La Pura Vida

Late Night Adventures

Jesse — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:07:49 +0000

Oh man, once again it’s been quite some time since my last post, and once again i’m posting in the early hours of the morning. Tonight, however, I have not been carousing around San José—in fact the only time I left the house today was to go buy a pack of cigarettes up the street at Mas X Menos (Mas por Menos). However, I’ve been feeling a touch of the insomnia again of recent, the old friend I thought I’d left behind a year ago, and I haven’t been able to get to sleep tonight. So, I was sitting here on the computer playing video games and watching tv shows online in an alternate sort of fashion. So, where, you might ask, does the adventure part of all this come in? I’ll tell you. It comes in about 45 minutes ago, which would be about 3 am, when I stepped out into the garage to have a cigarette. The garage has the double function of only entrance into the house, but is not wholly closed in, the garage “door” is really more like a big moving iron gate. Anyway, the main door to the house from the garage is a big, solid hunk of wood, and there’s a funny thing about doors to the outside in Costa Rica in that none of them have a knob. Instead all that you see on the outside is the key hole making it to where opening a door like this requires a key. I’m sure some of you might see where this is going already. Anyway, when I step outside to smoke I close the door, but make sure it’s not closed shut, instead the latch is just resting against the door jamb. As I’m smoking however I notice that it’s quite windy tonight, and just as I’m thinking this I hear the sound of the door behind me latching itself shut. This is possibly the worst sound I could hear at 3 am in Costa Rica. Funny thing about the garage, too, is that there is door sized door built into the giant iron gate that is the garage door. But, once again, you need a key to get either into or out of this door to the street. And, to top it off, all the windows in the house have big gates over them, too. Even those that are within the already jail like garage. So, there I was, locked inside the garage. “Shit,” I think to myself, “what the hell am I gonna do now?” So, I decide to search the garage for any sort of anything that might get me back inside the house without having to wake María, even checking to make sure my head truly won’t fit into the gap between the wall and poorly fitted gate over the open bathroom window. To no avail. But, in my last round of searching, oh lucky me, I find a key. I am excited at this point, thinking “Oh yeah, I found the secret key to get back inside.” I’m not that lucky, however. I test the key in the door, and it slides in real nice, but refuses to turn. It’s even more disappointing that it actually went into the lock, since that seemed like the ultimate reassurance that yes, I was holding the right key. But no, I wasn’t. What I was holding was the key to let me get all the way outside, which doesn’t do me a whole hell of a lot of good…until I remember that there is a window on the back of the house that has no bars on it and slides open quite nicely. This is great, except for the fact that alleys do not exist, at least in my neighborhood. So, what it came down to was me climbing up and over the roof, and down into the window. This would have been a not so hard task, except for the fact that the roof is all sheet metal, and makes a hell of a lot of noise when something is moving around up there. But, I attempt to make the journey anyway. (I should also point out here that yes, I did try ringing the doorbell, but no, María did not wake up for it). So, i toss off my slippers on the sidewalk, ascend the side of the house, making use of that wrought iron garage door and the iron gating from the next door neighbor’s house, to work my way to the roof. Once up top is when I discover the clamorous nature of the roof. However, I’m already up so I might as well try. I managed to slither along the roof with out making too much noise other than the occasional pop and krinkle of sheet metal pressed to look like a ruffles potato chip. But, the catch is that the window i’m aiming for is right above the stairs that lead down to María’s room, and part of the roof I will have to tread is the roof for the basement garden that adjoins said room. But, I happen to make it nearly to my goal before I hear Chispín, the household dog, down in Marías room starting to growl and let out the occasional bark, and then I knew the gig was up. I hear María wake up, and I’m sure she could hear me up on the roof as she came up the stairs, so I had no choice but to let her know what was goin’ on. “¡María! Soy yo, Jesse” I say in a loud whisper. At that point I was hanging my head over the edge of the roof right above the target window, which slides open at that point. “¿Qué diablos estás haciendo allá arriba?” she asks (What the heck are you doin’ up there), so I try to explain to her in broken spanish that the wind had closed the door on me and I could only find a key that let me out instead of in (My spanish was broken at this point because the adrenaline is pumping, making the words come out a bit scrambled and poorly conjugated). Anyway, thank god María has a good sense of humor, ’cause she pretty much couldn’t help but laugh at me climbing around on the roof trying to get back into the house at such an ungodly hour. She then showed me where the actually “get into house” key was hidden, in the garage, at which point I felt rather silly and stupid. Anyway, she laughed, I laughed, she went to bed, and here I am. I’m off to try and get some sleep now, with one more funny story to add to the story of my life. (Funniest part is that it’s not the first nor even the second time I’ve had to climb up a roof in a goofy situation to get myself back into my house, although not here in C.R.). Goodnight all.

