The second term of my 11th-grade year at TGS was initially supposed to be in Istanbul, Turkey. However, due to the situation and the safety of the country at that point in time, the TGS administration decided to cancel it and instead sent us into the middle of the jungle in Costa Rica. Whereas the ninth and tenth grader were sent on a five week long trip around Costa Rica, the eleventh and twelfth graders were stationed in the middle of the Monteverde Cloud Forest. At the beginning of the semester, I was not too fond of the whole situation. There we were, sitting in probably the only square acre in Costa Rica, which was constantly moist, due to being located in front of a mountain gap that trapped all the clouds you could possibly find in the skies of Costa Rican “spring”. When taking a cold shower in the morning, the shower lasted from the time you got into the fresh air/water bathroom (as-as soon you entered the bathroom the rain would storm in through the “windows”, due to the lack of their exitance) until the point when you entered the dining area to grab your beans and rice for breakfast. There was no real point in drying your hair after the shower, as every morning, the clouds would be stuck solely above our campus and give you the third shower in the morning after having tried of from the first and second one. Although this morning routine might not sound like the most pleasant one, I can assure you that after this and my plate of rice, beans, eggs and loads of salsa I was ready for the day like nowhere else I have been.

As annoying this rain might have been, it gave us a daily majestic rainbows, which were so close to the ground, you sometimes thought you could grab them with your bare hands.

 Personally, the entire situation became continuously better over the span of our stay. Not did the clouds stopped giving us our daily good morning shower, nor did our meals show a variety despite rice and beans for all three meals a day, but over time all the small things that you would only experience in the middle of this jungle made the entire stay an amazing experience that changed my perception of the everyday luxuries that we all experience at home. We started to appreciate the place for what it was; a closed we could come in contact with nature. Therefore, a friend and I started the most placed-based learning experience we could think of, a biology project, where we were looking at the occurrence of snake species in the different environments and altitudes around the campus. We tried to entice them to rest and digest under metal tins that we laid out, as snaked need warm

temperatures for their digestive enzymes to work. Sadly we did not encounter any snakes during this fieldwork; it was still an amazing experience to explore the jungle with a researching biologist who helped us with the project. He taught us a lot on the walks, when checking the tins, about the wildlife that we saw in the jungle. Additionally, situations like having a group of capuchin monkeys drop by for English class or in retrospect, having a tarantula and/or scorpion in your room, or the sheer beauty of those daily rainbows were such abnormal things that gave this small acre an incredible element of beauty and magic and made the term one the most memorable ones so far.