Baking Night!

Although I have made a few friends in my American Institute of Foreign Study group or AIFS, I have found that most of my close friends are actually independents. Due to the fact that I was the only AIFS person to be placed in a house by myself, and my house is further than anyone else's from Veritas, it was easy to fall into another group. And I could not be happier :) On Friday night, I was invited to an all girl's baking night at Bethany and Kalifa's house. It is always cool to meet other Tica families and to see how they interact with their host kids. There were about ten of us crammed into the modestly sized kitchen. We baked two batches of cookies and a fruit pizza. Of course, we hit a few road blocks along the way including altitude temperature adjustment (since we are much higher above sea level than at home). We also had to figure out metric and Centigrade conversions. The Tica mother made us the most delicious cold milk chocolate drink. It was like nothing I ever tasted before. She taught me how to make it, so hopefully I will be able to recreate it when I get home. No promises... At one point we realized that we were one stick of butter short. Bethany, her host dad, and I took a walk to a nearby corner store to pick up a stick of butter.  It was a great night, but Melissa and I had to leave a little early so that we could pack for our next adventure.

Project Outside of Campus

On Thursday, I went on a field trip to the San Pedro Mall during my Intercultural Communications and Competence class to secretly observe Ticos during their lunchtime. We went to the mall food court and ordered food to try to mask the fact that we were actively observing and taking notes. I found this interesting (even though it was rather awkward...) because I did the same activity while in a mall in Alexandria, Egypt. I did not formally take notes in Egypt, but I noticed a number of similarities. Both cultures are more collectivistic, polychronic, and high context. In both cases, I also noticed that the malls were actually less culturally divers than those I have been to in the states...particularly in bigger cities. In Egypt, most of the people I saw were either Egyptian or perhaps a student from Jordan. Here is Costa Rica, except for my fellow observers, most people were from Costa Rica. This is one of the bigger malls in San José, the most culturally diverse place in the country. One of the biggest physical differences I noticed was the amount of touching that went on during a typical conversation. It was enough to make any American feel a little awkward, but it is completely normal in a Latin American culture. I have just now finally gotten used to being kissed and kissing strangers on the cheek whenever I meet them. Other than that, I did not notice a lot of outstanding differences. Many of the stores were similar, except that everything seems outrageously priced when you first look at it. I guess that's what happens when the exchange rate is 500 to 1. I am sure that there would have been even more cultural differences in a mall outside of the capital city. I hope to visit another one soon.

San Pedro

On Wednesday, I took a break from writing essays to go on a field trip with my Tica grandmother Cecilia. My Tica sister Sophia calls her "Tita" and my Tica grandpa Herbert "Tito." Tita was going to show Melissa and I how to get to Melissa's internship in San Pedro. I was surprised that she crossed such a busy highway on the next street over from my street her entire life. It was nuts!

The bus to San Pedro comes every half hour and only costs 200 colones or a little less than 50 cents. The place where Melissa is going to work during March and April is called Fundación Mujer or Women's Foundation. I am also hoping to spend some time volunteering there during the month of March. The Fundación has set up a recycling program in the neighborhood to collect materials for single mother's and poor women in the community to set up their own businesses making crafts. They hold daily classes in setting up business and how to make the crafts. We saw baskets, waste cans, bookmarks, purses, backpacks, vases, and a whole bunch of other things made 100% out of recycled materials from the community. I am really excited to spend some time there, and it will be a wonderful place to practice my Spanish in a different way.

It is always fun hanging out at my grandparent's house because they do not speak a word of English. If I come across a word that I do not know during conversation, I cannot just resort to saying ?Comó se dice...?  or How do you say...? Instead I have to try to describe the word I am thinking of in other Spanish words. Tita has also made lunch and dinner for me a couple of times. She is a wonderful cook. Herbert likes to talk  to me about anything and everything. He's been telling me since I got here that it would get really hot, dry, and the wind would go away after the first of February. Well, it is March 1, and it poured all last night. I was freezing today! Oh well, maybe Herbert did not take global climate change into account...

El Día de San Valentín

 After returning from Montezuma, I was pleasantly surprised to find a package of white roses from my host mother's business laying on my bed. Two of the flowers had "I Love You" written on them and the other said, "Te Amo." They smelled amazing! Everybody I was around on Valentine's Day were a little bummed about spending it in Costa Rica. My Valentine's Day turned out to be pretty cool. Thanks Tyler :)

Montezuma!

