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.

Second Time Around

Well I have to apologize for not having posting in months, eeekk that's even painful to write. The last month and a half of my first semester was packed with final projects and final trips and lots of final get-togethers with my program group, one of the all of who made my first semester a wonderful group experience and provided a nice support network. I dearly dearly miss them all. I went to Panama two times during my last 6 weeks and had a wonderful time. First went and visited my friend from school who lives in Panama City and then two weeks later the Bocas del Toro, an archipelago of islands that was stunning. I'll put of the pics from these trips on my slideshow.
Had one month in between my two semesters so I got to catch up with family in Texas for three weeks and take in some much needed sun, currently pouring raining everyday in Costa Rica. My last week I went to Sao Paolo, Brazil to catch up with one of my best friends from school. I had an amazing epicurean tour with her as Sao Paolo is not a very touristy city, but definitely know for its international cuisine. Brazil was beautiful, I especially loved the one day we drove up into the mountains to Campos de Jordao, a town set up to look like a swiss skiing village, complete with many delicious chocolate shops. The city/area/megalopolis that is Sao Paolo has 11-13 million people (the count depends on your source) and it is only second to Mexico city in size for the Western Hemisphere. I've never been in a city quite like it. I loved hearing and seeing Portuguese everywhere and I'm determined to both learn some Portuguese as well as go back to Brazil, still need to see Rio, the Amazon and I want to visit Bahia. Future travels :)
Currently back in Costa Rica, with my same wonderful host family, looking forward (not really) to school starting Monday. I'll do my best to keep these updates a little more frequent for the rest of the semester. :)

Surfing, Bribris and Lots of Schoolwork

Well it's been a long time I know, but the Costa Rica school system has finally decided to throw some work at me and since I´ve also been travelling like mad the past few weekends I've just not had the time to write.
Went to the Nicoya Penisula for the first time two weeks ago and it was absolutely beautiful, stayed in a hostel by the ocean, near the town of Nosara. The beach was lovely, hardly anyone there so lots of space for all six of us to spread out, take in the sun, read and of course surf, which is what the beach is known for. Met a lot of surfer types at our hostel. I took my first surf lesson and had pretty low expectations, but was wonderfully surprised when I stood up three times throughout my lesson and if perhaps not gracefully somewhat rode the waves into shore. It was an amazing experience and I can somewhat appreciate the superlatives of surfer talk, because the feeling of riding the energy of the wave was quite simply cool. I am definitely hoping to rent a surfboard the next trip I make to the beach. Also had was able to check off the "de pie" experience in my list of Costa Rican things to do. We weren't able to buy return tickets before we left for Nosara, so on our return trip Sunday, riding the only bus back to San Jose from Nosara I got to stand for 5 hours. More exhausting than I would have imagined, enough said.
This past weekend was a trip of a different sort. The university here has a volunteer group called UNAventura, which makes regular weekend-long trips each semester with large groups of students to work in national parks, with poor communities and other sorts of volunteer projects. My trip was to Talamanca, an indigenous community right next to the Panamanian border. There were about forty students, only four gringos including me. I had a lot of fun getting to talk to Ticos outside of class. Got to help build a building for the local indigenous community, the Bribris and maybe make some tico friends. The only downside of the trip was Saturday night, three members of my particular work group had already gotten sick earlier in the day, probably from the water we'd drunken in the community, which had very poor resources. Long story short I threw up, and got about three hours worth of sleep before heading back to Heredia at 5am in the morning. Good trip though over all :)

Chocolate mi amor!

