If there was ever a contest for the longest blog entry, this one would win.

I am actually intimidated by the length this blog post needs to be due to my recent failures at keeping all you 10 readers out there up-to-date on my life and your expectations of my customary excruciating detail within each post. Anyway, let’s start with the rain. So we had some sort of rain record with twenty something straight days of rain. And it was rain all day and serious rain too. Everyone has a little bit of seasonal affective disorder in them…the rain is lessening now so it’s usually beautiful all morning and then rains for a few hours in the afternoon which is extremely doable for me. So anyway, the thrift store. SO cool. It’s called Ropa Americana and basically has all of the Salvation Army reject clothes…it is this huge store with an upstairs section where each piece of clothing is 60 cents and you have to dig through a 20 foot by 20 foot by 2.5 foot high pile of clothing. I found a free people sweater in there…and some pretty classic articles of clothing including a child size tie dye t shirt and a huge skirt I’m turning into a dress…then downstairs they have sections of things like one section is $2 a piece and there is another that’s $4 and you have to buy all of your things from one section before moving on to the other and there are people yelling over the speakers in Spanish the whole time about all of their great deals…it’s an interesting place. I also found THE COOLEST satchel bag for $3.

PUERTO VIEJO

So several weekends ago we decided to go back to Puerto Viejo because October is summer in the Caribbean side (aka not pouring rain constantly) and everywhere else we wanted to go had flooding and roads blocked off…anyway, Molly, Maria, Anna and I all went there early together and it was just so much fun. We stayed at Rocking J’s again and “slept” in hammocks for 3 days and that place is literally just so cool with such a good vibe and you are guaranteed to make at least 3 new friends a night. Just check out their website http://rockingjs.com/. So we went to the beach, went running on the beach in the late afternoon just when the bugs were swarming and got our legs basically chewed off which we would later scratch and turn into scabs and then form scars and we picked up several hundred full sand dollars and it was awesome. We also kept forgetting to eat…like one day all I ate was 2 pieces of bread until 5 pm and then we went to the supermarket to get food to cook for dinner and of course Anna and I lost Maria and Molly and then bought a mango and peeled it with our fingers and inhaled it like savages while walking back…and then we cooked plantains with onions and guac and refried beans and then pasta and sauce and then went out and danced like mad women. And we met so many people! I personally talked the most with several German men (traveling separately, I actually talked with them about political structure, education systems, healthcare…), several guys from throughout the US, some Australian men who may have been as old as 30 but were using sticks to pole vault into the ocean so their ages are therefore entirely up in the air…and two amazing girls traveling together named Nicole and Hannah, one from Canada the other from New Zealand. Also, the first night we split 3 dishes at the hostel that were AMAZING. We had a thai vegetable sauté in peanut sauce, the most AMAZING cheese-less nachos in the world, and this vegetarian burrito that for some reason they snuck blue cheese into (that was a little weird especially because I don’t really eat cheese…) We also taught a bunch of (some belligerent) German men how to play beer pong but they really hate listening or following any rules which gets quite frustrating. And went night swimming and then somehow Anna and I ended up lying in the sand talking and later that same night I fell asleep on the beach…bad idea-SO MANY MORE BUG BITES. But it was just such a nice and relaxing live-in-the-moment weekend that I had really needed after so much rainy weather, stressing over classes, getting kind of homesick, and being stupidly uptight. I would guess I slept a grand total of 11 hours over 3 nights…insanity for me.

DINNER WITH THE PROFE

            Upon getting back from Puerto Viejo, I communicated with my African Writer Professor from AU who happened to be in San Jose visiting his brother who lives there in order to see him. I went to his brother’s house from 2 in the afternoon until 9 at night, talking about everything, laughing, eating grapes, and eating the Indian food he prepared for dinner. Their house keeper is awesome and looks about 20 but has a 21 year old son and speaks perfect English but had known nothing when she had started with them 5 years before. We had dinner with a Russian and Costa Rican couple, and I just loved how open and friendly everyone was and how the ideas of being “politically correct” or not sharing details were thrown out the window. It was intellectually stimulating, fun, and awesome to have a taste of home. Also, I had begun a baking spree with vegan chocolate chip oatmeal raisin cookies that had tapa de dulce in them and my host family and professor were obsessed and ate every last one I gave them. That night I had my professor drop me off at FoFo for Molly’s birthday which was really fun and hilarious and they were obsessed with the cookies too!