Late night thoughts

Jesse — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:58:18 +0000

Hello all. I’ve just arrived home tonight after going to a hookah bar with a few friends, got to meet some new people, found a note on the light switch, and feel somewhat inspired to share a few thoughts. Last things first—the note. My host mom María left a note for me tonight and it reads like this:

¡Hola!

Jess, en la refrigeradora hay un vaso con ROMPOPE, está junto al fresco, es una bebida hecha con leche y ron, es deliciosa, te toma acompañada con queque. Espero que te guste, que duermas bien,

M:) (This is her signature, which is in reality an M with the tail swirling out into a smiley face—hard to reproduce on the computer)

This translates to: ¡Hey! Jess, in the fridge there’s a glass of ROMPOPE, it’s next to the juice, it’s a drink made with milk and rum, it’s delicious, drink it with the cake. I hope you like it, hope you sleep well.

This leads me to talk about two things. First, cake—and in broader terms just food in general. María loves nothing more to cook for me (grandma B., she reminds me a lot of you in this respect. LOVE=FOOD.), and on the whole she’s a really good cook. She makes some awesome Chinese food—fried rice, chicken in sweet pineapple sauce, other assorted meats in various delicious sauces of I don’t know what. She also makes more standard Costa Rican fare including a good serving of beans and rice during a majority of the week, but this is always accompanied by a salad of some sort (from bean salad that reminds me of the stuff that you make, mom, to elaborate salads with many assorted vegetables like beets and palm hearts) and some sort of meat. To more exotic things like cow tongue—which honestly is probably some of the best I’ve ever had, except it could use a little more heat—tripe soup with hominy that I wouldn’t quite call menudo, a squid and rice dish that was black due to the ink of the squid (delicious), and pigs legs (a little weird, there’s not much meat on a pigs leg, mostly just fat and the bones literally look like human knuckles. But once I got past the texture of the skin and the look of the bones I realized they’re really good and had fun sucking marrow with the best of them). She even went as far as to buy me some turtle eggs after having expressed an interest in trying them but not knowing where to go. They were good, you take them raw in an oversized shotglass with sangrita—a tomato juice conconction that tastes like spicy bloody mary. And even though María just gulped them down quick I made sure to squish them around in my mouth to break them and get the flavor. Now I want to see if you can fry ‘em. And finally, she’s a good baker as well. She makes a killer apple/cinnamon pie that’s strikingly similar to mom’s, and even baked us a fresh one the other night when a few of us got together to watch the CU v KU football game (Rich, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry. I was amazed that CU actually won that game. We have very little faith in our sports teams at CU). She’s also made me a big chocolate cake which I took with me to Montezuma, and tonight she made an orange and raisin cake. Which comes full circle back to that note. I just finished some cake, and am drinking the rompope. She’s right, it’s delicious. A lot like egg-nog. I love María.