Friday was an IFSA program tour, all costs covered which meant I was going regardless of our destination, by serendipity our destination was Tirimbina, a biological reserve that always gives guided tours of a traditional cacao plantation. Heavenly! IFSA always treats its students well, we had a private air conditioned van for the two and a half hour drive. The "tour" wasn't as I´d supposed, to be a walk, but rather a participatory lesson on how you take a cacao pod and turn it into chocolate. I got to taste the cacao fruit, actually quite good even if it looked suspiciously slimy to begin with. We were then shown and "allowed" to smell the seeds in different stages: fermentation, drying, roasting. Once we got to roasting we also got to tasting- trying some bitter but oh so delicious cocoa nibs, the ground nibs with sugar and cinamon and then a traditional drink of the aforementioned mix, followed by a barrage of chocolate, both in liquid and solid form. I was could not have been happier. Done with our gluttony we were shown the plantation. I had always imagined cacao pods growing in clusters like coconuts but instead they dangle individually from the normally arching trunk. Not that we were hungry for lunch after that, but IFSA of course provided a scrumptious full casado meal and cake (one girl's birthday had recently passed). Suffice to say we got back to the bus fully satiated, a wonderful trip/day, thank you very much IFSA.
Saturday morning one friend and I made the trek to Volcano Irazu, a two hour bus ride from San Jose, up through the mountains. When we reached the volcano we were freezing, it was raining and just plain cold, I could not believe I was in Costa Rica. Thankfully the rain stopped after about twenty minutes and we got to enjoy the spectacular view, of the valley below us as well as the two large crater pits that from Volcano Irazu, further away from the tourist area a mountain peak was smoking, a small "eruption" we later found out. Got to chat with a lovely old Japanese man who spoke English and who was traveling alone. Finished out our trip with a return visit to our breakfast spot in San Jose, that we'd encountered in a quick rush for coffee before our bus left.
Classes are starting to heat up here with a bit of work, but looking forward all the same to Límon on the Caribbean coast this coming weekend as class field trip.

So Nicaragua....

Ok so Nicaragua- We started our trip in León, a good 10 hour trip from San Jose, with a swift bus to shuttle switch in Managua. I had read some pretty serious warnings about violence and crime in Managua and had a number of Nicaraguans warn me to stay away as well, so we treated the city like a bus stop, only passed through twice in order to get to León and then to Granada.
The seven of us were exhausted when we got in early evening to León at our hostel, Hostel Sonati. The city though was impressive though from first glance, especially coming from Costa Rica. León was an exhibition city built by the Spanish during the colonial age as a sign of their wealth and control of the area. The massive buildings with fancy ironwork and beautiful churches are still there, if in a slightly decrepit state. León attracts tourist but not enough for the city to really clean itself up. Regardless, I found my favorite church there, the Iglesia Recoleción. We wandered the city for one day, visiting a fabulous art museum located in a mansion of an old home. The next day we made the big expenditure of the trip with a guided day tour that turned out to be well worth the $60 a person it cost. We went volcanoboarding! Yes, we hauled wooden "sleds" up Cerro Negro (an old cinder volcano if anyone is interested) and raced down. Well, in my case slipped, slid and rolled down. I couldn't quite get a hang of the breaking business and threw myself off my "sled" three times, to spectacular effect I'm told. Got a little scraped up, but mostly just dirty. Thankfully our tour included a lovely lunch and swim break at a close by lagoon. After-wards we headed off to visit the ruins of León Viejo, the original Spanish city which was destroyed by a volcano eruption hundreds of years ago.
From León we headed to Granada, the tourist capital of Nicaragua, and its supposed cultural capital. We'd picked up a travel buddy at breakfast an American guy from Florida, named Johnathan, who was headed to Granada that day as well. Once in Granada we split up, but not after being absolutely inspired by all his travels. An unfortunate surprise greeted us in Granada, our hostel(Hostal Mochillas) and in fact an entire section of the city was without water due to a broken pipe. Unable to clean up after our travels, we did a little scoping out of Granada's main park and were able to get up into the bell tower of the main church for a beautiful sunset view of the city and Lake Nicaragua, on the shores of which Granada sits. Granada was beautiful and we enjoyed our wanderings from site to site, church to church. Erin a woman staying in our hostal accompanied us for the day, which was fun. The city was beautiful but I think I liked the feel of León better, there were so many tourists around, some of it because of Semana Santa festivities (we did catch a cool church procession one day),but I think mostly because Granada is a city of tourism.Took a day trip to Masaya, which houses a few famous markets and thus spent a day in a shopping frenzy, the markets where everything you'd expect, crowded and tight with people making the products the were selling in the back along the sides.
Thursday after the guilty pleasure an American-style pancake breakfast at Kathy's Waffle House, we headed off for the Isla de Ometepe. Bus-taxi-ferry-by foot, we finally got to our hostal, a family run affair in a very very small village. The island was amazing, it was formed by two enormous conical volcanoes and it sits in the middle of Lake Nicaragua, the 19th largest lake in the world, which might not sound so impressive, but it was a sight to behold. All of us felt like we on the ocean, our room was but thirty feet from the shore, where waves lapped constantly. We took our last full day in Nicaragua to just relax, read, swim, and sleep. It was beautiful. I hope to return to the island in the future and perhaps have the time to climb one of the volcanoes and simply soak up a little more of its atmosphere.
Spent our last night in Rivas in order to catch our bus the next morning. Finished out with classic Nicaraguan meal, very similar to the Costa Rican casado with the gallo pinto, fried plantains, fish and cabbage slaw, though they make their slaw spicy in Nicaragua, which I appreciated. The bus ride back, customs and all went smoothly. It was a quick trip, but eye-opening. Nicaragua was more of what I expected Central America to look like, and served to highlight the high development and tourism of Costa Rica. The people did look a little different and speak differently though not enough to cause problems in communication, the history of the two countries has been radically different. I think I've had a very simplistic and unified view of Central America-its geography culture and people. Nicaragua was a lesson in just how much crossing a border can change the land and people. Now I´m looking forward to visiting Panama and seeing the differences there.

