Sabado

Me standing in front of the mother tree, which is in fact a Ficus tree (can't grow that in your living room though!)

The primary school that we worked with yesterday.  This is a garden that they work on and use the vegetables to feed the students in the cafeteria.  They have seven beds each for a specific grade at the school that takes care of them.  We planted lettuce and parsley there but they also had already growing peppers and tomato plants.  If you notice the beds are held up using old 2 liter bottles, each bed filled with a different food coloring.  This is something they do to reuse their bottles since proper recycling facilities are hard to find here.

Me standing in front of some peppers and eggplant growing out of vertical beds.  This is a very wise use of space it seems, and the plants do fine.  On the right you can see us planting lettuce on top of a green roof.  This is right outside of the cafeteria and it takes about 2-3 weeks for the lettuce to grow large enough to harvest and we will then be eating it in the salads that we have for both lunch and dinner.  A great use of space! 

This is me and two of the EARTH students that I worked with planting at the primary school and the cafeteria.  The guy on the left is from Colombia and the guy on the right is from Guatemala.  These guys are both first year students and enjoyed talking with me to help work on their English.  The guy from Colombia wants to be fluent in English so when he goes back home he will be the only one that can speak English in his city! 

The basilisk lizard that ran into the cafeteria when we were planting in the beds around it.  I guess that is what I should expect for an open cafeteria, although it was funny to see the guys running around trying to catch it.  This lizard is also known as the Jesus lizard because it can run across the water, some of the people in our group have seen this but sadly I have not yet.

Yesterday was a great day from working with the EARTH students planting vegetables to starting to collect data out in the rain forest.  Today we will be back out in the rain forest all day collecting data, am hoping to see some wildlife today but only from a safe distance!!!  Tomorrow morning we will be leaving for La Selva.