Tortuguero and Coffee Tour

Pura vida mi familia y mis amigos!

We have much to catch up on!

Tortuguero
Two weekends ago (Sept. 24-26) I went on a trip with my gringa friends Corrylee and Abby to a place called Tortuguero. Tortuguero is a tiny little tourist town on the north Caribbean side of Costa Rica that is only accessible by boat or plane because it is cut off by canals (or lagoons - I'm not sure which is the right term). We left for San José at 4:30 a.m. in a taxi, took about a 2-hour bus ride from San José to a town called Cariari, where we waited for a couple hours and then took a hot, sweaty, bumpy, jungley and crowded bus ride to Pavona. Pavona is a rural area where we got on a boat to take us to Tortugero. I was so sleepy that the boat was rocking me to sleep.

When we got there, a local who had been on the bus since Cariari and also on the boat, showed us to our hostel which was called Princess Cabinas Resort, which was our hostel right by the beach. The local, Ricardo, stopped by a house where they had just baked fresh bread. He gave us a sample and it was AMAZING! It had some kind of subtle cheesy, sugary filling, but we were so hungry that it was like manna from heaven!

We got settled in our hostel, got some food, cooled off in the pool, and then it turned out that Ricardo and his brother Ronaldo gave tours, so we paid him for some tours, which I will describe momentarily!

I need to mention that right when we got to the hostel, there were people out surfing at the beach right in front! We were more interested in eating at that moment though, so we didn't get to watch (or join) them. The beach wasn't very nice either - black sand with lots of flies and kind of littered. Supposedly the water has currents too, so we didn't go in.

That night we met with a group of six other tourists, Ronaldo and his little daughter, all of us dressed in dark clothes. Ronaldo gave us some brief instructions and then led us out to the beach to search for momma green sea turtles that come up to lay eggs at night. We found one right away and watched her lay her over 100 eggs by the light of Ronaldo's red lamp. Ronaldo explained that they go into a trance when they lay eggs, so he was able to hold one of her back fins out of the way so we could have a good view. When she finished laying eggs, she started covering up the nest with her fins. We went down the beach in another direction and watched another turtle creep up and start digging her nest, and then went back the other direction and watched another go out to sea. It was so amazing. It was supposed to have been a rainy weekend because of nearby hurricane effects, but it was really clear and almost a full moon, so we could see pretty well!

We learned some sad facts about the turtles. Apparently only 2 out of 1000 turtle eggs will hatch and make it to adulthood. Even before they hatch, they risk being dug up and snatched by raccoons, dogs and even local poachers who eat them. When they do hatch, birds will come and hunt them as they crawl to the ocean, and then those that make it that far have to swim a long ways to safety. Crazy! No wonder they are endangered.

Fun little tidbit was that one tourist in our group was the voice of one of the cartoon ninja turtles from the tv show!

The next day Ricardo took us on a canoe down the canals and pointed out a bunch of wildlife that I probably wouldn't have been able to see by myself. It was incredible how he could spot them! We saw a bunch of different plants, iguanas, a couple different types of herons, a caymen (small crocodile), a couple of howler monkeys, macaws from a distance, a Jesus Christ lizard (so called because it runs on top of the water, and a bunch of other birds. Sometimes there are manatees in the canals, but it is really rare to see them, so needless to say, we didn't see one.

Afterwards, we went on a short hike with our new British friends that we made, named Hannah and Lucia. We didn't see much except for howler monkeys from a distance and a little land turtle.

That afternoon we got coffee and banana bread at a little café owned by a lady named Dorling. Dorling was really nice and ended up talking to us for about an hour about some writing she was working on. She, like 85% of the Tortuguero population, was Nicaragua and knew a lot about the history and politics of Nicaragua's past. She writes about that and about experiences of interesting individuals who have stories to tell related to culture and history. It was a really cool conversation. Well, it was pretty much just her talking and us nodding our heads and saying "Mmm, sí," but it was really cool to hear what one of the locals had to say.

Another tidbit about the locals is that, since it IS the Caribbean, there is a small Afro-Caribbean population in Tortuguero who speak a really different version of broken English, whose name I can't remember at the moment. A few of them ran the hostel we stayed at, so we got a sample of how they talk, but didn't really understand anything they said!


That night we went out to dinner with Hannah and Lucia, and then walked around town a little bit before going to bed. Dinner was chicken with a coconut sauce, two different kinds of rice, typical cabbage salad and veggies and was delicious! I met a girl in town who was from Spokane and new people who go to Whitworth. Weird!