Fam Time....next up Nicaragua

Well my life here in Costa Rica has been busy, first my family from the US came to visit me about three weeks ago- mom, dad, sister, grandmother and uncle. It was quite a group, fun though and I was super happy to have a chance to show my family around as well as show-off my as of yet mediocre but still helpful and growing Spanish skills. My host family invited us all to dinner, which for my was an absolute whirlwind of translation and struggle for concentration as four different conversations seemed to be going on at the same time and each conversation required a little help with communication. Definitely a challenge, but I was so glad to introduce my parents and host parents to each other. Got a chance to visit Volcán Poás with my family, the first volcano I´ve gotten an upclose glance at. Sad to say that the smoking crater pool didn't quite live up to my expectations a magnificent burning inferno...oh well, Costa Rica has a few other volcanoes so perhaps I still have a chance at fulfilling my vision.
All of us headed off to Manuel Antonio for the second half of my fam's week-long visit, got a chance to take a mangrove tour, zipline at night with my mom(you don't really see much of the jungle, which made me a bit anxious since I also couldn't see where I would be landing) and share the park's beach(my favorite that I've been to in CR) with my family. It was a crazy fast trip, but I'm glad I got a chance to see everyone. This five month semester will mark the longest time I've gone without returning home, so it was great that to a certain extent home came to me :)
Week after my family left was a mad rush of planning, packing and preparing for Nicaragua- I found myself buying Lonely Planet PDF files online and then printing and binding them into a book at a copiadora in order to have some useful information on hand for the trip. It just turned out that I was one of the main organizers/planners of our group of seven. Just got back from Nicaragua today, however I'm tired and have written quite enough for one post. I'll devote my next piece to my absolutely wonderful Semana Santa in Nicaragua.

Mmmm torta chilena

Going a little stir crazy in Heredia, but my family comes in today and this week I will be getting out and about thank goodness. Had a decent weekend though nevertheless. Friday five of us headed to the Paseo de Flores Mall, which makes me feel like I'm back in the US, lots of American stores and food, air conditioning and very very clean. Saw Alice in Wonderland 3D with subtitles which meant we got to enjoy the original English :) Not an amazing film, but Tim Burton's stuff is always interesting and fun to watch and it was the first time I've been in a movie theater since I got here, mostly just been relying on what movies I can find on the internet as my nightly entertainment. Going to the mall also meant an obligatory stop by Rice n' Smile my favorite rice pudding stand ever, had tiramisu flavor this time and enjoyed it immensely. Saturday was a fun contrast of jungle and city: three of us set out mid-morning for some hiking at Parque Nacional Braulio Carrillo (such a difficult name to pronounce by the way), which meant of course taking a bus out of San Jose, to go anywhere in Costa Rica you have to leave out of San Jose. It was only an hour ride to the park, and the views there were stunning, we were winding through mountains with vistas of misty jungle out the window. Our hike didn't take too long, so we were back in San Jose by mid-afternoon and since none of us had anything better to do we decided to do a bit of wandering or traversing ( apparently the Spanish word for wandering is traversar, which I quite like). After only twenty minutes of traversing we found a huge festival- Festival de Transarete. There were dance performances, boxing, book stands, and live music. It was luverly. The live music was just starting up when we found the main part of the festival in Parque Morazan. A well placed coffee shop gave us a chance to refresh, I had my normal cafe con leche and a torta chilena. My friend recommended it, describing it as layers of giant cookies with frosting between each layer, that having been allowed to sit for some time has sort of gelled into a cake. It was amazingly delicious, and I'll be keeping my eye open for it in the future. Anyway we enjoyed the live music, one band only sang classic rock English hits so were treated to Stand by Me and Knock'in on Heaven's Door, but that was followed with some faster-paced Spanish rock. Finished out the evening with a trip to the cheapest soda (essentially diner) that I know of in San Jose. All together a good day, and sunday was pretty peaceful with the afternoon spent at the pool. I almost feel guilty having so much free time....

