If this international law thing doesn't work out, I can always pick coffee

Every day on the way to and from campus, our buses pass through acres and acres of coffee plantations. I always thought they were beautiful, and this past weekend I had the opportunity to actually step inside the leafy green fields to pick some of the coffee myself. Why, you may ask? The idea was to let students experience what it's like to do the work and to interact with the local coffee pickers. It was really an amazing experience.

We showed up at 8:00 a.m. on Saturday, and they loaded us into the back of a wagon that was pulled by a tractor. This is how the workers are transported to and from work every day. (Of course, the regular workers had already been working since 6:00 a.m.; we just got to sleep in a bit.)


Our coffee-picking destination was along the same road we take to school every day. Below is a picture of the portion of the road that "broke" and caused us to be displaced for the first three weeks of class. The original road was actually off to the right of the photo, but there was a bit of a landslide (note all the fresh dirt), so they just created this new road here with gravel and dirt. There's a really steep drop into a canyon off to the right of the photo.


So, I never really thought about how coffee beans grow exactly, but I never would have guessed they look like berries. But guess what? They do. (See below.) We were given instructions to only pick the red berries and to leave the green ones on the plant (I presume they wait for the green ones to ripen, then pick those). Picking them is a very tedious process, since you are supposed to avoid collecting leaves or green berries. No one wears gloves because they make it too clumsy to work with. If you smoosh the berry, you find two white seed/bean things inside that look exactly like peanut halves. Apparently these are then rinsed off, dried, and then I think they actually crack open and the coffee bean is inside them. Then you roast the beans.


Here are my spoils! I only picked for about an hour or two, and I didn't get very far. We pooled all of our collections together, and we were told that we would have earned a TOTAL of about $5. Split between 18 people, that means we each earned about 30 cents for our hour or two of work (but we were a lot slower than the normal workers).


This guy picked a lot more than me...


This guy below is only 16, and he's been coffee-picking since he was 8. Apparently the average worker picks about 6 to 10 of these baskets of coffee every day, which is the equivalent of about $8 to $14. But the faster guys can pick up a few more baskets a day, bringing the earnings, at most, to about $17 a day.


Here are some more workers. Most of them are from Nicaragua and come for seasonal work. The company apparently gives them free housing while they work, and they work 8 hours a day. Around February, when coffee-picking season slows down, they go work in the sugar cane fields.


Both men and women work in the fields, and they often bring their kids with them, either to work or just to hang out with them. There was one 16-year-old girl there working, and this baby below is hers. (I'm not exactly sure who the girl holding the baby is -- I think the 16-year-old's sister or maybe one of the worker's kids.)


And here's just a random shot of the coffee plantation.

So here's my favorite part: Apparently the coffee beans we picked are separated into different grades, and the high-grade beans are exported while the lower-grade beans stay in the country. Guess who this coffee plantation sells its high-grade beans to? Starbucks. Seriously. So the next time you're drinking Starbucks coffee, you may be drinking beans I picked with my own hands!

OK OK, you win

So, you asked for a hair picture. Here ya go. I kind of look like an idiot in this picture even without the hair. Enjoy.

Hairy experience (sorry, i love bad puns)

So, I've been in this country about three months now, and my Spanish is slowly but steadily improving. I still can't understand people if they're just rapidly talking to each other, but I can give directions to taxi drivers and can more or less read cooking instructions on the back of food containers. Yet I've run into a few stumbling blocks. People seem to misunderstand me, even when I think I'm speaking the language.

For example, when I first arrived here, I asked someone if they sold "cafe frio" (cold coffee). I needed my daily coffee fix, but it was really hot out, so I wanted iced coffee -- you know, Dunkin Donuts style. To my happy surprise, the guy said yes and promptly left to go get it. About 10 minutes later, he comes back with this elaborate coffee-milkshake-type of thing with chocolate syrup drizzled around the edge of an ornate glass cup and whip cream on top. Now I'm not saying it wasn't good -- because it was fantastic. But it wasn't exactly what I wanted (and it cost $5 instead of your usual 80-cent cup of coffee).

My next related experience was just about a week or two ago. I was in a bar with friends, and I wanted to order nachos. They had nachos with chicken or nachos with beef on their menu, so I went up to the bartender and pointed to the nachos on the menu but said "nachos sin carne y sin pollo -- vegetariana." Clear enough to me. I wanted nachos but without the beef or the chicken. And he asked "ensalada y fijoles?" So I said yes -- I wanted the salad toppings (lettuce and tomatoes) and beans. I even pointed to the girl next to me who was eating exactly what I was trying to order. A short while later the bartender brings me a huge garden salad with a side of refried beans and a handful of tortilla chips. Now -- again -- it was darn tasty. But it's not what I meant.

The culmination of my language barriers came this past weekend when I went to get my hair cut. I was quite proud of myself because I called the woman Saturday morning and asked to make an appointment for 2:00 that afternoon, and I did it all in Spanish. That part was successful. Then I described how I wanted my hair cut. I made a point of learning the word for layers ahead of time (capas), so I said I wanted capas largo (long layers). Perhaps the woman understood me and simply thought she knew better, but instead of long layers, I got incredibly short layers. My total hair length still goes past my shoulders, but the shortest layer is probably halfway up the back of my head. It's kind of like the Rachel haircut on Friends -- which would be cool if this were 1997. But it's not. Unlike my other experiences, I was not happy with this substitution.

So, I'm thinking I'm just going to let it grow out a bit until I'm home in December and I can explain to someone in my native tongue how to fix my hair. Until then, I'll keep practicing my Spanish.

Panama!

The week before last was crazy with final papers and presentations, and then last Wednesday we had an exam, so I was of course cramming for that. I think it went well -- cross your fingers! It was all about concluding treaties, the International Court of Justice, and the use of force. It's crazy how much I've learned already.