The next day we made the trip home, accompanied by Hannah and Lucia all the way to San José. I forgot to mention that they just graduated from "uni" in England and had spent two months traveling from Mexico through Central America and had just gotten to Costa Rica on Friday. Poor Hannah had her backpack stolen on one of the bus rides. She'd put it up above her and dozed for a few minutes, so that when we got to our stop, it had disappeared. Thank the Lord, she had her passport in a fanny pack under her shirt though! Other than that, we had fun getting to know them!

Well, since I am sooo detailed, I can't fill in the rest of the haps here at the moment, but I'll talk about today and then fill in the holes later.

Coffee Tour Fieldtrip
Today is Saturday, on which I went with my Spanish and culture class on a fieldtrip to Santa María de Dota, which is a coffee plantation. We got a little tour informing us about the toasting and cultivating process of their coffee and then were treated to a little presentation by some barristas, one of which was a girl who had one the nation barrista championships two years in a row! They made us some samples and then we piled into the van.

We then drove about a half hour up in the hills to a small organic coffee farmer's house. The women of the household made us these delicious sandwiches! Then the farmer took us on a walk, giving us very impassioned talks about sustainable living, agro-chemicals, contaminated water, economics, etc., all of which was kind of scattered and hard to follow, but very thought-provoking nonetheless. He also showed us the house of a couple indigenous women, which was pretty basic and bare. He told us that he and some other farmer friends are working to give the women new types of stoves to use that are more environment friendly, because they don't emit dangerous chemicals like a woodstove does. We were all a little confused about what exactly he was trying to tell us, but felt that his main point was that he was trying to do his part, no matter how small, to save the planet and care for the indigenous women in his area. If anyone's interested in his stove project, go to www.SeaChar.org.

We went back to the house for cafecito and then packed ourselves into the van and drove through the foggy mountains to get back to Heredia at 5:30. We all have group projects about some aspect of coffee, so my group met to talk when we got back and then I took the bus home with my friend Holly. Now I must work on my part of the project, but will definitely be writing another post soon. Hopefully I will learn to be more succinct so you won't have to read novels! Love you all and please remember me in your prayers.

Pura vida,
Caitlin

P.S. My internet is being troublesome, so I will post pictures later as well.

Haircut...Costa Rican Style

This past Friday the 17th, my exchange student friend, Jennifer, took me to a hairstylist that her mama tica had taken her to, to dye her hair. He works out of his home, which is right next to the university, because his salon was robbed last October. So now he's just working and saving up to get a new place to work out of. Anyway, so we go up and knock on the front door at nine in the morning, and Jen tells me that you have to be very persistent to get anyone to answer the door. The building he lives in is almost like a hostel, with a bunch of different people in separate rooms who share a common area and bathrooms and kitchen. After we knocked, I saw a woman's face peek through the curtains by the front door, but no one answered. We waited a couple minutes, went around to another side of the house, where we yelled "Carlos!" towards what Jen said was the hairstylist's room. No answer. Jen said that he must be asleep still. We go back to the front door and knock again and wait. Still no answer. We waited about fifteen minutes total and Jen finally said, "This is the first time I actually feel like giving up!" But just then someone answered the door. It was the girl I'd seen peek through the window. Oh, I forgot to mention that Carlos doesn't even know that we're coming. He doesn't have a phone, so Jen sent his friend a text telling him that we were coming, but never got a response. So as we climb the stairs and walk down the hall towards Carlos's room, I'm telling Jen, "I don't want to wake him up if he doesn't even know that we're coming," but she reassures me that it's fine because he needs the money. So we wake him up and wait in the common room for him to brush his teeth and get his styling tools. I told him that I just wanted a trim with long layers, to which he responds, "WELL, the style in Costa Rica right now is to do this zig-zag layering on the ends. All the girls are getting their hair cut like that." So I just said, fine, do what you want but don't take off a lot (in kinder-sounding Spanish words). He took about an hour and a half for a trim, haha! Jen had also told me that he likes to play matchmaker so she asked him if he had a a tican boyfriend for me, and he said, "Yes, yes, of course! He's coming in a bit to get his hair braided!" So the braids-guy, whose name is Christian, comes over and we all chat it up and watch Toy Story and futbol on tv as he's cutting my hair. I was anxious to go start my homework but then he tells me he's going to get curlers and that I had to wait a half hour with curlers in my hair! So I told myself, pura vida, just relax and enjoyed the conversation, which consisted of a lot of broken English and Spanish. And he actually did do a good job with my hair, despite my doubts. So there you have it, the most interesting hair cut of my life!


