Rain!

This morning, I awoke to the sound of rain pattering on the roof of the bunkhouse. It was still dark, so I didn't bother climbing down from my bunk and looking out the window. I just laid in bed for a while and listened. The coqui frogs were making lots of noise and soon I was lulled back to sleep. When I got up for breakfast, it had stopped raining... for the moment.

Once we hiked down to the area where we would be working, the rain started again. It was pretty cool at first, because even though it was raining, I wasn't getting wet! The canopy of the rainforest was catching all the raindrops before they reached me. But then it started raining harder. And harder. We were all trying our best to climb up and down the steep slopes to do our measurements, but it was difficult to get a foothold. We kept slipping and sliding downhill, whether we wanted to or not! :)

Eventually, it stopped raining and we ended up getting a lot of work done. I was working with Matt, another teacher, on measuring the width of the trees' canopies. Basically, we had to look up to see how far each canopy extended. We took two measurements for each tree: a north-south measurement and an east-west measurement. It took a long time because of the muddy terrain, and I was so tired by the time we hiked back to our camp!

Hiking back was an adventure... the trail had become so muddy that my shoes literally sank down to my ankles in some places! When I got back to camp, I had to laugh... the backside of my pants are now completely and permanently mud-stained. I had to rinse my shoes with the hose and lay them out to dry. I hope they dry before tomorrow morning!


Tonight should be a relaxing night... our frog study was postponed until tomorrow night. And tomorrow afternoon I'll be talking with Mrs. Jackson's class on a live webcast! I can't wait to share my adventures with her students!


Some of the people on my Earthwatch team (left to right):

Molly, Camille, Rachel, Jeff, Joe, Alison, Matt