Re-Settling into San Jose After the Rural Stay

We just finished our 10th week here in Costa Rica (meaning we only have 5 left)! Hard to believe how quickly it's all gone by! Now that we're back from the rural stay portion of the program, our schedules are all a little different. Our Introduction to Costa Rica class continues through the end of the semester, as well as Neotropical Biodiversity and Conservation. In place of our Spanish Grammar/Conversation class, we're split into two groups. One group is taking a class about Latin American rock music, and the other is taking a class on horror, terror, and the fantastic in Costa Rican literature (I'm in that one).

Monday - Intro to Costa Rica 8:00-9:30

Tuesday - Literature 8:00-9:30, Biodiversity 10:30-12:00

Wednesday - Intro to Costa Rica 8:00-9:30

Thursday - Literature 8:00-9:30, Biodiversity 10:30-12:00

Friday - FREE!!!

Without Spanish class every morning, we have a lot more free time. We don't have any afternoon classes, and every Friday is absolutely free to travel and explore!

Our first day back from the rural stay was pretty exciting for everyone. A lot of us didn't have much internet or cell service (if any), so we were all eager to hear stories from everyone's experiences. Luckily we all gave our formal presentations on the third day back in classes, so everyone was able to share their experiences and hear about everyone else's. Overall I think everyone really enjoyed their experiences, but each one was really different. Adam worked with a fishing community; Mateo worked in a school and in his mom's association making shampoos, creams, and holistic medicines; Armando worked at a school and a cemetery painting murals, Megan worked with the women from Finmac (one of our earlier field trips) making chocolate and teaching English; Jessy worked in her family's restaurant and cabins to be rented out to tourists; Carly worked in a school teaching English; and the other Emily on the program also worked in a school. Despite the great experiences, I think everyone was glad to be back in familiar territory here in San Jose and get started with our new classes.

My first weekend back, I went to the feria (farmer's market) with my host mom. It's hard to understand without seeing/smelling/hearing it for yourself, but here are a few photos:

Last weekend we took our first trip to the beach!! Friday was a field trip, but we decided to stay another two days to hang out at the beach. On the way, we stopped at Tarcoles (where Adam worked with the fishermen) to see his project and meet the family. But first... crocodiles! There's a famous spot under a bridge near Tarcoles where the crocodiles like to hang out! I sort of thought the whole crocodile thing was a joke until I laid eyes on them. The pictures don't do it justice, but they were really big!

Fishing boats in Tarcoles

THE BEACH!!!! We stayed at Punta Leona on the Pacific coast (near Jaco, one of the more famous beaches). Punta Leona is a resort with hotel rooms, apartments, and time-share type things. We all shared an apartment for the weekend. The resort is absolutely beautiful (along with the beaches)!

One of the 2 pools (probably 50 meters from the beach itself)

We saw A LOT of wildlife, including raccoons! They're definitely not nocturnal in Costa Rica. And not afraid of humans in the least.

Playa Mantas, part of the Punta Leona resort - playa means beach

Playa Mantas

We tried to walk from Playa Mantas to Playa Blanca, but we had a little quicksand incident on the way.

Made it to Playa Blanca!!

Playa Blanca at low-ish tide

HUGE waves at Playa Blanca!

Punta Leona is also famous for it's work with Scarlet Macaws - they were all over at Playa Blanca!

Tried to get some actions shots, but the pictures don't do them justice

Another action shot

Sunset back at Playa Mantas

Some more wildlife! This cute little guy was just hanging out.

He got curious and decided to get a little closer...

Just trying to get a better view...

But really he was planning his attack! When all of the workers were gone, this monkey snuck down into the restaurant to steal all of the sugar packets!

All in all, we had a great time at the beach. The beach itself was absolutely beautiful, with plenty of big waves and warm sand to play in. Some of the highlights were:

Empanadas - One of the guys in our group decided he was going to make cheese empanadas for us for the whole weekend. We bought the supplies here in San Jose to take with us, but the empanadas just did not want to be made. A mix of sticky dough and a weirdly sticky pan meant we had to be creative. We tried to make a few in the toaster oven with no success. Then we tried to use the dough to make tortillas with no success. Then I held the balls of dough in front of our air conditioner for a while trying to dry them out. Eventually (at the end of day 2), we had some decent empanadas, and we even stumbled upon a new favorite! Banana empanadas!