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Rafting, Volcano, Independence Day and other Tidbits

Hello friends and family! Sorry for being such a slow blogger. Here are a few highlights from the past three weeks:

Rafting
Two Saturdays ago I went rafting with a group of nine other exchange students from my program in a region called Turrialba. We caught a bus from Heredia to San José at 6:00ish in the morning, took a taxi from that bus stop to another bus station, took another bus for about an hour to Turrialba, where a guy from the company we signed up with took us in another smaller bus for about a forty minute ride mostly on a bumpy dirt road to the river. There, we split into two boats. I was in one with five other girls and a guide, and then the other raft had three of our girls, one of our guys, a Mexican guy and girl and the Tican guide. They gave us helmets, paddles and lifejackets, showed us a few techniques and off we went. It was a beautiful sunny morning, so in between rapids we would chat with the guide, watch bright blue “morpha” butterflies fly around or gaze at the greenery all around us. The rapids were pretty epic. We charged some class three and even class four rapids! Sometimes, if we were going over a rough rapid, the guide would tell us all to sit down in the bottom of the raft, instead of on the side where you normally sit when you paddle. On one of the class four rapids he yelled, “Get down!” so we all got inside. But then the raft filled with water and everyone, including the guide fell out! When I came above water I looked back and saw the guide crawling back in the raft, but I just kept floating along nearby my friend Ashli, holding onto my paddle and keeping my feet up, like they told us to, so that they wouldn’t get caught on a rock on the bottom. There were guys in single kayaks who’d been cruising alongside us, so at that point, one of them came up and was telling us to swim to the left, away from the current, but it was so strong that we couldn’t really do anything but literally go with the flow. Before I knew it, I was being heaved out of the water by David, the guy from our group and the Mexican guy who were in the other raft. They saved three of us, our guide saved the other three and everyone ended up safely back in our raft. One of the girls lost a paddle, but we ended up retrieving that, too, when it floated past our raft. I wasn’t really scared the whole time – I just kept telling myself, “Stay calm. You surf. You’ve been held under before. You can handle this. God’s is in control.” Everyone was completely fine and we all laughed about it afterwards. No one fell out after that. We stopped on a riverbank shortly after that for lunch, had sandwiches and fruit and relaxed a bit, and then hopped back in the raft for about another hour of paddling. There was one really cool part where we went through a ravine of sorts that was enclosed on the right and left with mountains and a suspension bridge crossing overhead. At that point the guide let us all (well he kind of made us) get out of the raft and just float on our backs for a while. It was soooo nice. A professional photographer had been following us down the river taking pictures, so all the girls in my raft split the cost of a picture cd. My face came out pretty hilarious in all of them – super intense and focused and embarrassing…you’ll have to see for yourself. We were very sleepy on the bus ride home.

Group Excursion to Volcán Poás and la Catarata de la Paz
This past Saturday we had an official ISEP (International Student Exchange Program) excursion to a volcano called Poás and a waterfall garden called La Paz. I guess we really lucked out in seeing a clear view of the volcano, because my host dad told me later that it's usually completed clouded over. He said he's been at least twice, but never seen it. We took a short hike to a lookout above the crater and watched smoke spume out of it. It was awesome! Then we took another short hike through a pretty forest to a lagoon, which was a bright blue color. After that we got back on the bus and went to La Paz and had a lot of lunch! The resort at the gardens is so nice!
It had a cute jungley theme, so even going into the bathrooms made you feel like you stepped right into Swiss Family Robinson. The Gardens had much more than waterfalls and plants. It was more like a zoo of Costa Rican wildlife. We went through a butterfly house, saw monkeys, went into the bird house, a reptile house and rainforest frog house. It was all amazing, but I think the bird house was my favorite because I got to hold a tucan on my shoulder! The frogs were pretty cool, too though. After La Paz, Ivelina took us to a souvenir shop and a restaurant where we got strawberry smoothies and dessert. We were stuffed, but it was so good!