And now I’ll wander on back to some thoughts that occurred to me while at the hookah bar, but first I will make it clear that this place isn’t just tobacco water pipes, it’s a full bar with a dance floor and loud, terrible music—Reggaeton. Reaggaeton is possibly one of the worst styles of music I’ve ever heard. I can’t even explain it except to say it’s terrible. IF you really want to experience the shittiness of this music try youtube. Anyway, we were chilling in a back room smokin’ the hookah and havin’ a couple beers. It was quiet back there and for a while our group of americans was fairly isolated. But after a while this guy comes back and sits at a table near us and starts to try and initiate a conversation, in english mind you. Well, one of the girls I was with was sitting facing me but with her back turned to him, so i was able to watch her face as I’m talking to him. He kept talking in broken english and I kept responding in spanish, and he even asked me if I was a tico which I took as a good sign. Anyway, the entire time Rachel is obviously not happy about this tico guy talking to us. And, to be honest at first I felt a little uncomfortable as well. But I thought about what Jared told me the other day; he said that if he had the Argentina trip to do all over again he would have spent less time with the americans and more time with the porteños. So I realized that I really gotta stop being so nervous around people, not everyone in the world is out to get me whether I’m a foreigner or not. Even if they did want to do something to me the best they could get is a phone card ($6), a 5 year old corduroy wallet ($0.50?), and on a good night 15,000 colones ($25.86). So really what do I have to lose? Not a whole lot when compared to what it means to be so cautious or introverted as to pass up the opportunity I have hear. So, I invited him over to chat, had a good time, and made a couple new friend (his friend/neighbor/coworker showed up later). So, all in all 1 more way to avoid the gringos and a new resolve to keep breaking away from whatever comfort zones (within reason) I have established down here. Keep it classy, all, I’m gonna get a few hours sleep now.