Then we had Thursday and Friday off, and you know how I just can't stay away from the beach! :) Actually, I tend to take every opportunity I have to get out of Ciudad Colon. It's a really small town (one traffic light, I think), and we're close enough to San Jose, but San Jose doesn't have a lot going for it. I'm realizing that I miss big cities, big time. I'm too close to roosters and muddy roads all the time. I miss street cleaning, and people rushing off to work in suits and high heels, and tall buildings, and meeting friends for a drink after work. But I don't miss it so much that I don't appreciate what I have going here. I love learning what I'm learning, and I love getting to know the local culture and seeing as much of the region as possible. I'm just going to be happy to move back to a city after my year is up.

Speaking of traveling as much as possible, a fellow classmate Jessica and I decided to travel over the long weekend. We went to the Carribean coast again (to Puerto Viejo) hoping to avoid the rain, but we weren't so lucky. But it was still great just to be by the beach and to be able to relax. We spent Thursday and Friday in Puerto Viejo, but then we decided that, since we were only about an hour and a half from the Panama border, we should go for our last two days.

I'm so glad we went! It was such a great experience. First we took a bus to the border, where I got a new stamp in my passport. And then you have to walk across a bridge to get to Panama. I think it's the first time I've walked over an international border. The bridge was this really old, rickety railroad bridge. Here are some pics of it:


On the other side of the bridge there are these taxis that take people to a harbor (about 15 minutes away) where boats leave for Bocas Del Toro -- our destination point. Bocas Del Toro is a collection of islands right off the coast of Panama in the Carribean. So we took an hour-long boat ride to the main island. The first half hour winds through a river, and then it opens up to the sea, where we wound through some of the islands. It was really beautiful. Some places had little huts on the water that you could rent:



We arrived on the island (Isla Colon), ate lunch at this little place on the water, and then found a hostel for only $8 a night per person. We were walking down the main street with all the shops and restaurants when we ran into a local guy named Robert. He offered to take us on a boat to one of the other nearby island for only $2 each way, so we took him up on the offer. (By the way, everything in Panama is in U.S. currency. Someone said they used to have their own currency -- Balboas -- but now U.S. currency is the official currency for Panama. Weird, huh?)

So Robert took Jessica, me, and this British guy to an island called Bastimentos -- which was the best cultural experience I think I've had since I got here. This Robert guy used to live on the island, so he knows everyone on it, and he introduced us to about half of them. The part of the island we visited is where all the locals live. They're all Afro-Carribean and speak a different kind of English (as Robert said, it's like English but not proper). There was this main cement walkway through the town, but no cars or roads. It was so lively -- it seemed like the entire town was out and about. There were boys playing baseball in a field:


There were guys playing dominos:


And there was a funeral, so half the town was dressed up and gathered at one house and at a pub down the street celebrating the dead's "passage into the next life," as Robert put it. We actually talked to a nephew of the man who died. He and several others in town said the man died of a broken heart because his son had recently been stabbed and killed. Here's a pic of some of the people gathering for the funeral celebration:


And here are some other pics of the town (I took about 50):




We went back to the main island after a little while and then left for San Jose early the next morning. It was quite an experience.

Back to the beach

I just can't stay away from the beach. Since I was sick, I was waffling back and forth on whether I was up to a weekend away, but late Friday night I decided to go for it. I went with two friends (Michelle from school and her Rotary friend who's also from the States and studying in Costa Rica, but at a different school). We went to Cahuita, which is on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica -- a first for me (all the other beaches I went to were on the Pacific). The Caribbean is great this time of year because it doesn't rain all day like it does here in the Central Valley or the Pacific side. In fact, it didn't rain at all when we were there.

Cahuita is absolutely beautiful, but the trip started out a little rocky. Since I waited until the last minute to decide whether I was going, I bought my ticket at the last minute and learned about a little thing called "de pie," which was stamped on my ticket. It means standing room only. A four-hour bus ride with no seat. It turns out several people were without seats, and we ended up sprawling all over the aisle of the bus -- at one point I laid down in the aisle and actually fell asleep. And Michelle offered to switch with me for a leg of the trip, so it wasn't so bad.

We roll into town around 2 p.m. and start popping into hotels looking for a room. In the half dozen or so towns I've staying in so far, I've always been able to just go there without a reservation and find a room for $10 to $15 per person a night. Not this time. Monday was a Costa Rican holiday, and apparently everyone went to Cahuita. We went door to door looking for a free room, and everywhere was full. By this time we were exhausted and tripping with sweat (it had to be close to 90 degrees -- way hotter than San Jose). We kept running into a few other backpackers who were in the exact same boat as us. After an hour or so we finally found one place that "sort of" had a room. There was some weird story about how some guy (I think who worked at the hotel) had the key to the room, but when he came back in an hour, we could access the room. And the shower was not totally put together when we got in, but they came in and fixed it. So all of that was a little weird, but we were happy just to have the room. And it turned out to be a beautiful place! It was this little duplex-type cabin that had a kitchenette on the first floor, and then a little second floor with three beds (sleeps up to five people). It was right on the water and had a porch with a beautiful view. Here are some picks of the place:



The next morning we woke up and went snorkeling. Landlubber I may be, but put a life vest on me, and I can pretend to swim with the best of 'em. We took a little boat out into this bay area -- and by little boat I mean something that looked like a big canoe with a clip-on motor. It was a sunny day, and we snorkeled over a large coral reef area with tons of bright blue and yellow fish (and some weird spiky fish and something that looked like a brain). It was really cool.

And then the guide dropped us off at the tip of the shoreline so we could walk an hour back through the state park on a path that followed the beach, and we saw a bunch of monkeys on the walk back!