GRANADA, NICARAGUA

            So there was definitely some spontaneity involved in this one. I had wanted to go away because there were so few weekends left for me to travel, so I was thinking Montezuma with Abe. The issue there was that there was rain forecasted for the whole weekend. Actually, rain forecasted for everywhere. So anyway, Shelley eventually called me telling me how much she wanted to go to Nicaragua. Anna, who had been planning on going to Panama that weekend but her plans fell through, said she was down for doing something with me. I was super stressed out and had no time to plan anything because it was already Thursday and I had class in the morning, volunteering in the afternoon, and Marco’s birthday celebration at night. Throughout me running around that day, somehow Anna and Shelley managed to plan an excursion to Granada, Nicaragua that would leave the following day at 5 am. We went there in TicaBus, which is actually hilarious because it has a leaping deer on the side of it, definitely copying Greyhound. It charged about $30 to make the approximately 8-9 hour trip to Granada from San Jose, which, for here, is astoundingly expensive. However, the bus did have air conditioning (SO COLD), show movies, and have a pretty disgusting bathroom (the other buses we take NEVER have bathrooms!) We had the option of going in another bus to the border, crossing on our own, then catching a 2 hour public bus (actually an old school bus from the US that couldn’t get recertified for use in the US) to Granada which would have saved us about $15, but that would have been slower, a figure-this-out-on-your-own type thing, a dash of danger, and a bathroomless venture. As we had it, they did basically everything for us in leaving Costa Rica and entering Nicaragua. We actually ended up taking a different TicaBus that didn’t go all the way to Granada and then took a taxi there. Taxis in Nicaragua are very different from those in cities in Costa Rica. They don’t have Marias (the digital thing that uses a constant rate and tells you exactly how much money you owe based on time and distance) and, in many cases, are missing door handles, parts of the seats, etc. Also, within Granada, cabs are a flat rate of 10 cordobas (less than 50 cents) a person for wherever you would like to go.

            Once in Granada, we checked into Hostel Oasis, the nicest hostel known to man. It cost 9 dollars a night, with one free 10 minute international call a day to anywhere in the world except Central America (ironic, no?), a swimming pool, around 6 computers with internet for guest use, and the cleanest, most comfy beds ever. And also with a central location. We then went to a shop with handmade crafts and bought most of our gifts there-so cheap and the woman was adorable! And went to a restaurant for dinner-I had decent gazpacho and this delicious fruity drink. We then walked around a bit-Granada is such an amazing city. It has beautiful colonial architecture, amazing cafes and restaurants, delicious and super cheap street food, art and jewelry venders at every step, live music everywhere, cheap or free museums, fascinating history, and countless things to do. We went back to our hotel because we had an early adventure day planned with a trip to three islands on Lake Nicaragua the following day. The crazy thing was that when we got back to the hostel, this girl came up to me. It happened to be that Nicole and Hannah, the girls from New Zealand and Canada, respectively, whom we had met in Puerto Viejo, just happened to be in Granada at the same time as us, staying in the same hostel!

            Our friends accompanied us on the island tour the next day-we went to a small island to drink some coconut milk and relax, to Monkey Island where we got SUPER close to the monkeys (I mean it helped that they were very comfortable around people and used to getting fed by them-something not so good that seemed to be not only supported there but encouraged, in comparison with Manuel Antonio in Costa Rica where it is heavily frowned upon due to the reliance of the monkeys on humans this can cause and the harm the food can cause them). We also went to El Castillo, which contained the Fortaleza San Pablo , which is a fortress from 1784 built to protect the city from pirates. We stopped at “Hidden Port” which is an island with an absurdly priced restaurant and an area to swim and a pet parrot. We also got to open up a flower that you see above that leads to a fruit that looks kind of like a coconut that only birds can eat. It was decent but not an unbelievably thrilling tour. Upon returning to the mainland, we got to see a group of cows grazing; they were the skinniest things I have ever seen-you could easily count their ribs. So we have a terrible system for raising cattle for slaughter in the United States-fattening them up on corn and soybeans that their systems aren’t meant to digest, not giving them any space to move around, leaving them in unsanitary conditions, and injecting them full of vaccinations and artificial growth harmones. Therefore, we like to idealize things in countries in which this “fast food” idea of raising animals does not (yet) take place. However, that doesn’t mean that animal treatment standards are by any means up to par. It’s quite a reality check and reminded me of how every single dog (even pets) in Guatemala looked. It’s just different expectations of what’s considered healthy.

