its a kind of magic...

May 2, 2007

What is it about that chorreador (cloth drip filter) that the Rodriguez family uses to make their coffee that makes it so sweet and wonderful? Why is it that every grilled platano has the sabor enough to make me drift into a poetic mind state? Why is it that every gallo de queso that I ever ate for breakfast in San Luis satisfies me enough to make me forget that I miss dark chocolate and spicy food? Why is it that I have never felt more content scrubbing dishes in the open air kitchen of the casita for the Sunday feria? Why is it that this poor ugly dog Chispa has grown on me until I’m calling her Princhipesa and giving her leftover gallo pinto to snack on?

I will tell you why. There is magic in San Luis. A magic that is burned into my soul and that is so deep I couldn’t forget it if I tried. There is the smell of tradition and love and family in San Luis. Yes I saw Jesus’ crucifixion reenacted gruesome and fake for Semana Santa, but every wife, husband, grandma, child, and dog of San Luis was present for that procession, like for the death of a loved one. The magic of San Luis resonates up to the tops of steep hills from the bottoms of crystal blue rivers and graceful wings of the Morphus Azul butterfly. The magic echoes from the seeds of the anona fruit and from the tasty sweetness of miel de chiverre. The magic resounds from the bottom of the bucket that I use to shower, and from the moist cleaness of the clothing hanging on the line outside. From every onion pulled out of the earth and every aguacate that falls from the tree, from every child that tumbles through the dirt, or that marches clean and pressed in a school uniform. The ambience is so powerful that one is simply absorbed into it and swims in it, unaware of the outside world.

Last night I had the sad realization that the food here in San Jose doesn’t taste the same as it did in my rural site. It could be that my host mom in the campo had the access to all of the wonderful organic veggies of her own finca to work with, or it could be that she used different spices or something. Or it could be that when she cooked she did it with ‘mucho gusto’ pouring love by the spoonful into the soup or the morning tortillas, and even the afternoon coffee. It could be that her hard working hands, though cracked, and darkened by fresh earth, added the ingredients to each meal with care and happiness that showed that she was grateful for what God had given her to work with.

Winter has begun in Costa Rica, which is to say the rains have come. Finally, the locals say, it has usually rained a lot more by now. I guess it’s tough luck if you don’t like rain, but there’s nothing I like more than holing up in my room to study with a nice pitter patter on the rooftop. We are also going through a series of apagones or rolling blackouts to conserve power because of the lack of rain, and because Costa Rica relies heavily on hydro-electricity. These blackouts not only make the average walk in downtown San Pedro more interesting, but life-threatening adventures. The strategy is to congregate enough people on the side of the sidewalk and then all step out at once so that the traffic has to stop for us wee little pedestrians. Talk about adrenaline. Patience of the already impatient drivers is stripped just short of homicidal events as horns blare up and down the congested calle. “Oh San José,” I say out loud partly to myself and partly to the other ACM Megan, “how I will not miss you.” It’s true that the city can get the best of me sometimes, and that I yearn for the campo life, but overall, Costa Rica is a sparkling enchantment of a country, and I can not help but look to the future and hope that somewhere in God’s little book of life, there is room for yet another adventure or two here in the Pura vida of Costa Rica.

Wow its April!

So I've hit the top of the hump. The 2 month marker was passed and now the time is flying! I only have 2 more weeks here in the campo and then I've got a 'field trip' with my advisor/pal to an undetermined destination for a week and then its back to the mad rush and pollution and stress of San Jose for 3 or 4 weeks. Wow how the time flies!
So last week after getting back from San Jose, I got an invite from Andrea to go visit her at the Art Festival in Ciudad Quesada (San Carlos). If any of you have ever seen me at an arts and crafts fair you know that this is a danger zone for me! But I had a great time leaving with an empty wallet and a full backpack. We were also able to go to an awesome salsa concert, but we soon discovered that 11:00 was far past our usual 9-10pm bedtimes in the campo, and had to head back to the house out of pure exhaustion. I'm getting the hang of traveling by myself here, its not so bad, just a little uncomfortable if you end up on a bus speacially made for short people!
Then when I got back on Sunday, after the bi-monthly feria was over I was invited by Isabel to go skating. I jumped on the opportunity since the family doesn't go out to do things like this often, and I didn't regret going! I was able to use Isa's husband Alonzo's roller blades, and around and around we went in a little gym with blasting music, and disco lights. That was when the classic rock came on, and I don't know that I've ever been so disoriented, so off balance and wobbly, and so happy!! Then afterwards we scooted into Grecia and got a pizza and ate outside, the four of us sitting on the curbside.
Later: Beginning Semana Santa

Just a bunch of little things

March 14, 2007
Last weekend, I decided to brave the Catholic mass with my family. I guess it was a good experience, and it was better than staying home alone, but I really couldn’t understand a word of the service and tried to just sit in peace while the service continued on, but I was so distracted by all the ornate and gaudy innards in the belly of this massive church that my mind sort of fogged over. I usually feel resentment in Catholic churches, for being excluded from the communion, but only one member of the 5 of my family members went up to take communion, so I didn’t feel bad.
The family novela or soap opera is called La Escrava Isaura, and is about a slave girl (a Latin slave mind you) who escaped from her master who is in love with her and fell in love with a young man and planned to run away to the United States. Her master invested a lot of money and recaptured her, but now everyone is starting to dislike him, and people want to help Isaura escape. It’s very cheesy drama in my opinion, but I’m hooked, I won’t lie. I look forward to my 8 o’clock novela every night.
I met with my advisor this week and what a relief! Her name is Gabriela and she is such a cool woman. She did nothing but reassure me that I was executing my project correctly, praise my data collection, give me ideas, and boost my motivation for working on this. Awesome! I also got a chance to chit chat with her about what she does, and it turns out she used to be some sort of national director of conservation in coffee plantations or something cool like that. And now she’s got a sort of traveling job where she works a consultant for farmers and the like for preservation of natural resources and developing the social relationships that are needed to make the improvements. She was telling me how awful this one place in Limon is where the banana farmers are so poor they hardly have a house to live in, and the planes fly over spraying the bananas, as well as the farmers, their children, and everything else with agrochemicals. And to top it all of, it’s a Rainforest Alliance certified farm. You have to ask yourself, how does this happen? How is it, that food, a necessity for life, is placed at such a low priority that the farmers producing it have nothing to eat and nowhere to live? Gabriela was also telling me that she worked with a lot of coffee farmers, who had never tasted their coffee from their own fields. It saddens me, but it also gives me hope that there are other people who are appalled at these poor conditions, and are working to better them.
After living here in Costa Rica, and talking about how much more luxurious it is here than in Nicaragua or in Honduras, I sometimes find myself embarrassed for the U.S. as a nation, where every family owns several cars, the average family spends more on electronics and entertainment than food, most people work in offices, and many of us never know where their food comes from--- thousands of miles away, where the family is saving up money to buy some small thing that we take for granted in the U.S. Not trying to give anyone a guilt trip! Ok? I think I can just appreciate all that I have in the U.S. (10 times more than I ever did) because I am damn lucky.