But I'm back in town now and this week is incredibly busy. We have a moot court thing on Friday, so we're all very busy preparing for that, plus we have a different paper due Friday and our final exam next Wednesday. Plenty to keep me busy!

Sick

Well, I'm officially sick sick sickedy-sick. It started with a sore throat and moved into cold sweats and the whole shebang. Despite the apparent prevalence of dengue in the area and my dozen mosquito bites all over my body, I'm pretty sure I don't have dengue fever. It crossed my mind, but after extensive Google research, it appears that dengue symptoms include vomiting, joint pain, and -- get this -- it feels like someone is pushing on the back of your eyeballs. Ow. So I just keep thinking "well, at least I don't have that."

I've been going to classes this week, but I think if I feel the same in the morning, I'm going to have to stay in bed. I might venture out for Jell-O and ginger ale, though, because I'm craving those. Luckily I had chicken soup on hand. (Thanks, Mom! That was in the 2 tons of food you send back with me. haha.)

More random thoughts strung together

On Thursday I went to dinner at one of my professor's houses. He had everyone in the class sign up for different nights so that we went in groups of five or six. I'm still so amazed how open and inviting most of the professors are. It was really a lot of fun. He and his girlfriend fed us lots of food and wine, and by the time I got home, I thought it was 9:30 or so, but it was actually close to 11:00, so that's definitely a sign of a good night.

Saturday night was also very cool. I went to this Lebanese restaurant in San Jose with a couple girls from school -- it has this really cool lounge atmosphere with great food. It was kind of hard to find -- as one would expect in the absence of addresses. Two of us took the bus into San Jose and all we had to go off of was a street name (Calle 22), which runs really close to the bus stop. So we started walking along Calle 22 and asking people if they knew where this restaurant was, but no one had heard of it. On about our fifth try, we stopped in this little market, and the guy didn't know exactly, but he stepped outside the store and asked a possibly homeless man if he knew. Sure enough, this guy seemed to know, and he told us to follow him. We weren't too sure about this plan (it wasn't a very good neighborhood), but we stuck to well lit streets and Michelle got out her little pocket knife -- just in case. He actually did bring us to the right place, but as we expected, he asked to be compensated for this guided tour. I was honestly grateful that he showed us the way, because I don't think we could have found it without him, so I gave him a dollar. Sort of like a pedestrian taxi. :)

Anyway, it's Monday now, and we're back in classes. Tomorrow we start learning about the law of the sea, and I'm procrastinating doing my reading for that one. :) After lunch today, one of the Natural Resources students took some of us on a tour of the trails around campus. I had no idea there was so much land around the school! There are some hiking trails you can go on that take two or three hours (we didn't have time for that). And there is this area with about four or five ponds and these statues and benches for picnics. And the Natural Resources students are working on creating some butterfly gardens (apparently you plant these trees that butterflies are attracted to, and they flock to the area). It's incredibly beautiful. I'll have to do some more exploring and take some photos. I might have to wait till it starts drying up next month, though. I was up to my ankles in mud today.

Well, I guess I should start reading about the law of the sea. Sigh.

A good day

Sorry it's been a little while since my last post. I'm slacking off a bit. :)

Soooo, on Saturday I went to the Multiplaza (big Westernized shopping mall) with my friend Michelle and saw a movie called La Vida de los Otros. It said it was in English with Spanish subtitles, but it was actually German with Spanish subtitles. Because I speak neither German nor Spanish, this posed a problem for me. Luckily, Michelle does speak Spanish, so she had to whisper the Spanish translations to me throughout the whole movie. The theater was pretty empty, so I don't think we were too annoying. It turned out to actually be a really good movie, from the parts I understood, anyway. Then on Saturday night we went to a party that some of the students threw at their apartment, and that was a lot of fun!

Today was a good day. The class this morning was about the authorization of the use of force, and it was actually really interesting. And then after class, four of us arranged to have massages! This woman comes to your house and gives hour-long massages for only $16. Such a good deal! It was awesome. And then I came home and found out that I got an internship I applied for. It's a volunteer (aka no money) position as Press and Communications Officer for the Human Rights Center, which is a small organization on campus run by one of the professors. I'll be writing press releases and updating the Web site and writing stories about some of the visiting professors. It should actually be a lot of fun.

I should run, but I'll try to be better about updating this more often!

The not-so-dead language

I'm up to my eyeballs in readings about treaties and the Geneva Convention and lots and lots of Latin terms. (You'd think my four years of Latin would kick in right now, but the only thing I remember from Latin is the Our Father, and I haven't run across that in the readings yet.) But I'm learning a ton and trying to keep up with all the legal jargon. Apparently the vice president of the International Criminal Court (in The Hague) is going to be in Costa Rica next week, and he's friends with our professor, so our professor is trying to get him to come in and talk to us on Monday, which would be awesome!

This weekend was fairly low key, although we had a gathering for the International Law department at one of the professor's houses. She has this gorgeous home with a huge front porch. One student's boyfriend is a cook, so he made all the food for us, and it was the best food I've had since I've been here. Just because I like posting pictures, here are a couple from the party:

That's a cactus leaf.

Chelsea, Jill, and me

On campus -- finally!

We finally made it to campus! Our first day there was Friday, and it was as beautiful as they described. Here are a few pics of campus I took today:

The cafeteria

One of the hallways (it's an open-air campus)

A classroom

On Friday evening some of us went to a party hosted by the African students. There are probably about 15 or 20 students from Africa, and they cooked TONS of African food, which was really good. They also dressed up in their traditional African garb and played their favorite music from Africa. It was a lot of fun.

