Birthday and Last Days of Class

I've had a very busy but fun week due to my birthday and the completion of the last week of classes at the University of Costa Rica.

On Monday, we decided to go downtown to the Parque Nacional and found that it was a cute little park with a bridge over a little stream and a small island in the middle that had picnic tables on it. It was a really cute place. While there, a group of high schoolers video-interviewed us on our view of Costa Rica and the politics here. We didn't know much about the political situation, but we got to share our opinion. In return, they allowed me to video tape them for a linguistics project I'll be doing this fall at Cleveland State.

I stayed up late that night doing all of my homework that I would have to do the next 2 days because Tuesday was my 24th birthday!
My friend Robin, who turned 24 a week before me, and I were planning on being as childish as possible on our birthdays so we planned on going to the roller skating rink to have our birthday parties. However, the rink was closed until 7 that night since kids are in school (it's 'winter' here). Instead, we decided to go play at the playground at my house on the swings, see-saw, monkey bars and we tried to find a 4-leaf-clover, but didn't have any success. Later on, we went out to celebrate at a restaurant, but it wasn't as fun as acting like a kid.

Some photos of my house and house family at dinner.

On Wednesday, I had tests in both of my classes but they were relatively easy. I got A's on both for final grades of A's in both Literature and Linguistics.
Today, I had to give presentations in each class which went pretty well. We were let out early to get ready for the ceremony, and we decided to go eat at a Peruvian restaurant. Before we left our school building, there was an earthquake. I was on the 4th floor sitting in the hallway and it felt like someone was shaking the building. I looked out the window, and it looked like the building was swaying in reference to everything else. The ground was vibrating underneath of us. Some of the professors came out of their classrooms, and seeing that we were foreigners, asked us if we were okay and if this was our first earthquake. I said that it was my first, and he congratulated me, which was funny, but it was still scary to have the whole building shake. As a result, the traffic lights went out on the main roads that we had to cross to get to the restaurant. But, there is no "treat intersections as a 4-way-stop" rule here for when the lights go out, it's just a free-for-all with cars honking and dodging each other. It was an adventure to cross the 6-lane main road to go eat! But here I am still alive to tell the tale.

The restaurant was really cute and had great food. I had tomato soup, lomo saltado, which is a dish Kevin's mom always makes me, chicha, pudding and ceviche. Luckily, by the time we were going back home, the lights started working again and we could be safer.

I got dressed in a new dress I bought here and then went back to the university for the award ceremony. They called our names and gave us certificates. Afterwards, we had a dinner with the whole group where some funny things happened.
First, my friend Robin was dared to toast the whole room of people, and there must have been 100 of us in the program. She tapped her class with her knife and lifted it and just said "a toast" while everyone stared at her and then she added "congratulations". It was hilarious, I was dying at how awkward it was.
Then, we were the last table to get dessert and I saw that it was 3 leches cake and I really wanted more than 1 piece. I decided that I would hide my dish under the table so that I would be served twice, but I started eating the cake while it was on my lap. The cake lady was on her way back to the table to bring more cake and my friend Judy yelled at me to stop chewing so that I wouldn't give away my cake situation. I stopped chewing and held my breath real quick, but I found the situation so hilarious that I busted out laughing and spit cake all over Judy and my friend Ashley's faces. It was gross, but so funny I almost peed. It was all worth it in the end, though, because I did get my second piece of cake.

In class and with my certificate

Afterwards, we went out to sing karaoke at a place near campus to celebrate the end of classes with our professors. All of the singers were really good, but I figured that there would be some silly people, like me, who sing just to be funny. I chose a song by Calle 13 called "No hay nadie como tu" as a song to rap to in Spanish and my friends said they would dance in the background. I did the song and sounded horrible not only because I'm tone deaf, but because I was trying to dance at the same time too but was running out of breath to sing. Needless to say, I ended up being the only horribly silly one that night while everyone else was really good at singing. My friends video taped me though and said that I was their favorite. Sorry for making your ears bleed, San José.

