Today we had no power all day, and most of the evening, it went off around 3 and came back on around 8:30, which is a lot of darkness as it gets dark around 5. When the power first went out, my first thought was joy, because I thought that this meant my host mom would be forced to order pizza or some kind of take out because I had seen earlier that our "dinner" of diced hot dogs and carrots was stewing in one of her four crock pots (how is it necessary to have 4 crock pots?!) and crock pots need electricity to work. However, when I got home, our house was pitch black and my host mom informed me that she owned one candle and that the hot dogs and carrots in the crock pot were a little cold, but I could sit by the candle and eat them. I opted to go to a nearby restaurant that had power instead of eating luke-warm crock pot hot dog delight. I feel good about my decision.
Following dinner, typical power-outage shenanagins took place on the roof of my friend Anne's apartment. Wine and ice cream were involved, and it was delightful.
A new addition to our house decor is a 16 inch skiing Snoopy which now resides on our kitchen wall. Happy holidays.
This past week/weekend has been good. School is school. I have to register for my classes for Winter Quarter tomorrow which is weird. It is strange to think that in a month I will be living an entirely different life from the one I am living now. I'll be seeing different people every day, going to a different school, speaking a different language. I feel mostly excited to come home, with pangs of sadness for leaving this place and the people I have grown close to here.
This weekend I had another unexpected adventure, which seems to be the status quo here. I don't have a cell phone, and I have literally not met a single person capable of giving accurate directions, so if plans get mixed up, the only option is to go with it. Which continuously has turned out wonderfully.
The original plan for this weekend had been to go to a beach called San Miguel with about 8 other people, a group a little large for my liking but solid nonetheless. So we met at the school as planned and got into 3 different cabs to get to the bus station.
The cab drivers had all been told what bus station to go to, so when me, Robin, Anne and Gigi got into the third cab, we double checked he knew and he said yes and off we went. We were the last cab to leave, but when we got to the bus station, none of our other traveling companions were there. We thought this odd, but figured they would arrive shortly.
After an hour, we started asking if there was another bus station for the beach we were trying to get to. Everyone we asked said no, we were at the only bus that went there. After two hours we decided to just get on a bus in the general direction of San Miguel and figure out our plan when we got off the bus.
We arrived at night in the port city of Puntarenas. Puntarenas kind of sucked, but it was dark and we had all of our stuff and the only way to keep going was on a ferry, and the first one didn't leave until the morning. So we reluctantly let a local shirtless man take us to a hostel, which turned out to be a shit hole with walls apparently made of paper.
Every time a car drove by or a person walked by, it literally sounded like they were inside of our room. The entire hostel also smelled like urine. In the morning there were tons of cars honking from 5am on, and Robin said "Jesus, why is there a parade outside?" After about an hour of honking and noise, I looked outside and to all of our surprise there literally was a parade outside. Well, rather, it appeared to be a race of sorts, but this was the cause of the noise. We got our stuff and left this hell hole for better things.
We walked through Puntarenas to get to our next destination: the ferry. We decided we would try to get to another beach, called Malpais. So we bought tickets to Malpais and got on the ferry. Two hours we got off the ferry and soon discovered that the ferry did not in fact go to Malpais and we would need to take a bus for 3 more hours to get there.
We didn't want to do that, so we asked a taxi driver if there were any hostels near by, and if there was a beach near by. He whipped out his cell phone and talked to someone, hung up and informed us that there was a hotel that would charge us $10 a night up the street. It was nice and clean, he assured us, and did not smell like piss.
I think that the gross paper hostel made the cabanas he took us to seem even more magical. We had a little cabin to ourselves, overlooking a clearing in the middle of the jungle. And three minutes down the street was a lovely little beach where we were the only people besides a few fishermen. We made friends with an Israeli guy who was working at the hostel and he talked to one of the fishermen and arranged for him to take us to the island across the water the next day.
The night was relaxing and wonderful. We went into the little town and ate the best meal I have had since being here. The night ended on the porch of our cabin with Rum and Cokes and hanging out with our new Israeli friend.