 On Friday February 11, I embarked on my first self-planned excursion so far. Every other excursion I have been on has either been associated with American Institute of Foreign Study or a class field trip. My friends Emily, Yaa, Melissa, and I planned every aspect of this trip from our bus route, hostel arrangements, to food. We chose Montezuma because it is not a very mainstream or touristy place to go in Costa Rica. It is located on the Pacific Coast on the Nicoya Peninsula, and it is mostly a surfer town that is famous for its hiking trails and three waterfalls.

On Friday morning, Melissa and I decided to test out a Costa Rican McDonald’s breakfast. We left our houses at 4:15am, and got pancakes at the 24 hour Mc Donald’s near our houses. From there we caught a cab to the Coca Cola bus station in downtown San José. The bus station does not sell tickets to Montezuma in advance, because they want to give tourists a chance to get tickets. Unfortunately, that makes it a bit more difficult for University students to get tickets in advance. So, we aimed to arrive at the station at 5:15 in the morning for a 6:00 departure. We were just in time to get in the front of the line. Had we arrived even five or ten minutes later, we would have had trouble getting on the bus. In order to survive in Costa Rica, you have to be pretty pushy. We watched a couple of American backpackers not get on the bus because they were not willing to push to the front of the line. Their loss…

The bus drove about three hours to Puntarenas. From Puntarenas, we got on a ferry to cross the bay between mainland Costa Rica and the Nicoya Peninsula. The ferry ride was about an hour long and the cost was included in the cost of our bus tickets. We were able to see a number of uninhabited islands, jumping fish, and coastal birds.

One of the islands in the Nicoya bay. 

After the ferry, we drove another hour to a town about 20 km from Montezuma. We then switched buses again and experienced a rather bumpy, dusty ride over a mountain to get to Montezuma. They dropped us off right on the beach, but in order to get to our hostel, we had to walk up a rather steep hill. Our hostel was called Luz en el Cielo that means “Light in the sky”. It was a rather cool place that was run by an American beach bum and his friends. We had the opportunity to meet a number of people from across the globe including Great Britain, Switzerland, Denmark, Germany, Australia, and the Netherlands. There were four rooms with a bunch of bunkbeds, two bathrooms, a kitchen, the office, and a whole bunch of hammocks. The hostel was located on the side of the mountain in the rain forest overlooking the ocean. At night we could hear the Howler monkeys. During the day, one of the white faced monkeys and a tropical bird tried to steal our food off the picnic table! 

Crazy bird eating food off my plate.

The monkey before trying to steal our lunch.

The monkey, after trying to steal our lunch.

The weather in Montezuma was the hottest that I had experienced up until this point, so, we were very eager to go to the beach. The guide books had warned us about the riptides in Montezuma. Frankly, we have been warned about riptides everywhere we have gone. Due to the temperature and geography or Costa Rica, riptides are notoriously bad. Tourists drown every week, there are person missing signs all over the place, and it hardly makes the news. There are not lifeguards at most of the beaches like there are in the states, so every time you get into the ocean you are taking your life into your own hands. I have a great respect for the power of the ocean, and I generally do not go in over my shoulders. However, Montezuma's waves were definitely humbling. Melissa and I were enjoying some good old fashion wave jumping when one wave came that was stronger than all the others. We both got hit pretty hard and flipped over a couple of times despite my attempt to dive under the wave. Once it had passed, we both found that we were no longer able to touch the bottom and were being pulled out to sea. Luckily we were both strong swimmers and I knew a thing or two about riptides. We were able to successfully swim out of it, but we never went back in past our waists after that point. Apparently there had been a strong earthquake in Chile that day, and there was a tsunami warning for our area. No one told us, but we would like to think that we survived a tiny tsunami...who knows? 

Cliff Jumping...what else?

We went on a number of walks. Of course we had to check out the famous Montezuma waterfalls, and we decided to go with our Danish and British friends that we had met. The waterfalls were gorgeous, and we were able to swim and cliff jump while we were there. In the evening, we took a walk on the beach to see the sunset. Of course, any sunset on the Pacific is supposed to be gorgeous, but due to the fact that we were on the peninsula, we were told that the sunrises are better. We met up with a local Tico who walked us to a different beach where one of the rivers flows into the ocean. There was a cool monument made out of colored rocks there. We did have a little trouble getting rid of the Tico afterwards. We ended up losing him in town.