Weekend in La Fortuna

We had this past weekend free to travel wherever we wanted to go, so we decided to take a trip to San Carlos in a pueblo called La Fortuna that is next to the Volcano Arenal where there are a lot of volcanic hot springs to swim in.

We bought bus tickets downtown for only $6 a piece the day before we left and I reserved the hostel, which I made sure had a pool. I was excited, because I reserved 7 beds in a room with 4 bunk-beds for 8 people. It was going to be just like camp.

The problem with other countries is that they are not that concerned with street names, but more so with landmarks. I asked one of the directors of the program where the bus station was, and she told me that it was 600 meters north of a certain church. So we set out downtown, but were hungry. We saw a pagoda type archway leading into a neighborhood, which was chinatown and we wanted to eat there, but there were mostly nail salons and shops with all kinds of junk. We asked in a beauty salon for the best chinese food, and a guy pointed us in the direction of the only chinese restaurant we could see. We asked him if it was the best chinese food and he said "well, it's chinese food" and walked away. It was pretty normal, nothing to write home about.

From there, we went to walk to the bus station and asked for directions about 6 times to make sure we were going the right way. However, like I said about landmarks, we got a different set of directions each time until we finally got a concrete answer from a police man who pointed down the street and said look for the big red building. We finally were able to buy our tickets.

Reserving the hostel was another challenge because my house dad decided that day that the telephone bill was too expensive, so he turned it off. I had to borrow my house brother's iphone but the hotel people said to reserve the room via e-mail and on their website. They said I would reserve a confirmation e-mail, but by the next day it never came. In the States, we are very used to always receiving automatic confirmation and it helps us feel secure in that we will have a room ready when we arrive somewhere. I didn't want to bother my brother again, so when I went to school the next day, I went to the office to call the hostel and they said of course they had my reservation, as if I was being crazy or paranoid.

The next day, we took a 5 hour bus ride to La Fortuna and got some homework done along the way. When we arrived, I had directions to the hotel from the website I made reservations on, but of course the directions didn't mention street names, just landmarks. So we thought we were following them well, but we ended up in a place with no sidewalks, so we stopped in to ask someone and they gave us a map to find the place. We followed the map, but it didn't have all of the streets on it that the city has, so we ended up walking very far again. We asked some girls if we were going the right way, and they said yes, but then we asked another guy and he said no. Long story short, we hailed a taxi and finally arrived at the hostel all hot, sticky, and starving. We went to an italian restaurant that makes wood oven pizzas and got one called "the volcano" that had meat and jalepeños on it. Of course, I got tiramisu, which was pretty good. We ended up swimming in the pool that night, which has a tight rope stretched over the middle to keep the guest preoccupied since they don't have TVs.

In the morning, we had breakfast at the hostel and then paid $36 for admissions to the hot springs at Baldi Resort which included a dinner buffet.
The resort converted the hot spring waters into paved pools, 28 total, complete with 4 water slides. The water slides were crazy! They have a life guard at the top and the bottom just like in the States, but there are no rules as to how you have to go down them. You can make a train of people and go down with others if you want to, you can go head first on your stomach, you can go backwards, laying down, sitting up, take a running start into the tube, it doesn't matter. They had one of those toilet-bowl-slides like at Kalahari, but without the directions as to how to ride the thing, I got banged up pretty bad with a cut on my left elbow, a huge bruise on my right elbow, and my back and back of my head feel bruised, but I can't see them to tell. No wonder all of the signs around the slides said "AT YOUR OWN RISK".

The hot springs were beautiful though! It was like swimming in a hot tub, then there were caves that were like saunas, and some pools had scolding hot water which I really enjoyed since I usually take very hot showers, I know it's not good for my dermis, but I love them! There were also swim up bars where we ate some nachos with guacamole and a pool that had disco lights and played music to dance to. We had all sorts of muscle aches and I had pulled the muscle in the arch of my foot, but the hot waters took away all of the aches and helped clear our faces up that had broken out due to all of the heat and humidity. It was like paradise!