March 15, 2007
Ides of March, Ides of March, I can’t remember when the Ides of March are and I’m trying to beware them! Sean you should know this one right? I was thinking it was the 16th or maybe the 11th or 12th, but the truth is that I know that it’s somewhere in March, and that was when Julius Caesar was slain (according to the Shakespeare play). It’s one of those things that I wonder how it entered my thought stream, but there it is, a little golden muse, making a quick dart through my head.
Sometimes do you ever just wonder what you’re looking for, maybe in life in general, but maybe just for one day? I’ll admit it. I’m a shopper. I love to go shopping. But I am a bargain shopper, and many times I don’t intend to buy unless the price is right. I think I confuse Costa Rican shop owners when I just want to wander around looking at their stuff and not buy anything. They don’t understand that I didn’t come with the mission to buy something; I just want to see what’s around, get lost in my thought, etc., and I get nervous when they jump up and stand at my elbow while I’m browsing. This is how my previous internet café excursion went. I didn’t feel like sitting down at the computer yet, probably because it gets overwhelming after a week of not reading emails.
So many moments throughout the day where I want to record my exact emotions to write in a blog later and I’m in no place to do so. Like when Andrea and I shopped around in Zarcero a little bit. We are of similar stature, she a little taller and more slender, but we are both well….on the larger side of the pants and shirts scale so to speak. We went in a shop and Andrea furrowed her brow and said, are these for little kids? I looked around, and said ‘No Andrea, these are for little women.’ We proceeded to laugh about this and then talk about how shapely the Costa Rican manikins are. We speculated that half the time that’s what draws eyes to the window of a shop, not the actual clothing.
Tuesday I had a little treat on TV after the novela. See Costa Rica does a special every month where they feature a certain actor/actress in a movie about once a week for a month. Well this month was Brad Pitt—“El hombre más sexy del mundo!” (The sexiest man in the world) Yes Brad Pitt, Costa Rica loves you. So I sat down and watched “Siete años en el Tibet” (7 years in Tibet) with my host father. Who knows why, besides that neither of us had seen it before, but it was long and sad, but I got a kick out of the fact that it was almost midnight (very late here!) on a Tuesday night and my host father and I were watching a Brad Pitt flick.
After the internet café yesterday, I ran into some relatives Isabel and Alonzo right outside and they offered me a ride home. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned her much before but the 1 and a half year old, daughter of theirs, Anny, makes me think they’ve got a Raquel Jr. on their hands. Oh she’s cute alright, when she’s in a good moon. Everyone wants to do everything for her, but man if she wants something and doesn’t get it, she gets MAD! They call her the ‘chapulina’ which is like the little trouble maker. She’s learned how to push buttons, and she likes to rile everyone up by turning off the TV in the middle of the soap opera. So when I accepted a ride home from my neighbors/family instead of taking the bus, I didn’t know I was signing up for a dose of cranky Anny. Oye what a headache. At least she got tired of screaming and fell asleep. Then last night I had another even better treat of ‘A Knight’s Tale’ which since I know very well, was able to laugh at all the jokes in all the right places, all of which seem funnier in Spanish, and hear that glorious soundtrack which includes Queen and War. Wonderful. I’ve been looking forward to watching some other movies like Ice Age and Finding Nemo in Spanish with the grandkids here. Maybe I’ll have to schedule it.

THE PROJECT

So here's part of my proposal which pretty much explains what I'm doing. I'll add more pictures laters.

Megan Vásquez
Project Proposal

Title: Impacts of Plant Biological Diversity on the Maintaining of Soil Quality on Coffee Farms in the San Luis Valley.

Theme:
The theme of this project is to explore the biological diversity of coffee farms to develop a way to measure the health of the farms and the land. This could be important to farmers for improving the quality of their coffee and maintaining the nutrients in their soil over the long term. Is intercropping or poly culture used on these farms, and does it benefit the growth and production of the coffee field? (possibly soil nutrients, flavor of the coffee, less reliance on chemical inputs, less erosion, etc.)
Also is it in the interest of the farmer to preserve biodiversity on his/her farm because they can obtain a type of conservation certification which can attract potential high paying buyers who value sustainable methods of farming? Do the farmers do it for money, to better support themselves, or do they also have an interest in preserving the environment?

Objectives:
Determine the state of biodiversity in each of three types of fields.
Determine plant biodiversity by counting number of plants in a given area (calculate biodiversity index).
Determine plant ground cover percentages and bare ground percentages.
Take soil samples from each field to determine nutrient content and the state of the soil.
Determine amount of production per hectare of each field (coffee, legumes, etc.) and the density of coffee plants per hectare.
Come up with a measure of the health of each field according to soil nutrients, plant biodiversity, and total profitable production, which could be possibly used to forecast future use of the land.

Introduction:
My interest in this theme comes from my love of coffee. I know that coffee has a huge market in the United States, and I want to explore the roots of that market. I believe it is good to have knowledge about the things that you do in your life. I have also explored Agro-ecology and Sustainable Agriculture, which both directly relate to the shade-grown method of producing coffee, and the conservation of nutrients in a field.
My site of study is San Luis de Grecia in Alajuela. San Luis is located at approximately 1,700 meters (5,100 feet) above sea level The majority of the farms in this area are coffee farms, along with sugar cane and other fruits and vegetables. There is a “beneficio” or co-operative in San Luis where each farmer sells his coffee and I’m told is then sold to Starbucks Coffee®.
I also have an interest in the rising trend of organic farming, and shade-grown coffee, which when mixed creates an intercropping/ polyculture method which is good for conserving soil, soil nutrients, and maximizing production.

Just some photos of San Luis

Mother-daughter bonding and Zarcero

March 10, 2007
So since I’m actually getting to know my host family now because I’m not flat in bed anymore, I think their getting to like me and vice versa. Last night I was talking to my host mother, who also got sick with the same thing that I did, and we were talking about how our throats were still hurting. And she said she’d make a salt-water plus something-else-that-I can’t-remember gargle. We each took our mug of potent gargle and went outside and stood under the brilliant map of stars and gargled together. It was quite the bonding experience, gagging on the bitter saltiness of our gargle, and spitting alternately or in unison. Hopefully it helped!

So last night before dinner I got a phone call. It was Andrea, one of the girls from ACM from St. Olaf that I went to the beach with the first weekend. I smelled an adventure brewing. “Hey what are you doing tomorrow?” she said. We then planned a trip to a nearby town called Zarcero which is known for its funky sculpted gardens. It was spontaneous and it would be the first time I’d seen anyone from the ACM in two weeks. I was really excited when I got off the phone and proceeded to tell my host sister my plans. She asks, ‘how are you going?’. By bus, I replied confidently, there is a bus in Grecia to Zarcero right? ‘Ummm, you actually have to take a bus from here to Grecia, then to Naranjo and then to San Ramon, and then to Zarcero. Oh, I replied, a little disheveled by her reply, well I think I can probably deal with it, I’ll just have to make sure I ask a lot of directions. So I talked to my host mom, learning that I only had to take 3 buses instead of 4 and that the first bus left from San Luis at 9am.

With the goal of arriving in Zarcero for a noon lunch, I set off in the morning for Grecia. Once I arrived I asked a lady where the bus for Naranjo was because it wasn’t really evident, and she pointed to a spot on the street saying ‘oh, there’s the bus right now’. So off I scampered, having no idea really where I was going, not having a map or any concept of how long it would take to get there. But I went. Once on the bus to Naranjo, I kept my eyes peeled for some sort of sign that I should get off. No such luck. When a bunch of passengers got off the bus in a small town, I went to the front and asked the bus driver, and yet another miracle of God occurred. “This is where you get off, and there’s a bus for Zarcero, behind us.” “Wow”, I thought. How absolutely, amazingly, lucky! Onto the next bus I hopped, and this time I noticed a sign that said 20km to Zarcero. Then I spent the next 15 minutes trying to remember if a kilometer was longer or shorter than a mile, and how long 20km would take on a bus going close to 40kph. I was also keeping an eye out for any familiar landmarks because we passed through this area when we went to Volcano Arenal. I did recognize a roadside restaurant, and then when we arrived in Zarcero, I recognized the funky sculpted shrubs and jumped off the bus, exuberant that I had reached my final destination for the day. AND I made it by like 11:30.