September 13, 2010
Four things worth talking about from today:
1. I had my first Spanish exam, which the teacher had assured us would be “muy, muy fácil,” and it was very, very easy, except for a few tricky things. I think I did well!
2. I finally mustered up the guts to go play with the girls’ soccer team. One girl from my Spanish class named Jennifer, who’s an exchange student as well, has been playing on the team for over a month now, and told me that the coach is very easy-going and really understanding and flexible about attendance at practice and games. So I just went up and introduced myself to the coach, Amelia, and hopped in on the drills. My soccer skills are rusty! I did alright, but definitely need some practice. Another big factor, though, was the fact that since it rains so much, the field was pretty soggy. There were about three mud pits in the half of the field we were playing on so everyone got really muddy, and which you can imagine makes obstacles to avoid where you’re running around. Plus, I don’t have cleats yet, which made it even more slippery in my sneakers! I had fun, though, and met a couple girls on the team who surf! One even told me she has a six-foot short board!
3. I had my “Pablo” class at six, which was good! We studied Galatians, but now we’re moving on to Philippians.
4. I was a total klutz today. I slipped and fell twice and ended up with five separate cuts on my right hand all in one day! The first three scratches appeared on one finger at soccer practice…don’t know how they got there. The first slip was after soccer practice. I had to walk down the hill from the school in the rain to make a bank deposit for a student visa transaction. On the way back I was crossing the McDonald’s drive-through outlet and slipped on a white painted arrow and fell on my left side. A man happened to be crossing at the same and gasped, “Muchacha!” and offered his hand, but I was already up. I scratched my foot a teensy bit and got my pants a little wet, but was fine. Then, at night class I cut another finger trying to close my umbrella. After class, I caught the bus to a stop about five minutes from my house. I walked through this little park right by my house and almost made it back fine, but slipped on a muddy part of the sidewalk right before the stairs that lead down to the street, and fell right on my caboose. I got home and cleaned the mud off of everything and found two more cuts on my right palm from falling. It was a trying day with the rain and mud, but pura vida!

15 de setiembre – Costa Rican Independence Day
Today was Costa Rica’s Independence Day, so for about a week prior to today, when I’ve walked past the central park in the afternoons, I’ve seen some sort of gathering, usually with music and folkloric dancing. All of Heredia has been decked out with Costa Rica flags and colors and coats of arms for a couple weeks now, too. The main celebrations started on Tuesday afternoon of the 14th, with the torch ceremony. It’s kind of like the Olympic torch idea, except it represents Central American independence. The torch is lit in Guatemala and then passes through Honduras and Nicaragua and then finally to San José, Costa Rica, where it is dispersed throughout the other provinces, including Heredia, where it is passed on to various little barrios. I should probably learn the history better, but I’m pretty sure that these four countries share Sept. 15 as their independence day because they were all liberated from Spanish rule around the same time. Please correct me if I’m wrong or feel free to enlighten me on the details!
So, on Tuesday afternoon I had my “Alternative Therapies” class, where I was supposed to give a group presentation that ended up getting postponed to next week since we had an hour-long conversation at the beginning of class and some other students had to finish up older presentations. Then after class, a Tican girl named Andrea, who is one of the two Andreas in my group project, took me to a Colombian ice cream shop about ten minutes from campus where we got “granizados,” which is a cup full of slushy, pieces of fruit, condensed milk, and topped off with a scoop of ice cream. It was delicious, needless to say! I had a really good time talking to Andrea, who is a year older than me, majoring in business administration (I think?) or something along those lines and has a contagious smile! Afterwards we went to the park where the festivities had started. We ate churros (oh yes, more sugar!) and watched some folkloric dancing. I met up with some exchange student friends and Andrea eventually left to go watch the festivities in her town. The big thing of the night was a little mini-parade of “faroles,” which are home-made or store-bought torches, made out of cardboard and decorated with tissue paper, with a candle glued inside it. It’s mostly something that kids are really into, so there were a bunch of families with kids and their lanterns that circled the park for the “parade” of sorts.
The next day (Wednesday), was feriado (holiday), of course, since it was Independence Day. I met with some friends around 7:30 at the park to find a good spot to sit and watch the parade. All of the benches were already taken, so we found a spot on the sidewalk. The sidewalks filled up pretty quickly, too, so it was a good thing we got there early! The parades started around nine and consisted of marching bands, cheerleading squads, flag-holder groups (sorry, I went to a tiny private school, I don’t know the names of these things), dancers, clowns, mimes, etc. The first two and a half hours were elementary students and then finally after about three hours the older student bands came, who were really good, but we were so hot and sweaty that the three of us out of about the ten or so that had started there, got up to get, yes, my second granizado in two days! Although it was hot, I loved the parade and all the different outfits and instruments. I especially liked the portable xylophones that some bands had, which is a typical Costa Rican instrument, and the really good drum bands from high schools.
Today was also the birthday of a friend named Lauren from the exchange program. Her mom had one of our student friends organize a surprise party, so about ten of us showed up at her house with a cake and candles and card and sang her happy birthday in Spanish. She was surprised and it was lots of fun. Her host parents made us lasagna, let us play pool and her dad even played us a few tunes on his guitar as he and his wife sang.

