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!
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| 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)!
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| One of the 2 pools (probably 50 meters from the beach itself) |
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| We saw A LOT of wildlife, including raccoons! They're definitely not nocturnal in Costa Rica. And not afraid of humans in the least. |
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| Playa Mantas, part of the Punta Leona resort - playa means beach |
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| Playa Mantas |
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| We tried to walk from Playa Mantas to Playa Blanca, but we had a little quicksand incident on the way. |
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| Made it to Playa Blanca!! |
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| Playa Blanca at low-ish tide |
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| HUGE waves at Playa Blanca! |
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| Punta Leona is also famous for it's work with Scarlet Macaws - they were all over at Playa Blanca! |
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| Tried to get some actions shots, but the pictures don't do them justice |
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| Another action shot |
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| Sunset back at Playa Mantas |
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| Some more wildlife! This cute little guy was just hanging out. |
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| He got curious and decided to get a little closer... |
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| Just trying to get a better view... |
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| 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! |
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!
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