            After that we went to lunch at a pizza place, and I got a homemade vegan pizza. We then shopped around at the street vendors and befriended them. One man taught me how to make the intricate metal jewelry designs, and I’m so excited to employ his methods in his jewelry when I get back! Another guy the night before had told us he wanted to cook dinner with us in a house “that was really more like a hotel…”. We practiced our Spanish and had a lot of fun. We then went to a free museum with a huge private collection of hand-made pottery from as far back as 300 C.E. and with mostly female figures in the “position of power” pose with their hands on their hips and breasts as signs of fertility. We then went to a super awesome art studio and came back to the hostel to meet up with Hannah and Nicole and also Maria and Molly who had arrived on the crazy buses. We went to a restaurant where you could get two rum and cokes for $1.25 or two of those delicious fruity drinks for less than $2 and where I got vegetable soup and rice for about $4. Then we went out to hang out and dance and met someone who lives in Columbia Heights in DC! We danced for a bit then went to this really cool bar with a huge pool and met some guys from New Zealand and went swimming. And Anna kept seeing this Nicaraguan man, probably around 30 something, who was in love with her. The next day we walked A LOT. We ate breakfast at this really delicious place we had discovered right across from the hostel owned by French people and where I could eat either gallo pinto and grain bread and jelly or gallo pinto and potatoes and fruit for less than $2! It was fabulous. Then we wandered around and got ice cream for lunch (a dollar for me for 2.5 scoops of sorbet, a cone, and a sort of biscotti cookie!) and had a political discussion about presidential candidates and the death penalty and eventually made our way to the lake where we met a vulgar drunk man and decided to get off of the beach and buy some street food and wander back into the center for dinner. Which ended up being a dollar and street food of gallo pinto, patacones, and salad wrapped in a banana leaf. Then some people got some stuff from my favorite street vendor who sold these sweet corn tortillas and also corn cobs grilled that tasted kind of like popcorn. Throughout the weekend we also got sugar coated cashews, sweet coconut ball type things, plantain chips with pickled cabbage and chili, a bag of fruit, this weird bread that they said was filled with sugar but actually had clumps of sugar and parmesan cheese in it, and probably more things. We then came back to our new hostel to change and such (ahhh this new hostel was next door to the other and was $5 a night including a computer with internet and gallo pinto, bread, an egg and coffee for breakfast and we somehow finagled our way into getting a private room with a HUGE king bed and a bunk bed to comfortably fit the five of us!) and went to go listen to live music from these people we had met on the street that day, one a French girl with dreads and the other a very socially outspoken Latin man. His voice was pretty bad, but the atmosphere and the filled-to-the brim with shoeless hippies thing was pretty awesome. And this kid played a couple songs on the flute which was SWEET.

            The next day we went to buy our tickets home and then went to the San Francisco Museum where for $3 we got an entrance and a tour! It was founded in 1529 by a Franciscan clergyman with most of it reconstructed and little of the original remaining. One of the rooms was awesome with tens of zoomorphic statues found on the island of Zapatera and from between 800 and 1200 CE. They represent gods of the indigenous people who constructed them and portrayed the animist culture, with animals combined with humans for many of them, constructed to respect the most important people. Each person had an animal with which they had a special connection or a mutually protective relationship, and the people portrayed were constructed with their sacred animal. One such statue was a woman with a crocodile/alligator on her back, and the breasts are now concave because the Spanish settlers found the statue vulgar as it was and removed the breasts, leaving holes. There was also a room with different pieces of pottery, showing the progression from simple hand pots to coil pots to wheel thrown pots. There was also a room depicting the popular games among the native people, both physically demanding and seemingly dangerous, and one meant for men and the other for women.

