and then we saw a giant hamster...

I have been a bady bad about writing lately, and for that I apologize. I just haven't really known what exactly to write about. I still don't know exactly what I should write about but I'll give it a go anyway.

Things in the house are silly as always. Our tree has been decorated ENTIRELY with Snoopy ornaments and the 16 inch skiiing Snoopy greets me every time I come home. I also was home alone the other day and I took the opportunity to peer into my host mom's ever secret bedroom. The woman has more snoopy stuffed animals than I could count in the minute before I got nervous she would come home and catch me looking at her secret lair. She also had a man friend spend the night the other night, which made for an awkward "buenas dias" when I was eating breakfast before school the morning after.

Today I was sitting in my room when all of the sudden I heard repetitive honking coming from the garage. It didn't stop for a solid minute and I thought my host mom might have been in some kind of peril, so I went out to see if I needed to save her or something. What I found instead was that there was a SCHOOLBUS of CHILDREN that stopped for a minute (not parked, STOPPED in front of the house and she was honking and screaming/swearing at the bus. She sure is a treat sometimes.

Another good anecdote about her is that we ask her to order pizza rather frequently because her food is borderline inedible more often than not. She finally ordered pizza, however, (I think this was to get back at us in a charmingly passive aggressive way) she only gave us each two TEENY TINY slices. And when we asked for more, she said there was no more. HOWEVER, after dinner my roommate and I walked past her Snoopy Liar and there was, in fact, half a pizza sitting on her bed.

The past two weekends I have actually made it to my planned destinations, which was delightful, although it didn't hold the same element of "who know where the hell we'll end up" which I have come to know and love in the past three months. 

Two weekends ago, four girlfriends and myself made our way to Montezuma, a beach on the Pacific Ocean. We did have the wrong bus time, which made our getting there process a bit complicated, but we made it.  Montezuma was touristy, but charming. It was a little beach town teeming with hippies. Most of the hippies who roamed the streets of Montezuma, shoeless and smelling like pot and body, were from the States, or Australia, or some other country, and again, it seemed that they visited and then decided to make a hippie life for themselves selling jewelry and smoking pot on the beach.

We had a lovely and relaxing weekend. We played on the beach, hiked to an incredible waterfall and indulged in some hippie-like activities, if you catch my drift. Good times were had by all.   

Last weekend I went to Monteverde, one of only five cloud forests in the world. It was extra touristy as well, but beautiful and really really fun. And it does feel kind of good to meet people who live here who speak Spanish as poorly as I do (sometimes even worse!).

Friday night there was a little bit of the element of mystery as we arrived not having any idea where we were going to stay. We found a cool hostel in the center of the little town, the guy that ran it was really cool and upon our arrival gave us a map and his recommendations of what touristy activities were the best.

On Saturday we did a canopy tour, which was SO MUCH FUN. It was three hours of ziplining over the jungle, one "tarzan swing" which was more like a bungee jump and one "superman zipline" where you literally felt like you were flying...for half a mile. After the canopy tour, it was nap time and then in the evening we visited the Serpentarium, which was basically a zoo for snakes, it was AWESOME.

Sunday we visited the National Park and hiked around for about three hours. It was really cold, and I did not pack properly AT ALL. but it was still lots of fun. After the park we went to a butterfly garden and frog pond. We saw tons of butterflies and frogs and ALSO a mysterious animal that looked like a giant hamster. We chased it for some time, but it was too quick and agile for me to get a photo.

This week has been a good one in Chepe. Lots of school work as the semester is coming to an end, which I am most certainly NOT a fan of. I also ate pizza which was shaped like an ice cream cone...you might be asking yourself, what the hell does she mean? I mean it exactly how it sounds, and it was silly and awesome. I only have two weeks left of classes and after that I'm going to take one more trip to an undetermined tropical/Jurassic park type location before heading back to Seattle.  I am excited and not to come home. I can't wait to see my peeps, but I feel like I'm just starting to get comfortable with Spanish and Chepe and it is a shame to leave now. I guess I'll just have to come back :)

Lights out in Chepe

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.

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.

Donde esta Dana?