When Andrea and I met up, we were so excited to talk about everything we had gone through in our first two weeks at our project sites, and so we ate lunch at a little restaurant, and explored every shop that Zarcero had to offer. Then we hit up the park, deciding that it was the optimal environment for a photo shoot, and each glad that the other was enthusiastic for goofy pictures. We passed a good 5 hours in this tiny town, and then decided that it was time to make the journey back to our homes, Andrea starting hers, with an unfortunate and embarrassing chasing of a bus because the bus driver didn’t see her, but luckily there was another bus she could take. I had about 30 more minutes to pass before my bus arrived, so I talked with a shopkeeper for a little bit, found a Sudafed equivalent in the ‘farmacia’, until the Naranjo bus pulled up.
I figured since I had already made this trip once, it would be easy, but then I remembered that buses don’t take the same regression route sometimes, so I began to worry a little. Luckily, again, I asked a man if he knew where to get off the bus to go to Grecia. He nodded saying he was going to Grecia a bit later as well and gave me some instructions for how to get to the bus stop. After noting my blank stare he said, ‘bueno, just come this way, I’ll walk with you over there’ and this kind-hearted man helped me to the bus stop, where I was able to get on and leave in less than 10 minutes. If you think that is lucky, just wait, I wasn’t done traveling home yet! So safe and sound on the bus, a familiar bus now, I relaxed. I was looking out the window, admiring the clouds, and I thought I recognized the song that was playing very softly on the radio, an English song I thought. I dismissed the thought because a little earlier I heard a popular Spanish song a few minutes ago, and they couldn’t be on the same station, right? Only a little later down the road, I was able to hear the radio a little better, and wouldn’t you know it, it was exactly the song I thought it was! Midnight Train to Georgia by Gladys Knight and the Pipps. When I get a treat like that on the Costa Rican radio, I can just sit in a nostalgia cloud for a while, content with everything I’ve ever had or ever will have, in love with life and the culture and the people, and grateful for all the wonderful things I’m able to experience here in Costa Rica.

I arrived in Grecia, and went straight to the San Luis stop, with which I am very familiar by now, and looking up on the schedule which said that the last bus on Saturdays departs at 6:15 and then looking at the identical time on my watch, my head just reeled at the probability of all this occurring (I think God was really watching out for me today). And so I hopped on the bus. Just as good as home by now. The only bad occurrence that happened the entire day was after I got off the bus and was walking down the driveway, which for 7:15 was pretty darn dark, and I heard the family truck starting up the road. I didn’t want them to come around the corner and not see me and so I stepped off to the side, and as the truck slowed down because he did see me, I fell into the ditch. Quite funny really. I only say it was a bad experience because I was a little embarrassed to biff it while someone was watching. I went and said hi to my host brother Juan Pablo, the driver of the truck, explaining that I didn’t want to get run over while he chuckled, and then nipped off to the house, adventure complete at 7:15 p.m.

I’ve decided that the bus system here in CR is pretty cool as far as I’m concerned.

Counting plants, strange but not a stranger, and loathing of insects

March 9, 2007
So I’ve finally gotten busy on my project! It is quite the project though! Yesterday, I spent about 2 and a half hours on a section that I thought would be simple because it was only coffee and small plants, no trees. Wrong. I spent half of my time trying to fight through coffee so dense that I couldn’t see farther than 2 meters in front of me, and all of them taller than my head. Now I’m no giant, but how are most Costa Ricans going to reach coffee that’s higher than my head? Then the section I worked in today, the coffee was only up to my shoulders and they were spread out a little more. Much better for sampling, but since there was so much space, a bunch of little weeds grew in that resemble dandelions except that the little white fluffy part is black and sticks to anything and everything it touches. My tan work pants were two toned after I left the coffee field. And I don’t know how these little spine thingys end up on top of my head, but there you go, it’s a mystery of nature.
It was a little warmer today than it has been for the past 4 days because of less wind. I’d say it got up to about 80 here, maybe 85, and I hate wearing DEET unless I can help it, so I wear long sleeves to avoid the biting bugs. Boy do I sweat when there is no wind around. There are no mosquitoes around here thank goodness, but I have still been bitten on my forearms and hands a lot by SOMETHING pesky. The problem with the DEET is that I have to use more water to wash it off and that probably is cold water. Megan doesn’t like cold water! Hence Megan bathes in her own sweat. Today I had the company of a relative’s dog named Café, a short little brown and white dog with an exceptionally waggly tail. I don’t like to take Chispa because she doesn’t know how to socialize with other dogs, and I’d spend too much time worrying about her. But Café is super cute and he’s quite the pal now as well.

My host mother’s granddaughter Jasmin who is 11 years old, speaks English, and she has taken to asking me about anything she can think of that is from the United States. The funny part is that her constant quizzing is mostly about newer cartoon shows, and video games, and I am DEFINITELY not up to date on those. When she got to Game boy, I was like, oh yeah, Nintendo 64 – the old Mario Bros. and the duck shooting game. Jasmin looked at me sideways, and then was like yeah, my dad has one of those and it’s old. When I got her out of her 50 questions mode we got to talking about hippies for some reason, and I was trying to explain to her that I am of the new generation of hippies, and she thought that was the funniest thing ever. Yes ‘hippies’ is a word in Spanish.
Jasmin’s mother is Isabel, and they live up the hill from us. She was telling me that the student that was hosted here last liked to go up to their house to speak English because she missed it. I didn’t tell her but, I don’t miss it because I talk to myself, sometimes in English, sometimes mostly Spanish with unknown words substituted in English, and every once in a while, just for a change of pace I’ll have a conversation in pig Latin.

This is Jasmin's sister Anny ---- quite the trouble maker! ------> (like Raquel!)

The other day I nipped into town for the afternoon to use the internet café and start looking at classes for next year (which are not available yet!). My host mom was telling me that I had to catch the bus a little farther down the road, so off I set down the road, and for a while it was deserted so I began singing out loud. Quietly at first and then my confidence grew and I was belting out a song by Queen when I rounded a corner and two women who HAD been talking were standing there looking at me. I kind of toned it down to a hum really quick, smirked and said ‘Buenos dias’ to them and just kept walking along giggling to myself. It was actually just one of those days when I found a lot of things unusually funny, and when I talked to Ben on the phone that night, I could hardly get a grip on myself when I was telling him about my happenings in Grecia and on the way.

I was watching the ‘noticas’ or the news yesterday with my family and noticed a few funny things. Firstly, in the background during the sports announcements are flashing horse races, gymnastics, baseball (of all things), and the only sport you actually hear announced is “futbol” or soccer. Ever. Seriously. I wouldn’t dream of asking if anyone plays basketball because that’s probably one of those silly things they played in P.E. once. The other thing I noticed was one of those scrolling messages that glides across the bottom of the screen announcing other things that they’re not really talking about. Well the one I noticed was ‘President Bush to begin tour of Latin America’ and it listed countries, like Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay, Mexico, and Guatemala. The next message read ‘President Bush is met with protests on his tour to Latin America in ….. countries’. I couldn’t help but laugh, and my host family probably thought I found something particularly funny about ‘futbol’.