The rest of the food - Or rather lack thereof. A couple of the guys brought a bunch of rice and beans to cook, but had some trouble with the cooking process (sensing a theme here?). Both were still crunchy after hours (or days in the case of the beans) of cooking. We were desperate enough for food that we ate it all anyway. I brought a box of cereal, and we had a couple bags of spaghetti, but the only other food we had was fruit. So. Much. Fruit. On the way to the beach we had stopped at a fruit stand with our teacher, and he bought us a ton of fruit to take with us: 1 watermelon, 2 papayas, a ton of mangoes, and I don't remember what else. It was just a whole lot of fruit, even for 8 hungry college students.

No electricity! The power went out mid-day on Saturday, and no one was really able to tell us why or when it would be fixed. We bought a few candles and prepared to have a candlelight dinner, but the lights came back on just in time. Since we already had the candles, we turned the lights back off, just to pretend.

THE ANIMALS - Definitely the most important part of the trip. On Friday, after the field trip part of the day, we went to the beach for the afternoon. We were waiting on the road to take the bus back to our house, when a monkey stopped by! He was hanging out up in a tree, so we put our bags down and walked a few feet away to get photos. We had our bags to our stuff for about 30 seconds, but when we turned around, a family of raccoons was digging through our stuff!! We're pretty sure all the animals had gotten together and planned the whole thing.
     The next morning, we ate breakfast in a restaurant at the resort. It was basically a series of decks with roofs, but no walls. Everyone at the restaurant was enjoying the wildlife and taking photos, so we decided to stay a while longer to watch (and eat as much as we could since we didn't want to pay for lunch). We had great views of monkeys, raccoons, and pizotes. They're sort of like a cross between a raccoon and an anteater with little pig noses (trust me, they're actually super cute). Unfortunately, when everyone else started the leave the restaurant, the animals got a little more brave - although it probably didn't help that one of the girls on our trip was extremely determined to coax them to our table with food. They got closer and closer, jumping on the tables and chairs a few feet over from us. It was all fun and exciting until a cute little monkey showed us his fangs and hissed at us. Naturally, we all jumped up and ran away screaming. We turned around when we got about 20 feet away to see animals around, under, and on our table eating the leftovers. We are positive that attack was a planned effort.
     That afternoon, we decided to bring a few mangoes with us to snack on at the beach. We left our bags and towels on the beach while we were in the water. At one point I turned toward our stuff to see a handful of pizotes digging through it. We all tried to run to our stuff, but it's actually really hard to run in the ocean while big waves are hitting you from the side. By the time we finally got to our stuff, the pizotes had eaten all of the fruit. There were a few people sitting near our stuff, but they only lazily clapped trying to scare the animals off. So much for the mangoes. Then the last day, the monkey in the restaurant stole all of the sugar packets, and a few raccoons were walking by our feet under the table. I think I've had enough animal experiences to last me a while now, but something tells me they probably don't feel the same. Despite all of the craziness, we really did have a blast at the beach.



This past week has been really busy. A woman from the ACM offices in Chicago (I think she's the vice president?) spent the week with us, along with a handful of professors from colleges in the US, to learn more about the program. They observed all of our classes and gave a few presentations on their own work (like the history of the Spanish language in different countries, and the role of women in Dominican Republican stories). We took a field trip with all of the professors to Llano Bonito de Leon Cortes (where Mateo lived during the rural stay portion) to learn about the coffee production industry. Mateo said it's a very beautiful area, but we were caught in fog/clouds, so we weren't able to see much.

It was pretty interesting to be with the visiting professors for their first time in Costa Rica. I think they all had a good time, but to top it all off, we had another big earthquake!! This was on 6.6, and in the exact same spot as the big on in September (Guanacaste, Northern Pacific coast). After the 7.6 quake in September, this wasn't too scary, but everyone had funny stories to tell the next day. I was sitting on my bed doing homework, and I thought the movement was just the dog moving around in my bed until my host mom told me to get in the doorway. She said she's always more concerned about her chandelier during earthquakes than anything else. Another student wasn't sure if the earthquake was even real, since her family didn't really react to it. And one of our teachers didn't even realize there was an earthquake until he saw it on the news! It's really interesting how different the earthquakes can feel to different people depending on where they are. Sometimes you don't even really feel it, but you can see everything around you shaking, so you know it must be an earthquake. We went to the Children's Museum yesterday (so much fun) and rode on an earthquake simulator. The guy said it was simulating a 6.7 earthquake, but it was so much worse than any earthquake I've ever felt here. My host mom was telling me that the magnitude doesn't mean very much to people here, because two earthquakes of the same magnitude can feel totally different. She said it all depends on the type of movement (side to side, circular, up and down).

