Old photos n' new news

Here are some pictures from our beautiful weekend trip to Manuel Antonio, a beach that is about 4 hours away from San José. The ride was long, full of bridges that crossed giant deep jungle rivers, and other rivers that seemed straight out of photos of the African savanna. But we finally got there, and happily had left at 7am from ICADS - so were on the beach and in the water by 11 am.

The Pacific was so beautiful! The waves were so huge, and so warm! I learned how to swim with big breaking waves and get carried on top of them, and also that if you go just barely underwater when a giant wave is about to crash on your head, it flows right over you without pulling you at all. I learned that after a weary hour of battling against the waves though. I think it's safe to say that this one had never really swam in the ocean before..

After a couple hours I grew hungry though, so went and ate the cheapest meal at the little beach restaurant (Costa Rican traditional food, luckily! Arroz con pollo and lots of beans and salad and salsas). I also got some semi-tropical drinks that I had been joking about with a friend, which were packed with tiny cubed lime bits, and later some more beers. It was just the beginning of the shortest but most soaked-up and appreciated weekend holiday that has ever been had.

I played in the ocean for hours, while friends napped, tanned (it was cloudy - but most of us still came away with a burn), and surfed. Later, when it looked like rain clouds were moving in, four of us decided to go around the beach and explore. Beyond the many stops (for me) to look at all the wild little shells that had washed up on the beach, and for another friend to climb trees and get lost in mangrove forests, we ended up on a giant island of volcanic rock jutting out into the sea, around which the waves were splashing in a very Titanic-esque way.

Despite none of us having shoes, we climbed first to one level of the mountain, then to the next, and up and up until we were at the very top, about 30 feet above the sea. On the ocean-side of the giant cliff, hundreds of deep blue speckled crabs were scuttling to the water. It was all very beautiful, and I'm sad, but also content that I didn't have a camera to take any pictures.

But it did hurt our feet, and so slowly but surely we climbed down. I explored more of the shells washed up on the beach, and we all began roaming in separate directions down the last stretch of sand. While some friends spoke to a local working for a hotel on the beach, I played with the many hermit crabs sneaking along, and just contentedly spaced out, staring at the ocean. Someone has to do it.

After following a river up back into the tree line however, I got called by a friend to go back and see a sloth. It only actually looked like a giant fuzzy peach butt, but I'm happy to say I've seen a sloth sleeping now. It was pretty cute. At about the same time, it truly started to rain, and so we decided to head back. Lightning crashed right behind us after I'd just come back to cover from running to wash one of a coconuts we found off in the ocean. I think convassing this summer has made me immune to the fear of getting struck by lightning. If I look up some statistics I could easily bring myself back to where I was though, I'm sure.

Anyways, when we got back to the hotel, we grabbed a knife and cracked open a couple of the coconuts. It was pouring rain, and I was rinsing sand off myself in the gutter, and hacking at a giant fresh coconut I'd found in the woods with a knife. It was a really great moment. Coconut water itself has a terrible flavor, I personally find, but I chowed down on the fresh insides. The rest of the coconut water we put into a bottle of rum, which was a warm and thick drink. Not as tropically delicious as it sounds. But I've heard that coconut water is incredibly good for you. So perhaps it was healthy.

The hotel served some uninteresting food, but it was easy for us to stay in one place and not have to deal with group transportation yet. Organizing the bill was a pain - it always is with young folx. I'm very seriously considering refusing to eat with people my age and ever share a bill again, because it drives me insane how disorganized and yet rigid people become when paying together. If you're going to be an asshole, pay by yourself. End of story. I ended up getting so frustrated that I payed whatever extra was mysteriously missing and peacing out. For my good deeds and anxiety-caused, excused myself to sit out on the porch with a beer to watch the lighting storm across the beach.

The night that followed was a mysterious and bizarre train of events, leading us from club to club, or rather being led by a suspiciously friendly man one of us had met on a bus. As a group, we ended up doing all the things ICADS told us were unwise (as our parents and common sense have as well - but who listens to those all the time?). However, since we were in a group we also helped each other realize how wild the situation had become. And that was when we ended up in the 3rd or 4th bar, where this man was introducing us to his sister (an old prostitute who was planning on singing us her favorite song), and two friends who had also been following us from club to club. I was watching a doorway, through which I could see a line of women getting ready to go out and find men to buy their time. It was a surreal thing to realize. Especially since the room they were in had a big poster of Snow White on the wall. I remember thinking about how prostitution is legal here, and being undecided about whether I was being an uptight American tourist, or whether this bar really was slowly appearing more and more shady. But it was large, and open, and one of my friends was even dancing with this random guy who had decided he was our tour-guide for the evening.