Several times here people ask me which Costa Rican dish is my favorite and I’m stumped every time. I always ask what things are called, but I always forget too! I end up saying something silly like ‘platanos maduros’ which are the grilled sweet plantains. The truth is that I like a lot of different foods, and I just can’t decide.

Yesterday I met Lucy, the largest spider I have yet to encounter, besides one tarantula that I stumbled upon out in the desert in New Mexico. Lucy (may she rest in peace) was sauntering in to my room after breakfast, and I was shocked and surprised that such a creature would like to enter my room, but I didn’t want this little gal hanging out in my belongings and giving me a bigger scare later so I chased her out of my room and then my host mother came to my aid. I have yet to make these wonderfully protective host mothers understand that I don’t really want them to kill the spiders; I just don’t want them in the same room (or house for that matter) as myself. I think I would have enlisted the 10 foot pole method for removing this palm-of-your-hand-sized-spider, or at least a shovel. Okay I am a big chicken, but um, yeah end of sentence.

My favorite time to journal is on the bus, or on the airplane, so next time I go somewhere is when you’re liable to get a little snippet, a window into my little corner of Costa Rica, where the birds chirp, the coffee grows, the sun shines, the children run around with dirt on their faces, and life continues on.

Mission ‘Casi’ (almost) Impossible and a million Rodriguez'

March 5, 2007
Today let the real excitement begin! I have officially started my project today! ...except have I? Friday I was able to escape (reality) to the internet café for a couple of hours, and then Sunday was the bustle of the Organic ‘Feria’ or market at my host family’s house. Whereas I thought a bunch of farmers came to peddle their wares, it was only my host family. But they sold a lot let me tell you! Radishes, turnips, tomatoes, cilantro, lettuce, berries (from someone else’s bushes), “matas” (flowers in the pot), compost, horseback rides, music, and a kitchen simply bubbling over with delicious smells of gallo pinto, casados, tacos, arroz con pollo, empanadas, and much more. Everyone was really tired by the end of the day, and after watching Los Picapiedras (the Flintstones in Spanish) with my host mother I hit the sack.

This morning I walked to the coffee field that I thought belonged to one farmer, but it turns out as I followed the road that weaves thru the coffee, the one field is actually three fields belonging to three farmers. I ended up at someone’s house, and asked the man for some direction. He pointed me one way, taking me thru one of his fields to get to the one that I was looking for, which turned out to be a different field that I was also using, but not the original one I was looking for. I explained my project to the man, and explained that I was staying with Eliécer Rodriguez and his eyes flashed with sudden recognition and he said oh, that’s my cousin. I told him that if he wanted I could do my project on his farm as well since he had a great diversity of trees and such, and he agreed that that would be fine. I thanked the man and now in the next field, tried to fight my way upward toward the sky, bushwhacking my way thru coffee plants as tall as and taller than myself, mumbling all along…. What IS this? It seemed to take ages to get back to the top, when on the road with a whole lot of dilly dallying and observing it took me like 15 minutes to get down. Coffee is thick and bushy. Note to self, take camera for tomorrow. But glancing down at my watch, I noted that it was only 9:15. Wait, like 15 minutes into class at CC? After eating breakfast at 6:15, 9AM seemed like a long way away, and time for lunch unfortunately! I looked behind me and noted that the slope at some points in this coffee field was somewhere around 80%. I took a deep breath and told myself that I just kept going up I would eventually get SOMEWHERE. As my head peaked over the horizon, I was met with ferocious barking of 2 small dogs and a locked pointy fence. Pretty much in someone’s locked yard. Lovely. So bungling my way back down into the coffee field I was able to escape thru a neighboring field who didn’t believe so religiously in the use of fences.

In fact that is the whole problem with the advancement of my project. There are no fences! There are lines of trees that supposedly divide the fields, but when you are underneath them (or you are an American and don’t know any better) it is almost impossible to tell which field is which. Luckily my advisor is coming this afternoon and she can help me figure out what I’m doing. Times like these (except for the current torrential wind) make me wish I was a hang glider and I could get a bird’s eye view of this area. When I told my host mother about the situation, she said something to the effect of well why didn’t you ask the owner where the margins are? And I replied that I simply didn’t know the owner (after all I had seen no one besides the man that I talked to). My host mother seemed to be laughing at me, seeming like, silly girl you just ask somebody and they’ll tell you. Oye, what a headache. Hey look at the bright side! At least I’m doing something besides being sick!

Aqui is a flagging device that I rigged--also know as Costa Rica's weapon of mass destruction!!!

San Luis de Grecia, paradise and hell in the high lands of Costa Rica.

February 26, 2007

My new host family is absolutely fascinating. I thought for sure I was a princess and a half waltzing into their lives, until I met their daughter. Even then, these rustic hard working people, still take time to care for themselves. On Sunday at her mother’s house I watched my host mother, Doña Maru as some call her, get a pedicure, manicure, and haircut from her sister. And the rest of the time she takes care of their housework, works in the organic veggie patches and flower gardens and works for a women’s association which makes natural products from the herbs that the women grow. The kitchen is amazing, and the smells almost constantly wafting from there, are almost enough to make me forget about chocolate. For breakfast I had corn tortillas with cheese on them, about the freshest cheese I’ve ever tasted, an egg, a cup of excellently fresh coffee, and a little banana that looked like it just came in from the garden.
Houses are decidedly different here. This house seems larger to me, and lacks the metal bars + garden that provides an extra door before the door to the house. San Luis is also one of the most tranquil towns I’ve ever been in. At night I can see the stars, and I can hear the wind in the trees and the chirp of insects rather than the roar of cars and public transit of San Jose. Ahh, this is my spot!
Doña Maria Eugenia y Don Eliécer Rodríguez own and operate an organic farm. They also host a farmers market here at their place every 1st and 3rd Sunday, so needless to say, I’m excited to be here when Sunday rolls around. I can hardly believe that it is only 10:30, because I got up at about 6:30 and I’ve been working on my polishing up my project proposal and making a schedule for the upcoming weeks. Tomorrow I meet with the man from the ‘cooperativo’ to talk about which farms I can study, and then let the fun begin! I’m really excited about my project, and if anyone is really curious, I can send my proposal, or post the introduction section in the blog or something.
So, I took my first cold shower, not wanting to offend the family by saying that I thought that cold showers were painful, and I was to the point to where I really wanted a shower. Yowza!! Afterwards when I was hanging my towel outside to dry, my host mom goes “oh I forgot about hot water!” and she explained to me that they heat some water with gas, and put it in a bucket and haul it into the bathroom. Whew! I thought I was going to have to develop nerves of steel or something! Though I think after working all day in a coffee field, and coming home hot and sweaty, and cool mountain fresh shower will feel good.
The family dog, Chispas, has learned that I am a friend, though she is still constantly playing the groveling submission role, no matter who talks to her. I think she’s very cute despite her unfortunate under bite.

Tuesday February 27, 2007
Yesterday when I told my host mom I wanted to go for a walk after lunch, she insisted on calling her friend so that I wouldn’t have to walk by myself, when really I just wanted to get away from after-lunch-sleepiness. The friend wasn’t able to go yesterday, but said that she’d like to go Tuesday around 7 to avoid the sun. I was thinking 7pm was an odd time to go walking because who wants to be cruising around in the dark? So, when my host mother knocked on my door at 6:35 a.m. on the phone with the friend saying that she was ready to go, I was a little surprised! But I jumped out of bed, eager to start a new routine of early morning exercise in contrast to my no-exercise routine in San Jose (besides one round of spinning). Turns out I made a wise choice, because now I’ve got a friend who loves to chat, and I can have company, and I can get to know the San Luis valley all at the same time.
For now, I’m waiting to start my project because I have to talk to the “tecnico” about which coffee farms I can use for my project. This tends to stress me out, because I have no specific information about this man, only that he is supposedly coming over today and I’m going to walk around the cafetales with him. HOPEfully he comes.