August 24, 2010: A Looooooong Day

Today was a loooong day. I had Spanish class this morning from 10 – 12 (it went a half hour longer than the official time) and ate lunch at school. I had forgotten to tell my host mom that I wasn’t planning on coming home for lunch so I had to buy lunch at school in the “Soda,” which is what the call a little cafeteria. I got a plate of rice and beans (of course), salad, suflé de palmito (quiche that has a vegetable that comes from the fruit of mountain palm trees), and a couple fried bananas with mango/carrot juice. YUM! I didn’t have my next class till six in the evening, but decided to stay at school to do some work in the library instead of walking the half hour back home and the half hour back. I wasn’t very productive as far as homework goes this weekend, so I have some catching up to do : ) At 3:30 I met with Abby and Corrylee to work on our project, which is coming along nicely. Then went to my night class, Pablo, and was really sleepy! I really enjoyed the class though. The professor, whom I might have already talked about, is from Brasil, so Spanish is her second language. This is very convenient for me since she talks slowly and clearly. I can even pick up on a few of her mispronunciations and Portuguese-isms. For instance, for lots of words that should be pronounced with the letter “b” she pronounces with “v.” Also, a lot of her e’s (which should sound like ‘ay’) sound more like ‘ee.’ I also heard her say “veentitres” instead of “veintitres.” I’m not being critical of her in a bad way, I just think it’s interesting! Anyway, we have finally moved from the introductory phase of the class into examining books of the Bible. Tonight we just did an overview of I Thessalonians and next week we’re going to get into the themes. In doing the overview, she assigned pairs of us to read and summarize small chunks of the five chapters in I Thess., which meant that I had to talk out loud in front of the class! I instantly felt a wave of nervousness come over me, but calmed down and waited my turn. My friend in the class, named Karina, explained her part and then I went and did fine. Phew! We didn’t get out of class in time for me to catch the bus so I grabbed a taxi, since there is always a bunch of them lined up in from of the school. When we pulled up to our house, the driver said, “You live with Gidgeth!?” It turns out that he knows my older sister well, because she calls him specifically to take her places when she needs a ride late at night or in sketchy places, and because he is her trusted taxi-driver friend. She gave me his number when I went to San José for the ballet this past Saturday so that I could call him for a ride back to Mercedes Norte where I live. So I called him, but he wasn’t working that night. So tonight he realized who I was and introduced himself and now I have a trusty taxi-driver friend named Marvin! What a strange coincidence. When I went inside I had a nice chat with Mom, Xinia. The first thing she asked me was, “Tiene hambre?” And of course, I was indeed hungry. She told me it was bummer that I hadn’t come home for lunch because she had made “olla de carne” (I’m not sure if I spelled that right), which (I feel like I’m repeating myself) is a soup with huge chunks of meat and veggies and is delicious! She showed me some pictures of a place that her family went to that I might try to visit in Costa Rica and then I ate the stew she made, which although it wasn’t fresh out of the crockpot, was still “muy rica”! I have been working on homework ever since, and now it is definitely time for bed! Thank goodness I don’t have class till one tomorrow!

Much to catch up on have we!

Hey y'all! Sorry for the delays on my posts! I actually just now posted the previous post although I'd started it a week ago, but I've been so busy with school lately and have had scarce internet time so I haven't been able to update my blog till now. Hope you're in a reading mood! I love to hear your comments : )

Saturday, August 14: Las Ferias

So the second day I was in Costa Rica was a Saturday, and I remember the family telling me that David was sleepy because he had gotten up at five in the morning to go by fruits and vegetables from the farmer’s market in Heredia. I had mentioned I would like to go with him sometime, so finally my friend Corrylee and I woke up at 5:30 in the morning to go see the market. We were amazed. It was huge, probably equal the size of all of Kauai’s farmer’s markets combined with almost all the different tropical fruits and vegetables you can imagine!