This is the entrance to the protected area.
We were not sure exactly what the rock art was about,
 but it was pretty cool.

This is where the river meets the ocean.

All four of us were hoping for a cheap weekend. The hostel and the bus ticket were not too steep. We cooked most of our own meals in the kitchen, in fact, I spent more money on water than anything else. Like I said, it was really hot there. Melissa and I did go out for one meal, and I had the best crape and jugo de cas ever! After dark, we hung out with some of the other people at the hostel. I found out that it is very easy to fall asleep in a hammock, but in the morning I had a good amount of mosquito bites. For the second night, the hostel owner put up a mosquito net for me. 

Melissa is on the left and Emily on the right.

Overall, the trip was a huge success. I had so much fun planning everything for my own trip!

This is the sunrise we saw right before returning Sunday morning.

Blog Catch Up Day- 127 Hours

First of all, I would like to apologize for the untimeliness of all of these blogposts. I have gotten "a little" behind, because I have been filling out an extensive scholarship application and working on a number of research projects for my classes here in San José.

Wednesday February 9

I had the opportunity to take advantage of yet another half off movies Wednesday here in San José. Every Wednesday, at all of the cinemas in the city, everyone only pays half the price to see any movie. I often go to the movie theatre in San Pedro near the University of Costa Rica. Movies are usually four dollars. On Wednesdays they are 2 dollars or 1,000 colones (1 mil). After my Documentary Appreciation class ended at 8:00, a whole bunch of us started walking to San Pedro to make the 9:10 showing of 127 Hours. Usually we take a public bus from near Veritas to San Pedro, but we wanted the experience of walking.... it's a bit of a hike to San Pedro.

Once we got to the theatre, we purchased the famous sweet popcorn that all of the movie theaters sell here. It is a bit of a mixture between caramel popcorn and kettle corn, and it is amazing. Luckily, 127 Hours has not been out long enough to be dubbed in Spanish. We watched it in English with subtitles in Spanish. As much as I love the experience of watching films in Spanish, I think I will stick to the animated ones for now. 127 Hours was rather gruesome, and I would not recommend it to those who have weak stomachs. I will definitely think twice before I ever go caving alone.

Wednesday was also a happy day, because I found out that I will be working at Camp Kirchenwald again this summer as a counselor :)

Just another school week in San José

The rest of the week was a little bit less dramatic as Superbowl Sunday. My host parents own a business called Speaking Roses Costa Rica. They print messages and pictures onto roses which they arrange for weddings, birthdays, Mother's Day, and especially Valentine's Day. They were rather busy all week getting ready for the big day. Sophia had her first day of school. She is four years old and not quite in Kindergarden, but she leaves for school extremely early in the morning and returns after lunchtime. Sophia and I watched a couple of Disney movies in Spanish throughout the week. I watched Beauty and the Beast twice and Mulan II.

Melissa and I also got a chance to watch Pocohantas in Spanish from Sophia's personal collection. However, the songs were not quite the same in Spanish. Melissa and I are keeping up with our daily workouts for the most part, but it is almost midterm time for our elective classes, so we are quite busy. During the week we went food shopping for our lunches and planned for our weekend trip to Montezuma. One day, we walked to Parque de La Paz, a huge park about a mile away from our houses. La Paz includes two big lakes with ducks and running paths around them. There is a hill in the middle of the park where kids like to go sledding. Of course there is no snow here, but they use cardboard and rubber mats to go sledding in the grass. At the top of the hill there are some benches where we could pretty much see all of San José. I am going to have to go back and take some pictures on a clearer day.

One day, we took a long walk to downtown San José. I have been downtown a number of times, but this was one of the warmest days yet. We walked around trying to find the food market that I had been to before. Unfortunately, my awful sense of direction was of no help to us. We will have to try again next week. We were able to find the Artisan Market that sells a lot of beautiful things for descent prices. There were a number of cute coffee shops, ice cream parlors, book shops, museums, churches, and other things to look at downtown.