Was that a whale?

Falling into bad habits again I see, since I haven't posted in about 3 weeks. I have been busy since Arenal. That next weekend I pulled an all-Spanish weekend when I went to the beaches of Guanacaste with my Tico friend from there, my Peruvian friend and a friend of hers from Peru. Despite not getting all the jokes, I was extremely happy to understand as much as I did.
Guanacaste is a province in Northwest Costa Rica and it is famous for its beautiful Pacific beaches. We visited three,a different one each day: Playa Hermosa, Playa Matapalo and Costa Blanca. That's the order we visited them in and also reflects my least to most favorite. Hermosa is well known and was a little too developed for me, in a country with two extensive coastlines you get to be picky about your beaches. Matapalo was less developed and quite impossibly we spotted a whale jumping from the water around mid-afternoon. My Tico friend's dad told later that the whales don't normally come that far north, but this one must have been special. The experience was incredible, in part just for being so unexpected. Costa Blanca was an itty-bitty beach that is only accessible through an old closed down hotel, a bit strange yes, but it meant that we were the only ones there, which for me equals perfect beach time.
Since Guanacaste I haven't traveled though I did make it into San Jose two weekends ago for a kickboxing championship that I'd been told about in my Muay Thai boxing place. I went with a friend and ended up running into about half the people that go to Muay Thai boxing, I hadn't known, but one of our members was actually competing. He ended up winning and the next day that I went in for a boxing class the first thing the owner did was proudly show me the championship belt, a very large and impressive black leather belt. Other than that not much to report, I'm under a mountain of homework and have finally gotten started on that 30pg history paper, so wish me luck.

Where's the lava?

Haven't posted in awhile so I've got quite a bit to write about, but I'm going try and break things up into three different posts. So anyways, two weekends ago I went to the town of La Fortuna with my friend Julia to check out Volcán Arenal, which is the most active and impressive volcano in Costa Rica, it regularly spews lava and causes rockslides down the sides of its perfectly cone-like form.
Julia and I ran into a few people from my exchange program and together we all took a tour together. The tour had a pretty busy schedule, we hike through the forest or should I say jungle of the national park in which the volcano is located. There were plenty of tropical flowers and exotic birds and spiders around, but some of the trees looked liked the belonged to the forests of northern Michigan, so I'm not really sure how to decide between forest and jungle. Our hike led us to a small waterfall, where got to swim, before heading to the park's observation deck to try and catch a volcan-backed sunset. Unfortunately this being the rainy season we saw more clouds that fading rays. By then it was dark and bit chilly with the coming rain, our next activity was natural hot springs. So wonderful, we went to a public spot so there were no nice tourist details like lighting or railing around the natural pool. After the hot springs we were supposed to check out the nightly lava show, but we were thwarted again by the rain.
Considering all we packed into our first day, I think we could have just hung out in our hotel pool all Saturday (only $10 a night, amazing deal!), but Julia and I decided to be ambitious a rent bicycles. This was more ambitious on my part than hers, because I hadn't ridden a bicycle in probably two years, and never did have very strong skills even then. We tried to bike to another waterfall but due to the difficulty often encountered here of following directions (go east 200meters and then take a left and keep going, there will be a sign....), we got lost. Still had a fun if a bit of a physically taxing time. The countryside was absolutely beautiful. Sunday we headed back to Heredia, lava unseen. I guess it just wasn't meant to be.

Tough Week Ahead :P

This my first tough week: two tests and two presentations. Consequentially most of this past weekend was spent doing work in my room, though I did manage to break away Saturday for a visit to Monte de La Cruz, a beautiful park up in the mountains north of Heredia. I also completed my first translation assignment for the university NGO I'm volunteering with. They are in the process of updating their website and want to make it available in both Spanish and English so I've been given the task of translation. I had 15 documents last week and to be honest the 12 page document almost killed me, thankfully most of what I translated was less than a page. Good, but tiring practice, haven't lost my interest in translation as a career yet.

Backsliding?

I'm not sure but I've been feeling lately that my Spanish has started backsliding, its been a greater struggle to speak and think in Spanish, which is pretty disheartening. Maybe its just a short slump? I was feeling so good about my speaking skills when I got back here about a month ago. In order to combat this I'm back to basics as far as looking up almost every word I don't know when I'm reading (there are so many!) and trying to speak a little more each day (without completely embarrassing myself I hope). Rumor on campus is of another protest tomorrow, apparently the government still isn't meeting the demand of the universities to increase their funding by 11%. For me that possibly means no class tomorrow, yay!
About time for my Philosophy and Ethics class, so far of which has proved to be overwhelmingly boring-essentially we are learning the history of philosophy and being told how absolutely amazing Socrates was, which is nice, but what about discussing his actual ideas?

¡20!