The next morning, we walked to the beach to meet the fisherman who would take us to Isla Tortuga. The toothless fisherman took the four of us in his rickity blue boat, that looked like a row-boat he had put a motor on. The motor gave out a few times during our 30 minute journey. Which was a bit nerve-wracking given that we were in the ocean and he had confirmed our suspicions that this ocean was in fact home to many sharks. But we made it without any shark attacks.
The island was perfect. Our fisherman friend dropped us off and simply said he would return in a few hours to get us. The sand was white, and although we were in the ocean, somehow around this little island, the water was completely calm. Perfect for back floating.
When we returned to the cabinas, our Israeli friend informed us that he needed to go to San Jose, so instead of taking a 4 hour bus, he sped us back to Chepe while we sat in the back of his truck. It absolutely felt like the perfect end to an unexpected adventure.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Zombies attack San Jose!
This weekend marked 6 weekends since I had stayed in San Jose, so I decided to chill out in Chepe (the nickname for San Jose) for Halloween weekend. The week leading up to Halloween was uneventful. School, home, professional chilling, homework, palling around, etc.
My every day life in San Jose is pretty silly. Mostly that is because my host mom is one of the quirkiest individuals I have ever met. Not to say at all that she isn't very nice, because she is. But she is one odd duck. As I may have mentioned, she earns her income by hosting exchange students, so she does not work. So what does she do with her time you might ask. Well let me tell you. She plays Wii. All day. Every day. For hours and hours on end. Her favorite game is Mario. She recently ordered Donkey Kong online and talks about it literally every day.
Other quirks include an extensive collection of Snoopy chatskies. All over the house. I have a snoopy keychain on my keys. My favorite is an airplane that hangs above a shelf in the kitchen with Snoopy hanging on. The best part is that said shelf is filled with various other Snoopy figurines and for no apparent reason a bowl covered with a salmon colored cloth with a face on it. She also has in the dining room a rather large portrait of herself, which I just find to be a bit ridiculous. She drinks one beverage and one beverage only. Coca Cola, in a glass, with ice, with a blue drink cozy, through a straw.
She is not a good cook. Which again, is fine, and I am not meaning to be ungrateful. It is mostly just silly. Tonight for example we had chicken that had the unmistakable taste of hot dogs. And I like hot dogs, but chicken, my friends, is not meant to taste like hot dogs. And I think that when it does, it is kind of a red flag. Another red flag is that she never NEVER eats the food she cooks for us. Suspicious? I think so.
All that said, she is treating me well, and feeding me (although the food is questionable), and housing me, so I shouldn't poke fun. The Wii thing is just too silly though. So is the portrait.
School is mundane, learning a language is a tedious process. I do feel like it's going relatively well, but 4 hours of Spanish class every day is a whole lot. And certain classmates with certain RIDICULOUS over-pronunciation can be a bit draining - impressions will be done upon my return. My other class, Human Rights in Latin America is interesting when it isn't canceled (which is often). In the evenings I go out or kick it at friends houses. One unpleasant aspect of living with a host mom is that there are rules much akin to when I was 10, I am not allowed to have friends over after 11, nor am I allowed to have boys in my room.
On Saturday, some friends and I went to a party at a hostel we had heard about from a friend of Robin and I. Not only was the informant absent, but we arrived to the party and were greeted by an overly creepy dude dressed as The Riddler. He gave us glowstick wristbands and we entered the party. It was in fact more of a rave. Now, I don't really like raves to begin with, but unexpected raves are even more jolting. Also there were an unnecessary amount of people in dominatrix type costumes. And one guys walking around in his underwear with a tray of paint, asking various ravers to paint him. We were all kind of waiting for some weird sex shit to start happening, and we left at one, so it very well might have gone down at three or four. So not what we were expecting, but a silly night nonetheless.
Sunday was epic. San Jose does Halloween right. I had gotten an invite to a "Zombie Disco Bloodbath" at El Steinvorth and noticed on the invitation that it was the after party for the Zombie Parade. So I researched this, and it was EXACTLY WHAT IT SOUNDED LIKE. My friends and I (in awesome Zombie attire, I might add) showed up to the park the parade was rumored to start at at 8 and there were literally hundreds and hundreds of zombies. We all walked down the main street in San Jose and every so often a person would start to scream and soon everyone else would follow. It was invigorating and fun and slightly terrifying all at once.