On Saturday I left for the beach with Michelle (another student in the Media program). We went to Samara, which is a really beautiful beach. It was pretty deserted. We went to a couple bars and we were pretty much the only ones there. We thought maybe there was a hurricane evacuation and no one told us, but I guess that's just what it's like in the off season. A few beach shots:





We didn't have class on Monday because this weekend was Costa Rica's Independence Day. But I had my first class in International Law today. We got to meet all of the faculty, and everyone seems great. They gave us their cell phone numbers, and two of the professors are having everyone over to their houses for dinner. The head of the department (and our professor for the first course) was a judge on an international court of the sea, and worked at the UN for ages. It sounds like I have a lot to learn from all of them!

Speaking of, I better do some more reading.

Not your typical alarm clock

This morning I was awoken at 6 a.m. by an earthquake. That was a first for me. There was a tiny little tremor first, and I think it kind of half woke me up, and then there was a bigger one, and the whole room shook and you could hear the earth rumbling, kind of like thunder. I jumped out bed and just kind of stood there, but it was over before I even stood up. I'm sure it was a pretty small earthquake, but it still kind of freaked me out. Tornadoes -- those I can handle. But earthquakes?

I heard my neighbor open up his front door, so I went outside, too, and he was like "wow, earthquake." And then the neighbor on my other side opened up her door, and it turns out the earthquake woke her up, too.

Today is supposed to be the first day that we can go to UPeace on the new road. If that earthquake did anything to ruin the road, I'm REALLY going to think Mother Nature is trying to tell me something.

The sunset today...

... taken from the balcony of my apartment.

Counting down

It seems like I just got here, yet I'm nearly done with my first class. We only have two more days of lectures, and then on Friday we give group presentations. And then we have Monday off (it's a Costa Rican holiday), so a bunch of people are already planning a beach weekend (myself included).

We're still not on the UPeace campus yet. Apparently they built a whole new road (using gravel) and the rains have kept it pretty muddy, and since its on a significant incline, this is considered unsafe. Yet they say it's been improving (we've heard that before), and supposedly we'll be on campus on Friday. I'll believe it when I see it.

I'm adjusting pretty well to Costa Rican life. The coffee is stupendous, and I have a daily fix of rice and beans. The school gave us the contact info for a local woman who teaches Spanish lessons, and I plan on setting that up soon (only $5 for an hour if you're in a group, and you choose your own group and your own meeting times). Speaking of good deals (you all know how I love a good deal), I heard (from my classmate's host mom) about a hairdresser who charges $5 for haircuts and something like $15 or $20 for highlights. And the same host mom told us about a masseuse who comes to your house and does hour-long massages for $20. So I'm all about those! I wandered around Ciudad Colon Saturday afternoon looking for a watch shop because my battery died, and I found this tiny little closet-sized shop, and the guy changed my battery in about 10 seconds and only charged me 700 colones (about $1.40). I paid $7 for the same watch battery in the States.

Well, enough about that. Back to paper writing for me...

Happily reunited

I have my luggage back! Yeah! It was quite a debacle. The American Airlines woman on the phone said they could deliver my luggage, but she needed an address. And I was like "What do you mean? There's no such thing as addresses here, but I could give you directions." And she was a Tica (local lingo for Costa Ricans), so I was confused why she was asking. Then I called my landlord, and he was like, "Sure, we have an address. It's '100 meters from the grotto in the neighborhood La Trinidad.'" Of course, I'd been giving these same instructions to cab drivers and the like, but I didn't realize it was an "address." So I called the woman back, and this apparent "address" was acceptable to her.

Of course, the driver got lost, as is prone to happen when you don't have street names or house numbers and when the grotto in question is not easily found. So the driver calls me on his cell and is speaking in Spanish, and I understand about one in ten words he's saying. Then he has the dispatcher who speaks English call me and relay what I'm saying to the driver. But this was apparently still not clearing up matters, so I got the driver's phone number and had my landlord talk to the driver and give turn-by-turn directions. That was apparently the magic ticket, because the driver pulled into the apartment complex about three seconds later.

Phew. But at least all my belongings were accounted for and not damaged. There was a little slip in one of the bags that said it had been inspected, so I wonder if that caused the delay.

As for other news, the hole in the road to the university is apparently fixed (and has had a few cars drive over it and withstood the heavy rains of the past few days, which is apparently encouraging, although the fact that they were holding their breaths to see what the rain would do to it isn't very encouraging to me. What happens when our 2-ton bus drives over it? )

We'll save that adventure for Monday. We finish this week's classes at LaSalle (the university-on-loan).

The case of the missing suitcases

I had a wonderful time at home this weekend, and I was really glad I was able to make it to my friend's wedding. I got to see some old college friends and spent a whopping eight hours (four each way) driving through the vast cornfields of Central Illinois -- that's one thing I don't miss in Costa Rica.

I also took the opportunity to bring back two full suitcases of goodies -- I was so ecstatic to bring back my printer, which will be a huge help. And my parents and my sister were my saviors because while I was at the wedding Saturday, they went shopping and picked me up a toaster oven to bring back and some non-perishable food and school supplies. It was all the "luxury" stuff I couldn't bring with my on first trip to Costa Rica. I couldn't wait to get home and unpack all my stuff.

And then the airline lost my luggage.

I still don't know where it is. And, even worse, the airline doesn't know where it is. They told me it might come in on a flight today, except the two flights from Miami (my layover city) that were supposed to come in today were both canceled. That pesky Hurricane Felix is right in the flight path. The flights may or may not arrive tomorrow, and my luggage may or may not be on them. Sigh.

In the meantime, I'm in full-swing paper-writing mode. I have an 8-page paper due Wednesday that maps a conflict (triggers of escalation, parties and attitudes involved, sources of stalemate and de-escalation). You could pick any conflict, and I chose to write about the Chief Illiniwek debate (for all you fellow U of I alumns). I figured I spent half my time at U of I writing about it for the student newspaper, and I know it inside and out, so it would be the easiest one to do.