The smell of it was wonderful – pineapple, cilantro, bananas and all kinds of aromas swirling in the air! Corry and I helped David carry the bags the he filled up. We had to go to the car and unload three big bags and then went back and filled them up again. David was so nice; whenever we’d ask him what something was, he would always say, “Do you want to try it? I’ll get it for you!” Corry had never had a coconut before so the three of us drank coconut milk, which Ticans call "pipas." David also bought each of us a fruit called sapote (I think), that I’d never seen before. Outside it looks like kiwi, but it’s the size of a small papaya and football shaped. The meat is dark orange and has a papaya-like texture except thicker and richer, almost like custard. It was good, but weird – it was so rich I couldn’t eat it all in one sitting, but later I craved it! So the reason that I was reminded of this outing was because, while at the market, David bought a bouquet of purple roses for Xinia for Costa Rican Mother’s Day which was the next day.

Running Outside!

After breakfast I went with David, Xinia, and Sebas to a recreation center. I played some one-on-one basketball with Sebas. I think I was winning two to one, but he got tired. So then I taught him and Xinia how to play Horse or "Caballo," rather. After that, David showed me the path that he likes to run, so I took three laps around the whole center, avoiding loose rocks in certain spots, passing by cows and barbeque-ers and a fútbol scrimmage, and finding the first Kauai-type pink guavas since I’ve been here. Then I joined the family at the pool for a while and we went back to eat our Mother’s Day meal.

August 15: Costa Rican Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day in Costa Rica is a huge deal. I’ve seen stores advertising for it since I got here. I asked if Father’s Day was as big a deal as Mother’s Day and apparently Mother’s Day is a much bigger celebration. I asked my host dad David what people normally do for Mother’s Day and he told me that the streets are packed, as well as every restaurant, because EVERYONE likes to go out to eat, but of course waits till the last minute to decide where to go instead of making reservations ahead of time. My host mom Xinia wisely decided to avoid the zoo in the streets and let David cook dinner. So he made a lasagna while she told him what to do. Then the whole family, minus Gidgeth (big sister who was working) plus Xinia’s oldest sister (out of her seven sisters, I think – Xinia is the youngest) sat down and had a delicious chicken lasagna lunch. As far as gifts, each family member gave her stuff before the actual day – son Sebastion (Sebas) got her a “Te quiero Mamá” mug, daughters Gidgeth and Nohelia got her a shirt, I gave her some chocolates I had bought the day before, and I’m not sure if David made lunch and gave her the bouquet of roses I already mentioned.

Tuesday, August 17: More Marchas

All classes before four o’clock were canceled again on Tuesday due to another protest. Except this time, instead of the four public universities having their own individual protests, they all got together in San José. This was good for me, because I needed more time to finish up a paper for my literature class for Wednesday!

Friday, August 20: Homework and Drizzley Evening

Today I met with Corrylee and Abby to work on our group project for Spanish class on “Danceable Rhythms.” We are each writing two of a six-page paper and then have to present our work for twenty minutes in class. The topic is a lot harder than it seems, because so much of their musical traditions aren’t written down, but rather are orally handed down from generation to generation. So it’s coming along. By the way, it started dumping rain this morning and throughout or whole homework session in the school library and a coffee shop…After dinner, Corrylee and I took a taxi to the next neighborhood over called Barva where there was a tiny little “festival” in the central park. We walked around with our umbrellas, browsing in the different stands, bought some yummy tortilla thing stuffed with beans and pork and salad. Then got ice cream and sat and talked and watched people play (dakine…the name is escaping me…not pool…that table soccer game…can someone help me out?). It was a good rainy evening!

Saturday, August 21: Ballet de Kiev
On Saturday, I met with my friends Corrylee and Abby again to work on our Spanish project. Then in the evening the three of us plus another friend Callie took a taxi together to San José to watch a Ukrainian ballet show. We had bought the cheapest tickets for about $28 dollars, so our seats were wooden steps up at the very top of the theater. Nevertheless, we had a perfect view of the stage and all of us loved the show. There were about ten different dances which were all snippets of well-known shows or plays, like Don Quixote, Swan Lake, and Sleeping Beauty. It actually didn't rain at all today (okay that's a lie, it drizzled for like ten minutes), but it was the first relatively dry day in a while!

Sunday, August 22: Church!

