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!