Anyway, I'm exhausted, and it's time for bed. If you happen to cross paths with a couple of navy blue rollerboard suitcases with my name on them, can you let me know? Thanks.

Back in the USA -- very briefly

So, my big news is that I'm going home for a very short weekend tomorrow to attend my old college roommie's wedding. I'd been going back and forth for months as to whether I'd be able to make it (whether plane tickets would be too much, or whether I'd be able to find flight times without missing class). It wasn't looking too good, so I held off. But then when I arrived here, I realized the atmosphere of the school is quite a bit more relaxed than I expected, and missing a day wasn't going to kill me. (To prove this point, I told my discussion leader today that I would not be in class tomorrow, and he said "I expect and hope that you will get wasted this weekend, but don't forget you have a paper due Wednesday." haha.) And, believe it or not, ticket prices stayed relatively low even a week before the departure date (I just booked the tickets earlier this week).

So, I am really excited to be home, even if it's very brief, and I'll be spending most of my time in Central Illinois, where the wedding is. It will be great to see a bunch of my old college friends, too. I think I would have regretted it if I didn't go. And it gives me the chance to bring back some stuff with me (like my printer! yeah!).

Not much else is new around here, so I'll leave you with one final thought that I found surprising: We may complain about rising gas prices in the States, but apparently we have it good. I always heard London had the highest prices, and they paid around $5 or more a gallon. But I assumed that was extreme, and most other countries paid less than we did in the States. It seems like that's not true. I talked to some people from Brazil, and they said they pay at least $5 a gallon. Even in Costa Rica, which in some ways is quite a bit cheaper than the States, their gas is something like $4 or $4.50 a gallon. Everyone I've talked to pays more for gas than we do in the States. And when I told them we are outraged at the gas prices in the U.S., they just laughed. Who knew.

Be back in a few days when I return from the States...

Classes begin

We've now finished our first two days of classes. The actual class time is pretty short. We have lecture from 9:00 to 10:15, and then we meet in smaller discussion groups from 10:45 to noon. And then we're done for the day. This first class we're taking is a Foundation in Peace and Conflict Studies course, so the entire school (about 150 people) takes it. It lasts three weeks, and then we start our respective masters' classes after this class is over. We have readings to do every day, and we have to submit a short summary of the readings every single day to our discussion group leader. And we already have our first assignment, due next week. But so far, it's not too bad, and I actually welcome the work after quite a bit of downtime here.

As far as the other students go, everyone is incredibly nice and sociable. I'd say most people are in they're later 20s (very few are right out of college, and a few are quite older), so it's not at all like high school or even undergrad, where it's harder to make friends. Here you're welcome to just walk up to any group of students and join their conversation or each lunch with them. I've made a few friends who I tend to spend more time with, which is nice.

Sorry I don't have more interesting stories to tell! I'll work on that for future postings. :)

The last days of freedom

Sorry I've been a little absent the last couple days. We had our last day of orientation Friday -- mostly procedural stuff like the library and Web access that I won't bore you with. But then we had our official welcome party Friday night, and that was a lot of fun. They had a handful of alumni there, so it was good to talk to them and ask them questions. We went to a local bar, and it was funny to see the professors and staff let loose and dance with the students. At one point this carnivale-type performance swept into the bar, led by a handful of guys playing the drums, and followed by some men and women dressed in Vegas-style feathered getups. It was really cool. Apparently these same people perform in the local parades.











A few students decided to organize a beach trip for Saturday and arranged a 14-person van to take us a few hours to the beach. Unfortunately, the beach day turned into a rain day. It was cloudy when we set off, but we were hopeful. We stopped along the way at this one place known for its abundance of crocodiles, and it did not disappoint. We walked onto this bridge and saw one massive crocodile sunning himself on a little muddy island, and then on the other side of the bridge, we counted 18 crocodiles in the water and on the land! It was really kind of freaky, and they were just lying there with their mouths open.



When we got to the beach, it was pouring rain, so we went and ate lunch. It was still pouring when we finished, so a few of us found a cozy lounge bar with a view of the ocean and sat on some couches and read for a couple hours (I brought Harry Potter with me to re-read, and I found another of the students is a huge HP fan! yeah!). Most of the group decided to go in the water anyway, despite the rain. It's a pretty big surf beach (most of them are in Costa Rica), and the waves were bigger than I'd ever seen (then again, the closest body of water I grew up next to was Lake Michigan). Some of the students rented some boards and attempted surfing. Being the "landlubber" that I am, I stayed far, far away from such activities.

The true excitement (fear) of the day came on the drive home. The van wouldn't start when we were ready to leave, so a handful of students pushed it until the driver could kick it into gear. (The driver was actually one of the university admission officials who also handles all the transportation stuff.) So, that got us started, but then about an hour and a half into the drive, it started getting dark, and we playfully reminded Eddy (the driver) that he should turn his headlights on. He replied, sorry, but the lights actually aren't working, and we're trying to get to Puriscal, where another van will meet us. We started getting a little nervous. (Mom, this is the part where you don't read.) We were driving through mountainous terrain, which is typically a little dangerous even in daylight. The little bit of twilight we had quickly turned into pitch blackness. There were absolutely no street lights, and we were on winding roads through the mountains with absolutely no lights. The hazards weren't working, the taillights weren't working, the defrost wasn't working, and the windshield wipers weren't working -- and it was raining. Eddy was of course driving very slowly and carefully, but our biggest fear was other traffic whipping around the curves and not being able to see us. Finally, a truck came up behind us, and Eddy signaled him around and asked him to lead us into the nearest town. The truck driver was very nice, and he turned on his hazards and drove in front of us. Then about 15 minutes later, for no apparent reason, everything in the van started working again. The headlights came on, and the windshield wipers and defrost started working. We met the other van in Puriscal, but by then we were only about 30 minutes from home, so we just followed the other van, in case the lights went out again, but they were fine the rest of the way.