This morning my friend Holly and I went to Taja’s church, which is called "Vida Abundante," (Abundant Life). Holly and I walked twenty-five minutes to a park downtown, where we caught a bus for about a ten-minute ride to a barrio called San Josecito and got off at a hotel where the church holds its services. There were probably about a couple hundred people, of which, Taja, Holly, and myself were the only gringas that I saw. They started off with worship, which was a more contemporary style that I really liked; they had a whole band and sang the Spanish version of songs that I knew in English, for example a couple of Hillsong songs and “Yes, Lord.” Then they took offering and there were announcements in a little video powerpoint presentation up on two screens. Afterwards, the pastor, who was probably about thirty, gave a sermon from the first chapter of Haggai. I liked the pastor a lot – he was really energetic and into his message. The sermon was about fulfilling your dreams (for the Lord) and really focused on fulfilling their communal dream as a church. After the sermon, they had a special time of prayer to ask for God’s guidance about buying a property for the church, so everyone held hands in a big circle around the room and prayed together. I will probably be attending again in the future.

Random fact you might not know about Costa Rica:

Ticans brush their teeth a lot. Pretty much all the students carry toothbrushes and toothpaste in their backpacks, so after lunch the girls’ bathroom is full of girls brushing their teeth. We talked about it in our Spanish language and culture class and our teacher told us that it’s typical for people to brush their teeth from 3-5 times a day, depending on personal preference and the thickness of your toothbrush’s bristles. It’s not uncommon to brush after each meal and morning and afternoon coffee!

Well, you are now officially back up to date on the haps in my life here in beautiful rainy Costa Rica. Just FYI, though, normally the mornings are sunny and gorgeous and I work up a good sweat walking to school in the morning. But then it usually starts to get cloudy and one o'clock and can rain at any point from that time on, and the evenings have been relatively chilly, which is actually refreshing.

Bye now, friends. I'm off to work on my report on beets and cucumbers! Love and aloha to all : )

Almost a month in...

Hi friends and family! I have been busy, busy with school so I haven't been able to write, but here are a couple quick highlights.

Dance classes
Both of these have so far been the bomb! This past Wednesday, Corrylee and I had Baile Popular and learned some Swing Criollo (a bouncy swing with a Latin twist, I guess) and Bolero Clásico (which was a slower, classic step). We've just been doing basics so far, so we're hoping we learn some trickier moves. On Thursday, I had my second class of Costa Rican Dance, which is folk dance. We actually danced this time as opposed to last week where we just talked about folklore. It was so much fun! The girls who had the long typical skirts wore those and everyone else (including me) just held scarves in each hand twirled them around. Most of the class are dance majors, so we gringas had to make a big effort to keep up with the professor who taught at a really fast pace - which also made it more exciting. After we learned a whole dance, he split us into four groups and gave us each an hour to choreograph our own dance using the moves we just learned. Not to brag or anything, but my group rocked it!

Flu : (
I caught some kind of virus last Wednesday so I was really tired, had a stuffy nose and soar throat and couldn't sleep very well for a week, but now I'm better! Thank you Lord!

Smoothies
My friends and I have discovered a couple cheap smoothie stands right by our campus. One of them gives you a pure fruit smoothie with cherry-flavored sugar on the rim of the cup and a little paper cup of popcorn for two dollars! I've gotten two so far. My favorite of the two was...I already forget what was in it except that it had ginger and bananas and was delicious!

Protest
On Wednesday, Corrylee and I walked to Spanish class. We had heard some talk about there being some "march" that day, and thus that we might not have classes that day, but since ISEP, our study abroad program, doesn't allow us to participate in protests, we went to school anyways, just in case we did have class. So when we got to the entrance of campus, there was a huge crowd of students, staff and professors, including our Spanish language and culture professor, Alexa, who told us that she'd talked to Ivelina (the Costa Rican ISEP coordinator) who had told her that it was fine if we participated. So a group of us stood in the middle of the street with her and a huge crowd of students that diverted traffic from the main road onto another street. The students held signs, a small band played music while a "mascarada" (person wearing a big fake head over their head) danced around, and then some students from the school of dance performed a rather raunchy dance in the middle of the crowd of students. Then the whole crowd started to march down the street toward the central park, but Alexa told us that she had just received a call from Ivelina telling her that, actually, ISEP students can observe the protest but not participate in the march. So a few of us watched the crowd roll on out and then went and got smoothies. I still had to go to literature class at one o'clock : ( From what I gathered from talking with various people was that the reason for the protest was that the government is trying to privatize the school, which would mean that a lot of students would lose scholarship money. So the other three public universities in Costa Rica also had protests that day...

