands because it will only make things worse. There is nobody here under 25, with the exception of my new little sister, and nobody who is unmarried. I guess I am going to have to get used to being alone a lot.
On the other side of things, I have been getting a lot of cool work done. I have put myself in charge of marketing and outreach, which gives me an opportunity to be social, at least via the internet and telephone. Today I emailed a couple of blogs and magazines in the US to see if anybody wanted to write a story about the farm and resort. Also today I helped Juan Artista and Steven plan out next season´s planting area while pigs walked around us and ate all the roots of the dying plants from the last harvest. Pigs are really weird and social and are always very boldly walking around and following people places. Also, I made some great pasta sauce today with the basil and tomatoes from the garden and had a fantastic lunch! Yesterday Leo and I moved twenty bags of compost and then spread all of it on each of the 250 plants in the medicinal plant sanctuary. By the end, I was completely covered in dirt. My hands were black! I had Giselle take a picture of me before I showered and I am going to post it tomorrow when I bring my camera to work.
Honestly, I have been pretty frustrated here but I am trying to look on the bright side. There is nowhere else that I am supposed to be right now, and I have school to do online, books to read, photos to take, a lot of half-written stories to finish, and a huge forest to explore. Honestly, I am probably not going to make friends here. That´s okay, though. Being here is not about being social, it is about learning and growing and there is no better way to grow than through spending a lot of time alone. Or, if anybody wants to come visit, you can stay anywhere on the (always empty) resort for free and we can go ziplining and river rafting and I will show you the rainforest and make you lots of meals. Tempting, right?
I guess that means I can expect a couple miracles while I am here. With luck, one of these miracles will be making friends. I live in a tiny town, almost two miles uphill, in the rainforest, and then from there, on a farm with a small community of farmworkers. This is really cool for the work side of my trip, as well as the biological side (I am getting really asorbed whenever there is work to do and seeing lots of amazing things that wouldn´t exist if there were a ton of people around). Unfortunately, there is not a high probability of my making friends while I am here. As my Spanish improves, I am beginning to notice that people don´t really like me around here. The only Americans they experience are tourists, and to them, I am just like all of those people. Additionally, almost everybody I encounter here are married couples, and my presence seems to be causing problems. All of the women who work at Luna Nueva are really cold towards me because their husbands stare at me all the time. I don´t want to talk to their husbands because it will only make things worse. There is nobody here under 25, with the exception of my new little sister, and nobody who is unmarried. I guess I am going to have to get used to being alone a lot.
On the other side of things, I have been getting a lot of cool work done. I have put myself in charge of marketing and outreach, which gives me an opportunity to be social, at least via the internet and telephone. Today I emailed a couple of blogs and magazines in the US to see if anybody wanted to write a story about the farm and resort. Also today I helped Juan Artista and Steven plan out next season´s planting area while pigs walked around us and ate all the roots of the dying plants from the last harvest. Pigs are really weird and social and are always very boldly walking around and following people places. Also, I made some great pasta sauce today with the basil and tomatoes from the garden and had a fantastic lunch! Yesterday Leo and I moved twenty bags of compost and then spread all of it on each of the 250 plants in the medicinal plant sanctuary. By the end, I was completely covered in dirt. My hands were black! I had Giselle take a picture of me before I showered and I am going to post it tomorrow when I bring my camera to work.
Honestly, I have been pretty frustrated here but I am trying to look on the bright side. There is nowhere else that I am supposed to be right now, and I have school to do online, books to read, photos to take, a lot of half-written stories to finish, and a huge forest to explore. Honestly, I am probably not going to make friends here. That´s okay, though. Being here is not about being social, it is about learning and growing and there is no better way to grow than through spending a lot of time alone. Or, if anybody wants to come visit, you can stay anywhere on the (always empty) resort for free and we can go ziplining and river rafting and I will show you the rainforest and make you lots of meals. Tempting, right?
Monday, January 7, 2008
My First Week!
Hey Guys!
I have been here for about a week now. Costa Rica is really beautiful and there are lots of amazing plants and animals in the rainforests around me. So far, I have seen an iguana, a sloth, a poison dart frog, leafcutter ants, a lot of toucans, and a million different types of plants! For the next month, I am living with a nice Tico family. Walter and Giselle and their daughter Emilie are very kind and take really good care of me. My Spanish is pretty mediocre but they are helping me to learn! The hotel hasn´t actually had any guests since I got here, so I am thinking that I may never have to do any work! Mostly at work I have been learning about farming and the rainforest, and yesterday morning I milked a cow. Time moves more slowly here than I have ever experienced, and I wonder if I am going to be able to make it through six months at this pace. Maybe I need to take up more hobbies? Pictures will be coming soon! It has been raining and I don´t want to get my camera wet.
I have been here for about a week now. Costa Rica is really beautiful and there are lots of amazing plants and animals in the rainforests around me. So far, I have seen an iguana, a sloth, a poison dart frog, leafcutter ants, a lot of toucans, and a million different types of plants! For the next month, I am living with a nice Tico family. Walter and Giselle and their daughter Emilie are very kind and take really good care of me. My Spanish is pretty mediocre but they are helping me to learn! The hotel hasn´t actually had any guests since I got here, so I am thinking that I may never have to do any work! Mostly at work I have been learning about farming and the rainforest, and yesterday morning I milked a cow. Time moves more slowly here than I have ever experienced, and I wonder if I am going to be able to make it through six months at this pace. Maybe I need to take up more hobbies? Pictures will be coming soon! It has been raining and I don´t want to get my camera wet.
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