As I transition back home to Los Angeles and UCLA I’m already missing Refugio Bartola. Waking up each morning to a serene Rio San Juan, a flock of birds singing, fresh squeezed juices, and a day of data collection in the rainforest. Overall, the trip exceeded my previous expectations and changed my outlook on field biology. As someone who has past experience in a wet lab environment, the necessity to constantly readjust my field experiments (because a lack of an item) was new to me and difficult. Challenges of not having a heat lamp readily available, for example, really made us think out of the box, literally. To address the confounding variable of not being able to control for temperature we instead performed our behavior trials at the same time each day and in the shade.

While in Nicaragua what surprised me the most was how people, myself included, handled the stress surrounding their projects and various situations. Being able to push through during the middle of the trip and wake up for early 5am hikes days on end was exhausting both mentally and physically. But, like most challenges in life it is how you respond that determines your eventual success and even happiness (both during the trip and after in my opinion). I personally like experiencing moments of exhaustion like the middle of the trip because it makes me realize what I’m truly capable of. For me especially I handled the stress by always trying to stay positive and keeping my day balanced (literally and figuratively!)­­––by sleeping enough, allocating time to work out and socialize with my peers.

The rainforest is an incredible, almost magical place that I will never forget. I can’t overstate how grateful I am for the FBQ and my eye opening experience. By far my favorite moment was hiking up to the end of one of the trails to a creek, then trekking through the water for another kilometer or so. Under tree falls and over waterfalls, with Blue Morpho butterflies flying around everywhere I turned, it was unreal and adrenaline inducing.