Apologies for missing last week. I don't really have a good excuse, but I have more to write this week so all the better. Two weekends ago I opted out of my program trip because I didn't want to do any of the offered activities (ranging in price from $65-$95...no gracias) nor did I want to spend another weekend with the citizens of Blackout City. Instead I went to one of Costa Rica's many national parks with a friend of mine. The park was on the Pacific Ocean and was incredible. We spent 6 hours hiking different trails, one of which ended with a waterfall/swimmin' hole (my favorite) AND I saw two monkeys and a sloth. The monkeys here do not carry the Ebola virus, so I was very excited to see them.

The week was fairly uneventful. We had finals in Spanish classes (I am now in Intermediate 1!) and I went to the doctor and experienced the Costa Rican medical system. Although I didn't really, because my program director opted to take me to literally the most expensive hospital in all of Costa Rica. I told my Tico friend which one I went to and his response was "holy shit, the president goes there." I have seen time and time again that the general assumption is that all Americans have unlimited funds at their disposal. And while this assumption is not at all unfounded, I just have a problem with generalizations of any kind, because there is simply no way for a generalization to be right all the time. For example, my program director failed to mention to me that the doctor's appointment would cost over  $200 because "she didn't think it would be a big deal." And true, it wasn't as big a deal for me as it might have been for a lot of people here or for many people in the States, I would have appreciated a heads up at least. As the appointment depleted a significant portion of my funds, I think I will be eating a lot of eggs in the next two months...which is fine, I like eggs.

We had a 4 day weekend this weekend, so I went to Nicaragua with my amigas Robin and Kim. It was quite possibly the best weekend of my life. Not only is Nicaragua beautiful, and the people are wonderful and the general attitude of laidbackness is infectious, and best of all, the whole weekend reaffirmed time and time again that people are good, and that if you trust in that, you will get far.

This weekend, my trust in humans got me from San Jose, Costa Rica to Nicaragua to the town of Granada to the Island Ometepe, one of the least populated places I have ever had the pleasure of encountering and back over the boarder. Literally none of that would have been possible without the help of people who I will likely never see again in my life.  The series of events that contributed to the most magical weekend I have experienced are as follows:

We (a group of 7) left San Jose at 4am on Friday and arrived in Granada, Nicaragua around 12:30. We asked for directions to a hostel and got there without any problem. Friday afternoon was just spent walking around Granada. My friend Kim has family friends who own a bed and breakfast in Granada so Robin and I went with her to find them and they were wonderful.

The rest of our group left Granada in the morning on Saturday and we went to meet these friends for breakfast and afterward they took us to a market, which was wonderful (and cheap!) and after to a lookout point which overlooked a lake to the background music of a band playing lovely music, a mandolin was involved, need I say more? There were children playing and horses walking around, it was beautiful. Granada was super quaint and quiet. The buildings were colonial and brightly colored like different flavors of sherbet. There was a market in the town square and horse drawn carriages. The mode of transportation was either horses or bikes (I literally saw a whole family on a bike, with the dad pedaling, the mom and one kid sitting on the bar in between the seat and the handlebars and another kid on the handle bars) I did not know it was possible to fit so many people on one bike, I was going to make my friend Kevin try to give me a ride on his bike but we both decided that he would probably fall and both of us would probably a) get injured and b) look like idiots.

On Saturday afternoon we got a taxi and asked him to take us to the bus to Rivas (the port city to take us to Island Ometepe) This is where the trust in people begins. He took us to a lot with a bunch of old school buses painted different colors. He pointed to one and said that one went to Rivas. So we got on. Two hours later we were in Rivas. We got in another taxi and asked him to take us to the ferry. He took us to the port, where there were 3 ships. He pointed to the one in the middle and said that one went to Ometepe. So we got on.

The boat ride was beautiful. Once upon a time, Mark Twain went to Nicaragua and wrote essays about Island Ometepe. We are nerds and printed out the essays and read them to each other as the sun was setting behind the volcano. It was one of the most serene and peaceful moments of my life.  After the sun set, the moon was orange and barely lit up the shadow of the volcano. In the words of Kim, it was the exclamation point on our day.

