Twenty-six Feet of Rain

Tomorrow starts my second time being apart of the Forman Rainforest project. Each year three schools from Litchfield send students down with their entrprid leaders to Costa Rica to conduct research on various topics. This year there will be four teams: Spider Silk, Bio-acoustics, Birds, and Reptiles and Amphibians. I will once again be leading the birds team and Co-leading the Reptiles ans Amphibians team with Alex Shepack.

El Plastico

 

 

The famous entrance to Rara Avis

We bring the students down to Rara Avis, an eco-tourisum reserve that has been running since 1983. Rara Avis is nothing like I had ever seen before, there isn't a spot of landscape that isn't covered in green. Like the title says they get on average twenty-six feet of rain, making this true rainforest. The species diversity is beyond incredible across the taxonomic scale.

Last year was my first year leading both the Birds and Reptiles and Amphibians, I had a group of three girls on each team, so six girls in total. I was a tad nervous to say the least, I was in this unknown terrain, was leading six girls, and was confident they were going to eat me alive. They turned out to be some of the hardest working kids I've ever worked with. We coined ourselves the mega-team, most of the time the teams don't collaborate a lot, but because I lead both groups we had to work together. It was quite the first year, they all also set the bar really high for my expectations for this year.

The Mega-team.

We will be looking into a few different topics this year between the two teams. I will be very excited to share our findings when we get back. Last year will be hard to top.