Hippie techno and Nunchucks...

Relatively quiet weekend, didn't leave town. I did though go to a local all-day DJ festival in Santo Domingo, a neighborhood just south of Heredia. Four of us went, and though I believe it started ridiculously early-10am, who takes in techno at that hour?, we arrived around one. What we found were two "stages", one in small stage setup, very normal, however the other DJ had been placed on the kids playground in the treehouse, it had a slide. I thought it was perfect. Anyway, not much of a crowd, as gringas we always seem to show up too early, however what people were there was pretty much as hippy/hipster as I've seen in Costa Rica, lots of dreads and alternatively styled clothing. I had a lovely time, people watching, dancing for hours and just taking in the music, some of which was good, some of which was not. The last act we saw was wonderful, one guy was playing a sitar while the DJ mixed in his own beats.
That was Saturday, Sunday was a food orgy of freshly made guacamole, fresh bread, and rice pudding, as wells as a little tanning while reading terribly wonderful chick-lit. These are the costa rican days I love the most. :)
Monday though had its highlight when my sensei handed me a nunchuck to "try-out", he had me doing a few little practice flips and I felt myself on my way to becoming a real samurai. A very positive and uplifting moment for a Monday :)

¡Si se puede salsa!

So I have finally mastered the basics steps of salsa! Gracias to my lovely baile popular teacher last night, the three basic steps of salsa are drilled into my head,including the(what was for me) surprising fourth "pause" step in salsa, which I was completely ignorant of and was probably why I failed so miserably in my previous salsa attempts :)All together a pretty cool night, learned salsa and then walking to the bus stop with two fellow gringas we ran in to a free concert on campus. Pretty legit concert, lights, a stage, mosh pit and crowds of people being watched by security, I saw two fights break out in the twenty minutes I watched. The music was good, kinda rock, with some other unidentifiable influences, you had the basic two guitar and a drummer set up backed up by three horns, which made for an awesome sound. There are a lot of live music shows at the campus (Universidad Nacional Autonoma), a lot of lunch time performers with a casual set up by the cafeteria, and this concert was the second big one I've stumbled across in the school´s plaza. I love live music, I just wish I had any clue ahead of time when bands were performing. The school and Costa Rica in general don´t really try to advertise events and websites here are generally useless when it comes to correct and up-to-date information. Oh well, guess it just means I can look forward to a few more surprise concerts in the future, not a bad deal :)

Passed that One Month Marker

Strange to write but Costa Rica is starting to feel routine. Started my fourth week of class today, and while the workload still seems pretty light it keeps me somewhat busy. Had another samurai class and we actually got to punch the bag today, as well as work with our wooden swords and poles...
Interesting times this weekend, went to a live music show that turned out to be African drum music, very invigorating, and absolutely fun to dance to. Sunday I headed to the beach at Jaco, only a short two and a half hour bus ride away, it was just me and one friend. Supposedly Jaco is usually a super-crowded beach, but hardly anyone seemed around when we were there. I wondered if it might have had something to do with earthquake in Chile, I know some people were worried about tsunamis along the coast, but I´d checked beforehand and the papers said that if anything would happen it already would have occurred. Anyway, the beach was great, not the actual beach itself which sadly was no where near as beautiful as Manuel Antonio, however just getting to soak up the sun and swim in the waves was worth it. I'm always feeling restless by the end of each week (which would be Thursdays for me) and was content to have traveled for even one day.
Had the most delicious pumpkin-chicken soup today for dinner, it might sound like an odd combination, but mmmmm, perfect ending to the day. Hope I'll get some for lunch tomorrow; the norm here is dinner leftovers at lunch, and there's a microwave in the cafeteria that always has a long line during lunchtime. Last time I used the microwave, I had to fend off one guy who very much wanted to practice English with me, asking when we could meet and practice. Which I felt bad saying no, but I've already agreed to do a sort of language exchange with another student in my physics class, and at least with him I'll have a chance to practice my Spanish. It's a bit frustrating at times how many people here speak enough English to constantly be trying to use it when they speak to you. My samurai class "sensei" likes to repeat things in English to me, even if I'm already following along with the exercise. All I can do though is keep my sense of humor (some of the English accents I hear are amazingly comical) and reply back in Spanish.