When we arrived to Ometepe it wasn't late, but it was dark. We had the name of one "hostel" from a flyer at our hostel in Granada. All we knew was that we needed to go to Balgue (a "town" on the island) and then walk for 15 minutes. We asked someone where Balgue was, and they pointed to a bus and told us to get on. I should mention here that Ometepe was real rural - there was a whole lot of jungle and not a whole lot of buildings, restaurants, hotels or people. So we were a little nervous but listening to people had gotten us this far.

After we had been on the bus for a solid 2 hours and were three of five remaining passengers, a white dude and a breathtakingly beautiful Brazillian (and magical we would soon find out - like I actually think she probably can do magic) woman got on the bus. The guy was clearly a gringo too, so we asked him how to get to the place we were looking for "Finca Bona Fide." Much to our delight, Kurt replied "Oh! We're living there right now! We'll take you!"

So we followed them through the jungle for about 45 minutes (NOT 15 as the flyer had claimed) and finally arrived at the farm. The farm was not in fact a hostel, as the flyer had claimed but was more of a hippie commune. We would have never found this place ourselves in a million years. There were 7 people living there and they worked on the farm with Nicaraguans during the week and basked in the magic of the farm and Nicaragua on the weekends. Even though it wasn't a hostel, they were warm and welcoming and let us stay there and cooked for us. The place was run by a guy named Chris, he wasn't there, so we slept in his bed which was made of bamboo and covered by a mosquito net.

In Chris' absence, Camilla, the mystical Brazillian woman we met on the bus ran the farm, along with her boyfriend Mitch. Camilla moved with the grace of a fairy, and her smile was absolutely infectious. We determined that bees do not in fact make honey, but rather Camilla smiles and does some sort of spin and honey as well as everything else good in the world just appears. Mitch was originally from Boston but has spent the last 4 years being a vagabond. He had dreadlocks and said things like "that meal was really beautiful, thank you everyone for sharing in it." When we arrived and saw that this farm was more of a commune than a hostel we apologized for imposing and he said "there is literally nothing you could do to make me upset." I believe him. Both him and Camilla seem like those hippies who are just so at peace with everything in their world that literally nothing could shake their joy. We later played a game called "what could we have done to make them mad" the best things on the list were a) have a food fight with all of their organically grown food or b) steal the dog that lived there, who Mitch seemed to be in love with.

When we woke up we saw the breathtaking view of the lake and the volcano (seen best from the farm's treehouse lookout.) We hung out there all morning, relaxing, talking with the hippies, reading, writing. The only slightly negative aspect about the magical hippie farm was that the "bathroom" was in fact a hut with a hole in it and a beehive in the roof of the hut. Taking a poo was a rather nerve wracking experience with bees buzzing under me in the shit hole (literally).

In the afternoon we decided to trek to a hostel closer to the main road, as we had to return to San Jose the next day. After hiking for 3 hours, we found another hostel. On our walk down we were followed for quite some time by a stray dog, who we named Dana. She followed us for the better part of two hours. She was skinny, but not sickly, and somehow regal. We think she is on the upswing, we determined that if Dana was a person she would live in a down and out town and possibly work in a diner but had big plans she was saving up for. At a certain point we looked down and didn't see Dana, she probably went out to follow her dreams.

We spent the rest of Sunday afternoon playing in the lake and generally basking the in the magic of Nicaragua. The owner of our hostel informed us that there were two buses to the port in the morning. One at 5am and one at 9am. We needed to get back to San Jose so 5am it was. To be safe, we left our room at 4:55 (even though everything is late in Latin America), as we walked out the door we heard the bus driving by. I have never run so fast in my life. We burst through the gate of the hostel and I threw our key at the door of the office and we hauled ass. The bus must have heard us yelling or seen us flailing because he stopped and we got on. The next two hours we spent on the dirt roads getting to the port. We ran into our friend and savior from the day before, Kurt on the bus, and I think we overwhelmed him with our chattiness at 5:30 in the morning.