The buffet was also awesome with pastas, meats, salads, soups, teas, coffee, fruit juices, a fruit bar, side dishes, different breads, and desserts complete with a chocolate fountain. I went up about 4 times. After soaking one more time in the hottest tub, we returned to the hostel and went out dancing. We found out that the hostel also had a tight rope between 2 trees as well as a jungle gym, so we decided to also entertain ourselves on those that night.

We went to sleep and got up in the morning to take the bus back to San José. We got to visit the beautiful central park of La Fortuna and visit a few shops before boarding the bus. Thank goodness there was not a lot of traffic on Sunday and we got back into town in only 3 hours. It was a beautiful and fun-filled weekend!

Weekend trip to the Caribbean coast!

I had a fantastic weekend on the Atlantic/Caribbean coast in the province of Limon!

We had a 3-day weekend, so we were able to leave for Limon on Friday morning. On the way there, we kept seeing signs for fruit that said "mamón", so we asked our professor what it was and he had the bus pull over so that we could try it. It looks like a red sea urchin, but once you peel that off, its a piece of fruit with a pit in the middle, very delicious! We have to be careful with the word mamón, though cause if you call someone a mamón, you're calling them a "sucker".

We also stopped at a restaurant along the way that sold a lot of fruit, sweets, and treats like empanadas, yuca pancakes, etc.

We stopped in Puerto Limon, the port city here that my dad ships stuff to, to look at the port and to shop at the central market. It was kind of creepy though with people that looked homeless, but I did end up buying a shirt for my sister.

We finally got to our hotel, and it was so nice! It was more like a bread and breakfast and had very modern rooms with balconies, a beautiful courtyard garden, a pool, and a breakfast nook. A cute italian family owned it.

We decided to go out for dinner, and we went to this pizza place the italians recommended. I really wanted sea food though since we were staying on the sea, so I got the mussles, or mejillones, follwed by tiramisu. It was delicious!

At night, we decided we wanted to go for a night swim. In the pool was a bouncy ball that kids are supposed to sit on and hold onto the handles and bounce on. We decided to use it as our volleyball and played boys vs. girls made-up pool volleyball with some different rules. After that, we tried to make a whirlpool like when we were kids, but it didn't work. We had so much fun trying though!

The next day, we wanted to go to the nature reserve to find monkeys. We had cereal, rolls, egg, a big bowl of fruit, coffee and OJ for breakfast and went to the reserve. It was really cool to see the beach and then the rainforest only about 20 feet off the coast. There, we saw lizards, bugs, a snake, butterflies, sloths and monkeys! They were howler monkeys. They were so cool to see close up and swinging on the branches over us. I was scared they would try to mess with us, but they were just doing their monkey things.

Afterwards, it was getting warm, so we decided to find the black sand beach to go swimming. I had never seen a black sand beach before so I was so excited to see it. We walked on the beach and jumped some waves in the water.

We visited another beach town in Puerto Viejo where we ate and swam some more. They had really huge waves that knocked us over almost every time, but we had a lot of fun trying to stay standing.
For lunch, I had caribbean steak, tostones, caribbean rice that has coconut milk in it, beans and salad. The restaurant was really cute!

When we got back to the hotel, we knew we wanted to go to another beach front sea food restaurant that catches fresh fish to serve called "Sobre las olas." We visited earlier and they said they had fresh swordfish ceviche, so we wanted to go that night. To work off some of the food we had earlier, we played pool volleyball and then got ready to go out. The restaurant had beach front tables and they lit the candles for us, very cute! They also had a hammock that went over the ocean, so of course I had to try it out. Thank goodness I didn't fall off onto the beach.

Afterwards, we went out dancing and got to practice salsa and meringue. We were the only ones really dancing though, but still had a good time.
The next day on the way back home, we listened to the world cup game on the radio and stopped to try some guanabana fresh from the farm. It looks like an oversized bumpy avocado, but cuts like a pineapple with a more juicy texture and a less sour taste. It was delicious!

National Theatre, Food and More!