We're all enjoying our time here, but starting to get a little anxious that the time is going by so quickly. We've only got 4 weekends left for traveling, but a list of at least 10 places we'd like to visit. Not sure how we can work around that one!

Rural Stay Pt. 3

I’m back in San Jose! It’s hard to believe how quickly those three weeks went. I’m putting all of my photos on my computer while I write. I hadn’t realized how much I did in San Luis until now (and there were a handful of times when I didn’t have my camera to document the many things we did every day). To recap the last week:

On Sunday we went to yet another church to see the First Communion of Doña Faynier’s nephew. This was my first time at the church in San Luis. Not only did I get the see the First Communion of a bunch of the kids I’ve gotten to know, but it also seemed like I knew just about everyone at the church. I’m pretty sure everyone was related either to Doña Faynier or to one of my students (and I only had 10 or so). After the First Communion, we went up the mountain to Doña Faynier’s sister’s house for a celebration, which does indeed have an incredible view of the countryside. In fact, every time I walked or drove past that house I wondered what it would be like to live there. Turns out Doña Faynier spends a lot of time there! We were going to go to the Poas Volcano, but as soon as we got to the party it started to pour! I’m not sure I’ve ever seen rain that consistently intense. Everyone was saying it might be a temporeal (translates to never-ending rain - apparently it’s pretty common in October to have 10 consecutive days of rain). Doña Faynier told me that one time it rained for a student’s entire rural stay. She never saw the sun once in San Luis! Apparently the worst part was that the laundry doesn’t dry for 3 weeks. The student got a kick out of ironing her clothes dry or cooking them dry on the woodstove. Luckily, I had better luck and the rain calmed down that evening. We spent the evening at home making tortillas. I’ll admit, I’m almost a pro by now. I hope I can buy the right supplies in the US to make them.

We spent Monday at home, but took a couple of quick field trips. First we walked for a couple of hours to see… a tomato plant. Not a factory. The living plant. I thought we were going to see the tomato farm and take a tour or something. Nope! We got to the edge of the farm and Doña Faynier said, “Here we are! Isn’t this a cool plant? I’m sure it doesn’t exist the US. This is probably your only chance to see one!” I had no idea how to respond. Luckily Lucia was with us for the walk and she changed the subject very quickly. In the afternoon we went to Grecia to see one of Doña Faynier’s friend’s stores. Carolina owns a macrobiotica (natural health store). We saw the store as well as her lab where she makes everything with a team of about 15 people. One of the guys working in the store took me around to show me the different products. It was like the tomato plant all over again. He kept saying things like “Here, this is a bottle of dried oregano. I’m sure you’ve never seen this before, right?” When I told him that we have oregano in the US too, he said, “Oh, well it must be really expensive though, right? It’s better here because it’s cheap.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him that my mom has been growing oregano in her garden for as long as I can remember. That night was the last of my English classes. The kids all said they learned a lot more in 3 weeks with me than in several years of English classes at their school. One of them brought me a few roses to thank me for the classes. It was a pretty great feeling to know I actually helped them.

On Tuesday, we spent the whole day in the Association. That particular day we made shampoo from azul de mata (no idea what that translates to in English – literally “blue of kill” but I don’t think that exists), and some different types of soaps. I spent most of Tuesday observing and talking to the women about their work. Right now they’re working on designing new labels for their products. Right now their labels are in Spanish and English to appeal to tourists, but the English parts have a lot of errors. Since there’s no internet here, I’m going to bring some of the labels back with me to translate, and then send them the translations in a week or two.