We got to the boat and at this time were famished but this was the only boat for 2 hours, so we didn't have time to eat, and there weren't really any places around anyway. So we got off the boat in Rivas and got a taxi and asked him to take us to the bus station. Our taxi driver informed us that one bus went through Rivas a day, and it came at 10:45 (it was about 8:30) and we didn't have reservations, so if that one bus was full, we would be stuck in Rivas. But, he said, if we paid him $20, he would drive us (about an hour drive) to the boarder and we could find a bus there. Again, we'd gotten this far listening to people, so we figured why stop our streak. So Luis took us to the boarder and during our drive, we had a great time shooting the shit with him. When we got to the boarder he said to us "Okay, when you get out a bunch of guys are going to ask you if you need help getting across the boarder, but you don't need them, I'm going to tell you what to do. Go to this building, pay $1, don't let them ask for more, after that go to this building, pay $6, don't let them ask for more and after that go cross the boarder." It pays to trust people. It got us across the boarder and back to Costa Rica. Once we were on the Costa Rica side, we saw a bus going to San Jose, hopped on and we were on our way back.  We also bought sandwiches. Turkey on white bread had never tasted so good. The sweet taste of crossing boarders.

Lesson of the weekend, people are good, people are helpful, people are kind. The world, with all of its problems, is a beautiful place. I think the hippies would be proud.

Dados de Queso

Last week I found myself sitting in RostiPollo, a Nicaraguan restaurant chain, trying to put my finger on what it reminded me of. When all of the sudden it came to me that RostiPollo reminded me TO A T of Chilie's. I have been avoiding American type food like the plague, but I felt okay about RostiPollo because it was a Nicaraguan food chain, even though I kept expecting to hear the baby back ribs jingle at any moment.

AND by far the best part of this adventure in mediocre restaurant chains of Central America was that I discovered "Dados de Queso" which means cheese dice. Which are fried squares of cheese. YES PLEASE. After many cheese dice I ventured to some new bars with my Tico friend/guide of the city. I am more and more in love with the absolute chaos of San Jose every day.

Like I mentioned before, San Jose is by no means a city that one falls in love with immediately (like say, Paris) but the more time I spend here, the more I am appreciating the exquisite chaos it has to offer. Downtown feels insane, there are so many people and so many things going on and so much noise that when you walk into a place that feels good (El Steinvorth) it is like a wave of relaxation falls over you. And I think that makes me feel even more at home when I do arrive to those places I have come to call "mine" here.

I think that a big part of why I like San Jose so much is because it is one of the few places I have been to that feels real or authentic. Tourism dominates so much of Costa Rica's economy that it seems like most places are built to cater to outsiders. And so I guess in a way that becomes a part of the culture. But it feels very odd to live in San Jose and have a Tica mom and Tico friends and then go stay at a resort where all the guests are from the States and all the employees are Ticos. More than odd, it feels dirty, like I am just playing into the age old norm of white privilege, and I don't like it.

Not only does the race dynamic bother me, but it makes me feel like even more of an outsider. In my previous travels even if I didn't speak a word of the language, I could keep my mouth shut and blend in. Not so in Costa Rica. I don't have to say a thing, the minute people see me, they know that I'm not from here and that is a feeling that is really new for me. I am still struggling with how it feels, but I think it is an important and worthwhile struggle.

Last weekend our group went to Volcan Arenal, the world's 16th most active volcano. It was pretty epic, you could see the whole volcano from our hotel and there was a small earthquake while we were there. We arrived Friday night after a rather nauseous time on the bus to a wonderful buffet. After dinner most of our group got schwasted and made asses of themselves in the pool. Notable examples included some dumbass girl who smashed a bottle for no reason on the side of the pool and another girl who made out with three guys at once. And I wonder why Americans get such a bad rep...because of people like the members of Fall II International Studies Abroad, also known as Spring Break Costa Rica.

On Saturday a group of about 6 of us went on an all day guided hike through the jungle. It definitely made it to my top 3 things I've done in Costa Rica, possibly ever. The hike was in the crater of another dormant volcano. We saw toucans and snakes. About 20 minutes into the hike a snake slithered across the trail and our guide said (very nonchalantly) "Oh, that's a type of viper, it's the most poisonous snake we have in Costa Rica." I also ate a bug. I'm not quite sure what happened, our guide showed us a bug and said it was edible and asked if anyone wanted to eat it and without really thinking about it, I volunteered. The taste was fairly neutral. I definitely wouldn't say it tasted good, but it didn't really taste bad either. The consistency was that of what I would imagine raw chicken would be like, and it had the same amount of protein as a 30 oz steak.