We went to El Steinvorth after the walk and were pleased to see that it wasn't just us Gringos who went all out for Halloween. Our cover included a shot taken out of a plastic syringe and then we entered a dance party of zombies. A note from the evening, everything is better as a zombie.
I have about six weeks left, and that is tripping me out a bit. It's a long time and it's not. I'm not sure yet how I am going to feel when I leave, but we'll save that for another entry. I miss home (or at least the people who make it home). Until next time.
My every day life in San Jose is pretty silly. Mostly that is because my host mom is one of the quirkiest individuals I have ever met. Not to say at all that she isn't very nice, because she is. But she is one odd duck. As I may have mentioned, she earns her income by hosting exchange students, so she does not work. So what does she do with her time you might ask. Well let me tell you. She plays Wii. All day. Every day. For hours and hours on end. Her favorite game is Mario. She recently ordered Donkey Kong online and talks about it literally every day.
Other quirks include an extensive collection of Snoopy chatskies. All over the house. I have a snoopy keychain on my keys. My favorite is an airplane that hangs above a shelf in the kitchen with Snoopy hanging on. The best part is that said shelf is filled with various other Snoopy figurines and for no apparent reason a bowl covered with a salmon colored cloth with a face on it. She also has in the dining room a rather large portrait of herself, which I just find to be a bit ridiculous. She drinks one beverage and one beverage only. Coca Cola, in a glass, with ice, with a blue drink cozy, through a straw.
She is not a good cook. Which again, is fine, and I am not meaning to be ungrateful. It is mostly just silly. Tonight for example we had chicken that had the unmistakable taste of hot dogs. And I like hot dogs, but chicken, my friends, is not meant to taste like hot dogs. And I think that when it does, it is kind of a red flag. Another red flag is that she never NEVER eats the food she cooks for us. Suspicious? I think so.
All that said, she is treating me well, and feeding me (although the food is questionable), and housing me, so I shouldn't poke fun. The Wii thing is just too silly though. So is the portrait.
School is mundane, learning a language is a tedious process. I do feel like it's going relatively well, but 4 hours of Spanish class every day is a whole lot. And certain classmates with certain RIDICULOUS over-pronunciation can be a bit draining - impressions will be done upon my return. My other class, Human Rights in Latin America is interesting when it isn't canceled (which is often). In the evenings I go out or kick it at friends houses. One unpleasant aspect of living with a host mom is that there are rules much akin to when I was 10, I am not allowed to have friends over after 11, nor am I allowed to have boys in my room.
On Saturday, some friends and I went to a party at a hostel we had heard about from a friend of Robin and I. Not only was the informant absent, but we arrived to the party and were greeted by an overly creepy dude dressed as The Riddler. He gave us glowstick wristbands and we entered the party. It was in fact more of a rave. Now, I don't really like raves to begin with, but unexpected raves are even more jolting. Also there were an unnecessary amount of people in dominatrix type costumes. And one guys walking around in his underwear with a tray of paint, asking various ravers to paint him. We were all kind of waiting for some weird sex shit to start happening, and we left at one, so it very well might have gone down at three or four. So not what we were expecting, but a silly night nonetheless.
Sunday was epic. San Jose does Halloween right. I had gotten an invite to a "Zombie Disco Bloodbath" at El Steinvorth and noticed on the invitation that it was the after party for the Zombie Parade. So I researched this, and it was EXACTLY WHAT IT SOUNDED LIKE. My friends and I (in awesome Zombie attire, I might add) showed up to the park the parade was rumored to start at at 8 and there were literally hundreds and hundreds of zombies. We all walked down the main street in San Jose and every so often a person would start to scream and soon everyone else would follow. It was invigorating and fun and slightly terrifying all at once.
We went to El Steinvorth after the walk and were pleased to see that it wasn't just us Gringos who went all out for Halloween. Our cover included a shot taken out of a plastic syringe and then we entered a dance party of zombies. A note from the evening, everything is better as a zombie.
I have about six weeks left, and that is tripping me out a bit. It's a long time and it's not. I'm not sure yet how I am going to feel when I leave, but we'll save that for another entry. I miss home (or at least the people who make it home). Until next time.
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