This is it! The final blog post of our time here in Costa Rica this summer. Today, we are packing up all of our stuff to leave Gran Casa. We have a late-night flight out of San Jose tonight and will arrive in Newark early tomorrow morning. These past five weeks have been a whirlwind of field work, office days, weekend trips, and research in general. Overall, I am very appreciative to have had this experience, and I feel like the trip had a good balance of research/work and trips to the field/exploring Costa Rica. However, five weeks is a long time to be away from home, and I am ready to be back in New Jersey. We are already moving back into school in just over 2 weeks!
The trip definitely provided me an insight into to the worlds of geology and research as a whole. Specifically, Rosa and I now have a much better understanding about landslides, what causes them, and conditions that make areas more susceptible than others. Of course, this will also continue into the year as our research continues at Rutgers. I loved that we were able to connect the work we were doing in our lab to real life, in the form of doing field work at the locations we were studying and seeing real life landslides up close. It would be more difficult to become passionate about the research without this field work element.
Living away from home for over a month was different, but in a good way. Sometimes I feel like I get too comfortable at home, so it was definitely good for me to experience a foreign country for a good chuck of my summer. Of course I gained a lot from the research I did here, but I also won’t forget all of the fun weekend trips we went on during our trip. From swimming in the hot springs in La Fortuna, to watching howler monkeys in Puerto Viejo, to enjoying the beach in Manuel Antonio, I feel like I got to explore the entire country of Costa Rica in addition to the work we were doing.
This isn’t a goodbye to Costa Rica, it’s a see you soon! We will be returning as a group for a little over a week during our winter break to meet up with our mentors again and showcase the work we accomplished while at school. With that being said, check back in during January. Until then..... peace out!