The main production room at the Association

Storage room - it's amazing how empty these shelves look after two days making shampoo and soap

The view from the Association building overlooking their giant garden/mini farm

Preparing all of the plants for an herbal shampoo

I woke up on Wednesday with a lot of energy because… temblor!!! We had an earthquake! Temblor basically means little earthquake (this one was 5.2), but it felt pretty big to me. I woke up to a shaking bed and watching all of my stuff rattle off of the table in my room. Everyone else in my family acted like nothing happened, but I was pretty startled to say the least. It was a good thing I had energy, because we spent the whole day cooking. I thought we were cooking for some reason like a party, but it turns out we just cooked for the sake of cooking. We made bizcocho (baked balls of cheese and about a dozen different forms of milk/cream), tamales mudos (a tamale filled with beans), and empanadas filled with cheese and jelly (not together though). I think I ate more on Wednesday than I do on any given Thanksgiving, and I didn’t even eat the tamales mudos! Doña Faynier dumped a whole bunch of beef and chicken flavoring into the dough for the tamales. I explained I didn’t want to eat one because the flavoring is made from the animal fat, she jumped right in to explain to me that it’s all some sort of conspiracy and there’s actually no animal fat in the chicken flavoring. It’s all a lie. Some guy at the market told her so, so it has to be true. We just ended up agreeing to disagree on that one.

Lucia proudly displaying her dad's first coffee harvest of the season

On Thursday we went back to the association where we made an herbal shampoo and more soaps. I spent most of the day cutting labels and packing all of the products to sell. In two or three hours I think I cut almost 300 labels. Then I moved at least 200 bottles of shampoo, followed by 200 bars of soap into their storage room. It was a really long day… As we were leaving I asked Doña Faynier if I could buy a few of their products to bring back to the states. She told me to pick out what I wanted and I would pay later. When it finally came time to pay, all of the women said they needed to have a talk with me. Everyone was really serious and I had no idea what was going on. Apparently the very serious news was that they had all talked and decided to give me the products for free, as a gift for all of my work there. I kept trying to explain that it wasn’t for me, it was for friends and family in the US, but they insisted. Now that I’ve been to Sarchi and I have the gifts from the Association, I’m fairly certain I won’t have room to bring everything back. Or my bags will be overweight. I’ll need to figure that out…

Friday, my last full day in San Luis, was absolutely perfect. I think it was the most beautiful morning in the whole three weeks. I spent the morning packing and playing with Lucia, which turned out to be the same thing. It was a slow process, because every item I needed to pack had to be “bought” from Lucia’s “store” before I could move on to the next item. Later in the morning, Doña Faynier and I met her son Jeffery in Grecia to go to the Poas Volcano! It was about an hour or an hour and a half drive, but it was really beautiful. Apparently it’s pretty rare to get a good view of the volcano because of all of the rain and clouds, but we had a perfect day. As we were taking pictures at the edge of the crater, we had a big surprise – another earthquake! We later learned that this one was 5.3, but it was a pretty long one. I definitely do not like earthquakes, and I absolutely definitely do not like earthquakes while standing at the edge of a crater looking down into a volcano. I’ll be perfectly happy to never have that experience again. There was a fence, but it was basically just a couple of logs that wouldn’t actually help if we were in trouble. Jeffery and I took a walk/hike to the nearby lake. I’ve been missing getting to walk outside in the fresh air and the smell of fall, but the 30 minute walk took care of that. I’m convinced that it was the exact same temperature at the lake as it should be on a crisp October day. There were no fall leaves to look at, but the rainforest is pretty cool too, I guess. On the drive down, we stopped every mile or so to buy strawberries or cheese from someone sitting on the side of the road. We ended up with 3 kilos of strawberries and 7 different kinds of cheese. We ate lunch at a little restaurant recommended to us by one of the cheese guys. Everything on the menu had meat, but they made me a special vegetarian plate that was absolutely delicious: avocado, salad, cauliflower, plantains, rice, beans, and French fries. The view from the restaurant only added to the perfect lunch. We might as well have been in the middle of The Sound of Music. On the drive home, we got stopped by a bunch of traffic. A big semi truck was on its side in the middle of the road. We got to watch as a couple of tractors and bulldozers attached chains to the truck and pulled it back upright. Once the truck was ready to drive off, everyone in the street started cheering and high-fiving each other. During every commercial break, there are little animated motivational clips about “community” and “responsibility.” I’m pretty sure we saw the one for “teamwork” in the making. Friday ended with the perfect surprise. An early birthday party! One by one my students showed up to the house. I knew we didn’t have a class scheduled, but none of them could tell me why they were there. I didn’t even pick up on it when Lucia started singing happy birthday to herself. She’s making stuff up all the time, I figured she was just being herself. All of my students sang Happy Birthday to me in English and brought me flowers and chocolate. We all had dinner and cake together, and they were all excited to show me how much they’d practiced their English. I can’t believe how many times I heard them practice the words “Happy Birthday,” even after the song. After they left, Doña Faynier, Jenny, and Lucia had a few special gifts from me. Lucia and Jenny gave me a small framed photo of Lucia with the words “To my Aunt Emily, from Lucia – I love you” (in Spanish of course) and a small ceramic doll. Doña Faynier gave me a small wooden box and wooden earrings. In all of the craziness of living in San Luis, I had almost forgotten that my birthday was coming up, so it was all a really nice surprise.