            After the museum, Anna and Shelley went to catch a bus back, and Molly and Maria and I went and bought a package where for $27 including tax we got a DELICIOUS lunch at the Garden Café and an hour AMAZING massage at a gym and spa. In between lunch and the massage we went to make mosaics. We paid a little over $6 a person and were there for over 3 hours making pretty small pieces. Man, is it slow. It was super cool though and we got to break glass and do everything ourselves…although pieces of glass were flying and I’m not sure how none of us got glass in our eyes…We then had to run to make our massages and literally died. It was amazing. I’ve only gotten a massage once-when I was doing gymnastics and my coach recommended it-but it was with all of my clothes on and rather painful because my back was so tight. This time it was like a massage you see in the movies, which, at first I felt a little uncomfortable with especially since I had a man, but oh my goodness it was so great. Then we got dinner at this Mexican place the little boy at our hostel recommended (the hostel was run by a family in their house) with our Israeli friend (he was super interesting-had lived in India for a year, LA for a while, and was now wandering without a plan, just knowing he couldn’t go back to the US because he disagreed with their policies. Anna and Shelley and I met him the first night when we were going to check out this hostel and I thought he worked there and kept insisting on speaking Spanish to him but he had no idea what I was saying because he didn’t speak Spanish…) Anyway, this place was really cool with torches and we were the only people there and they cooked the food right in front of us and the owner was a woman from an island near Alaska but my tomatoes tasted kind of like alcohol…We were there for a really long time and at the end the woman gave us a 30 minute speech about her political and educational philosophies on the world, some of which were pretty ignorant…like when she said we wouldn’t have so many devastating earthquakes if we didn’t detonate so many bombs…but she was nice and meant well. Then we went to the center and took some weird pictures and then found the “Imagine” café which had just finished live music. But I sweet talked one of the young guys who had been playing and convinced them to play again. And I drank homemade ginger ale and listened to their AWESOME reggae swing music-there was an upright base, a cahon, a guitar, and a violin and they sang. Great way to end the trip!

BAILAR EN CLUB 212

So I made some oatmeal peanut butter chocolate chip (vegan of course) cookies for Marco’s birthday and went to my grandparents house to celebrate with a delicious dinner and with such awesome family. My host mom had made me special separate rice so that it was vegetarian, and also they had this homemade pickled vegetable thing that reminded me of the ones my family used to buy when I was little but better and had green banana in it and I ate so many servings that my host family decided to make a giant jar of it. That night my friends and I dressed up (I as a hippie with 3 head scarves and a long skirt from the ridiculous thrift store and gypsy earrings) and went to FoFo and we were literally the only people dressed up which was great. Then we went to Club 212 where the free drink was a Red Bull. Which was so dangerous for me because I always accept free things but never drink caffeine. We literally broke it down on the dance floor for over 3 hours. It was awesome. They had a pretty demeaning sexy costume contest and then another regular costume contest and then hired dancers who did the Thriller dance and were AWESOME. And my friends and I just danced like wild people and felt beautiful and didn’t care one bit what other people thought. And we had a bunch of people come up and join are group and made friends with some people and danced salsa with some Costa Rican men and just had an absolutely amazing time. I got home at 3 am even though I had to wake up at 7:30 the next day…

PERROS DE LA CALLE

So Sunday I did the “Perros de la Calle” thing that I had done with my class before and brought Anna and Molly with me. We brought a bunch of food and went to the Red Zone district of San Jose, feeding dogs and people. This time I actually got to talk to people and had an amazing experience. At one point there was a tiny kitten behind a giant garage-type door crying out to us. We didn’t know what was behind the door or if the kitten could get out, and I fell in love with it. We stuck food and water under the door, and I lay on my stomach for literally ten minutes looking in the crack under the door just watching it and then I stuck my hand under and it put its paw on top of it. Later, we went to a part where a guy came up to us three Americans. In perfect English, he told us his story. He lived in Newark, NJ for 30 years working as a cab driver, waking up at 3 am and finishing work at 7pm 6 days a week. He got exhausted and eventually returned to Costa Rica with $40,000 saved up. He started relaxing and enjoying himself and got carried away, and eventually the money was gone. He told us that in Costa Rica “you don’t have to work to live” and made it seem like that was something quite bittersweet. I was so glad to finally get a glimpse into how someone goes from living a productive life to being homeless, and finally I started to understand. Just as sometimes, when I’m really stressed out, I’m tempted to run away from school, to just give up in all that I’m doing, lifestyles get too much. I never give in to giving up-I usually can take a break if I really need one and do things that I enjoy and relax me. But not everyone has that option; they can’t take breaks when they need them. And it’s so easy to get burnt out. And what happens, if, for example, you are living in a bad part of New Jersey, in a run down apartment, without any free time to enjoy yourself or any time for friends, family or hobbies and then you go somewhere else where you can live on the street for free, drink when you have the money, eat because people are generous, and have all the leisure time in the world? Now, many people would choose the first option because of “dignity”, of “work ethic”, of many things that are socially ingrained in the majority of us. Especially because we are American and work comes before happiness. But I understand 100% where he is coming from. He wants to go back to the US, to start again, but he is caught up in this lifestyle, in a downward spiral. There are many other reasons people are homeless, but this is such an interesting glimpse into one man’s situation. He then asked for a kiss on the cheek from each of us and was sure to tell us that he didn’t have any diseases…then we met this other guy who was definitely not 100% there but was hilarious. He started singing to us and playing the drums on a nearby pillar and it was super catchy. There were also several transvestites, which got me to thinking, in the US, a place much more socially liberal than Costa Rica, transvestites are not widely accepted. Just imagine what they must go through in Costa Rica. I’m sure the only work available is on the street as prostitutes, and there are no social resources for them to go to to connect with people, to feel comfortable in their environment. But this group of homeless people in this area was a community, and it was amazing to see. Not even gonna re read all of this before I post it because it is SO long and I am so tired. I hope it makes a little bit of sense.

