Welcome to our Central America Blog!

After hours of packing and re-packing and running errands and then running more, we have successfully placed the necessities for the next months of our lives in four carefully weighed 50 pound bags.  While much of the preparation was physical, the most preparation had to be mental.  To leave a constant life in Bloomington IN, pack everything we own into a 10x15 storage unit and prepare to live in the unknown future of research and life in Central America takes mental relaxation in a time of stress.

Celebrating the holidays with our families felt good.  They were also troopers as we ran errands and spread all our belongings out in every attempt to re-pack while taking up record amounts of floor space.  They also will be such a wonderful support network for us as we head out.

This time living in Central America is to conduct Monica's PhD research.  We will be in the region of Trifinio, also known as Montecristo and La Fraternidad as it spans three countries: El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.  We will be taking to the mountains of the Cloud Forest to measure trees and interview people in my attempt to understand how local villages are interacting with the protected area La Fraternidad (a biosphere reserve) and which norms, customs, rules and laws best protect the natural state of the forest.

We will be writing more little by little and posting a few pictures on this blog site.  We hope you enjoy reading it and hope we can do justice keeping it updated as we will be living in the mountains without electricity and will travel into town to keep you updated.  Thank you all for your support!

Hasta Pronto: Monica and Greg

Oh! Here's a last chance for Monica to play in the snow and build a snowman: