So Friday (Sept. 10) I was getting a little anxious about jobs; in the morning I sent my resume to an engineering company in South Boston.

The rest of the day was mine, so I dcided I'd attend the annual Eastern Massachusetts Hawk Watch meeting with my dad's best friend Ted. The meeting is a kickoff for the annual hawk migration count. I knew I was going hawk watching on Saturday with Ted, so I figured I'd go to this meeting because I like hawks and honestly I had nothing better to do.

The meeting was normal, first the president of the organization rattled off some expense figures and membership numbers. Then there were two guest presentations, one from this lady who bands Kestrels (a falcon) in her free time. That was neat, but the second lecture was from this Costa Rican dude who runs a hawk watch program in his country. His speech was cool, lots of mathematical science about the 3 milllion North American hawks that pass through Costa Rica each fall. His program is minimally funded, so he gets people to pay to come down to Costa Rica for a week or so and count hawks for him. At the end of his half-hour talk I went up to him and asked him if his program ever takes on full-season volunteers and gives them a deal on the program. He said it depends on the year. I asked "What about this year?" He said, "This year we can take a full-time volunteer." 10 minutes later, I'm basically signed up. The next day we met up at the hawk watch I was going to, and at the end of the afternoon I drove to UMass to celebrate my friend Alexis' birthday. As soon as I got to Alexis' place I bought a plane ticket to Costa Rica. 11 days later (after helping Steve and Janelle set up for and clean up after their wedding in Ithaca, NY) I was in Talamanca.