That was about the same time my plastic chair collapsed under me, which was quite a spectacle. One of the legs just bent and I went sliding across the floor. After that, I didn't feel comfortable drinking or even staying, and since most of my friends were on the same page, we left, though the man ended up following us to another club. I didn't have enough money on me to pay the entrance fee, and wasn't convinced it was worth having someone cover me since I was already exhausted from being thrown around by waves all day. The over-friendly man was talking to the bouncers, trying to translate for us, and told us they were closing in 15 minutes, and that we should go back to the other bar (they were not actually closing for another 3 hours). But he was also being too flirty and too touchy, asking for hugs and kisses, holding my arm to tell me I was beautiful and next thing saying I was his lover and wife - but that's not especially bizarre here I was told. I edged further and further away, told him no, and sorry but "life is rough," to which he responded "but that's how I like it". Aaaand at that point my patience for the situation flipped, and I realized I was being a very stupid young tourist, and we grabbed the next cab - and a couple of the more out of it friends who hadn't made it inside and sat for a harrowing taxi ride up the mountain home.

A good thing too. In the morning my friend Paul (who had stayed in the club for another hour or two) came into our hotel room and told us that when he'd gotten out of the club a few hours later, the man was still there (his friends had been inside), and as Paul got into a cab with the last stragglers of the group, the man grew enraged, demanding money and punching his shoulder. I'm sure there were a million miscommunications that happened. Perhaps, when he first introduced himself, he offered to guide us around. If that was the case, and he'd heard the things we were whispering (to get us out of the sketchy bar faster, one drunk member of our party lied to us about having seen the man's friends knives..), it's understandable that he was upset. It's so hard to gauge intentions, and since I live in a relatively safe bubble of a world, I always forget exactly how much relying on other's better judgment and drinking are two things that really should never go hand in hand.

I spent the rest of the night taking care of a friend who had drank too much, and despite having only had a couple drinks myself, woke up with a terrible hangover the next morning. Going over the details about how stupid we had been didn't make me feel much better. But the nondescript hotel breakfast, accompanied by cups of lovely Costa Rican coffee and then a $10 dollar massage on the ocean did, providing the fastest hangover cure I've ever experienced. The masseuse cracked my back by plucking at the skin around my spine - it was wild. After packing up our rooms, we went swimming in the pool while waiting for those friends who'd gone to a nature preserve to come back. I was happy to have stayed and appreciated the ocean however, and relax more. It was a weekend that gave me a lot of time for introspection, and to make myself content. I certainly left a little wiser to what an idiot I can be (I wonder how I could have forgotten), and also with a clearer picture of why I am here, and who I want to be here, and in general. There's more to it than that, of course - there always is, but that's all for tonight I think! That's my wild story. It's been almost a week since then, but I figured I should write it down so that I don't forget it.

And the moral is not that people should not be trusted. But rather, that going with your gut is not the bad thing to do in most situations, especially at night when intoxicated in a country where you don't speak the language, don't have a cell-phone, and don't even know the name of the street you're on or what's around the next corner. If I were a 200 lb man maybe this would not be so. But that isn't the case, and I'd be an idiot to believe anything to the contrary.

This is all very poorly written.. But I was in the blazing sun all morning watching Independence Day parades, and since have been writing a paper and am really out of it. Oh well.

Costarricense

-"Crear una mayor sensibilidad a la cultura latinoamericana, especialmente a la costarricense, y valorar las diferencias culturales"

From my green bedroom right next to the noisy intersection, I was shocked to find an open wireless internet connection named "the Vitamin-E Project". Though it slides between being one or two bars of connection, it is faster and more reliable than the days of yore of dial-up. Using it brings me more than a little grief though, as I don't know whose connection it is, and whether I should be paying them for its use. Just another pequeno cultural difference plaguing my mind. Does it belong to my host-family? Am I racking up their bills as I translate every other word from my tareas on Google translate?

Yes, I am going to include Spanish palabras in italics, just because I can.

The baby kitten just wandered past my room into the dark hallway. I still can't seem to figure out where it came from, and why everyone is so blasé about the tiny baby walking around underfoot.

Today was such a big day! I had my first day of school, and felt like a toddler as my 17 year old host-brother walked me along the busy street to the ICADS head quarters. For those who don't know, ICADS stands for the Institute of Central American Development. Another classmate, who is from Chicago, lives next door to me, and I later found out that there are many other students in the surrounding area. Mi hermano accompanied me to the door of ICADS. The walk was mostly silent with some awkward smiles; he says he really loves to caminar and laughed and said that it was not a problem when I told him "lo siento, mi espangol es la mierda".

Of course it was even more awkward between the students when we first arrived; no one spoke much except those who already were familiar. A shocking amount of people doing this ICADS program are from the mid-west - never have I seen so many people from Michigan and Maryland and Wisconsin out of their home-states. And they all seemed more confident in their Spanish than I am, but that didn't bother me as I've got an over-abundance of confidence in French, which is only serving tripping me up. Or maybe not, more on that later.