Well then, that's life for ya sometimes, now isn't it?

Wow, what a day…so October here means rain pretty much all of the time. Sometimes it’s nice out for part of the morning, but yeah, rest of the day, night=rain. So this morning leaving my house I realized I had forgotten my umbrella, was too lazy to go back and get it and justified this by telling myself that I had my rain jacket and that the umbrella wasn’t that great anyway and that I wouldn’t be outside for that long anyway…first Autumn Fail. Second Autumn Fail would be catching the bus to go to my volunteer work (I’ve already done this twice before, mind you, I just can’t for the life of me remember where to get off…) then asking the driver to tell me when we were at InBioParque so I could get off…now the other two times this plan worked perfectly. However, this time I felt as though I had been on the bus for an awfully long time, but the driver insisted that all was fine…finally, he pulls up at the bus station in SAN JOSE and I was like, dude, this is San Jose, definitely not where I wanted to go…and he was like there’s an InBioParque in San Jose, 300 meters that way. I was just like uhh….and I was already late to begin with. However, this very nice young man with beautiful eyes and entirely too much gel in his hair came up to me as he had heard my plight and told me that he would bring me to the bus station to catch another bus back in the same direction from which I had come so I could get to InBioParque and then he did and he even talked to the bus driver about where to let me off…and he also told me that my first bus driver really hadn’t known anything and had just made things up…he said it was because he was Nicaraguan (Ticos have the same bitterness and stereotypes towards Nicaraguans as many Americans have towards Mexicans, for many of the same, often insubstantial, reasons). I just don’t understand AT ALL why people here refuse to ever admit they don’t know where something is. They always just want to help and that constantly entails them just making things up off of the top of their heads. Which, my friends, is worse than “not helping”. Much worse.

Anyway, my new bus driver was super nice and super friendly and this woman in the front insisted that I sit next to her, and we talked the whole way there about my experience in Costa Rica and she gave me a brief, much needed but most likely fruitless geography lesson of the area. She was delightful. Then I finally got to the place, drenched, because I had to walk from the bus. And then the guard took a good 15 minutes and approximately 5 phone calls to let me in because the woman I’m technically working for decided not to tell me that she was out sick…

So, after putting back together a broken dead spider (actually literally I did that) and typing some stuff into the computer, I left to catch my bus. I waited at the stop for a good 25 minutes, and after Maria had told me I could take a different type of bus than usual, I did. However, this bus’s route stopped 2 kilometers from the bus stop I had gotten on it at and about 5 km from the university…meaning, I was stuck in a place I didn’t know with a random bus driver. He actually happened to be a sweetheart and helped me flag down a taxi and waited with the bus until the taxi came and then drove right up to the door so I could get in it and then I took the taxi to the UNA (my university). However, leaving the taxi, I heard the sound of something dropping and knew it was my phone. The issue there was that I couldn’t find it anywhere, not in the stream that was the street, not in the cab, not under the cab…even after giving the driver came out and helped me search and called my phone…nowhere. So now a random taxi driver has my number and probably my phone as well…which isn’t very logical…anyway, I really had no idea where my phone was, paid entirely too much for a number of different buses and a taxi, and was dripping wet. And in that state I met up with Molly, Maria, my Costa Rican friend Laura and her incredibly attractive gaggle of single (what?! Single guys exist here?) Tico guy friends. I was a bit of a mess…and now I am wearing two sweatshirts and shivering and wondering how I am going to wake up for yoga tomorrow with nothing to use as an alarm…