Weeks 2-2.5: Trip to Nicoya Peninsula and Classes

Hello my fellow Blog-mates,
Here are a few highlights since my last post!

So classes started last week and are going well so far. Here's my class schedule for anyone who's interested:
Monday: Spanish 10-11:30, Paul 6-8:30
Tuesday: Complementary, Alternative and Traditional Therapies (natural medicine) 1-3:30
Wednesday: Spanish 10-11:30, Universal Lit. of 21st Century 1-4:30, Popular Dance workshop 4:30-6:30
Thursday: Costa Rican Dance Class 1-3:30
Friday: Libertad!

Here are some interesting observations and tidbits about going to college in Costa Rica:
1. I love the campus because it's really jungly. Most of the buildings have an open garden area in the middle (you may have noticed if you checked out my fb album).
2. Punctuality is not the norm. Most students show up between on time and fifteen minutes late. I was in a linguistics class that I ended up switching out of into dance, but the professor didn't even come to the first class. We waited for forty minutes, and then the Tican students passed around a sheet of paper that every signed and then they took it to some authority and we all left.
3. Classes are long! And they are very conversation and project oriented, whereas in the states it's a lot more of lecture and note-taking and quizzes. The professor goes on and on here! I kind of like the conversation-style aspect, but it's a lot to take in and a long time for my attention span.
4. In the longer classes, you get a coffee break!

Terapias Complementarias, Alternativas, y Tradicionales
When I had this class for the first time last week, I enjoyed it. We went over the plan for the class, and then talked about all the different kinds of therapies we could think of (including hug therapy and laugh therapy). I stayed afterwards to ask the prof (a small man maybe in his sixties) about the homework, and when I told him I was an exchange student he was surprised and told me he thought I was Tican! (yes!) Then he started asking me a bunch of questions about Hawaii and offered to buy me "juice" from a place nearby campus. It turned out to be a smoothie place with pure fruit smoothies and it was so good! Then he walked with me about fifteen more minutes toward my home, talking and went to visit a friend.

Trip to Montezuma
Early Friday morning, I went with my friends Abby, Callie and Corrylee on a trip to the Nicoya Peninsula in the northwest and stayed in a little tourist town right on the beach called Montezuma. We left our houses at five, took a taxi, a bus, a half hour walk in the morning sun, a ferry, and another bus, and about seven hours to get there in the early afternoon. We stayed at a hostel called Hotel Lucy for $10 a night - such a good deal! Friday we jumped in the water, found some food and signed up for a boat trip the next day. Saturday we took a 45-min. boat trip to "La Isla de la Tortuga" where we went out snorkeling twice, were served a delicious meal of fish, rice, , salad and fruit, and stretched out on a beautiful beach with white sand. The island had a peacock, a few turkeys, a friendly little pig, and of course a bunch of fish in the water that we saw snorkeling. That night we had Italian food for dinner and poked our heads into a bar where locals and gringos were dancing salsa and merengue and a couple of my friends got some latin dance lessons from the Ticos! Sunday, we hiked to some waterfalls, which was my favorite part of the trip. We followed a river up to the base of one that was probably at least 75 feet tall, then hike to the very top where a 15 ft. waterfall fell into a pond you could swim in and go on a rope swing, which also fed into another waterfall that was about 35 ft. tall that fed into a pond that fed into the 75 ft.ish one. After watching a local jump off the 35 footer, I did too! It was my first time actually jumping over a waterfall - I've jumped off rocks by waterfalls, but never over one, so it was awesome! That afternoon, we had lunch and took a long walk looking for a beach where supposedly people were surfing, but it started to get dark so we had to turn back : ( A friend and I did find a whole army of scary crabs with black bodies and bright orange legs that made their homes in dirt on the side of the path...and I'm sure they were plotting to attack. They were so scary. Then on Monday, we made the tired trip home...it was a good trip!

2nd Week of Classes
Not much to tell. Didn't have Pablo this week because Monday was a holiday. Lit will be the hardest. Lots of reading and writing and trying to understand all that symbolism the prof is telling us about. It's interesting though. I have to do a report about cucumbers and cabbage for my natural medicine class (the prof assigned me cucumber since I told him that Dill was an herb used to pickle cucumbers). My friend Corrylee and I had our dance workshop last night and I loved it and sweat buckets. I have my second dance class in about an hour so I gotta eat lunch and get going!

Love you all! Thanks for reading! I would love to hear from you and love it if you keep me in your prayers and let me know if you have any requests!

Till next time : )