But now I'm back in my apartment, safe and sound. We already have our first readings for class on Monday, so I better crack open a book and dust off those cobwebs! Here's hoping going back to school is like riding a bike.

Sinkhole still sunk

Day two of orientation inside the Ciudad Colon gym. Apparently this sinkhole is going to take awhile to fix. We're supposed to start classes Monday, and I guess we're borrowing an auditorium from another university for next week. Supposedly the road will be fixed sometimes next week. I hope so, because I really want to see the school where I'll be studying this next year!

I also had a bit of a snag with my documents I needed for my student visa. Apparently they're not exactly "valid" or "authentic." The Costa Rican officials came in, and they fingerprinted all of us, and took all our information -- it was all rather intimidating. When I told the guy I was 5'6", he made me stand up to proof it. Seriously. Anyway, my certified copy of my birth certificate and my certified criminal record check (which I had to pay Massachusetts $25 for, and which I had to have notarized) is apparently not official enough. I was apparently supposed to get the secretary of state's office to certify each of these, and then go to the Costa Rican consulate in the States and have them certify them, too. What?! There are a handful of us in the same boat, and we're told to sit tight and they'd give us further instructions. Anyway, most of us were thinking we should just leave the country every 90 days, and that should solve things. Because U.S. citizens are allowed to stay in the country for 90 days, so we figure we can just hop over the border to Nicaragua or to Panama for a weekend, and come back to Costa Rica, and restart the 90 days. So we might do that.

Anyway, I promised photos of my apartment, so here they are!

First day of orientation

My school orientation didn't go quite as it was planned. Apparently a storm last night created some sort of sink hole in the road that goes up to the school. So our buses had to turn around and go back to Ciudad Colon. They improvised and held the first day of orientation inside a gymnasium in Ciudad Colon, instead. And they apparently plan to hold the next two days of orientation inside the gym, too. So I still haven't been able to see my school yet, which stinks. But it's been cool to meet everyone. Here's a photo of everyone in the gym.



I met people from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Cameroon, Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Japan, Norway, Brazil, Italy, The Philippines ... and that's all I can remember for now.

At the end of the day, they had this group of local kids come and do this really cool dance for us:


I'm going to head out now to meet some of the people from the program, so I'll write more later!

An open letter to the person who translates Costa Rican dairy products into English

Dear Señor or Señora,

I'm not exactly sure what "leche agria" is, but you shouldn't translate it "skimmed milk." An American (for example, me) might interpret that as skim milk, and she might be very excited to find it considering she has found nothing but 2% milk since arriving in this country, and she is accustomed to drinking skim milk.

You can imagine her disappointment, then, when she had her bowl of Cookie Crisp all poured and waiting for milk when she opened the carton of this supposed "skimmed milk" and smelled something akin to bad sour cream. And then she took the tiniest taste and nearly wretched in the sink.

Perhaps this is my punishment for not learning the language before entering the country. But I'm trying. I swear! And I'm already onto you about the sour cream. I was thrown at first, I admit. But I did some Google research and found that Costa Rica seems to be the only Spanish-speaking country that calls it "natilla." You didn't even bother putting the translation on that one.

I'm off to buy some 2%.

San Jose, lights out, and Project Runway

Not much new today. I'm pretty much just killing time till school starts. I still hadn't seen most of San Jose, so I hopped on a bus today and went into the city. It's pretty shabby. It's not your average skyscraper-type of city; in fact, I don't think I saw a building higher than six stories. There are a couple of nice churches and some decent shopping areas. I hear there are some museums and things, too. But so far, I'm not too impressed with San Jose.

So here are some other observations for you. My power keeps going out from time to time. It's only for about a minute, tops, and I'm apparently the only one who thinks this is weird. It happened a couple times when it was raining, so I thought it must be the storm. I stepped outside one of the times, and the whole neighborhood was black, yet I was the only one popping my head out the door, so I went back inside, and the lights came back on. Then, a day later, I was in the grocery store in Ciudad Colon, and all the lights went out. It was daylight out (and not raining), so I could vaguely see the other people in the store, and no one seemed fazed by this. The lights went back on a minute later. Apparently this is just something I need to get used to.

And here's a point of irony: The last two years when I lived by myself in Boston, I didn't spring for cable. I particularly remember thinking "oh man, I can't watch the finale of Project Runway" because that was on when I switched to no cable. So, I move to Costa Rica, and guess what's on TV? Project Runway. As I was typing this, I was watching an episode of Lost, and last night I watched Grey's Anatomy (two of my favorite shows). I've also seen Friends, Seinfeld, That '70s Show, and a handful of old but good movies. These have all been in English with Spanish subtitles, although they're not all that way. I was excited last night because I saw that Six Feet Under was on, but it turned out to be dubbed in Spanish. Overall, though, the English-speaking channels have been a godsend.

Finally, I leave you with a couple pictures of my 'hood. (I'll send more of my apartment once I take some pics.) Here's the little mini-mart a few minutes from my apartment. I go here for milk and bread or little stuff. Plus they have the most adorable little albino kitty who lives there:


And here are some random bikers on the road between my apartment and Ciudad Colon. I've noticed several people biking on this road. I think they like to train here because of the hills and the curves:


Another episode of Lost is coming on now! Sweet!

The results

Turns out I'm pretty good at estimating. The walk from my apartment to the Ciudad Colon football field takes about a half hour.

I actually had some company on the walk down. Just about a half hour after I put up that last post my next-door neighbor (the Canadian with the bus schedule) called and asked if I wanted her to show me around. I said I was about to go take a walk down the hill, and she said she'd come with. And then she also invited the neighbor on the other side of me. Turns out on the other side is a couple about my age from Oregon with a 3-year-old son. They're on an "extended vacation" and have been here for about three months so far and plan to stay another three or so.