La vida cotidiana

Jesse — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 20:33:49 +0000

Holy cow, it’s been so long since I last posted an entry. Sorry to leave you guys in the dark as far as how things are going for me down here, but for the most part I’ve just been caught up in schoolwork and whatnot. I have taken three out of four of my first exams, but have yet to find out how I did on any of them. I was pretty concerned about my Spanish Literature test; for the first test we had read over 1000 pages of literature and theory and I really had no idea how to study for it. But a couple weeks before the test I sat down with the prof and she seemed really understanding of my situation. She even told me that she figures only about 30% of her students do the readings each week, and that if I do the better part of them then I’m already ahead in that respect. She also assured me that she would not be holding me to the same standards as the rest of the class, seeing as they are native spanish speakers who are in their last year of literary studies here at the U. She said that she recognizes good effort when it’s there and will judge me accordingly. That made me feel a whole lot better, considering I’ve put a boatload of effort into this class. Hopefully it showed up in my test. The other tests weren’t so bad as that one. The material in Fonetics is as new to me as it is to the rest of the class, and for the most part it was just a bunch of memorization of little symbols that represent sounds and where in the mouth they are pronounced, among other features of each. I’m actually really enjoying that class, and it has been helping me with bettering my accent for sure. The test for the History of Muslim Spain wasn’t bad either. Our teacher seems to be a genius and knows more about Muslim Spain than any one person should, and he reads Arabic sources that date back to the 8th century. He can even write spanish in arabic characters. Pretty wild. He also is one of those teachers that really doesn’t like tests and just does them because he has to. So, our test ended up being in groups, which made things easier for me. The writing of the essay itself was left to a Tico, which means that I didn’t have to worry about grammatical stuff and I was able to contribute ideas orally. After those three tests we had a long weekend because monday the 12th was Columbus day and the school was closed, which meant that I had a 5 day weekend seeing as I don’t have classes on Thursday or Friday. So, me and a few friends made a trip out to Montezuma, which is on the Nicoya peninsula on the Pacific side of the country. It turned out to be one of the best trips we’ve taken. Montezuma is beautiful (as most of costa rica is, honestly) with rainforest running right up to the beaches. It also is home to some pretty spectacular waterfalls that are about a 30 minute walk up into the forest. It’s a set of three waterfalls, each with it’s own pool that in turn dumps out into the next fall, and from top to bottom the waterfalls grow in size, with the top fall probably only being about 15 feet, the second stands at about 40 feet and the third is around 60+ feet. Above the uppermost pool is a rope swing that we spent a good amount of time playing around on, in fact that was the majority of what we did up there. But, on the way out we decided to take a big plunge (literally) off the top of the second fall. At first it was just David who was going to do the jump. He’s a big follower of the Lonely Planet travel guides, and this was a recommended thing to do at Montezuma, and we were able to talk him through his fears while standing at the top by reminding him that, “This is an LP recommendation, man! Do it! You can’t let down the LP!” After standing up there and psyching himself out for over five minutes he finally took the plunge. When I saw how awesome it seemed I decide I had to do it myself. Standing at the edge of a 40 foot waterfall contemplating a jump off is probably one of the scariest things I’ve ever done. You’re whole body is telling you not to do it, and it takes some serious concious mental effort to force your legs to make the move. But, that was definitely the worst part of it. Once I jumped a couple things went through my head simultaneously. First I thought to myself “Why the hell did I just do that? I can’t believe I just jumped off this thing!” and immediately after all I could think was “Oh man, this is so awesome!” And it was, in the few seconds it takes for you to hit the water below your mind is working in overdrive and the whole thing seems a lot slower than it really is. In the time that I was falling I was able to take in the whole scene, almost as if I was watching myself from somewhere else—the overwhelming green of the forest all around, the huge waterfall behind me, the rushing wind, the muddy brown of the pool below. After I jumped we talked Josh into doing it as well, even though he has a thing with jumping off of high stuff. I finally got him to do it by telling him that if he didn’t do it he would be regretting it in a couple hours at dinner. So he did it, and after agreed with me that he would have regretted not doing it. The next day was also pretty sweet, we took a tour out to Isla Tortuga, which is about 30 minutes by boat from Montezuma. We did some snorkeling and some beaching and were served an awesome lunch of sailfish, mahi-mahi, potatoes, onions and beer. I saw some sweet fish, but ended up getting some brutal blisters from the flippers I was using. And, that was about the whole of our trip, except for travelling there and back and some general beach chilling.

In my time here in Sabanilla (suburb of San José, about 20-45 minutes to downtown by bus) I spend a decent amount of time just hanging around the house and doing homework, but have found a couple ways to kill time. There’s a pool hall not too far from where I live and I probably go play pool there 4-5 times a week. It’s way different from the U.S. as far as pricing goes. Here they charge anywhere from 1-2 dollars an hour to play depending on the time of day and possibly what day you go (we haven’t really figured out exactly how their prices work, but we do know it’s way cheaper sometimes and a bit more expensive other times) but no matter how the pricing works it’s still a heck of a lot cheaper than in the U.S. where we pay a buck a game. However, the tables and cues are in need of a little help. Most tables have at least one spot where there’s some sort of dip or rise that will make the ball curve one way or the other, the bumpers on a lot of the tables are sorta shot, and it’s hard to find a cue that’s straight. It makes it all a bit more interesting, i guess. I also occasionally hit up the movie theater, again, a lot cheaper than in the U.S. The most recent movie I saw was Che: el Argentino which is about Ernesto “che” Guevara. It’s only the first part of the movie, since the distributor required that they split it in half because in total it’s over 4 hours long. It was really intersting because it was made in the U.S. by an American director (Steven Soderbergh), but 90% of the movie is in Spanish. Anyway, if you guys get the chance to see it it’s definitely worth checking out. Well, that’s about all I got for now, but I’ll definitely try to post more often. I’ve got a few ideas of just some smaller stuff I could talk about, general impressions of life down here, little quirks of the ticos and so on. Keep it classy, everyone.

The latest….