This week our field trip was to the Teatro Nacional in downtown San José. The theatre was constructed between 1890 and 1897 because Costa Rica would invite performers to come, but none would do their plays there because there was not a good theatre space. They imported marble from Italy, gold leaf from Central America and a team of theatre builders from Belgium to make it. It has a president's box at the best view and the president can go and see plays. Costa Rica is stable enough that his box has nothing blocking it; no bullet proof glass, etc. They have never wanted to assassinate any of their presidents. It was full of paintings and beautiful art.

After looking in the theatre, we went for a walk around downtown. I saw these cool pay phones that you swipe your card with, so I joked by asking "What are those?" My professor actually started explaining what a pay phone was until he saw me laughing at him. We also saw some statues and stopped for CHURROS at this chain they have down here called Crispy Churros. Even though these are a Mexican treat, Costa Rica has a lot of chains of other nationality restaurants. This place will fill the churros with any filling you want and they're all served hot which reminds me of Krispy Kreme. We ordered the biggest one called Churro Chorreado which came with 4 with guayaba and dulce de leche sauces on top. It was sooo good!

Today we had our midterm exams in our classes. The literature one was very easy for me because I'm used to studying literature at Cleveland State. The linguistics one is a take home test, which I'm happy about, but I'm having trouble in that class because it's so technical. It's mostly about how people talk and different accents, but there are these weird letters to signify sounds, and they're not from the American alphabet; I think they're actually Greek symbols like the theta, lambda, etc.

FOOD:
This is food from one of the cafeterias on campus. It's white fish, beans, rice, salad and veggies, all pretty normal.
The cool thing that I bought with the dish is called a manzana de agua, a "water apple". It was pretty good and has a pit instead of a core.

This is fish, lentils, rice, plantains, cream of mushroom soup, and cas juice.

This is poached egg, coffee, beans, pineapple, banana and torta chilena, a cake with a cookie like texture and caramel in between the cookie layers.

This is beef tips, coleslaw, rice and beans and yuca. The juice is called maragay.

This is cas juice, lentils, rice, chicken and pork rinds. They also made hand-made tortillas, so I put my chicken in those taco style with tabasco sauce. The chicken was on a bone, but the other night I hardly ate it off the chicken leg because I don't like to think my food was alive before I ate it, so this time my mom shredded it off the bone for me :).

This is pizza from a place in the mall called "Amore." I got the kind with salami and gorgonzola. The sign said they sold tiramisu, but they were out that day :(. It turned out ok though, because the mall also has a Crispy Churro, so I went there for dessert :).

This weekend, we are staying in Cahuita for 3 days since we have Friday off from school. I'm excited to go back to the beach and explore another province of CR!

Volcán Poás, los jardines de la Paz, FIFA y la Isla de Tortuga

I had a very busy but very fun-filled weekend!

On Saturday, we went to volcán Poás which is another volcano. On the way there, we stopped for some coffee at a plantation which was probably the best coffee I have ever had! I forget the name of it now, but coffee that grows in high altitude is supposed to be one of the best.

When we got to the top of the volcano, we found ourselves in another cloud so we didn't have many views except for whiteness.

The cool part of the day, though, was going to los jardines de la Paz where there are 4 waterfalls and a zoo full of animals. I even got to hold a toucan and a snake! We also saw a lot of other pretty birds, butterflies, monkeys, jaguars, frogs, humming birds, ocelots, and probably others I can't remember.

We saw these white cows that are the national animal of Costa Rica and represent the hard work that the farmers do here. They were very pretty and wore a special head dress. The driver uses a stick to guide them as they pull plows or other things. Putting the stick up on the harness means to go forward, putting the stick on their noses means reverse, and leaning the stick on the harness means park.

We got to try some "agua dulce" which is a sweet tea and a pastry that tasted like flan, but not quite. They were both very delicious.

There was a garden full of humming birds and I saw probably a million different kinds. The butterfly room was also very impressive with all of its flowers. I was scared of the snake room, but when the keeper took one out to hold, I knew I would regret not taking the opportunity.

The most impressive part of the gardens were the 4 waterfalls all in a row. We saw some of the most breath taking views and had to keep going down sets of stairs to get closer. What we didn't realize, though, is that once you go down, you have to come back up. Our thighs were killing us when we got back to the top.