So, Jasmine (the Canadian), Victoria, and I took the 3-year-old for a stroll down the hill. They showed me their favorite bakery, the post office, the gym they go to, and all the bus stops. Then when they headed back I went to the supermarket and took a cab home. I was really excited because I found these ready-made pizza things, and then I came home and realized I didn't have an oven. sigh.

Oh, and I found a cockroach in my apartment. I was folding up my wet umbrella, and it fell out of the umbrella onto me, and then fell onto the floor. I chased it around for a while before I could smoosh it. ugh. i hate big bugs. So then I bought a ton of roach traps and set them all over. Here's hoping that was a one-time sighting.

An experiment

Today I go on an expedition. Down my hill. It may sound simple, but I'm hoping it will clear up a lot of things.

You see, I'm starting orientation at my school on Wednesday, and I'm still not sure how to get there. I know that a bus leaves Ciudad Colon at the football field at 8 a.m. That part is easy. I'm just not sure the best way to get to the football field before 8 a.m. There is a bus that can take me there and it goes very close by my apartment, but I still haven't figured out how the schedule works (or if it works). And since the buses only go by every hour or so, I don't want to take my chances being late on my first day.

So, I'm going to attempt to walk the bus route instead. Sarah and I did take this elusive bus once (we waited a full hour before it showed up), and we drove the route in a cab a few times, and it looks like a pretty short distance. And the good news is that, leaving from my apartment, it's downhill.

So, I'm going to put on some walking shoes, charge up my iPod, and see how long it takes me to walk to the football field. If I'm optimistic, I'm thinking it could take me 20 minutes, which wouldn't be a bad walk every morning. My glass-is-half-empty guess is somewhere around 45 minutes. Any other bets?

The one thing I do know is that, regardless of how long it takes me to get down the hill, I'm taking a cab back up it.

My first week in Costa Rica

Welcome to my blog! This first posting is a little overdue, but I've been busy in my first week! My friend Sarah flew down with me (and just left today), and we trekked all over Costa Rica. Sooo, here's what I've been up to so far ...

Aug. 9
Arrived in Costa Rica! Our cab got a little lost getting to my apartment, probably because addresses don't really exist in Costa Rica. I don't even know if the street I live on has a name. Instead, I tell the taxi the general neighborhood and then say "cien metros sur de la gruta," which means, "100 meters south of the grotto," which is a statue of the Mother Mary randomly in someone's yard. Pretty much all directions are like this, although most tell you where they are in relation to the town's church or supermarket. Although downtown San Jose does have street names (translated to Street 1, Street 2, Avenue 1, Avenue 2, etc.).

Sarah and I took it easy our first day. We ate dinner at a nearby hotel that has a restaurant in it, and the food was excellent. I had my first taste of Imperial Light -- Imperial is the beer of Costa Rica. To be honest, it's not that great, but I'm used to drinking Bud Light, so it's a pretty fair trade.

Aug. 10
Woken by roosters. Seriously. At 4:30 a.m. I live up on a hill, which is great for the view and the cool breeze, but the roosters are no picnic, and I nearly go into cardiac arrest every time I walk up the hill from the bus stop. There's also about a billion stray dogs and cats in Costa Rica, and they apparently like to howl loudly in the middle of the night.

Anyway, Sarah and I caught a bus at 6:30 a.m. (!) to Monteverde, which is a cloud forest. A cloud forest is more or less a rain forest, but there are really low-level clouds that sweep in and out of it. It's only about 100 miles from San Jose to Monteverde, but the bus ride took us about five hours. Granted, we made a lot of quick stops on the way and one 15-minute rest stop, but the bulk of the time was lost to rocky, dirt roads. Someone needs to introduce Costa Rica to pavement.

We arrived in Santa Elena (a small town outside the forest preserve) and hopped on a yellow school bus to take us to the reserve. Overall, it wasn't supremely impressive. It looked a little like most forests I've been in, except there was more moss and greenery over EVERYTHING, and at one point it started pouring rain, and then we really felt like we were in a rain forest. :)

We stayed in a hostel for $10 a night per person, where a 12-year-old boy (with surprisingly good English) took our reservation and showed us to our room. It wasn't a bad room -- we had our own bathroom and, better yet, hot water, which is hard to come by in Costa Rican hostels.

Aug. 11 -- "Coolest day ever"
Today was the day we did the zip line canopy tour, and it was SOOOOOOO awesome. The same 12-year-old boy who checked us into our room advised us on which canopy tour to do. He suggested Extremo -- which happens to be the highest and longest zip lines of any tour company. After looking at the brochure, which boasts 14 zip lines, some as long as 2,000 feet and as high as 490 feet, we started to wonder whether we shouldn't have put our trust in someone who wasn't so ... well .... 12.

But we didn't plunge to our deaths, so it all worked out. You start out on some smaller and shorter zip lines, and then we got to the third zip line, and you literally could not see the end of it. We were standing at the top of one hill in the mountains, and the end of the line was attached to the top of another hill, and you had to zip line over a valley, hundreds of feet below. And to top it off, a cloud had just rolled through (remember this is a cloud forest), so when Sarah went on the zip line, she literally disappeared into the cloud. I just about peed my pants. We went back and forth over this valley four times, and we also repelled 90 feet and did a this "tarzan swing" thing, which is incredibly scary. Going over the valleys I switched between thinking "this is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen" and "Oh my God, I'm going to die." Here's a pic of me coming through a cloud after crossing a valley (left) and a picture of the valley, where you can barely see the zip line at the top (right) :




After our three-hour tour zipping through the cloud forest, we went back to town and booked a jeep-boat-jeep ride to go to La Fortuna, which is a nearby town that is home to one of Costa Rica's most active volcanos (Volcan Arenal). A large lake lies between the Monteverde and La Fortuna, and if you took a bus around the lake, it takes about nine hours. We opted, instead, for the jeep-boat-jeep route, which is about 2.5 hours total. We took a minivan through the rockiest road you could possibly imagine -- I NEVER get motion sickness, but I started feeling really queasy after about a half hour. Then we hopped onto a boat (see below -- notice volcano in background):


We went to a Chinese restaurant with some backpackers we met in Monteverde. And we stayed in another $10 hostel with a private bathroom and hot water, and this one also had a kitchenette and fan. It was pretty nice, and we had a view of the volcano from our window.