After a round of introductions, we were divided into small groups: a theme for this entire program and the next four months of my life. We were given a tour of the ICADS facilities, which are beautiful! Small, but with beautiful gardens in the center, and patios, and tiles and windows everywhere. Everything you could dream your Spanish immersion classroom would have! Plus endless coffee, which is helpful since I haven't been able to stay awake or stop eating since I arrived. Which is only a slight exaggeration.

Soon we reassembled as a class for more information, then gradually were taken out by our Spanish professors for individual interviews. Though I was fairly nervous for mine, it ended up being very funny. My interviewer applauded my ability to speak French without realizing it, and she somehow managed to piece together a relatively accurate portrait of my life. In the end, I was placed in a Spanish class that has only two (!!!) students (which compared to the more customary 3 or 4 is not a huge change), which we think has been formed specifically for the two students who speak the most French. And I couldn't be happier to have such a small class! So much one-on-one time!

Since we'd spent the majority of the morning already working out logistics, we only had about an hour of Spanish class, during which time the professor made me ask my fellow classmate questions and vice verca. He's from North Carolina and goes to a liberal arts school in Florida, and has spent a lot more time traveling in South America than I. However, in the short term I seem to have an upper hand in understanding Spanish thanks to my French. So far I've been able to understand almost everything when spoken to, except for when my host brother (who mumbles a little) tries to communicate with me, which makes me feel pretty bad. I need to understand more!

But it was exhausting to speak, even for an hour. I don't know how I'll manage classes from 8 am to 12 pm, every day! And that is just including the Spanish. Also, my professor is fining me for every time I crack a knuckle. She already has made ten dollars off me. ABSURD.

By the time lunch came around I was starving. We all went out to eat, and I got to know the student from Hampshire College who is doing the same program as me. She's very cool, and I'm sad she doesn't live closer to my own house here in San José! Oh well! I'm sure that won't be an issue. Today we all went to the bank and exchanged our money, and tomorrow we are being sent out in small groups to explore the city and complete a treasure hunt! What a crazy way to discover such a crazy city.

Later in the afternoon we received more information about what we will be studying this semester, and where we will be going on outings and longer trips, and what guest speakers we will have. I leave for Nicaragua in under three weeks! And everything looks so amazing! The speakers are all fantastic, and the outings sound incredible. For example, this Friday we are going to an organic coffee growing commune (for real!) and a small-scale coffee roasting facility!

I forgot to mention in my first blog post - there are low-lying coffee bushes growing everywhere here! And everyone drinks coffee all the time! I am in heaven.

It's the rainy season here, so afternoon courses were interrupted by clashes of thunder and lightning, which no one seemed to blink an eye at except for me and another student who lives close by. Tomorrow she, the girl from Chicago, and I are going to walk to school together. Big girls walking on their own to los classes! No, but in all honesty walking along the side of the road here (in daylight, even) is extremely scary - cars zip by and pay zero attention to pedestrians, and there aren't really stop lights or crosswalks. The best bet when you've decided you want to cross the street is to wait for a bus to pass, since buses only go straight and down turn on the side roads we have to cross. And there are many, many buses.

Today, when walking home in heavy rain, my host brother and I had to stop on the sidewalk before side-stepping to avoid puddles to insure no cars hit us. And the cat-calling culture is even more intense here than in the United States: even though I was walking with my host brother, and was wearing jeans and a sweat-shirt, I was hollered and whistled at from cars and by men standing next to me on the street. Excuse me? No buenas dias for you, sir.

Anyways, it has been a very long day so I will wrap this up. I hadn't even intended on writing again, but felt like it. When I got home I hung my shoes up to dry, and went through my homework highlighting all the words I don't know yet and adding them to my big list of vocabulary words written in funky highlighters to make learning less of a chore, but more difficult to read. I had dinner with my host mother, who is, in fact, Ana Fallas, not Rosie. I met Rosie later this evening - turns out she had seen me passed out yesterday afternoon and though it was too cute to disturb. Ana made me an amazing salad with giant slices of avocado, tomato, and little quail eggs, which she wouldn't stop pressing me to eat since I told her I adore avocados. There was also rice, and a yummy pasta dish. So much food! She also made rice pudding later, which made me melt with happiness. Nothing makes me melt like rice pudding.

I felt much braver about my Spanish after a day of rattling on class, and spent most of the meal trying to describe more personal things, such as how much I had enjoyed playing with Triné when I first arrived and practicing my Spanish with her, how important it is to me to speak many languages and how I come from a family that speaks many languages, and how happy I am that there are ICADS students near my home who I can easily go out with at night and on weekends once I know the city better. I am so grateful that she is so willing to work with me to understand me! I hope (and suspect) she finds it pretty amusing, though.

I have a lot more readings I should work on tonight, but I am exhausted even though it is only 8 o'clock! Or at least I suspect so. I haven't figured out the time difference or whether my clock on my computer is wrong. I am also trying to upload a photograph of the money here - it's like a jungle safari! Everything is bright colors and covered in animals. Since my internet isn't up to uploading these photos, I suppose I'll make do with a Google image. On these notes - buenas noches!