But, to make things a bit better…these experiences happen to everybody. My host mother reminded me that material things are superfluous and the important thing is that I’m safe. This experience is really teaching me to be more laid back about things and to realize that worrying and getting upset does nothing…in fact, recounting the experience makes for a pretty good story…thrift store tomorrow!! Really excited! Then a rainy beach weekend this weekend…ahhh…

It's a beautiful life

I definitely have my ups and downs in general with emotions, and sometimes they can get extreme. But as my parents have told me, since I am a very intense person, it means I can be so intensely happy at times- something that some other people will never experience.

I miss home, yes, but I am really starting to love it here seriously again. After finding all of the flaws, I am finding all of the beauty and am hoping that I have enough time left here-only two months! It really helps that this morning I called the AU financial aid office and the Hollings scholarship office and discovered that I can keep my scholarships and my status in the honors program if I drop this Tridimension class that I originally took for fun and an easy A but oh how ironic! It is meant to discipline art students, that I have spent so much money on, that I have spent hours on, that I have been told by my professor that I was doing well in, and that I apparently have a 70 in (I was just told this 1.5 weeks ago...). She seems to think that's okay; unfortunately, that would be very harmful for my GPA for a class I honestly don't need to take for any reason. I feel a little bad about "giving up"on it by dropping it, but honestly it will give me more time to travel, to spend with my family here, to work on my other classes, to enjoy life with my friends. I am just so relieved. Because I just need 30 credits in the year in total-this semester I have 13, and since I don't have a lot of space in my schedule anyway I was going to take the SCUBA certification class next semester as a sixth class (at least 18 credits in total) anyway (I pretty much need to take all five classes towards my major slash minors every semester until I graduate)

Also, I just can't believe how wonderful my host family is. They just always think of me, treat me like another child, are always giving me advice, always have time to spend with me when I'm available and when I'm not they feel so bad for how much work I have. My host mom also just teaches me so much about life whenever we talk. She is such a peaceful, upbeat, loving, generous person, and I admire her so much. She is so open about everything and always has time to talk about things with me. She encourages me in my classes, cooks delicious vegan food for me, always makes sure I'm happy and well, makes excuses for me that I exercise a lot whenever I eat them out of house and home, and welcomes my friends with open arms. Tonight we talked about how connected my two families got to each other when my family came to visit and selflessness in the name of children and unity within a family. We were talking about how hard it is for my parents as us kids are growing up and how it's especially hard because boys don't share as much with their parents as girls. She was saying how parents have to rediscover spending time together as they did when they were novios and how they have to enjoy every moment. She said at first when she fought with her husband she thought she wasn't right for him because they were so different, but she was patient and found the beauty and good in their relationship and has a rule to not go to sleep angry at him. And now my host parents are pretty much the cutest and happiest couple in the world. This came from talking about a movie she wants to see where a man wants to divorce his wife but his father tells him he has to do a list of things before he can. And they're all beautiful, sweet things to rekindle their romance and their spark. Because so many couples who end up divorced had separated at the first sign of conflict and never tried to be patient and remember why they had loved each other so much to begin with. It's such a good life lesson in general. There is a reason for every decision and every situation, so instead of regretting that decision or finding every flaw in your situation you have to find the beauty in it and be willing to work through your negative emotions to find happiness in the situation you're in. And if something isn't right for you, that's okay, at least you see it with a clear head and with a better perspective. It reminded me of my negativity for a while while here.

I'm also working out so many things within myself here-finding a balance with working hard but not killing myself over my grades because, based on my values, they really shouldn't matter to me as much as they do. Also, I'm really really hard on myself and critical of almost every action  and almost every decision I make. I need to chill out more, stay in the moment, and not regret or get frustrated so easily. To see my situation with a clear head and view things through other people's perspectives.

Also, I have a huge test on Monday, and I'm ready to get down to business studying after movie night with Molly and Maria! This class-Geosciences-is a true challenge, but I knew that and wanted that from the start. I now understand why it's important for me, and it's going to help my Spanish academic vocabulary tremendously!