On Sunday, we went on a cruise off of the pacific to la Isla de Tortuga, or turtle island. It's called that for the shape it has as you approach it. I was in heaven that day! The ship had a pool on it that me and my friend Robin had to ourselves because everyone else was to shy to come in until much later in the trip. Servers walked around with fruit to serve us and they also served ceviche, which was so delicious! It's one of my favorites.

On the island, they served us lunch which was fish with a really good sauce I've never had before, barbecue chicken, rice, potatoes, salad and white wine. They also gave us warm rice pudding, which I love!

We got to land and wanted to snorkel, but because there had been an earth quake earlier and visibility in the water was low, they cancelled it. We wanted to try something new, so we did the banana boat instead, which was so much fun! They connect the banana boat to a speed boat and take sharp turns to knock you in the water. Next, we played beach volleyball with some ticos, went swimming in the ocean, had coconut water and laid on a raft to finish the day. We also swam in the pool on the boat deck on the way back. It was such a beautiful day!

Cartago, los sube-y-bajas, food update, & 4th of July

Yesterday, I went back to the old city Cartago, but this time I visited the market, the train tracks and the garden at the museum.
The market is kind of like the west side market, but more like the one I visited in Puerto Rico. They even had bags to scoop your own pet food along with a ton of fruit stands, stands that sold meat and other food products, and even tourist items and clothing accessories.

After that, we followed the train tracks back to where our bus was. These were very nice train tracks, except some cars were parked on them. My professor said as long as you know what time the train comes, you can park there. Hopefully you don't run late!

We passed a pretty garden along the way, so we took a nice group photo. It was in front of a museum, but we didn't have enough time to go in.

The best part of the day, though, was walking back home with my amigos and convincing them to come to the park in my development to play on the sube-y-baja... the see-saw! I finally was able to find someone around my weight, so we partnered up and had soooo much fun. We also climbed a tree, swung on the swings, went down the slide, and played on the monkey bars. I love the times I get to act like I'm a kid again :).

FOOD UPDATE------
These are nances, a fruit that tastes like a more sour version of the golden delicious apple and is much smaller and softer. They have a nance tree at my house and make a drink with it and milk.

This is a guanabana, the fruit that heals your cells of cancer and has all kinds of other benefits. They make juice, ice cream, juices and jelly with this.

This is mayonnaise, but in a pouch you squeeze. They also had one that was in a bottle to squeeze as well, but it's not open yet.

This is what we had for dinner tonight, which is chicken, rice, arañitas, which are shredded platanos that are fried, and manuelitas, which are crepes filled with sweet cheese and cinnamon.

Below is a popsicle made of hocote fruit and milk.

This breakfast is banana, mango, papaya, toast with strawberry jelly, rice and beans, huevos con chorizo, and cafe con leche.

Ham and cheese crepe with a cream sauce and a salad from a restaurant near the university.

Chicken leg, rice, and veggies.

For breakfast, an egg and rice mix that turns into an omelet type thing, but kind of like a rice cake as well. Rice and beans on the side of course.

Pork ribs, pasta, and rice. Don't ask me why pasta and rice. I think it must be a sin here to not always always always have either rice or beans here. The drink is made with pineapple juice and rice and it's good for your kidneys. All juices in this house are homemade, I don't think I can ever go back to store-bought... not that I really drink juice in the States anyways...

Today, July 4th, my housemate and I dressed in red, white and blue, but that was the extent to which we celebrated.
We went to a pizza place for lunch, saw some musicians at a fair at the university, went to the mall, and then spent the night doing homework. I also watched TV and there was a program of comedians doing skits like Saturday Night Live and I understood most of the jokes.
Here are the musicians we saw:

Gas is also at astronomical prices, they told us how much in liters, and I did the math to see that it is at $5.60 a gallon USD!!! They do not advertise the price on signs, though, you have to drive up to the pump to see the price!

Tomorrow: another volcano and some gardens, AND HOLLAND VS. COSTA RICA in FIFA!!!
Sunday: Turtle Island on the pacific coast
Stay tuned... !