Our destination on the hike was Rio Celeste. It is a special (dare I say magical) kind of river only found in three places in the world: there's one in Brazil, one in Japan and one in Costa Rica. Rio Celeste is actually the meeting point of two rivers. One of them has a really high sulfur level and the other has really tiny pieces of jade in the water. When the two rivers meet, some kind of (magical) chemical reaction takes place and the water turns bright blue. Like neon blue. Think the color of the sky, perhaps mixed with a bit of vanilla ice cream. Like if the sky was a flavor of ice cream, the color of that ice cream would be the color of this river. It was nuts.

There was also a spot of water that we stopped at. Our guide told us all to think really hard about the most beautiful thing we could think of. We did and after about 30 seconds the water started bubbling violently. The guide (who I kid you not, seemed to know EVERYTHING about the jungle) shrugged his shoulders and said he didn't know why this happened. There might be some kind of scientific explanation but even if there is, I would rather not know it.

Our guide was the cat's meow. He is a biologist and tour guide. He informed us that he has discovered 3 new species in his 26 years as a biologist. I now have an abundance of knowledge of what plants I could eat if I were to potentially get lost in the jungle. It was like having a more awesome and less douchy Bear Grylls as our guide.

This weekend the Group of Idiots has another preplanned excursion, but Robin and I have opted out of this one. I'm not quite sure what the weekend ahead holds. Friday night there is a concert of a Costa Rican folk band called Malpais that we will be attending and Saturday, Sunday and Monday (a holiday from school) who knows...but todo bien, I'm down for a surprise adventure. I am thinking about everyone at home a lot, I love and miss you all, until next time, pura vida :)

the world is a mystery when you don't understand the language...

My dear friend Robin said the above to me the other day and I feel that there are few things more true. At this point, one month into my stay in Costa Rica, I am in a constant state of uncertainty. (I think I'm ordering this, but who the hell knows?)

In the past 2 weeks the silliest lapses in understanding Spanish have come in the form of a) Robin and I becoming very excited about free juice samples at a restaurant in Puerto Viejo, on the Caribbean, only to discover said drinks on our bill. And b) when a mystery woman showed up at Robin's house for breakfast and we had no idea why this woman was there. This event is what prompted the statement. We are still not quite sure who this woman is and why she joined us for breakfast.

So two weekends ago I went to Puerto Viejo, which is in the province Limon, on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica. It was beautiful but I was rather perturbed with how gringo-ized it was. Sure, there were Ticos that lived there, but in fact, the vast majority of waiters/waitresses and bartenders I encountered were Gringos.

We stayed at a hostel called Rockin' J's which rented hammocks instead of beds. Which was fun for about one night. To be honest, I do not know why so many people recommend this hostel so highly. It was really dirty, like really REALLY dirty. As in, I felt it would be more cleanly for me to skip showering rather than go into the showers. Also the hammocks literally felt as though they had never been washed. Robin and I opted to switch hostels on the third night, much to the dismay and confusion of our companeros. For whatever reason, everyone we were with LOVED Rockin J's. And don't get me wrong, it was a fun place to party, but not such a great place to sleep and/or shower at.
  
The owner of Rockin J's was an old-ish man, about 55 or so, who I am pretty sure visited Costa Rica when he was like 18 and never left. Which is cool. But he was 55 and still raged like an 18 year old, which especially weirds me out post "the incident" with Robin's crazy host mother. His right hand man, was about 30 or so and reminded me to a T of the bad guy in the movie, The Girl Next Door. He had one of those mohawks that was really just a landing strip of slightly longer hair down the center of his head. And from what I could tell, he wore exclusively t-shirts with the sleeves cut off. He was the kind of guy who seemed relatively cool at first but the more you talked to him the more you realized he was kind of a douche. On our second night in the hostel he invited us to, and this is word for word, "a rave/pool party in the jungle, it's kind of far away so you'll have to take a taxi but there will be TONS of coke and ex there." We declined his offer and felt no remorse about this. Our good feelings towards declining the jungle rave were confirmed when a bunch of people came back at 5 am, on ecstacy and woke us up to talk about the rave (and give us lots of hugs).