Wednesday February 28, 2007
So since I had nothing better to do and I couldn’t start my project yet, I decided I’d get sick. Yep, silly I know, but it was the only logical thing to do next so that I felt justified in wasting time. As soon as I got back from my walk yesterday I started feeling scratchy in the throat. Today I’ve gotten up to eat breakfast and lunch, read for an hour, and the rest of the time I slept.
I did get to hang out with my host mother’s grandson Joshua yesterday, and learned a lot from him. When I didn’t know a word he proceeded to pantomime and acting it out saying “that one thingy on their back, and the other thingy, and they swim in the water!” I also watched amazed as he diligently hunted for spiders in the house, picked them up and chucked them outside. I’ll grab a shot of one at the next available chance.
So it turns out that the Tech guy has car trouble and hopefully he can come soon and show me around. My host father was saying that everything is pretty informal around here, and I just have to be patient and wait. I hope they realize that I’m only here for a limited amount of time and that I need to get busy on this project! I’m sure I’ll be much happier once I get that going. But for now it’s taking all my self constraint from ripping my hair out in boredom.

Trip to my rural family and Sunday con La Abuela Interesante

February 25, 2007
I finally arrived at the bus stop. I’m sure I prayed for God to spare my life a little longer at least 3 times on the way over here in the taxi. I’ve got two big duffel bags to stress and worry about where there will be space for them and if anyone will try to nick them, until I meet up with my new host mother Doña Maria Eugenia at the bus stop.
Restaurant Fuxing, Chinese I assume, stares ate me from across the parada, mockingly as I sit here trying to calm the rapids that seem to be coursing through my veins. I am lucky though. My bus stop is separate from the main bus stop, cleverly named the Coca Cola, where transvestites cart around strollers full of trick dogs that will pray a rosary, tourists are constantly dodging red flashes called taxis and anyone with any sense is guarding their possessions with the vigilance of a British Knight.
By some miracle, or the grace of God, where I planted myself on the sidewalk with my load happened to be the front of the line for the 9:00 bus. It could have been fear that persuaded the Ticos to let me on the bus first, or maybe sheer awe at the mass that I was carting with me to this tiny mountain town called Grecia. I stored my stuff securely in the storage beneath the bus ( I was the only one storing stuff) and boarded.
As the bus began to move my heart lightened a little, a vendor climbed on the bus, selling his wares: hand-crafted wooden bracelets and leather wallets that had the Nike swoosh engraved on them. The fresh air that brushes past my face through the open window soothes me. And so begins my next two months in Costa Rica.
I met up with my host mother at the bus stop and she tells me we’re going to her mother’s house in Sarchí. She wanted to know if it was okay if I brought my stuff to her house and then take it to our house in San Luis later. I think the look I gave her must have been pathetic, even though I agreed to take the stuff over there, because after we waited at the bus stop for a while, she offered that we could take a taxi to her house. I was mightily relieved.
Later at her moms house: Boring and crazy at the same time. I thought at first it might be rude to journal about her mother but she’s quite the character! The “grandma” made it clear that I was not something she saw normally in her life or ever for that matter. When I was first introduced to her she was napping, her leg detached and propped up next to the bed. We all ended up napping in one place or another, because it was too hot to do anything else. Me out on the porch, where at least the breeze could cool me off a little. Later when she got up and came out, she decided to keep an eye on me in case I tried anything funny, and though she didn’t talk much anyway, definitely would not talk to me! But every once in a while she’d slam her hand on the table, or pop her dentures out at me or tap my nalgene with her spoon. I thought I might be a little crazy too if I lived by myself and had nothing to do but watch telenovelas (soap operas).

I had a dream last night about school next year, living with Paul, Jacob, and Sean. I dreamed our house had a large auditorium in it and we could invite a ton of people over to watch movies. The boys were leaving and Jacob handed me his beer, saying hey do you want this, I don’t want to take it with, and Megan, make sure you don’t go anywhere k? I can’t remember the rest.

Pizza and Chocolate

February 22, 2007
Thursday I experienced Costa Rican pizza. Quite a process really. They sell it by the huge slice, and a particular piece with Canadian bacon was calling my name. I asked the lady behind the counter if they had one with pineapple and she said no, but that she could add it. I gladly accepted and watched as she loaded the slice onto a tray and then got on the telephone mumbled something quickly, and then hung up. I stood bewildered as she loaded the tray with my pizza slice onto another larger metal tray, which then proceeded to raise itself up through a hole in the ceiling. When my pizza returned it was toasty warm and had 50 cent sized slices of pineapple on top. It was amazing! It also seemed amazingly normal but sometimes I find something as simple as familiar food is comforting and relaxing to the mind.

February 24, 2007
I feel like one of these days I need to write a time unspecific blog about any little weird thing I’ve seen or heard or experienced here in Costa Rica. Sometimes our brains are so tired after a day at the ACM that the smallest little thing is enough to send me overboard into fits of giggles. For example: Riding the bus home from ACM one day with Steven, having a conversation about technology with Steven (the new iphone, silly I know), and all of the sudden a little kid on the bus starts meowing. Oh my gosh. I could hardly control myself.

So on today I went into the ACM to work for a little while, more to use the wireless internet to call my family from my computer, which is way cheaper than any calling card that either of us have encountered. Then, later that night I accompanied my neighbor student Steven to the ‘Multiplaza del Este’ (a sort of mall) to shop for a jacket. I had been there once before with my host family, so I knew my way around pretty well. Except there was one problem…the smell of chocolate. Once you step off the bus and carefully cross the busy street you’re hit with it, the smell of freshly melted chocolate, or baking brownies, who knows what, but it is intense. I have yet to encounter a good solid high quality chocolate here so I instantly went into hound dog mode and insisted to Steven that we had to find where the smell was coming from. We wandered around a good 20 minutes, and were eventually led outside again, following our noses, mouths watering and eventually foaming, wondering where that heavenly scent was coming from. Our emotions changed from enamordos de chocolate, hope, and joy to anger and frustration that we couldn’t find the source. We concluded that it was a torture device installed into the ventilation system, and we continued on our shopping trip heads hanging, energy draining from our bodies from the exertion, and sadness taking over our brains.

The Basílica and the Reverie (in reverse chronological order)

February 21, 2007
Mood: Pensive
I sit on the bus knuckles white and clenching the seat in front of me. It’s the first time in about 3 weeks that I’ve recognized the smell of pollution; I guess I was getting accustomed to it. The bitterness stings my lungs and I don’t feel like breathing. I can feel my pulse in the fingers on my plastic bag-laden left hand which is sitting on top of my heavy backpack. I recall the first week of my arrival when I thought that the air smelled like the organic waste material I disposed of at my job in the Chemistry Stockroom in Colorado. The bus slows in the traffic that’s as thick as molasses and the car in front of us begins backing up to let another car into the lane. Mental. I tighten my grip a little as the bus jerks to a stop about 2.5 inches from the other car and the driver lays on the horn.

My Spanish teacher told us that as many people that have died as casualties of the Iraq war, is equivalent to the number of people that continue to die every day in car accidents in Costa Rica Alone. Costa Rica is probably close to half the size of Colorado, population about 4 million. Yesterday another professor was talking about how a taxi crashed into a bus killing all 5 people in the car. But what’s sad is that the Ticos are beginning to build up an immunity to the daily bloodshed, ‘oh at least it was only one taxi today and not 3’.

