Sometimes I almost feel like a different species...

 Well, I'm now at my parents' house in Beebe, AR... but here's what happened my last couple of days:

Thursday was pretty normal.  I went to my morning class. At lunch, I went to pay my exit tax at the bank  In the evening I hung out with the family.  On Wednesday night, I had had my first nightmare about the beginning of school, so I spent part of Thursday evening working on school stuff.  

Friday I woke up early for no good reason, so I started packing.  When I got to school, I had a long conversation about politics with one the teachers.  I was pretty proud I pulled that off in Spanish.  Cathy and the boys were overly impressed... I guess they had never heard me speak Spanish really.  Which is sad since we had been in Costa Rica together for 5 weeks.  I also took some more pictures of the school and my teachers.

Forester from the front

The back garden at the school.

We liked sitting at the table on the back porch during breaks.  Cathy, Nigel, and Simone.

With my morning teacher, Halder.  I had him for the last week.

My teacher!  She was awesome, but you put us together and its hard to believe we are the same species... I'm probably not standing totally straight either.

    During our last class, Simone and I kept hijacking the conversation to reminisce, in Spanish of course.  At the end, I got a certificate.  After class, Simone, Violet, Cathy and the boys headed to Rio for one last time.  I went home.  Mathias was there and so was the neighbor girl who is 10.  We had a big time playing.  The little girl can actually speak quite a bit of English.  We spoke in Spanglish.  After dinner, Isabel and I visited for quite awhile.  Jorge even did the dishes so we could keep talking.  We then took pictures.

Mama Tica y Papa Tico.

We visited for awhile longer.  I was getting tired and headed up to finish packing.  I think it took me until about midnight to get it all organized.

Saturday I woke up even earlier than I needed to.  It turned out to be good, because my taxi came even earlier than we asked for.  (We had scheduled 6:30 instead it came at 6:15.)  Anyway... I worked on not crying... we loaded my stuff into the car and off I went.  I talked to the driver all the way to airport in Spanish... so I was pretty proud.

The trip home was super easy.  The flights went smoothly and my luggage made it.  Mom, Dad, and mom's college roommate picked me up.

An Opera or Captain America... same thing right?

This last week is flying by.  Last night (Tuesday) I got home early.  Isabel and Jorge were out and Mauricio was apparently asleep.  Papas Ticos called Mauricio to ask if I was home, he said no.  (I was in my room.)  They came home and were in the house for a little bit before they realized I was in my room.  We were invited to go to Isabel's sister's house for dinner.  So the Papas Ticos and I headed over to my Tios Ticos' house.  It was another night where I felt a bit like a pet.  Autumn, come.  Sit.  Watch TV. Eat. 

Actually its the first time I've felt a bit better about my Spanish.  (I feel like I can't say anything most of the time.)  BUT I could follow most of the conversation at dinner.  Usually I have a hard time with a bunch of people and with Isabel's sister and brother-in-law.  (Especially the first week I was here and we spent a lot of time with them.) Anyway... it was fun.

6 hours of classes a day are still brain melting.  BUT I think I'm learning a lot. 

Simone and I were going to see the opera Carmen tonight at the National Theater, but it was sold out.  So since we had told our families that we would be out for the evening, we decided to see "Captain America."  Another student from school Devon, who happens to be from Arkansas, came with us.  We were going to try to go to the 6 PM 2D version.  It was sold out, so we went to the 6:40 3D version. We were not going to have our plans foiled!  My eyes still aren't quite the same... but I enjoyed the movie.  So there you go... not as many exciting stories without the tours.

My first pilgrimage?

As I have mentioned before in this blog, the patron Saint of Costa Rica is La Virgen de Los Angeles, nicknamed La Negrita.  Legend has it that missionaries were having trouble converting the natives to Catholicism.  A little girl named Juanita found a little dark statue of the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus.  No matter where she or the priest put it, it returned to the rock where she found it.  The priest took this to mean that they should build a shrine and church there.  The Costa Rican natives then found faith because she was dark like they were (hence the name La Negrita.)

La Negrita on the stone where she was found.

