Studying for the AEPA

LRE

IDEA

PL 94-142

ASD

MR

MIMR

MOMR

HI

OHI

PDD

FBA

IEP

IDEA-R

1990, 1997, 2004

ADA

CP

FAPE

TBI

PLEP -> PLAFP

504-Plan

Practice Test

Pura Vida! Day 1

Costa Rica

Day 1:


Arriving at the airport in Liberia, CR. It was pretty hot, and the security guys pretty quickly made sure I put away my camera ("No ca-ma-da, no ca-ma-da!")

Burger King in town.

There was a parade in a small city which we accidentally joined for about a block. Our driver's explanation for why a fiesta/parade was going on: "...Domingo." ("Sunday.")

The flat areas are very flat. The dry season is very dry. The rainy season is very rainy. And the people were all very nice and welcoming. Volcanoes, rainforest, beaches... Costa Rica has a lot of extremes.

And the food is very good, too!

Going over the hills on our way to the Ecolodge. The thin band of light blue-grey you can see in front of the most distant mountain range is the Pacific Ocean.

A view I passed several times each day walking to and from the Cabinas.


The sky and mountain above our Cabina.

First night's sunset.

Pura Vida! Day 2

Costa Rica

Day 2:


Milking Susa.

Baby cow almost had a good picture with me, and also almost nailed me in the face with her head.

And she peed. And her mom drank it. Gross.

But she looked like Bambi, and was super cute.

In front of the Ecolodge after milking.

Milking team. The two in the foreground were at the Ecolodge on vacation with their family.

Ecolodge again.

Strangler fig vines wrapped around an Ebony tree.

Little, cool flowers everywhere.

Hanging out before one of the hikes.



These are "swiss cheese plants," and the holes simulate prior herbivory (having been eaten already) so bugs will pass over this plant in search of a not-already-eaten plant.

These trees produce protein bodies in their sap for ants to eat, and in turn the ants live in the tree... this provides shelter and food for the ants, and the ants protect the tree from any animals that may try to eat it. If you knock on the tree, the ants rush out, and they will even remove any debris that is stuck in the tree (ex: leaves, sticks).

More cool little flowers. THey look like something from Willy Wonka.


You can see the trail where the insect has eaten the top layer of this leaf.

Caterpillars, I think?

More swiss cheese plant.

Huge tree -- you can see some people standing next to it on the right.

Cutter ants -- these are very cool. They cut leaves up, carry them home to enormous nests (think ant pile, but the side of a king size bed, a few feet high... and that's just the exposed area) where they pile the leaves up to make compost. Fungus grows on the compost, and the ants eat the fungus. Insect agriculture... pretty amazing.

Big tree again.

I forgot what these are called, but they come in a few colors and grow all over the place. So do orchids, which grow in trees and all over the ground. In fact, the national flower is a type of orchid, and it's illegal to sell it. They bloom one month each year, and that happens to be the same time we were there... ¡Qué suerte!

Very green foliage everywhere we went.

Alien caterpillar. Found by animal-Geoff, not plant-Jeff. Animal-Geoff does all kinds of things other naturalists don't like: rescues injured mammals, has killed a few bugs to keep as samples for identification, has earrings. He apparently makes them really mad.

Small plant, but in the background is the river at the bottom of a gorge. Across the gorge is a farm where the naturalists are afraid to go. "Nobody talks to them, and they don't talk to anybody." I heard two variations of who owns and runs the farm: "Europeans" and "Hippies." I don't know which could be more scary to locals, but I picture both could have undesirable characteristics and be hard to understand.

More of that caterpillar. It has very fascinating coloring.


B-A-N-A-N-A-S!

Good, good, good food.

Injured Coati Geoff and I carried to his cabina so he could feed it bananas.

Pineapples in the edibles garden.

The pineapples had this view.

Medicinal garden tour.

Cool, colorful birds ate bananas off nails (a bird feeder of sorts) in front of the Comeador porch.

Since it rains so much, large-leafed plants need water to run off quickly to prevent breakage under the weight. These elephant ear type plants caused water to bead up like it was Mercury.

More of the birds. They might be a Mot-Mot.

Oh, the Terror!
The woman who was about to clean the floor seemed a little weirded-out that we laughed at her, but I explained to her that "Terror" is a very bad thing. She assured us the soap is a very good thing, and "muy fuerte" ("very strong").

A Coati (aka: Nosebear). He had a little run-in with a dog, which was (happily) anticlimactic. The dogs pose a big threat to wildlife, and we were not allowed to touch or acknowledge the roaming pet dogs that wandered onto the property every now and then. They may actually be what hurt Geoff's Coati.

A farm we saw on our hike down the trail that went through the banana trees. I have no clue if we were supposed to be there, but the man wearing a surgical mask who we ran into waved nicely.

Very pretty everywhere.

OK, so this next part needs a little explanation. En los Estados Unidos, tenemos Pie Grande. En Costa Rica, tienen la Chupacabra. (In the US, we have Big Foot. In Costa Rica, they have the Chupacabra.) It's pretty much the same thing in that it does-doesn't exist, and although most people don't buy it, it's fun to act like it's real... like the Tooth Fairy or fair taxes. So we decided we'd do our best and figure out what it may look like, should we run into one and need to quickly identify it. Albeit unscientific, we did our best. So I give you:

La Chupacabra