View from the church in Grecia

Inside the church in Grecia - it's really famous because it's walls are only made of sheets of metal (compared to all of the concrete/wood churches)

Poas Volcano

Clouds/rain moving in! Pictures don't capture the hugeness of this (or the steepness of the cliff in front of me)

Next to the volcano - maybe an old crater?

Nearby lake (almost positive this is an old crater)

Jeffery was determined to take as many photos for me as possible, but almost all of them were blurry

Surprise party!

This picture makes me laugh every time I look at it. I really felt like I was at a 10 year old's birthday party, complete with screaming, laughing, and crying children (all at once)

All in all, I had a pretty amazing rural stay. I'm still realizing all of the little differences between my family/house here and my family/house in San Luis de Grecia. I think it may be a while before I completely absorb everything from the rural stay. Today was quite the culture shock for me. My host mom and I had breakfast (I didn't realize until now how much I missed her/our cooking), went to the Feria (farmer's market - WAAAY more exciting here than in Grecia with people shouting and singing and throwing free food to you from across the stalls), and we went to walmart to pick up a few things we both needed. We spent a long time there, so I was able to really take in the millions of options there. Life in the city is certainly a different experience!

Rural Stay Pt. 2

I’m already finishing up my second week in San Luis de Grecia. Sometimes it feels like I’ve been here for months, but looking back it’s gone by really quickly. On Saturday we ended up going to Sarchi. It’s a very big tourist attraction, but we didn’t see very much of the town. We did, however, stop at the famous market where I was able to make a big dent in my shopping list for Christmas. We got caught in a big rainstorm, but as we were running for cover I think I caught a glimpse of one of Sarchi’s claims to fame: The world’s biggest oxcart. The oxcart is one of Costa Rica’s national symbols. It sounds sort of lame, but the ones here are really pretty – either bright blue or red with colorful designs on ever side. I think we were close to the oxcart, but it was raining so hard I’m not sure if I really saw it, and we didn’t really have it in us to go out of our way to see it. Instead we went to my host dad’s parents’ house (I think). His sister died almost 10 years ago, but Saturday was her birthday. The whole family came to the house to celebrate. The family hung a portrait of her surrounded by candles and flowers. The family read the Stations of the Cross and prayed the Rosary together. It was a pretty somber afternoon, but was followed by a lot of food and conversation. In just two weeks I have met so many family members I’ve just decided to stop trying to learn names. It’s amazing how huge the families are here, and how involved the whole family is with everyone else in the family.

On Sunday, I was re-introduced to Doña Faynier’s side of the family. It was her niece’s seventh birthday, and the entire family showed up yet again (of course). Parties here are not just an hour or two or three. They’re a whole day. Doña Faynier and I went to her mom’s house after mass, so we probably got there around 11 or 12. By then there were already at least 15 people at the house. People came and went all day, and we didn’t end up leaving until almost 9 that night. Not much happened while we were there either. There was the usual piñata, cake, and presents, but the rest of the time was just spent talking to whoever happened to be around. It was interesting too that most of the people at a 7 year old’s birthday party were over the age of 50.

We didn’t do much on Monday. After a busy weekend, Doña Faynier decided it would be best to rest up, especially because Tuesday and Wednesday would be extremely busy. I honestly can’t remember what we did that day, which makes me think I probably just spent the whole day helping around the house and playing with Lucia. Every day we get better and better at communicating. I’ve finally figured out that if I really can’t figure out what she’s talking about, it’s most likely because she’s just making stuff up out of thin air. Last night, for example, she started talking about how great it was that I was eating my coffee tortilla (in case anyone else is as confused as I was, coffee tortillas definitely don’t exist – I had to ask Lucia’s mom Jenny about that one to be sure).