Many healings have been attributed to La Negrita.  Her Saints day is on August 2.  People walk from all over some from as far away as Nicaragua and Panama to Cartago to celebrate her day.  The main road from my house to school is the major road from San Jose to Cartago.  Thousands upon thousands (probably in the 100 thousands) of people walk this road on the days leading up to August 2... August 1 is the big walking day.  From where we live it is about a 4 hour walk. My Papa Tico got up this morning and walked to Cartago.  He said it took him about 3 1/2 hours.  (By the way, this walk includes going over the continental divide... there is a mountain between here and Cartago.)  I saw small groups all weekend walking which I thought was impressive.  Seeing 5 or 10 people walking it together was cool. 

After class today there were so many people walking that it was safe and easy to walk home (there was police stopping traffic and everything.)  So I guess I did a couple miles of the walk. The sidewalk which is generally pretty empty walking long distances was full.  I was even more impressed than this weekend.

Apparently mi familia tica has the tradition of walking up to the ice cream shop on the corner and watch the walkers... I've never seen anything like it.  They had closed down one direction of the road totally and the other direction mostly...  The road was full of people.  What impressed me the most is that while we saw the very old and very young... I'd say most people were between 15 and 40 years old.  I would not expect to see that much devotion from people so young. It was really something to see... There were families pushing babies in strollers or even carrying them in arms.  There was one guy in a wheel chair rolling himself.  There was a very old woman being pushed in a wheel chair.  There were church groups walking together singing.  Some people had on sensible shoes... others did not.  One guy was pulling a rolling suitcase with another bag on top... I'm guessing he came from further away than San Jose.  Oh and a lady carrying her little dog.  Yikes!  Anyway, it was really interesting.  I felt uncomfortable taking my camera, but I did steal this picture off the interwebs... I'd say its about what I saw.  We watched for a half an hour to an hour or so and saw thousands of people.

In other news... it is very weird at school with just a few of us there.  I enjoyed my first day of intensive school with 2 hours of one-on-one in the morning and four hours of now two-on-one (now that everyone else has left) in the afternoon.  But my brains were ready to fall out.  Those of us that were left were a bit sad without the old crowd.... but I'm learning lots.

The Beginning of the End

Friday was the last day of classes for most of my friends.  Those of us in Intermediate 2 have really loved our profe Hazel.  (Simone and I get to continue with her for one more week.)  We decided to get Hazel a present.  The fact that she had never read Harry Potter but wanted to had come up in class.  I had volunteered to be the one two buy the first couple of books Friday morning.  An easy task as I had seen them everywhere earlier in the month, or so I thought.  Well, with the last movie coming out there must have been a resurgence of interest in reading the books, because it took me 4 stores in a rain storm to find them.  In the store where I finally found it, I bought the last of copy of the first book. Its all David's fault... he had jinxed me the night before.  Simone made a loaf of Swiss bread (her dad is Swiss) and brought it to class.  Hazel had bought iced coffee drinks, so we had a little party.  We had the option of watching a movie or doing more exercises with the subjunctive.  We chose the subjunctive... we are a sick group.

Intermedio 2 - Julio 2011 Back: Eric, David, Me, Simone, and John.  Front: Rob and Hazel.

After class, we headed to El Rio for something to drink as per usual.  Stacey had to go pick up a friend who had come to travel with her for a few days.  After a while we headed to a Mexican restaurant down the street for a goodbye dinner.  We eventually had to break up the party and head home.  Saying good-bye was not a lot of fun.  It has been a great group... I feel very fortunate to have made such good friends here.  It was kind of funny.  I said good-bye to Stacey for real.  I knew I was going to see Simone, Eric, and Jenee again.  John, David and I rode the same bus toward home.  I get off a stop or two before they do.  So once the bus hit my stop... it was basically a... "Well.. uh... see you guys."  and I hopped off the bus.  (Well stepped down carefully, I keep waiting to fall down the bus stairs but you know what I mean...)

