Hello! My name is Annika Jonker, and I have the incredible opportunity of attending UGA’s Avian Biology study abroad program May 8th – which is only days away! Throughout my life, I have lived in 3 continents thanks to my father’s job. I was born in South Africa, then moved to Europe when I was 6 years old, and then moved to America shortly before turning 15. Since arriving to the United States, I have been able to travel even more: cross country around America, to Peru, to Ireland, and beyond!\u00a0I have a passion for travel and a love for learning new languages and cultures, so the idea of leaving the States to go to Costa Rica is\u00a0not frightening to me at all.<\/p>\n
What is, however, of concern to me is the weather and what to I should pack. I know that sounds like a trivial thing to worry about, but I am quite conflicted as to what kind of clothing to bring. Dr. Davis – the professor whom we traveled to Costa Rica with – cautioned us not to bring shorts or t-shirts, for the mosquito population\u00a0is horrendous in Costa Rica during this time of year, right before the rainy season; but at the same time, he said it is going to be humid and above 90 degrees almost every day during our time there. I packed according to the recommended packing list and tried not to worry about it too much. After I had packed everything,\u00a0I felt immediately more prepared and excited for the trip. After more thought, I also realize that I am quite nervous about the activities that we will be doing. Our days will mostly consist of hiking and bird watching – I love hiking, but am not much of a bird connoisseur. I am therefore really excited and looking forward to learning more about Costa Rica’s biodiversity and seeing most of its avian species! My parents bought me a book entitled “Birds of Costa Rica,” so hopefully I can use this to my advantage \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
Last year, I went to Peru as part of \u00a0a medical mission trip. We aided impoverished communities in the mountains and got to explore the towns and meet the people who lived there. I am expecting this trip might be similar to my experiences there. The people were so welcoming and so kind, and very quick to help us with our Spanish, which I loved! I’m hoping that during my time in Costa Rica, I will learn more Spanish and be able to successfully converse with the Costa Rican natives. I hope to learn as much of the culture as possible, too, and eat lots of delicious Costa Rican food!<\/p>\n
I am SO excited for this journey and can’t wait to start this new adventure! Hasta lluego, UGA, I’ll see you soon!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hello! My name is Annika Jonker, and I have the incredible opportunity of attending UGA’s Avian Biology study abroad program May 8th – which is only days away! Throughout my life, I have lived in 3 continents thanks to my father’s job. I was born in South Africa, then moved to Europe when I was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":411,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,33,35,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-avian-biology","category-costa-rica","category-faculty-led","category-maymester"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/411"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2731"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2732,"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2731\/revisions\/2732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}