wanderlust (n): the strong, innate desire to rove or travel about: May 2011

I apologize for the serious lack of information put on this blog. And I am probably going to continue with this lack of information for a little while longer. Writing a large research paper while spending the my last couple weeks in a country leaves little time for many things except stat analysis and living up life. However, I will include alot of pictures so you guys can get a brief idea of what I have been up to.

These are all pictures from a trip to Punta Leona, a resort-ish sort of location on the Pacific Coast that the director of my program worked at a while back. Needless to say it was a breathtaking day and a night and a day, and included one of the most beautiful sun sets of my life AND a double rainbow.

Little do we know the beauty we are going to see soon.

The beach during the day.

The sunset begins over the beach skyline.

Waves. A necessary component of any beach sunset.

Perfect shells everywhere.

The rainbow begins.

The rainbow DOUBLES.

Then the sky exploded with beauty.

And the rainbow faded a little (but was still fantastic)

And the sun set got to a whole other level

And then I couldn't help myself and I went swimming.

It has still yet to be decided if children are fat here, or what the heck causes it. Though it is nice to be back in San Jose I fight a daily battle between my desire to work and desire to enjoy my last month here. So far I have usually been able to accomplish a little bit of both, but working on a large project while abroad is definitely a different process than when I am on a college campus.

I won’t bore you with stories (let alone pictures) of my statistical analysis process. Mostly it includes a lot of reading articles, writing words, and putting numbers in excel, then do that again, and again and again.

A more interesting story is our adventure to a volcano last weekend. We went with our program to Volcan Irazu, which was really beautiful. We lucked out with the weather, which I learned was a rarity. It was a breath taking drive to the volcano itself, and we were eventually at about 11,000 ft. It reminded me of the lovely thin air and on top of the world feeling that I had been missing in Colorado.

The land is in the clouds. Magical.

Another Volcano off in the distance. Notice the small smoke plume coming out of the top of it.

Like we were in an airplane.

When we got to the volcano itself we first saw an old crater or a previous explosion. This volcano is still sometimes active though, so there was no swimming to be had. However, the water in the old crater was an amazing aqua marine color. Also beside us was a desolate are where the plants were just beginning to grow back. Comically enough this place is called “Playa Hermosa” or beautiful beach. It was beautiful, but not really like any beach I had ever seen.

Playa Hermosa.

Look at the color.

Another shot of Playa Hermosa. Over the edge is the view down into the crater.

Afterwards we visited a church nearby that is of Saint Los Angeles. It is probably the most famous church in Costa Rica, and has a spring of blessed water that I drank out of. On the day of the Saint of L.A, almost a half of the country makes the pilgrimage to the church to give thanks to the saint and leave gifts of gratitude and appreciation.

Inside the church.

Tokens of thanks.

As a doe longs for streams so my soul longs for you god.

Greenery.

The following day, Friday, was the Royal Wedding. Obviously this has everything to do with my research on childhood obesity in Costa Rica so I spent the whole day cooking British related food with the two girls who are working on my project with me. We made tea flavored cake, pound cake and jam, strawberries and cream, iced tea, tea sandwiches, and listened to the Beatles during the whole process. Little head way was made in my statistical analysis, but it was a simply lovely afternoon, darling.