I talked to a Tico on the bus the other day and he expresses his frustration and sadness at his country explaining that there are people in the country that haven’t seen the other side of their own country because they can’t afford it.

I’m caught in a dream, daily, wondering where I am in time and when and if I missed something. I’m caught off guard when people speak in English, and even more so when I throw in an English phrase into my conversation. But time doesn’t pause to allow for thinking, we’ve got to function as we are able brains working overtime to translate, contemplate, recreate scenes, and dream when there is a moment or two to spare.

We went to the Basílica in Cartago today, which is a huge Catholic church built in honor of the Virgin Mary. It is quite spectacular. The story of the founding of this church goes something like this:
Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, there was a young indigenous girl who was walking around outside, surely on her way from one place to another, when she came across a small dark figurine of a woman sitting on a rock. The figurine seemed very beautiful to her, and very kind, so she picked it up and took it home with her. She didn’t want to risk someone taking it, so she wrapped it in cloth and put it beneath her bed. When she got up in the morning, she pulled out the cloth and discovered that the figurine had disappeared. The girl was stumped and didn’t know what to think. But the girl went walking about and passed by the same place where she first encountered the figurine and there she was perched on the rock again. The same thing happened again, and this time the girl went to the father of the church and told him about it. The father doubted the girls story, but went to the site and encountered the figurine. He too took it back with him, and he discovered that the girls words were true. Together they decided that that was where the dark skinned Virgin Mary wanted to stay and so they constructed a church on the site in her honor, and enshrined the Virgin Mary inside the temple, where she remains to this day.
The place definitely has that ancient religious feel to it, and the reverence was added to because of the fact that the church was full of people for Ash Wednesday. I found myself intrigued by different symbols I found in the church, very reminiscent of the DaVinci code. On a lower level outside is a place where water passes beneath the church, and people hold this water as holy in their minds. People are filling up jugs of water, rubbing it on their children, and on parts of the body that are injured, in hopes that the Virgin de Los Angeles will cure them. It was pretty powerful to watch.
We ended up the day by visiting a beautiful lookout where we could take some awesome pictures, and then going back to the school.

Next entry: Pizza and Chocolate

Volcan Arenal, Spinning, Site Visit, and Discothèque

February 9-18, 2007
Last weekend we made a trip to the Volcano Arenal. I walked out of the house feeling like at least 10 million colones and was brought promptly back to earth (literally) when I fell up the stairs onto the bus. It was the most hilarious and most embarrassing thing that could have happened. I mean I guess it could have been worse, I was luckily. I mumbled a quick “perdón”, paid the bus driver and found a seat as fast as I could. I wanted to burst out laughing and bury my head under my seat all at the same time. Politely, no one on the bus laughed, though I think that might have helped my morale a little.

This volcano is currently active, burping and rumbling softly throughout the day and sending out chunks of molten rock tumbling down the side of the mountain. It’s a very tall pointy volcano, not a huge caldera.

There we had tours and hikes during the day including 2 wildlife/nature preserves, thermal waters, and another walk through the national park. We got to see some white-faced capuchin monkeys and some spider monkeys, along with toucans, and condors, and fly catchers.

The thermal waters were pretty amazing too, they had about 5 big pools from temperatures of like 98 to 108, and then a really cold pool, about 65-70 degrees that I could hardly stand at first, and then it really grew on me after I tried the super hot pool!

A few of us returned to school on Monday morning with stomach problems, we don’t know if it was food somewhere or the water, but it wasn’t super fun. But we were all glad to not be the only one with an upset tummy, and gladly jumped out of the way for a compañero that needed to make a dash for the bathroom.

Then Thursday I had my first dose of spin. Spinning actually, apparently they have this phenomenon in the states too, but I’ve never encountered it. It’s probably outlawed in a state like Colorado where there are plenty of nice paths and tons of outdoor space. Spinning is a type of indoor cycling class with intense music of the 90’s red lights, and black lights. The class began with a Michael Jackson song and we jammed on to the 90's music from the U.S. Oh nostalgia. A long-haired instructor telling us ‘arriba!’, ‘siente!’, ‘mas carga!’, ‘posición uno!’, ‘quito carga!’, etc (Stand up, sit down, add weight, drop weight). Kind of like running, but on a bike, it was intense, and cost a mere 700 colones ($1.30) for an hour. I went with two girls from St. Olaf, Jenna and Jenny and the three of us were absolutely soaked in sweat afterwards. Buen ejercicio!

Friday after class I left San José with my advisor Gabriella, to go check out my site for my project. We took the bus from SJ to Grecia which is a beautiful bustling little town/mini-city, and then on to San Luis from there. Apparently the church in Grecia, which is made all of metal, was shipped to Costa Rica by accident, and was actually supposed to go to Greece the country, but they set it up here before anyone noticed. Grecia is also noted as being one of the cleanest cities in Costa Rica. Also, lucky for me, they have an internet café! Grecia is about 30 minutes from San Luis depending on how many people are on the bus (how many stops). My advisor and I arrived in San Luis, walked around looking at some of the cafetales or coffee farms, and then to my shock and sadness she told me that almost all of the coffee from this area is sold straight to Starbucks, the farmers selling for whatever price they can get, and the people live in poverty. Muy triste.

Afterwards my advisor dropped me off at my new host family’s house to spend the night and talk to them a little. The family has a beautiful organic farm, and hosts a ‘feria’ or farmers market the first and third Sundays of every month. I’m going to be in heaven!!! The family is unusually large at six children, but the youngest is my age, and four of the kids are out of the house and married, and the 2 youngest are going to University of Costa Rica, in San Pedro.

After I got back yesterday, around 3pm, I decided, now or never is the night to go out and dance, before we all leave to do our research in the field. So I asked my host sister when I got home if she was up for a little baile, and we decided to go out. I also got ahold of 2 other ACM students and the four of us went to dance. It was absolutely aMAZing!!!!! We got to Castro’s Bar in Barrio Mexico near 8:30 (my sis knows the tricks, go early to get a table) and before I had even ordered my drink I was asked to dance some salsa. I think he was hoping that I knew what I was doing, and I was hoping he would teach me so unfortunately we just ended up doing the same repeated steps the entire dance with no variation. Aye! Then after a while, I danced another salsa with Steven from ACM and since we took the same class, we were able to improv a little, and we had a really good time. The three of us students took to the floor for the reggetón section and freestyled, that was way fun. My favorite in our class de baile was the merengue, but those Latinos made it look so fancy and complicated and I didn’t think I could remember how to do it. BUT I discovered that if the guy knows what he’s doing, he can just steer the girl here and there and everything comes out beautifully. That’s right guys! Every boy here takes dance lessons as part of his job before he gets to the go out and dance age. ;) This is how my last dance went. The man I danced with, just pulled my arm one way and I’d spin, and another way, and this way and that, and it was way fun!

My host sister Shirley and I ready to dance! (and matching! how cute!)

Then today, after an amazing Costa Rican breakfast of ‘gallo pinto’ (mixed rice and black beans fried in a pan with some seasonings) with eggs and fruit and coffee, I went with my sister and father to the farmers market. It was mind-bogglingly huge! I have never seen so many platanos, mangos, mandarinas, papas, sandias, papayas, coconuts, pipas, cantelopes, strawberries, chile dulce, canya de azucar, and many many fruits and veggies of which I know no name for in my entire life. I’d guess that there were between 100-200 vendors there.