On Tuesday we began our marathon of tamales. The mystery of the pig from the week before finally started coming together for me. We spent all day on Tuesday cleaning the giant plantain leaves that would be used to pack the tamales. It was simple work, but I couldn’t believe how tired I was at the end of it. For each leaf (and these leaves are GIANT) we had to use a rag to wash all of the dirt off of both sides, then cut out the spine down the middle, and then cut them all into the right size for tamales. It was pretty boring, so I started doing some math with the leaves while we worked. I’m pretty sure I alone washed and cut over 500 leaves. Again, remember that these leaves are giant – maybe 3 feet long on average. While we were working on the leaves, a few other women worked with the pig in the kitchen. I thought they were cooking it, but I might have been wrong, because the smell didn’t kick in until Wednesday…

On Wednesday, everything finally kicked into full gear. We spent the first three hours or so in the kitchen with a dozen other people cutting and cooking the meat, cooking the vegetables and rice, and mixing together the masa (cornmeal dough) for the tamales. I figured even if I didn’t work directly with the pig, I could help with the veggies and dough, but I was so wrong. Literally everything in the kitchen was coated in a thick layer of pig juice, and everything was prepared with more parts of the pig than I could have ever imagined. I’ve cooked with masa before to make tortillas. All you do is add water and stir – very simple. I figured we were just going to do the same thing, but make a giant supply of it. Instead of water, they used – actually, I have no idea what it even was. Pig juice really is the best way to describe it - liquid pig juice and solid pig fat, both poured in by the bucketful, and that was followed by about a thousand chicken bouillon cubes. The veggies were a similar story. Instead of simply steaming them with water, more pig juice was used. The worst part of all of this was the smell. It was amazing to me how much it smelled like 9^th grade fetal pig dissections. We all thought that the 3^rd floor science hallway was uninhabitable for 2 whole weeks because of the strong smell of the chemicals, but it turns out that dead pig has an extremely distinct smell. While we were cooking the meat I kept trying to figure out what the smell reminded me of. Once I made the connection to 9^th grade Biology, it was all I could think about. Finally, we were mostly done cooking, and we moved everything out into a bigger room to put the tamales together. It’s a fairly simple process. Two plantain leaves are laid on top of each other at different angles. The masa is spooned into the center, followed by rice, meat, bell pepper, carrots, and cilantro. Then the leaves are rolled up into a little package, and tied together with some sort of string-like plant. Each package is cooked for about half an hour in boiling water so that the masa solidifies around the rest of the food. Again, this should have been fairly easy work, until you consider that we made 548 tamales, and that’s not counting all of the ones that broke somewhere in the process and had to be remade. It was nice work because I was able to get to know a lot of the other people there, but I truly hope that I never ever have to make tamales ever again. Or at the very least, I’ll leave out all of the pig juice. We started working at 7:30 on Wednesday and didn’t get home until at least 4 that afternoon. It took two showers to get the smell of pig off of me…

It took a team of about 5 people to place all of the ingredients on each tamale

Wrapping the tamales

This is just a small glimpse of the finished product - multiply by about a thousand and you'll get the right idea

On Thursday we went to Atenas for some sort of meeting with a bunch of agricultural groups and the vice minister of agriculture. It took a while to get there, especially since everyone in the car thought they knew where it was (everyone thought it was somewhere different), and it turns out everyone was wrong. We ended up driving down 4 different “roads” until we ended up at a dead end in the middle of someone’s farm or the jungle in general. The dead ends came when the plants and rocks got too big to keep driving. Of course, there was nowhere to turn around, so we had to back out of all of these dead ends, a couple of which went on for a few miles. Eventually we got there, there being a famous coffee plantation. The meeting was in a conference room, but I was able to watch all of the work outside through the windows. I tried to pay attention to the meeting, but it was so hot I had to put all of my energy into sitting perfectly still so I wouldn’t make myself hotter. Everyone there looked sort of miserable after the first hour, and the meeting ended up going on for another 3. The speakers were getting so hot and tired that they stumbled on their words and talked really slowly, which made it feel it really wouldn’t ever end. As painful as the meeting was, it was pretty interesting that the vice minister of agriculture takes the time to meet with all of these teeny tiny groups to talk about any problems their having and find solutions that work for everyone. The vice minister actually knew everyone there by name, even though most of the groups are as small if not smaller than Doña Faynier’s – 6 or 8 women making soap and shampoo a few days a week in a tiny house at the top of a mountain. At the end of the meeting, each person was given a free bag of coffee from the plantation. I’m not sure if I was supposed to take it, since I wasn’t actually supposed to be at the meeting, but Doña Faynier didn’t stop me. The drive home was just as eventful as the drive there, with everyone getting each other confused about which way to turn since it was all backwards.