Jesse — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:17:29 +0000

Wow, it’s been a while since I threw up a post here. I didn’t realize how long until I started typing in the url for the site and found out it was no longer in my history log. Anyway, for the most part I’ve just been workin’ on school stuff and chillin’ here at the house. This last weekend a few of us made a trip up to Monte Verde, and I gotta say it was maybe the most fun we’ve had on the the trips we’ve taken thus far. Our group made the trek in two divisions: Mary and Rachel went on Thursday afternoon since they didn’t have class (I don’t either, but I had already promised to cook dinner for María on Thursday) and David, Josh, Erin, and myself got up at an ungodly hour of the morning to catch the bus from downtown San José at 6:30 am. We arrived at about 12:30, with a 20-25 minute break thrown in there somewhere along the line. It really wasn’t so bad, though. And, Monte Verde is the home of the now famous zip-line canopy tours, and although they exist in other areas of C.R. we wanted to do them at M.V. because it’s supposed to be the best place for it. The tour was pretty damn fun, but I felt like a total dork wearing a climbing helmet. I could not understand what it would be good for. Climbing helmets do nothing to protect you in the case of a fall, if you fall the helmet will be wearing you for protection. What climbing helmets really do is protect your head in the even that a rock should fall from above and hit you. My big question was “Where the hell is a rock going to fall from in the forest canopy?” The answer to that is “Rocks don’t fall out of the canopy.” And we all pretty much agreed that the helmets were merely a way to make the customer feel safer. Ah….feigned safety, how I adore thee. The worst part of it was that the helmets and gloves that they had us wearing totally reeked, and to top it off still felt a little moist. I was glad I didn’t shower beforehand. But, all-in-all the canopy tour was a blast. We also went on a good hike friday afternoon to get a good view of the surrounding area from a mountain-top. The road was super-steep, and Mary didn’t handle it so well. But, at the top we all felt a lot better. It’s too bad, however, that it was sorta cloudy and we were unable to see Volcán Arenal in the distance. That’s the second time that clouds have shut us down on seeing the same volcano. After the tour most of us headed back to to the hostel and chilled out for a bit while Josh and David took the hanging bridge tour. It cost extra money to get on the bridges, so most of us decided to skip it. When those guys got back we decided to lunch and then go check out “the tree.” Eating was pretty cool since we had a kitchen to cook in at the hostel. For dinner the first night Josh and I cooked up some steaks and some french style green beans, accompanied by this tuna infused rice that María had packed up for me. For lunch the second day I ended up just making a giant bowl of guacamole, but got to eat a fajita that Dave and Josh had left over. The hostel was pretty fun in other ways as well. It was fairly small, and between our group and a group of New Zealanders we had the whole place rented out. The owner was also pretty cool, and we had the chance to chat it up with him and practice our spanish. Oh, back to “the tree.” Outside of Monte Verde there’s a hollow tree that you can climb up on the inside like a ladder. Well, it’s not really a tree, but rather a strangling fig. It’s a woody vine that grows downward around a tree, eventually sucking the tree of it’s life. This one must have been really old, because the tree was rotted away leaving the hollow that you could climb in. It went about sixty feet up, getting tighter along the way, and at the top you could climb out and hang out in the branches of another tree that the fig was leaning against. It was a wild experience. After that we went back, chilled at the hostel and went to bed fairly early. We wanted to get up bright and early on sunday to go see what turned out to be the most impressively tall waterfall I’ve ever seen. It was hundreds of meters high and fell into a little pool at the bottom. The water was freezing, but that didn’t stop some of the group from getting in. I wasn’t one of them. I probably woulda taken the plunge except it was overcast and slightly rainy while we were there with a chilly breeze. But, it was awesome to see and I got some sweet pictures. Not only was the waterfall awesome, but the hike into it was like walking through an enchanted forrest. More places I never thought I’d be…Oh, and I got to see my first dormilona. Apparently it’s considered a weed here in Costa Rica, but to be honest Josh had been telling me about this thing since we got here and I didn’t quite believe him. It’s this little plant with skinny leaves that spread out horizontally along a stem, and when you touch it the leaves react and curl up. It’s pretty cool to see.