Learning "Ji-booty"

Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio has definitely set a high standard for my future park visits. This weekend I saw monkeys, crocodiles, iguanas, a jungle deer, and the most beautiful electric blue butterfly. The crocodiles actually were spotted outside our bus window, casually sunning themselves on a river bank, and thankfully none were present at Manuel Antonio. The jungle, beaches and ambiance were lovely, relaxing and the park was extremely well maintained. The six of us who ventured to Manuel Antonio (only a 3 1/2 hr ride from San Jose) stayed close by the park at Hostel Serena Vista, which certainly lived up to its name, with a front porch to the reception building that took in an ocean view with the water appearing to rise up above the jungle in front of us...not sure how else to describe it, but it looked incredible.
Swimming at the park's beaches was an opportunity to look back at the wonderfully undeveloped shore, a cool green jungle staring back at you instead of rows of condos like the beaches I've visited in the US. Unfortunately in our eagerness to soak up all this beauty we also soaked up a bit too much sun, ending Saturday with sunburns all around. Worth the pain though....the monkeys we saw on the beach were crazy. On the look out for food, and generally lacking fear of humans, the monkeys would run up to people's bags and steal away whatever food they could find. We all watched as late in the afternoon one monkey managed to steal a bag of cheetos almost a big as him. Another monkey stole a child's boxed milk, raced up a tree and after tossing aside the straw gulped down the milk, it was obvious he knew what he was up to. The whole weekend was a great rest from school and probably a bad break from Spanish, I don't think I spoke Spanish more than two times the whole three days.
Today though I started my day off right with Spanish class and ended it quite well with my new noncredit mixed martial arts class, which I think I'll be calling my Samurai class. I'm the only gringa and it's a small class with only five newbies and four higher level students(all of whom had spiffy Japanese martial arts uniforms on for class). The teacher is a tico, but with a sense of humor which is great because we are learning Japanese style martial arts- very very ritualistic and formalized, so his attidue helps relax the class. I'm used to the heavy contact approach of Krav Maga and I think I'll need to time to adjust to this new style.
We practiced some basic forms with fake wooden swords; I had to fight the urge to laugh as I was taught to lunge for a killing blow with my wooden sword. I think the class will be fun though so I plan on staying with it, besides it gives me the interesting opportunity to learn Japanese in Spanish....the teacher insists on counting in Japanese,which I of course have no knowledge of, and then we were taught the Japanese names of our forms today, but I had a hard time remembering Japanese words with Spanish accents. The only one I did manage to memorize was when we held the sword out flat in front of us the teacher called the form something that sounded like "Ji-booty", causing me much stress as I internally laughed like crazy, while striving for a straight face.

Tico high school and Food-starved Monkeys

Today was good, had my final two classes of the week, both were really good: La migraciones de Costa Rica looks interesting and Cultura and Desarrollo en American Latina, while full of fellow gringas, has two cool professors and I think will be pretty interesting as well.
Overall it's been an overwhelming week that's felt like the first week of high school all over again. Everyone just looks really young on campus. I have quite a few freshmen in my classes and they act and dress like high school kids- lots of jean miniskirts, gelled hair for guys and everyone wearing hollister/american eagle/aeropostale shirts. I was a complete coward this week and didn't really try to chat up any of the Ticos. Part of the problem though is when I do talk with them they are incredibly hard to understand, not sure why since I don't have problems understanding my professors or family...
Saw the most amazing thing at the local mall on Tuesday (amazing for me :). The mall was really nice, very American feeling with two stories and little kiosk stores running down the middle of each main hall. One of the kiosks was called Rice 'n Smile and they sold rice pudding of about ten different flavors. I absolutely love rice pudding! I got the choco-avellena flavor, which amounted to nutella rice pudding and was in heaven for the next half hour.
Anyway, now I have a lovely three day weekend to look forward to (no Friday classes) and I'll be headed out early in the morning to Manuel Antonio, a famous park on the Pacific Coast that is rumored to have extremely aggressive monkeys (we've been warned to guard our packs against food-hunting monkeys) and close by are beautiful beaches, including one nude gay beach which I think we might be avoiding. Should prove to be an adventure :)