Friday was another day spent mostly in the house. Since there wasn’t much to do at the house, I took the bus up to the top of the mountain so that I could walk back to the house and take photos along the way. I think my family thought I was crazy (the walk took about an hour for me, but my host mom said it takes her almost two), but it was really nice. On the way back, I stopped at Cristian’s market to use the computer. I was just going to spend a few minutes there, but deleting all of the trash in my email took almost half an hour alone. Then I had to respond to a few emails that were actually somewhat urgent (different applications for jobs and committees at CC, which are starting to become a mess since I can’t actually go to meetings or interviews until January). I spent the afternoon at the house with Lucia, and in the evening we went to Grecia to buy fruits and vegetables at the Feria (basically a farmer’s market). I went to the Feria once in San Jose and couldn’t believe how much food there was that I had never seen before, but this last time I was able to identify mostly everything there. On top of fresh produce, we also bought some tortillas and bread. All of that fresh food has made for a few especially delicious meals in the last couple of days.

The main road through the middle of San Luis

Mountains in the clouds!

One of the many many many farms nearby

Farther down the road

Lucia and Nani

 On Saturday, we didn’t have much work to do, and Doña Faynier was caught up with all of the housework, so we decided to take a day trip to Zarcero to see a famous park. I had no idea how complicated the trip would end up being. Jeffery drove us partway down the mountain on his way to work, but then we had to catch a taxi to keep going. We ended up sharing the taxi with a few other people, which meant that the taxi couldn’t actually take us where we needed to go. We got out and walked a ways to the right bus stop, where we waited for almost half an hour to take the bus to Naranjo. In Naranjo we searched around for a while for the next bus stop, and ended up waiting on the sidewalk for almost and hour for the bus to Zarcero (which was already full, so we sat on the stairs for the 60 minute bus ride). When we got to Zarcero, I couldn’t believe it was worth the trek to get there. The park was the size of a small city block in front of the local church. The park was interesting, with each tree trimmed into the shape of a different animal. Unfortunately I couldn’t identify anything other than a bird and a dinosaur. The park took about 10 minutes to walk through (slowly), and then we hopped back on the bus to head home. Cristian had to pick something up in Sarchi, so we ended up getting off the bus there to look at the giant oxcart ride home in Cristian’s car. I’m glad we went, especially since there wasn’t any work to do at the house, but I really can’t believe how long we spent getting there and back just to walk around for 10 minutes.

Tree arches in Zarcero

Weird faces of something resembling monkey in Zarcero

It's a dinosaur!! I think.

Church at Zarcero

Inside of the church

The Biggest Oxcart in the World!!!

There are kids in this photo to see the relative size

Grecia Feria (farmer's market)

Today is the First Communion for Doña Faynier’s nephew, the grandson of one of the women from the Association, and two of the kids that have been coming for English classes at the house. So far I’ve been to mass at two different churches, and today we will go to yet another church. After the mass I think we are going to lunch at Doña Faynier’s sister’s house, which apparently has a really great view of the countryside. Depending on what time we finish, Jeffery might be able to drive us to see the Poas Volcano. It’s pretty close, but the roads aren’t direct at all. He said it takes an hour or two to get there, even though it’s just on the other side of our mountain. I really hope we get to go. I doubt I’ll make it out this way again after I go back to San Jose, so this is probably my only chance to see it.

The tentative plan for the rest of the week is:

Monday – Visit the natural products store of one of the women who works at the Association

Tuesday – Work at the Association

Wednesday – Work at the Association

Thursday – Work at the Association

Friday – Hang out at the house

Saturday – Return the San Jose

And somewhere in there I’ll be teaching a few more English classes to the neighborhood kids.

Another photo of my students