Puerto Viejo was beautiful AND I saw a sloth, so that life goal is achieved. But I was really upset by the fact that it seemed like in this place with a beautiful beach and so much incredible nature, the best thing Puerto Viejo claimed to offer was free drinks from 10-12 at various bars. It seemed like most of the people I went with were more concerned with getting fucked up than seeing and experiencing a new place, I doubt a lot of them even remembered much about the weekend.

This past weekend I went to Tamarindo, which is a beach on the Pacific side of Costa Rica and it was a lot of the same. The other 50 members of our study abroad group have arrived and it is definitely clear that the main prerogative of the majority is to get drunk as often as possible. In fact, we watched a movie in class on Friday and when I sat down the girl sitting next to me informed me that she had just vomited due to the night before. Lovely. AND classy.

It just seems like a lot of people in our group are looking for the United States in a place where it doesn't exist. But it generates money, so, there are a lot of bars that offer free drinks to a majority Gringo clientele. In Tamarindo we went to a restaurant whose menu almost exactly mimicked that of Red Robin. Not that I don't love Red Robin, but that is not what I'm here to see. This restaurant was extra disappointing because it also mimicked Red Robin in that the prices were oddly high for such mediocre food, and the staff was unnecessarily surly.

But no matter, it was a good weekend. Robin and I opted out of the offered extra excursions to save money and just layed on the beach. I attempted to surf with my friend's surf board, but that did not go so well. I got out into the water and then a big wave crashed on my head. I got scared and promptly returned to shore. I got rather sunburned and for the first time utilized an aloe vera plant, which worked about the same as the aloe vera in the bottle but it felt much cooler and more exotic.

I am increasingly frustrated with my Spanish skills. I am incapable of not speaking and it is so hard when I want to say something but I do not possess the vocabulary to do so. Oh well, I guess there will just come a certain point when I stop saying things like "Oh wow, that shirt is drunk" and "I'm going to ignite my friend" (I said the latter by accident when I was trying to say I was going to meet my friend. Oops.)

Until next time...pura vida.  

pterodactyls and butterflies

It seems to me that being abroad is not a complete abroad experience unless you embarrass yourself on a very regular basis. After all the various fuck ups of being in Denmark (lure=nap, lort=shit) I feel it is much easier to brush off the constant mistakes and mishaps here.

On Friday of last week, our class went on a trip to Cartago, a smaller city about 30 minutes away from San Jose. We visited a church which has in it a statue by the name of La Negrita (the little black one). The story goes that a young girl found the little black statue of the Virgin Mary in the woods and brought it home with her. She went to sleep and when she woke up the statue was gone. The next day she went back to the woods and it was there again, in its original spot. She brought it home three times and the same thing happened. So she brought it to a priest, and the same thing happened to him. So it was decided that the statue was divine. I guess at some point the statue stopped running back to the woods because now it is in a giant golden case inside of the church. Personally I think the story sounds slightly frightening, but people in Cartago are pretty into it.

So now the statue is believed to have healing powers, so when people are praying for someone who is sick or hurt, they come and ask La Negrita. They walk the length of the entire (huge) church on their knees up to the alter to ask her for help. Then after she helps the person in question, they come back to the church and walk on their knees to say thank you to her. It's pretty cool, people come from all over the world to see and pray to this little statue. On the anniversary of the day the statue was found millions of people come to the church.

After the church, our class went to a market, which was really bustling and a lot of fun. Our teacher told my friend Robin and I to be back at 1 (it was 10 at the time). So we walked around the market and then decided to go see a bit of the little town of Cartago. So we had a lovely time, we went to a park, where there were lots of children chasing birds (David - if you are reading this, all I could think of was "mischief knows no language") there was also a man dressed as Jesus who sat down and talked to an old woman for quite some time.

So at about 11:45 Robin and I decided to go back to the market and get some lunch. We took our time getting there and all of the sudden were met by our teacher. She informed us that we were in fact a) supposed to meet at 11, not 1 as we had thought  b) we were not supposed to have left the market and c) they thought we got kidnapped so they called the police. Well shit. It was one of the more embarrassing moments of my life, but what are you going to do? And I definitely learned the difference between the words for 11 o'clock and 1 o'clock.