I bought a bunch of fruit to take with me to school and make smoothies for lunch, and to make a typical Costa Rican meal with my class tomorrow. The other thing that boggles my mind is how cheap everything seems to me. I paid 300 colones for a kilo of potatoes which is about 60-70 cents. About 2 pints of strawberries for less than a dollar. A kilo of mangos for $1.20 or so. Amazing.

I’ve decided that I’m officially addicted to Costa Rica. Don’t try to help me now because it’s too late. I’ve been drawn in by the culture and the beauty that surrounds me here.

Oh I’ll be back in the U.S. there are plenty of things that I miss there as well, but Costa Rica now has a permanent residence in my heart.

Hope you all are in good health, appreciating your public bathrooms, your green chile, your snow, and your Colorado beer (those of you who are lucky enough to have that).

Much love and sunshine,

Megan

p.s. I'll add more pictures to this one in a day or two, i didn't load them onto my computer yet.

El Gran Cucaracha, Monday February 5, 2007

I saw my fist cockroach today. No I take that back, I saw my second cockroach today, but the first one was the size of a dime. This one would take up half of my palm. And for this reason, I couldn’t squish it with my shoe. Just imagining the grand crunching noise it would make is enough to give me the heebees. It escaped my tirades with the broom and shimmied up the wall behind the toilet. I’ll be on my guard from now on.

Okay, okay, the moral of the story is that I’m a chicken and my host mother came and saved me from the scary cucaracha. And then she said, “Oh don’t worry Megan, don’t be afraid of the cucarachas, their just coming in to bathe because it’s hot.” Aye caramba. Now I have to fight for shower time with the cucarachas. Lovely.

Today I really hankered down on my project summary, which I had been putting off because I have to write it in Spanish and that involves a lot of thinking. But as I began writing, I realized how much passion I have for the subject. As if you knew already about my project! Ah, silly me. One guess……Yep you got it, coffee. I’m going to do a biodiversity study in different coffee fields, hopefully a cultivated one in open sun, one with a few shade trees, and one with an intact forest/shade-grown coffee. So by surveying the biodiversity of the field I’m hoping get a general measure of the health of the coffee fields, and maybe make a recommendation or give my research to the farmers to use. It makes me feel really important at least. :)

Iguanas, Monkeys, and Drunken Ticos Feb 3-4, 2007

I feel like this one is pretty long, and I apologize, but what I endured was pretty dang long to, hence the long-ness.


This was our view out the bus window --------------->


This weekend I was trying to figure out what to do and I finally buckled down, threw my hesitation out the window, and bought a bus ticket to the beach with 4 other students from St. Olaf college. This was a great idea and a bad idea all in the same roundtrip package. For one, I needed to construct a project proposal and I had a lot of Spanish homework. But it was a great idea because this would possibly be my only free weekend in the Costa Rican summer where I could play around on the beach before I have too much of a workload to shoulder and before the rainy season hit.

5,000 colones to get to Manuel Antonio and back, about 3 ½ to 4 hours depending on the situation (you’ll learn more later!), which is about $10 of extreme fun in a cramped bus. Highways here are rarely more than 4 lanes, but the highway to the beach was just a little old two laner, sometimes winding switchbacks with no railings, sometimes wide meandering curves, then long straights through hectares and hectares of suspiciously useless looking palm trees, and treacherous one lane bridges that sounded as if the were falling apart behind you as you crossed the river.

When we finally arrived in Manuel Antonio, short of breath and sweaty, we walked around in pursuit of our lodging, a beach bum “cabina”; cold showers, a toilet, and beds. It took us a while to find since we were told to walk along a dirt path and then to the left for 75 meters, and luckily no houses or buildings in Costa Rica have numbers on them for easy finding. We probably passed it 3 times and even asked someone sitting at the cabina if they knew where it was and they said no. We finally realized that it had changed names (we made the reservation from an outdated guidebook) and found our happy home, for $11 a night (per person). After that it was, get in your suit, slather on some screen, and run for the beach! We decided to wait to try the national park and its beaches until the next day, so we sat and endured the sun of the public, free beach.

I have never in my life had time pass so slowly. We arrived in Manuel Antonio at about 10:30 and were checking our watches at least every half an hour, wondering how many hours had passed already, wondering how many babies had been born, how many galaxies had passed on, and how many stereotypical tourists we could count on the playa. Maybe the beach just isn't for me!




We were all done and baked by about 3, so we retreated to the cabin to clean up a bit, do some shopping and then hit up the 2 for 1 happy hour at Iguana Jacks. Happy hour started at 4:30 and the hour and half before that passes incredibly slowly too. We all had ideas about finding a discoteque to practice our newly learned dancing skills but that was before happy hour. We ordered our drinks, margaritas and strawberry daquiris, and were all expecting to have a half price discount on our tickets when not arrive one but two drinks per person at the table! Man were those some good margaritas! Needless to say we were a little sloshy by 5:30 when we decided to get up and go sit on the beach to watch the sunset. After dinner at we went back to the cabina and were all crashed out by 9:30 and didn’t get up until 9 the next day.


I was toasted, and I mean my skin. I didn’t even bother putting my swim suit on, save my easy dry Hawaiian shorts, and I had plans to play hide and don’t seek with the sun all day.
Iguanas in the National Park are like pigeons in the U.S. Hungry and Pesky. The monkeys are about the same but they are a little cuter and a little more mischevious. I think they were all plotting to distract us with their cuteness, and send their cousins out to steal our backpacks. The ocean was actually too warm for me, you had to swim out a ways to get any cold water, and at that distance from shore is where I start getting a little panicky so I mostly soaked up the “sombra” or shade all day, taking pictures of the iguanas and the monkeys and anything else beautiful that caught my eye.



Costa Rican "squirrel" equivalent



Costa Rican "pigeon" equivalent


The last part of the day was the most interesting. When we all got on the bus from the clearly un-indicated, unlabeled bus stop we boarded with three Ticos, who bust out their mini cooler and continued drinking beer out of the sight of the bus driver. Apparently this is not allowed. So later when more people boarded, we discovered that two of the three didn’t have bus tickets, but just paid the bus driver to be on board. Needless to say they were a bit of a disturbance, “borrachos” as they say, and when we stopped at the bus stop and the one Tico bought another beer to bring on the bus, the bus driver had enough and called the director of the station to make him dump it out. They (the 3 Ticos) made a huge fuss about it. So afterwards, the bus driver made a call and drove the entire bus (50-ish people) to the police station to kick these people off the bus. What a riot! The three of them kept yelling that the bus driver was the problem and to ask any of the people on the bus what really happened. I’m thinking “Don’t tell them to ask me, cuz I’m not going to stick up for you!” These guys were continuously bumping me, and spilling their drinks, and they were convinced that this was an injustice! Crazy, after that the rest of the journey was uneventful, just a silent late night taxi ride back home with my neighbor student, and I was home by 10:30 with my host sister offering to cook me some dinner. How cute! Bueno, since this is long, I’ll cut it off for now, until next time! Pura Vida!

My first sunburn (quemado)

Friday, February 02, 2007, 7:11pm

Well as you might get to see in the photo, I am shamefully sunburned. Yes, it is only the 6th day I’ve been here, and yes I was not at the beach playing in the sun, or in the rainforest, but exploring the city of San Jose with my classmates and afterwards picnicking in a park with all our host families, playing ‘futbol’ (soccer) and Frisbee.

