Our midterm exams were on Monday 3/7, so Sunday we had a day with no activities scheduled so that we could study. I had a relaxing day reviewing my notes and napping, since I had sustained a serious sunburn on my back and legs at the mangrove beach (they didn't tell us we were going to a beach, so I didn't have sunscreen!) and was dehydrated and tired. Luckily my generous friends applied aloe to me every now and then in return for my lending them anti-itch cream for bugbites and Neosporin for mysterious rashes... after three weeks of constantly sweating in Palo Verde, almost everyone had some sort of weird ailment. The next morning, we had our environmental studies exam, which covered all of the topics related to Costa Rican environmental policy, management, politics and economics that we had studied so far in the semester. The exam was three hours long, but most of us finished early and used the remaining time to study a bit more for our next test. In the afternoon we had the biology exam, which covered everything else from the first half of the semester. Luckily neither exam was too difficult, since the material we were responsible for knowing was very extensive. Overall I thoght they were both fair tests that we were prepared for.
All of our other final assignments were due the next day at noon, so after the exam Rukhshana and I walked down to the river to do our field notebook assignments. After our 30 minutes of observation and description were done, we hung out and watched the sun set, which was (as usual at Palo Verde) beautiful.
We came back for dinner, and then got to work on our other remaining assignments: insect identification and a plant taxonomy practical. I did all ten insects in one night, and it took me way less time than the insect IDs at Las Cruces, which I was very pleased about. Then I did our plant practical, which was creating a dichotomous key that could be used to identify ten plant species found at Palo Verde. After spending some time hanging out and chatting with my roommates (a very frequent occurrance for us), I went to bed feeling very productive since I had completed two exams and three assignments all in one day.
After lunch on Tuesday we received back the rough drafts of our IP writeups, and had one day to redo them. In the rough draft I had gotten all of the ideas down that I wanted, but still had to read a lot more literature that I didn't have time to get through while we were doing data collection and analysis. I spent the rest of the afternoon and the next morning reading and taking notes on about 20 additional papers, and then reworked my paper Wednesday afternoon. The final copies were technically due at 5 pm, but most people hadn't finished and our professors were pretty flexible about all things related to the IPs since we were so short on time. I had finished writing mine by dinner time, but then took a break to eat and proofread it after dinner. Since it was our last night in Palo Verde and also since the station was full of OTS directors for a meeting the next day, the kitchen staff slaughtered one of the cattle for us and had a giant barbecue complete with fresh meat, patacones (fried plantains), rice and beans, and, the unanimous favorite, (LOTS of) guacamole. It was a serious feast and felt like a celebration of all of the hard work we had been doing at Palo Verde. After dinner, the party continued; the next day was Tom's 21st birthday, but since we were spending most of the day on a bus and then dispersing to our homestays, we decided to celebrate the night before. Because the directors were staying in all of the buildings, we couldn't be loud there and went out to the pier to celebrate. We ran into another group of college students from the University of Florida who had been staying down the road from us for a week but we had never seen until that day. They were also leaving the next day and were celebrating their last night in Palo Verde, as well. The next morning, we all managed to wake up early, pack our stuff, and be on a bus by 8:30 am to head to San Jose, where we'd be spending the next two weeks.
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