Saturday, I decided to head into Downtown San Jose.  I had been there a few times on various tours, but never really looked around.  There were lots and lots of people around.  This coming Tuesday, Aug 2, is the day they celebrate (for a lack of better term) the patron saint of Costa Rica, La Negrita (I've mentioned her in previous posts.)  Anyway, I'll probably talk about this more later, but people walk from all over to for Mass on Aug 2 in Cartago.  The main street near my house is a major thoroughfare to Cartago.  There were lots of pilgrims walking, which added to the crazy number of people around.

Anyway, I wandered through a couple of markets again.  I holed up in the smaller one when it started raining really hard.  (It's covered.)  It was funny because most of the people at the various stalls knew who I was at least for awhile.  Several told me that for me they'd give me a good price (In Spanish or English depending on the person.)  I'd laugh and say, "Just for me?"  Most would laugh and say "Of course."  BUT one guy looked at me with a very serious face and gave me a very flat, "No."  (I mean seriously lady, why would I give just you a good price.)  I found it hilarious.  I only ended up buying stuff from people who spoke to me in Spanish.  It went about half and half on what people would use with me first.

After awhile the rain lessened a bit and I caught the bus home.  In the evening, I had the house to myself.  Jorge's aunt died earlier in the week (I think.)  And so Jorge and Isabel went to the wake.  Mauricio went out... although he was in for a bit in the evening.  I actually really enjoyed having some time in the house alone.  Isabel was a bit worried about what I was going to have for dinner... I assured her I was capable of making a sandwich for myself.  :)  I got to sit around and watch movies in Spanish.

Sunday was another quiet day.  In the afternoon I decided to go the the Museum of Costa Rican Art.  It is supposed to be open on Sundays and free.  I took a taxi there, because I wasn't sure which bus to take, and its on the other side of town.  When I got there, it started raining again... of course.  (I've been very grateful for my umbrella the last month.)  And there was a sign that said it was open and free on Sunday and Tuesday... and this was true kind of... parts of it were open and it was free.  Mostly the outside parts and a couple of the inside rooms were open.  I did get to see some cool stuff, but it was weird how it was only kind of open.

I decided to walk back to the city center which was a 2-3 kilometers away.  I stopped in a Quiznos with internet access for lunch.  (The internet had been down all day Saturday and Sunday.)  I then walked on through the downtown and caught a bus back to home. 

Jenee, Eric, and I had made tentative plans to go to a ballet Sunday night, but the ballet had been postponed until September apparently.  So we met at the Mall near my house.  We aren't really mall hanging out people, but we managed to kill a few hours.  Particularly with Jenee and I oohing and aahing over all sorts of stuff in a home decoration store. After the shops closed and we ate dinner, we caught a cab.  They dropped me off by my house.  The head home tomorrow (Monday).  In the group that I hung out with... it is now just down to Simone and I.

When I got home Jorge and Isabel had just returned.  They had spent the afternoon with Jorge's family.  I hung out with them for awhile.  Then I headed to bed.  I was about to go to sleep when I saw the internet had finally come back on... so I took the opportunity to post.

Tomorrow (Monday) starts my private lessons in the morning and just two of us in the afternoon... it should be and interesting experience.  Its hard to believe that I'll be back in the States in less than a week.

Butterflies and a Volcano

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we went on our last two excursions.  Tuesday we went to a butterfly farm.  Costa Rica has around 14,000 varieties of butterflies and moths.  This is due to the wide variety of microclimates at different altitudes and the fact that it doesn’t freeze here.  The butterfly farm we visited started as just a farm.  They originally operated just to grow butterflies for export to zoos and such.  Now they have it opened for tours.

Because the group that went on Tuesday was all in at least Intermediate 1, we did the whole tour in Spanish.  What was really impressive was how slowly the guide spoke and how he managed to use vocabulary we knew.  There was a big garden with lots of butterflies.  They are not afraid of humans at all, and so lots of them landed on us.  I think I had one hang out on my hand for a good 20 minutes. 

We saw the whole life cycle, from mating butterflies (seriously), to the caterpillars, to the chrysalis (moths have cocoons, butterflies have chrysalis), to butterflies emerging from the chrysalis, to the butterflies flying everywhere.  At the end of the tour, we saw chrysalises and cocoons being sorted and packed for shipping.  It was pretty neat to watch.