Officially out of the teens now, and at a solid two decades, wow. My actual birthday was pretty normal, had class, went to boxing. My host family was super sweet though and surprised me with a birthday cake after dinner. Went out for drinks and a little dancing after wards with friends. Unfortunately had to leave my house at 4:30 in the morning in order to catch a bus in San Jose for Uvita on the Pacific Coast, which meant that I got absolutely no sleep.
There were three of us, Sydney, me and then our friend Lauren from school. She had just come in because she's doing another study abroad program in Costa Rica for the semester. So generally good times just catching up and hearing about everyone at school. Our hostel, the Tucan Hotel was great 1. because we had AC in our room (so wonderful on the humid/hot coast) 2. because it had an abundance of comfy chairs and hammocks to hang-out/sleep-in and 3. because it had free coffee (i love free and I love coffee :).
Saturday we headed out to the national park Marino Ballena, where we did exactly what you're supposed to do at the beach, sleep/relax/read/swim/chat/snack. Around 4 in the afternoon we headed over to the parks most distinctive feature. Due to awesome and to me inexplicable forces of geography, there is a whale's tail (in shape) that extends out from the beach into the ocean at probably a football field's length. At low tide you can walk out on the tail and have ocean waves lapping over your feet from both left and right. The view and feeling of almost walking on the ocean was incredible.
Sunday though was the best, because the three of us paid for a group surf lesson. Our instructor was Travis, an American who'd come to Costa Rica originally as a Peace Corps volunteer and then later had staid and married a Tica. He teaches surf lessons on the side as his main focus is community development. By amazing or perhaps not so amazing coincidence, Lauren, Sydney and I are all interested in doing the Peace Corps post-college. So just getting to talk with him was super interesting. However the surfing was even more amazing (terribly sorry to be using all the superlatives, but its was the day calls for :). This was my second time and while it took me a good 45 minutes before I managaged to stand, stand I did and it was a blast. I am absolutely determined to surf at least once or twice more before I leave Costa Rica, surfing just gives you such a rush and all I was doing was riding in the white-wash, not even touching the huge crashing waves further off shore, I can't imagine how much fun that must be to master those.
So that about sums up my twentieth birthday, pretty darn good time if I do say so myself. Now back to the schoolwork, of which I just found out I have more than I thought. Apparently I will be writing a 30 page history paper this semester. Eeek! I haven't even written a 30 page paper in English let alone Spanish before. So wish me luck! :)

Caribe-Cahuita

Not much to report on the school front, just lots of reading :( Campus did get interesting last Wednesday when there was student/faculty/administration protest march against the proposed cuts in Costa Rica's budget for higher education. The main street in front of the campus was blocked off, there were theatrical/dance performances and then a march through town. I only hung around for the being, as a foreign student I didn't feel like me participating would really be a legitimate action and of course I had a ton of reading to do.
This weekend went with three friends to Cahuita on the southern Caribbean side of Costa Rica. Apparently the Caribbean has its whole own weather pattern, because despite the fact that its been pouring like crazy on the rest of the country every day, we enjoyed two sunny mostly rain-free days. We checked out the beach in the national park and then Playa Negra (Black Beach) the next day, the water was exactly how Caribbean water is meant to be, beautifully clear and blue. Our hostel was also nice, very laid back and fairly new. The owner was an Italian who had built the whole thing himself in the last two years. The name, Hostel Shangri-La was a bit much I thought, but the front porch with comfy chairs and hammocks great. I was sad to have return on Sunday. However it won't be long until I'm gone again. This Thursday is my 20th birthday, eek! So I'll be headed to Uvita on the Pacific side on Friday :)

¡Vamos Morados/Go Purple!

Made through the second week of school and I'm definitely going to have a heavier work load this semester than last. As a result I probably won't be traveling as much I did last semester. My load for this semester is: History of Central America, Cities and Urbanism, The Political Economy of Globalization, Ethics and Philosophy and Mandarin. Yup, Mandarin, it actually hasn't been too bad, I have two sweet extremely cheerful young chinese girls teaching my class and while the whole four tone thing I know will probably kill me, so far I've had fun.
I've also had a lot of fun with my new martial art, I wasn't really getting much out of last semester's samurai class, exciting as it seemed on the surface- all those wooden swords and nunchucks. For this semester I'm going to be taking Muay Thai boxing classes at a place literally right next door to my university. I've already been five times in the last two weeks and I love it. Very very exhausting, my abs are currently a tight ball achiness, but we do real boxing, something I never got to do with Krav Maga, and while the sweaty boxing gloves are kind of gross, the high-energy of the classes has been really nice.
This past Wednesday I went to my first real futból/soccer game in Costa Rica. It was a very intense experience, I already had a jersey for the team I was supporting, Saprissa. So chosen because I liked their purple of the other team's black and red and also because my tico friend was taking us I a huge fan of Saprissa. We sat in the Saprissa fan section, which was criss-crossed with huge purple banners and got handed balloons to cheer with during the game. Riot police lined up at the fence at the bottom of our bleachers, a measure which extreme to me since the game we were watching was an early one in the championship. However when we looked down the back and behind the bleachers and saw police collaring some already drunk and belligerent fans early on in the first half I thought the riot police might be a smart move. Especially when a few of the opposing team's fans were trying to exit the stadium and passing thru our section, inciting quite a few curses and a number of drinks and other food items thrown in their general direction. Quite a first futból experience, I just wish someone had actually scored a goal, the game ended zero to zero.