Anddd....I've been talking to Teresita (program director) about my class issues and she spent literally five minutes the other day telling me how wonderful my spanish has gotten, how it's because I practice so much (I do, sadly, speak English well Spanglish to a lot of American friends here but clearly never to my host family nor my Costa Rican friends though) how I am so confident when I speak, how I barely have an accent, how I hardly make mistakes!! Such a confidence booster, although other people think I have a German accent...that's interesting

Also, I finally started volunteer work with InBioParque...I'm in the Education department, but today I just did survey entry into the computer. However, I wasn't even frustrated with going through surveys of hundreds of kids and counting how many felt a certain way about each aspect of the environment and of their education because I completely get how it's important. I get that I'm not here for long and that it's hard to get me, especially since Spanish is not my first language, working on a project directly with kids. And someone has to do it! It really wasn't bad-after all the work I've had lately sitting at a computer for a few hours listening to my I pod and counting up survey results was actually pretty relaxing.

Anyway, I thought I was just going to write a few sentences, guess that never happens with me...

we're counting down from five...five, four...oh, she jumped already....

So I have now come to understand that my extreme angriness and frustration of the past week/few weeks over so many things here is simply a very regular stage of culture shock. I am now thankfully past that stage and once again appreciating the beautiful country I am in, understanding that it clearly has flaws as do all countries and that it’s doing pretty damn well for a developing country. I always get really intense about things when I have extreme emotions, and this time it led me to message everyone I know in Europe, complain about my life, tell them how an experience in Europe is truly what I imagined study abroad to be like, and demand that they give me every last detail about their experience. While still retaining the desire to travel to Europe, I have since returned to my original mindset of believing that being here is great for me-for the language element, the nature element, a greater understanding of the simplicity of life and the issues that this world must face together. And while it is hard to find many of my passions in common with people here, I have so much to learn from them-how to be simply satisfied with life, how to be more easy going, how to be open and friendly and warm, how to be generous. Anyway, this is truly a rollercoaster ride of emotions, but I guess that’s what it’s supposed to be! Lists!

1. I went bungee jumping today. WOWOWOWOWOW SO scary and so much fun!!! It was at a place with the first jump in Central America and for a while the highest. I think it’s still rated among the top ten in the world because of the height and the view-about a 200 foot free fall. It’s also super safe-20 years, 40,000 jumps, and not one accident. That didn’t seem to comfort the parents when I told them haha. But apparently there were famous people jumping with us! I found this out when this group of children came up to the two most beautiful people in the group and asked for their autographs-apparently they’re on this show on channel 6 here where there are teams and they compete in all of these silly contests. And I got creepy pictures of them! Because that’s clearly better than asking to take one with them. Because I think the concept ofbeing famous is dumb anyway
2. My host family is the cutest. Today they had a party at my grandma’s for a cousin that was going back to Germany to study. My host uncle made inappropriate jokes and danced around while the women sang karaoke to super old American songs-from the 50’s and 60’s and 70’s and 80’s which was really entertaining because in the background they had the artists slash music videos and the effects and the videos and the hairstyles were great.
3. I went to a trash pick up organized by the university in Heredia on Friday. Wow, was that ridiculous-it is ABSURD how much trash there was. And the quantity of cigarette butts. Yummmm. But I met this French woman who has been living here for several years and her husband works for the UNA and she cares a lot about the environment and was telling me how hard it is for people to recycle here and how disorganized things are and how hard it is to organize them. Like to recycle they can bring stuff once a month to the central park or they can drive like 20 minutes to drop it off. But many people don’t have cars. Or big enough spaces to store things for a month…
4. After receiving gloves from the trash walk that I should have returned I concluded that I could finally pick up trash on my way to school like I had dreamed of doing…so this morning on my way to meet my friends to catch the bus to go bungee jumping from 6:30 to 7 am I walked through town wearing one glove and picking up trash. Upon arriving at the meeting place with a bag filled with trash my friend was like “dude, we’re going bungee jumping, why did you bring so much?” I was like, “I didn’t, I was just picking up trash…” he looked at me like I had nine heads and a beard. The best part was bringing a bag full of trash I found on the street on the half hour bus ride and then wandering the streets with it until I found a place where they had separate bins for different recyclables. Classic.
5. I’m going to Vertigo, a club in San Jose, tonight to celebrate my friend’s birthday but it is pouring like nobody’s business. How would you feel if I brought my IFSA Butler Study Abroad bag with the giant green frog on it to a club just so I could bring an umbrella?