Aug. 12
This was our day of rest. Sarah and I headed to the hot springs in La Fortuna, which have 16 different pools ranging in temperatures from 98 to something like 180 degrees Fahrenheit. I only stuck my toe in the hottest spring, and I'm pretty sure it would give you third-degree burns if you stayed in it for more than a minute. But the "cooler" pools were wonderful, and you had a great view of the volcano the whole time. Plus there are three different swim-up bars in the pools. Sarah and I got there when they opened at 10 a.m., and we stayed till around 7:00 p.m. I'd show you the photo of our pruney feet and hands that we took, except it's really gross, so I'll spare you. We were told you can usually see hot lava running down the side of the volcano at night, but all we saw was a steady stream of smoke coming out the top of it.

Aug. 13
We caught a noon bus back to San Jose the next day, and that took up most of the day. We somehow managed to find the bus we needed to take back to Ciudad Colon that night (the town near where I live) and then took a $2 cab from there. Another early night to bed and early wakeup the next morning...

Aug. 14
We had to get up for another 6 a.m. bus. Those who know me know this is quite an accomplishment for me to actually wake up for this. This time we headed south to Manuel Antonio park on the Southern Pacific Coast. This is a rain forest that borders white sand beaches. And the best part -- we saw monkeys in the trees! We also saw about a dozen lizards like the one on the right here (I think they were iguanas). We hiked around for a little while, and went in the water for a bit, but then it started raining (of course, being the rainy season, it's rained every day we've been here. But it's also been sunny every day, too). So we headed back to the nearby town Quepos and checked into a nice little hostel with the cutest old man owner. He didn't speak a word of English, yet he still managed to give us a 10-minute lecture on how we should get copies of our passports and be careful not to get our bags stolen and tell us which restaurants are good. He was really good at communicating with hand gestures and things. We hung out in Quepos that night, which has a lot of fun bars, and we even managed to find nachos and potato skins. mmm.

Aug. 15
We spent the day on the beach right outside Manuel Antonio Park, and we learned a very important lesson: when you're 10 degrees from the Equator, a bottle of SPF 30 doesn't do a whole lot. We both got burned, even though we used up most of the bottle. Some more pics of the park and the beach:


























We took the bus back to San Jose the same day.

Aug. 16
This day shall be known as the day the bus won. We'd been singing our praises the whole trip about how we'd been great about catching all our buses and finding the bus stops (which is not easy). So of course we had to have one day where we got it wrong.

We had heard the local buses were a bit tricky, to say the least. The girl in the apartment next to me is a Canadian teaching English down here, and she hung up a supposed bus schedule. The schedule makes no sense to me, and seems to make no sense to the Canadian girl, either. The schedule lists "Brasil" and "Trinidad" and she told me never to take the "Brasil" bus, but there were only one set of times, so I asked how you know when the bus is coming that's going in the right direction, and she didn't really have an answer for that. So, Sarah and I figured we'd take our chances. We did manage to get on the right bus that goes by my apartment, and we got off in Ciudad Colon. And we meant to hop on a bus that would take us to San Jose, but we got on it going the wrong direction. We thought it was a little odd when it started climbing higher into the mountainside, instead of descending to San Jose, which is in a valley. But we stayed optimistic. Perhaps it just goes in a circle, we thought, and it would descend down the other side of the mountain and go into San Jose. Turns out, not so much. We stayed on the bus for a full hour as we passed tiny little villages on the hillside, until finally everyone got off the bus, and it did a U-turn in what was evidentially it's finally destination.

I went to the bus driver and asked "San Jose?" and he laughed and shook his head. Then he said a whole lot of things that I didn't understand and pointed, and I was very confused, so I said "otro autobus?" (meaning other bus?) and he said "no, aqui." So I said OK and went back to my seat. The bus driver went back the way we came, and, lo and behold, in another hour we were back where we started in Ciudad Colon, but this time we were one block over, which is where we were supposed to pick up the bus. Sure enough, we stayed on the bus, and it went to San Jose.

Now I know.

We hopped off a little before San Jose to check out the Multiplaza, which is a shopping mall that looks a lot like it does in the States (a huge change from the mountainsides and dirt roads I was used to). I was ecstatic to find a Papa Johns, Subway, Quiznos, and Taco Bell in the food court. I know where I'll be going when I'm feeling home sick. :) There's also a huge supermarket that carries a lot of the same groceries I could find in the States.

There's also a movie theater there, and Sarah and I discovered that several of the American-made movies are shown in English with Spanish subtitles at the bottom, so we ended up seeing No Reservations (the new Catherine Zeta-Jones movie). Move tickets = $4. Medium popcorn and soda = $3. Awesome.

Aug. 17
This brings us to today. Sarah left this morning, and this is the first chance I've had to blog and upload photos. My other plans for the day involve doing laundry and setting up my apartment. Very exciting stuff, naturally.

I promise my next blogs won't be so long! I'll probably be writing on here pretty frequently, so check back anytime if you're curious what I'm up to! :) My landlord said he'll drive me around tomorrow so I can get a feel for where everything is. I'll let you know how that goes!