This is how I came about having a severe burn, and the most unfortunate part is that I was wearing a short sleeved v-neck shirt. Aye! Que lastima! (what a shame!). When I arrived home my mom proceeded to explain to me that I looked like a chameleon and then later that I had ‘un gran collar’ or a great necklace. All I can do is grimace and slather on the aloe vera. The other sad part is that I AM going to the beach tomorrow (to try to burn something else, right?), and if this isn’t better by tomorrow, I’m going to have to stay out of the sun or I don’t know, buy some body paint.

Today in our Spanish grammar class our prof told us, you know, you just have to get creative with language sometimes. We continued on to learn how to tweak our words to add emphasis to them and now its ‘pura moda’ (totally fashion) to use. For example—if you are saying something is ‘rico’ or rich, you change it to ‘riquisimo’. And if you want to add more emphasis you add more –si- like ‘riquisisisiSIsimo’. You can also say ‘requete rico’ or ‘requete riquisimo’ or super-requete riquisisisisiSIsimo’. SUPER-FUN! I like.

Today we toured San Jose, and our profs showed us all of the dangerous places that we shouldn’t go. Before I learned about this tour, I thought we were in San Jose already, but en realidad we were only in a little sub-city that’s called San Pedro. That’s where ACM is. I felt like I couldn’t focus much because I was preoccupied with taking care of my own security, trying to interpret all of their ‘consejos’ (recommendations) in Spanish, watching a little old man trip and land on his face, trying to determine how to distinguish Banco Nacional from Banco Popular, it was just so much for my brain to take in.

I think they like to take this much care because their have been incidences and they want us to be prepared for anything. For example, only last semester a girl and guy from ACM were ‘held up’ by an armed guy (I know how to say this more gracefully in Spanish), but luckily escaped.

When Estevan (student from St. Olaf) and I took the bus back home, I can honestly say that I’ve never been on a bus so full of people! The bus seats 50 and there were probably 75 on the bus. It was near impossible to get off, but I escaped without losing any possessions or monedas ‘por dicha’ (luckily). Bueno, tomorrow, I have to catch the bus to the playa (beach) at 6:30a.m. and I have to leave my house to get to the bus stop at 5:15. Super-bueno no? I’ll be getting pictures up soon, and I liked Sean’s idea so I obtained a similar website. It should be great. Talk to you all soon!
Con Amor,
Megancita
La gringita riquiSIsima!

Que Rico!

Hola Amiguitos! I have many tales to tell you and little time in which to do it! The first is that I feel i have regressed in time (and just forget you know about punctuation right now), don't know why, but any time I fall asleep I forget my name and my language, and where I was born. I feel like I've learned mucho mucho spanish in the short 3or 4 days Ive been here in Costa Rica, and right now I'm on the verge of hysterical exhaustion. Wave after wave of Spanish, day and night, and coffee coming out my ears. I found Sean's comment in his adventure newsletter about the woman rubbing his head SO funny that I chortled outloud in the ACM computer lab, causing people to drop pots of steaming hot coffee, birds to shriek and topple out of the trees, and the bus drivers to cease using their horns.

One saying the 'Ticos' use often is 'Que rico' which means litterally how rich, or more figuratively how beautiful or how tasty, etc. It can be used on any thing from me to food to the weather. Pretty funny. I've taken to using it in any odd situation I can think of for pure entertainment purposes. Another funny one is to add Super- to the begining of any word. Like Super-amigo or super-caliente.

On another note, I met my project advisor today, and much to my deeply embedded confusion in my head I had to and have to do the whole thing in Spanish. Write the paper, give the presentation, todo todo, en espanol. Ay! But on the other hand, my advisor is about 36, young and restless, and so we're planning a weekend trip to Panama, pretty cool eh?
the food here is pretty much the same for EVERY meal, unless you make your own lunch. Meat of your choice, with rice and black beans, sometimes salad, and sometimes beets. Lots of bread and juice. And did I mention the coffee. Oh.......let's not even go there, you know how I am. Bueno, my host mother is coming for me soon. I feel like such a baby because the other kids only had their mamas hold their hand on the first day, but this is a big scary spanish speaking city, and I'm going ot take advantage of her guidance while I can!!! For now until next time, when I have cuentos (stories) to tell you and when I have more time to collect my head for a little English immersion! Hasta Luego!
Megan
La gringita
Americanita

Day 2

January 28, 2007

Day 2 En Costa Rica. AY CARAMBA! My Brain is having much trouble switching back and fourth between Spanish and English. We took a drive today to try and find the end of the rainbow, but guess what. We didn’t find it. Driving here is a gas. I think the ‘velocidad maxima’ on every road is at least 80 and on small curvy 2 lane roads with no lines and sometimes not enough room for 2 cars to pass, I think the limit must be about 150, horn used often when flying around blind curves to let the other cars know to burry into the mountain to get out of the way. But that’s just suggested of course. Costa Ricans take their round abouts seriously too, there’s no messing around about it. I think they prefer that to traffic lights, and I’d say that everyone here probably drives 50 times better than anyone in the U.S.

I’m getting along in my Spanish, but I’m still kind of out of it from the “Jet Lag” even though technically Costa Rica is only one hour away from home sweet home. I fell asleep on our little Sunday drive to the Waterfalls, only to find when I woke up, I couldn’t remember Spanish. Guess I’ll have to stop sleeping.

Tomorrow they’re going to show me the bus route to the school. Addresses here are given from a familiar location, and distance from that, there are no numbers on the houses, or street names. So I live 100 meters south and 50 meters east of the Casa Cural. Cool huh? I also hear that Brian and a guy, Steven from St. Olaf live nearby, so I’ll look forward to having a bus riding buddy.

I met some of the other ACM kids from St. Olaf in the airport, and upon our arrival, the locals wasted no time in letting us know that we’re gringos. Or when the family refers to me they say “la estudiante extrañjera” which means the foreign student (and makes me much less defensive). I hate to admit that I stand out like a sore thumb….but well being tall and not having black hair has a lot to do with it. Other than that, I’d say I just dress a little more conservatively than the average woman walking down the street, and I hope to start blending in better. The man at the restaurant insisted in speaking to me in English even though I replied back in my rugged Spanish, because he could tell I’m American.

In the 24 hours that I’ve been here I’ve already met 5 other members of my host father’s family and one of them, Henry (el cochero- the driver) is the one whose expert racing skills took us to a waterfall site and back. Unfortunately when we got there, they told us that it starts raining in the afternoon and you can’t see to take pictures, so we’re going to try this adventure again next weekend. Apparently something is up with the alarm system on their car too so when you start it up it sounds like an ambulance, and frequently if you take a corner too sharp the car starts chirping. This car could compete with Bonnie!

Costa Ricans love to eat. They like to eat a lot and they like to eat often. We ate a large meal of arroz con (rice with) whatever at a restaurant at about 5 and then promptly on returning to the house at 7:30 we ate arroz con pollo (chicken) again. And man do I love that coffee!!! These people also have a great sense of humor. We were munching on some sort of chip-like items with mild spice, at the waterfall stop, and Henry says, hey will you pass that Styrofoam over here? I guess it sounds funnier in Spanish. I’m also glad that my host mother, Ligia, likes spicy food, I was worried. My dad warned me that food in Central America is bland, but I am saved by bottles of hot sauce!
I’m told that there is a dog, but I haven’t had the opportunity to meet her yet, and tomorrow, I have to catch the bus at 7 so I guess I’d better get in my 7 minute shower and go to bed!

Overall, Costa Rica is beautiful, and as soon as I wake up from this reverie that I’m in I’ll be able to tell you more and better how AWESOME it is!!!! Hasta Luego y Pura Vida!