Mariachi and Chinese food

Starting to feel comfortable with Costa Rica I think. My host family and I don't seem to have too many problems communicating. Yesterday, five of us managed to work our way to San Jose, walk across half the city and use the bus system for the first time without getting lost and managing to keep it a cheap trip. I bought some earring that are supposedly made from orange peel, which I can't quite be sure of, they are lacquered black, so can't be sure of the natural color, but they do seem too light to be made of wood and have a slight curve to them that might suggest an orange peel...
Last night was crazy, my family hadn't warned me that we were to have a surprise party for my host aunt, who turned fifty the day before. I found out about the party when I saw strangers walking into my house and once I entered my madre introduced me to everyone in the family. About fifteen minutes after we surprised the birthday girl a nine-man mariachi band came streaming into the house playing and singing like crazy,I could not believe my eyes. Afterwards there was some hilarious Spanish karaoke and a general good time :)
Tomorrow is the first day of classes....I'm ready to get busy but not so much for the whole college classes in Spanish bit, I understand people pretty well when they speak to me, but I have a really hard time when ticos are talking to each other since the speak so much faster. Wish me luck!
Today Costa Rica had a presidential election, which meant that there was a ridiculous amount of car honking and waving of party flags all throughout the day. I got a good look at it all wandering through Heredia during the day. Tried some Chinese food, tico style and it was pretty much the same as Chinese food in the US-sweet and heavy on the sauce. What was strange that there was no hoisin, soy or sweet and sour sauce at our table but instead the ever present Lizano picante salsa and ketchup, yes ketchup. I tried both with our food but can't really recommend either to go with Chinese food.

A few pics from my time in Monteverde

 

 

 

 

Bienvenidos a Heredia

My host family in Heredia is fun, they have had quite a few students before so they like to help me out and correct my Spanish. My host sister Estefania is 8yrs old and adorable, I think she likes me a lot and wants to cook something with me. Her brother, Fabricio (such a great name!) is your typical 11 yr old, loves his Nintendo DS and asked me what Wii games I played our first night at dinner. I played a charades sort of game with both of them and a friend of Fabricio's today and I was absolutely terrible, didn't know half the words I was given, but the kids were great and hilarious to watch. My host parents are super sweet- my mom, Alba, has a great energy and calls me Alexandrita. My padre, Oscar, is funny and he works for the UN in San Jose at some sort of institute against criminal activity in Costa Rica.
I have a pretty sweet room, and I don't use the word sweet lightly. My bedroom is the only one on the second story and I have my own bathroom, a television and a lovely big bed. My madre told me that the television only gets Spanish channels though the rest of the televisions and the house get international channels. In my best interest as far as learning Spanish was what she told, so I watched Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire dubbed in Spanish while I unpacked last night, it was interesting. I felt like Harry had a really feminine voice.
Tomorrow I'm taking the bus for the first time to the IFSA office in downtown Heredia. I'm a little nervous but my mom drove me around in circles today pointing out the stops over and over again trying to make sure I understood where I needed to be. It takes some getting used be treated more like a child, but it's comforting a bit to to have that extra attention, because the language, landscape and people are all different and I need some extra help getting around. We are going on a tour of the university and Heredia tomorrow so that should help with my bearings.

Adios Monteverde

Last full day in Monteverde, I'm going to miss my family here, especially the kids. Two days ago my group went on a canopy tour, aka a zip line and it was amazing! Very very cloudy up in the cloud forest, so much so that at times I couldn't see anything around me but white while zipping along, felt like a personal cloud world :) Realized also how small this country is because on our walks to school we can see then Nicoya Peninsula and the Pacific Ocean from the road.
We've had two dance classes so far and I think my favorite is Tico Swing and merengue, the salsa was hard. Tonight we have a fiesta with all of our host families. Each family is bringing a dish, ours is frijoles. So this afternoon I'm walking to the supermercado with my family to get the ingredients and then we'll make it this afternoon.

Well made to the lovely Hotel Bouganvillea yesterday without troubles. The hotel is beautiful with a huge back garden that had tons of flowers, cactuses, and to my surprise banana trees! Today seems be the normal mixup of orientation activities though I'm dreading the Spanish placement exam we will be taking. Just have to hope for the best and the rest of the day should go well. We are leaving for Monteverde after lunch and nobody quite seems to know how long it'll take us to get there, all part of the adventure? So excited to be here, already had myself some traditional tico breakfast of eggs and gallo pinto (fried black beans and rice :)

Casi Buen Viaje!/ Just a few more days...

Hey All,
Just two more days until my early Saturday morning flight! I'm getting excited and a little put out with packing :P, but overall I can't wait to get there. My first two weeks are orientation so I'm not sure how often I'll have internet access but I'll try and put up pics and a few words as often as possible :) My first week I'll be up in the mountains in Monteverde, Costa Rica, which is between two cloud forests (doesn't that just sound lovely :)....and the area has Quakers, which intrigues me. Never thought of Quakers in Central America, guess my horizons are already widening. Hope everyone's 2010 is off to a great start.