Chanhassen High: The STORMy Scientists!

Hello again parents and anyone else who's reading! Today marks day 5 of our 10 day journey in the beautiful Costa Rica. Today in our opinion would be the best day so far because it was just so jam packed! We started the day off by waking up at 5:30 to prepare for our hike on Santa Maria. Breakfast this morning was at 6:15, rather than the usual 7:30. After breakfast we rushed into our vans to get our favorite driver, Eddie (he is the best). The drive to Santa Maria was about an hour and ten minutes long. when we arrived, we all doused ourselves in another coat of bug spray and we were on our way. Not even 10 minutes into the hike, our tour guide, Freddy, spots spider monkeys sneaking around in the canopy above. We stood there for a solid 5 minutes observing these adorable creatures. Moments later, a fellow classmate, Grace Ewing, spotted a large stick bug. Freddy, without hesitation, grabs that stick bug and lets it crawl all over him. This is one of the many creatures he gra...

Hi Moms and Dads! (and everyone else) Tonight the daily Blog is being brought to you by Olivia Hach and Justina Dudziak. We are thrilled (and so very very tired) to be able to write the blog tonight! So today started off with a good ole wakeup at 7 AM (8 AM for you folks). Breakfast, as you probably know, is at 7:30, so we all stumbled out of bed and spent the thirty minutes getting ready for the day. We then walked to breakfast and had eggs, rice and beans, a waffle bowl, and awesome pineapple. After breakfast we walked back to the room and hung out there for around an hour. I (Justina) played solitaire for this hour. Olivia took a nap. We then grabbed our sacks of stuff and blundered to the classroom to start the Day of Science. This began with our groups gathering together to plan a trial experiment. This was based around the question "Where is Escovopsis in the ant colony?" The planning for this alone took about an hour. We then carried out the experiment in the lab r...

Hola parents and grandparents, Today we got started studying ants. We got to dig up the fungus gardens and queen ants. About 2 minutes or less, we found a dead colony. That means a colony without any ants living. About 10 minutes later we found a mature colony. It was as big as a master bedroom! That it is the equivalent of the ants building the Great Wall of China in scale to us. we got to hold many kinds of ants, such as workers, minima, queens, and soldiers. Derek started bleeding from on of the bites, and so did Noah. Those soldiers can really bite! After each group was done digging out one fungus garden we then all went to lunch. the juices here are very good, today was strawberry banana. We had risotto with heart of palm, steak, and salad for lunch. After lunch everyone went back to their cabins for about 2 hours, to get ready for storing and researching our ant colonies. We got to study with world famous Dr. Pinto! We started preparing our artificial ant houses in our plasti...

(The view from the morning walk) To whom this may concern, today was another great day in the rainforest! It all started with a wake up call from the mysterious birds at 5:30. A few girls went on a morning walk to test out their rain boots and to see the views around Finca la Anita. They saw a creek, as shown in the picture above, and walked in it to test our waterproof rain boots (well, we thought they were). Once everyone else woke up, we went to breakfast at 7:30 and had eggs, rice, beans and yogurt with cacao nubs, which are small pieces of the cacao bean. The eggs tasted like fried rice to some people (cough cough Shea).  After breakfast, we went on a cacao (chocolate) tour, which was basically just everybody eating a lot of chocolate. A highlight was homemade hot chocolate with chili powder and whole vanilla beans (we may bring some home). We had two types of hot chocolate, an American way with lots of sugar and the traditional way with more chili and less swee...

Success! We all made it to the airport on time this morning (2:50 sharp).  First flight to Houston went smoothly, we even arrived a little early. That meant we had plenty of time to find doughnuts and coffee in the Houston airport. Boarding the next plane did take a little time, but we arrived in Liberia, Costa Rica safe and sound. Jon Doleman met us at the airport with a surprising fruit to try. It took some squishing to get everyone and all the bags into the vans, but we managed to make it to lunch at a local restaurant. It was phenomenal! After lunch we packed up back into the vans and began our adventure to the Costa Rican rainforest! But we couldn't enjoy it just yet. One of the vans decided to break down, but the locals nearby were very kind, and offered us fruit and some small mountains to climb while we waited for the new van. The view was gorgeous! And many, many pictures were taken. We saw our first leaf cutter ants, tried some more fun fruit, and investigated every o...