On Friday we had yet another enjoyable night with our boyfriend El Steinvorth. The bartender now knows us which is excellent, it feels good to be "regulars" at a place here. On Saturday we got up early to go to Volcan Irazu, a volcano that is about 2 hours away from San Jose. We rode the bus, which was quite a nauseous time especially because I was being a good Jew and fasting on Yom Kippur. But I made it sans vomiting, so I was proud.

The volcano was really cool, you could see a giant crater with a ton of steam coming off from it. We climbed up a big hill and got an incredible view. It was cold enough to see your breath, which I did not think happened in Costa Rica. Shorts were an unfortunate choice, I only wore them because every other time a Tico has said "it's cold" I have been sweating, so I did not head the advice of my host mother and quite regretted this decision. But what are you going to do? A new phrase I have learned from some Tico youth I hung out with the other night is "Todo bien" which is the equivalent to "it's all good," and/or one of my favorite phrases "don't even worry about it," this will be an important phrase to remember I feel.

On Sunday, Robin and I had opted out of rafting with some of our other gringo amigos because it was rather pricey, so we decided instead to take a bus to Alajuela, a town about an hour away that we had read about in a guide book. There was a coffee plantation near by so we figured we would take a bus to the town and then find our way from there.

The only problem with this plan is that finding places is incredibly difficult here. First of all, they don't have addresses in Costa Rica, which is fun and feels very laid back and cool at times and other times is rather frustrating. Secondly, it seems that Ticos are quite bad at giving directions. I sympathize with this, as I am terrible at giving directions, but literally everyone will tell you a different way to get to the same place. And it usually takes about five tries to actually get to said place. It is something I have never experienced to such an extent as I have here.

So we wandered around Alajuela for a while, following various directions and ending up walking in circles. Finally we broke down and got a taxi. The cab driver was really nice, and when we got to the coffee farm we determined that there was literally no way we would have EVER found it on our own.

After the stress of being lost and not knowing where we were going, we felt completely calm and collected upon our entrance to the coffee farm when we were greeted with "hello friends! the tour starts in 20 minutes, would you like to wait in our butterfly farm?" ABSOLUTELY. We looked at butterflies and talked with our tourguide, a new friend named Dayanna, who we have plans to hang out with again next week.

The coffee farm was beautiful, and HUGE. It was at the top of a big hill and when you looked off the ridge all you could see was coffee plants and trees with giant leaves. It literally looked like Jurassic Park. We finished the tour jittery from all the coffee and in a great mood from the beauty and tranquility of being in the middle of nowhere where it looked like we might encounter Little Foot at any moment.

Instead of taking a cab back down to Alajuela, we got directions to the nearest bus stop, which was only about a mile away. So we walked down the hill, all the while looking off the side of the road at endless green. We got to the bus at 3:07. The bus came on the hour, once an hour. So we had quite some time to kill. We sat in the bus stop and talked rather extensively about the dinosaurs we wished we could ride back to San Jose in lieu of the bus. But the dinosaurs never came and after an hour, the bus did come. We were a bit nervous about getting back to San Jose, because we did not know what time those buses stopped running. However, we got back and after a few misdirections (of course) we found a bus that was going back to SJ and all was well.

It felt really good to navigate (albeit with a few hours of being lost, and missing a bus) our whole day by ourselves. The week has been good. It is our last week of this section of language classes, so I move up a level starting next week. I feel like my Spanish is still rather horrible, but it's getting less horrible every day. I hung out with a Tico the other day and felt like he understood probably 90% of what I was trying to say, or at least pretended to. And I understood about 80% of what he was saying, and pretended with the rest :)

I forgot how silly it is to learn a language. I feel like I am constantly saying things that are slightly off, and therefore have completely different meanings such as "I'm going to go eat a shower" and the Ticos around me just think "Oh well, she probably means she is going to take a shower" The other day I claimed that I enjoyed the fruit, dog (perro=dog pera=fruit) another fun one is that barato = cheap and baracho = drunk.

This weekend I am treking to the Caribbean. The hostel we are staying at rents hammocks, not beds, so I think it will be a wonderful weekend. My plans are to eat a lot and lay on the beach. Until next time, pura vida!