Butterfly eggs

A Chrysalis, there were lots of different kinds, but I thought this one was cool.  The metallic color reflects the leaves around it camouflaging it.

Caterpillars

This butterfly has 3 faces.  The first is its real face.  This is the second, see how it looks like a snake or lizard head?

The third face is an owl.

I just think this turned our cool.  I think they might be flirting.

Sorting chrysalis and cocoons for shipping.

 

Oh one interesting fact, did you know there is just liquid inside a chrysalis until right before the butterfly emerges?

Wednesday, we went to the Poas Volcano, the most active volcano (of the 371) in Costa Rica.  Now that sounds a bit scary, but the good thing about it being active is that it is always letting off pressure, so they don’t worry as much about a big eruption.  When we arrived we could hear it rumbling a bit.  Once we got to the main crater we could see the smoke, and smell and taste it.  It was an experience for all the senses.

The water in the main crater is around 50^o C or 120^oF.  The steam for lack of a better term has been measured around 700^oC or 1300^oF.  The smoke is toxic.  Luckily it always blows in the same direction.  Nothing grows on that part of the volcano.

Poas and I

A closer look at the water in the crater

See how nothing is growing in the smoke?

We got back to school on Wednesday just before class started.  So we ran over to the AutoMercado (the grocery store down to block) and grabbed sandwiches to eat at break from class.  Wednesday was the first really bad day I had in class.  I was already kind of grumpy, then we hit vocabulary I didn’t know while we were doing an exercise.  It was one of those things where it wasn’t that I didn’t understand what to do, I just didn’t understand what the words meant.  To make matters worse, the guy right before me kept getting cards that I understood.  So I got even more frustrated.  Ah well… the fact that I went 3 weeks before Spanish class made me want to cry may be a new record.  I don’t know what it is about language class, but I get frustrated enough to cry on a regular basis. 

After class I walked home to get rid of my frustration before I had to interact with people and speak more Spanish.  After dinner, Jorge and Isabel told me I looked tired and should go to bed… it was only 8:30.  I managed to make it to 9:30.  I was really tired… I’m not sure why.

Today (Thursday) we didn’t have an excursion so I slept in.  Then I went to school to upload pictures and hang out.  Not much of note happened.  Class went much better. 

This evening for homework I had to watch and episode of a telenovela (Spanish Soap Opera) for homework.  I’m not sure it I’d have understood it in English.  In 40 min, a woman was drunk in the park but some priests saved her from being arrested, a couple announced they were pregnant, a woman told her husband she wanted to be separated, a man (the son of the drunk woman) found out is girlfriend? Wife? and her mother had been kidnapped by bad guys, and a woman was shivved in jail, and got her release papers.  IN 40 MINUTES!  And I left out some stuff…that was only the more dramatic stuff. 

After the telenovela I sat and talked to Isabel while she ironed clothes.  She is sooo patient when it comes to talking to me.  She has been wonderful about letting me practice Spanish.

We tasted the world's worst spaghetti sauce but the rest of the trip was awesome

July 25 is a national holiday in Costa Rica.  It is a celebration of the annexation of Guanacaste, one of the provinces.  Because of this we had Monday off and therefore a long weekend.  Jenee, Eric, Stacy, Simone, David, and I headed to Manuel Antonio, a national park on the Pacific Coast.

Stacy had bought our bus tickets on Friday.  We met at the bus station for our 9 AM bus and headed to the coast.  The closer we got to sea level, the hotter it got.  There isn’t much exciting from the bus ride except for the fact that I ended up sitting next to a pre-med student from Dallas. So we ended up talking about the medical school application process in Texas.  He has one interview already.  We also got to talking about my research a bit (he asked).  Neither were things that I expected to talk about on a bus in Costa Rica.

We arrived in Quepos, the town near Manuel Antonio Park, where we were actually staying.  The hostel we stayed at probably has the prettiest grounds of any hostel I have stayed at, but otherwise it was definitely not my favorite.  But that’s ok, we didn’t spend much time there.  Once we got checked in, we headed to the public beach at Manuel Antonio. 

