I´m here and I´m alive!

It was an adventure getting to Costa Rica, but I´m safe and sound here now.
We had to take 2 flights to get here from Detroit. 1 from Detroit to Chicago, one from Chicago to Houston, and then one from Houston to Liberia, Costa Rica. Our flight from Detroit to Chicago was fine... and then we sat and waited in the departure lounge for the gate we heard mentioned over the intercom. Only when the flight started boarding, and my boarding pass gave them a blinking beeping red light did we realize that we were in the departure lounge. This flight was still going to Houston but it was the wrong airline. Meaning... we were in the wrong terminal, and had to get to OUR gate within 20 minutes, or it´d depart! Yikes. We got to the gate and it looked like it was closed so I looked at the guy pleadingly. He said 'we´re still deplaning' meaning, we weren´t late! But that´s when the real adventures started. We got on the plane a bit late, and then sat on the plane for a while... Finally the captain updated us: they got to a thing on a routine checklist and they were 'missing a pin'... having found the pin in the cockpit and not underneath the plane they got worried, only to realize that yes it´s supposed to be in the cockpit. they just had to get maintenance to sign off on it. So we left an hour late. As we´re in the air, we´re thinking we don´t have that much time to get off the plane in houston and then back onto the plane to costa rica, so we get a little nervous. THEN the captain comes on the intercom and updates us again: ' we´ve been having a little weather lately, and we´ve been rerouting to get around it... we don´t have enough fuel to get to houston.... so we´re gonna land in dallas and fuel up'. hmm.... we sit in dallas for a long time (well over an hour) because of 'paperwork'... but finally we´re heading to the runway and we stop and sit there. captain says 'so we had enough fuel to go straight to houston... but now houston wants us to reroute again... meaning we don´t have enough fuel. we´ve got to go back' so we go back to the gate and refuel again. AT least time we got updates about those of us with connecting flights in houston. they rattled off a list: if you´re going to bla, you´ve got a flight leaving houston at 8... etc etc etc. AND if you´re going to Liberia, Costa Rica, yoú'll have to wait until tomorrow because there´s only one flight a day. We´ll put you in a hotel.
But they didn´t. We got to >Houston (around 8:30, we were supposed to land around 2 or 3 or something), they barely even were helpful until we found one particularly helpful woman who told us a few numbers to call to find ahotel - but the airport wasn´t paying for it. We ccouldn´t get the payphone to call Dan in costa Rica so this nice lady let us use the airport phone to call him. that was also nice of her. We tried calling a bunch of hotels but there was nothing available so we slept on the floor of the airport. At least it was quiet, unlike lima. And carpeted - the chairs all had armrests so we slept on the floor. And the airport was empty, just cleaners. So it wasn´t bad, as far as sleeping in airports goes.
And finally we arrived yesterday around noon, unpacked our stuff, went for a walk and saw some volcanoes, and then watched the sunset... ate a yummy dinner of pasta, and headed to bed around 8pm.

This morning we got up at 4am and headed out into the field. Dan was taking me on a tour of the study site. It was 'cool' today, starting the morning off at 21degrees, and hitting only 28 by 11am. It´s the dry season now, so it hasn´t started raining yet... that´ll happen soon.

I saw some cool birds today, so if you´re bored you should search for them on google images, or flickr or something.
Blue.crowned motmot
Elegant trogon
Pale-billed woodpecker
Long-tailed manakin

And I study the Rufous-and-white wren, a rather boring looking brown bird with a decently pretty song.

I just found out today that I won an award through a national granting agency. The Fred Cooke Award, it gives me $700 to do research or travel to a scientific conference. Sweet.

Also, I have a professional website. It´s not finished but you can check it out
http://web2.uwindsor.ca/courses/biology/mennill_lab/barkern/ there