While it was muggy and still in Quepos, the weather was perfect at the beach.  The breeze coming in off the ocean, kept things cool enough.  The water was the perfect temperature.  We took turns playing in the water and watching our stuff.  Some laid out… I, of the pasty skin, applied sunscreen religiously.  There were pretty good waves coming in so we had a great time jumping in them, getting knocked over, laughing at each other when we got a face full of sea water.  It was awesome.

Since we had skipped a real lunch, we got hungry eventually and headed back to Quepos.  One of the teachers at the Institute had recommended a pizza restaurant.  We were very sad when it was not open.  We wandered around and finally found a way to feed ourselves.  When we got back to the hostel, the rest of the group got in the pool.  I was tired of being wet, so I took a shower and dried off.  Some of the group went dancing later, I went to bed.

The dorm wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t real great either.  During the day, it was pretty uncomfortable, so Jenee, Stacy, and I decided to upgrade to a room with its own shower, and more importantly A/C.  We then headed to the National Park.

A couple other students had been to the National Park earlier in the month.  They had strongly advised us to get a guide that we would see many more animals that way.  Boy, were they right.  We were discussing whether or not to pay the extra money and this guide comes up and offers his services for half-price.  (The discussion had included the fact that we weren’t sure we’d want to pay $20 a person.)  It turns out it was the same guide the others had had, and it really was half price.  BUT it was TOTALLY worth the money.  We got to see lots of things we wouldn’t have seen otherwise.

William our guide and a walking stick.

A crab

Colorful grasshopper

Red Dragonfly

Howler monkey

Sleeping baby Howler

3-toed sloth and baby

2-toed sloth and baby

Jesus Christ Lizard. The name comes from the fact it will run across water.

Africanized Bees

 

At the end of the tour, William took us to his favorite beach in the park.  We found a nice shady spot to set up camp then started heading out into the water.  It was beautiful.  The public beach was nice but the beach in the national park was nice.  It was great…  One cool thing that happened was that Jenee and Eric headed to find a geocache.  They ran into a group of monkeys.  One of them even started throwing stuff and Eric.

"Our" beach

View from where I was sitting

See I was there

 

After having another great time at the beach it was the middle of the afternoon and we had skipped lunch again.  So we headed out of the national park to find lunch.  We decided to eat at the first place that “looks decent.”  This was not a great plan.  It was one of the worst if not the worst restaurant any of us had eaten in.  If you don’t mind bad food and bad service for a high price, it was ok.  Jenee said her spaghetti sauce was the worst she had ever eaten.  We all thought it was an exaggeration…nope… it was really, really bad… unless you like stewed tomatoes with a distinct metallic taste.

So we then headed to another restaurant to try again.  While at the restaurant, I realized I was turning red.  I still had been using lots and lots of sunscreen, but I still burned.  Everyone else was heading out to the beach.  I headed back to our air conditioned room.  I had to wait an hour (or at least it seemed like it) to check into our new room.  I kept getting pitying looks from people.  I didn’t know why until I looked in the mirror.  I was pretty red. 

After everyone got back, we hung out in the air conditioned room, then went for ice cream.  Some of us hung out in the common area of the hostel and learned a card game from some Israeli newlyweds.

OH one other thing of note from Sunday, that even though I didn’t get to watch it.  Uruguay won the Copa America.  Soy celeste.

Since I was already pretty burnt, I knew I couldn’t go to the beach again really.  I found a mangrove tour to go on that was on a covered boat.  Stacy also did a tour, but she went kayaking.  On my tour there was a family from Panama.  They were really nice.  I got to see some more new things.

Mangroves

Lots of locals were out fishing on the holiday

After the tour, Stacy and I headed to the beach to meet the others.  I had given the others money to rent and umbrella and chairs at the beach.  So I hid from the sun and took a nap.  It was still really fun.  We ate lunch then headed back to Quepos to get cleaned up and ready to catch the bus.  Just after we got back to the hostel, it down poured.  We thought it would rain on us all weekend, but the weather was beautiful.  So we were really fortunate to have the rain hold off til we were ready to go.

We got home around 9 Monday night.  I took a shower and went to bed.