Other than all that I’ve just been crunchin’ away at class and homework. I have so much reading to do for my classes that it sometimes seems a little overwhelming. Hundreds of pages of literature and poetry to read each week between my two literature classes, plus reading for phonetics and more reading about the history of Muslim Spain. We read over 100 pages of poetry for my literature of Spain class for yesterday, and I have an equal amount to read for next week. A veces siento que me estoy ahogando. However it is interesting reading, and I get to take a break from the poetry to read short stories for my latin american literature class. Hah, I take a break from one set of reading to read another. It’s really not all that bad, though. I have a lot of free time on my hands despite all the homework. It’s wierd to not be working all the time to pay the bills. Sometimes I even feel like I spend too much of my time lazing about. I have time to go out with my friends, watch movies—both by myself and with María—play scrabble online, take naps in the afternoon. Well, that’s about all that’s going on right now, and I should probably get back to reading….I’ve already spent a good amount of time being lazy today, time to be productive. Until next time, keep it classy everybody.

Ah, the first week of class.

Jesse — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 19:25:29 +0000

This week was the first of the semester for regular classes at the U, and thus ends our easy intro classes, days of lazing about, three hour afternoon naps, and my summer. I had signed up for a contemporary latin american lit class, two history classes (History of Muslim Spain and Social history and collective mentalities in Costa Rica), a spanish phonetics class, and a dance class (Bailes populares). Latin american lit is going to be fun and I really like my professor, she seems exceptionally intelligent, and the same goes for the history of Muslim Spain. The professor for that class Roberto Marín Guzmán appears to be one of the leading researchers on the subject (we’re reading his monster of a book called “Society, politics, and popular protest in Muslim Spain), and aside from that he’s very friendly and seems to like foreigners. On the down side the collective mentalities class turned out to be a history class on the catholic church and our professor is really boring—and to make matters worse she’s what seinfeld would call a “low-talker” and I couldn’t hardly hear anything she was saying—and my phonetics class was cancelled, but no one told us. Three others from the group are in the class with me, and we were all sitting in the right room at the right time, the professor came in, handed out the syllabus and it all seemed pretty legit—all the syllabus talked about what phonetics and phonology—but when I read the name of the class it was “Introduction to linguistics” instead of “Phonetics and orthology.” But, turns out the professor was the same for both classes and she told us we could stay in the class if we wanted. Although the linguistics class seemed really interesting I don’t know that CU will give me the phonetics credit I need since it’s not directly related to Spanish, even though the whole class is about phonetics in general. And, our lazy-ass Spanish advisor at CU refuses to do any advising by email for students studying abroad. How that makes any sense I don’t know. So, I think I’ll be dropping the collective mentalities course and the linguistics course and taking an additional literature course on contemporary spanish lit and a different phonetics course that will surely get me the credits I need. The extra literature course is going to make the mountain of reading I have even bigger, but I’d much rather be reading literature (which will actually count for credits I need at CU) than reading some boring crap about the catholic church in Costa Rica that won’t really count towards my degree.

In other news, during the first week of each semester here at the UCR there’s a boatload of activity on campus. Every day there was live music (which was fun for sure but very distracting during class) accompanied by people in costumes, on stilts, and lots of crowds. As a culminating event they had a nearly all day music festival here at the university’s sport park (where they have all physical ed classes and their playing fields). The tickets were free for all students. The event started at about two in the afternoon, but I was pretty wiped out and ended up napping on the couch for a few hours and didn’t make it over there until about 6. I got to see a local ska band that was actually pretty good (I kinda thought ska was dead at this point in time, but apparently it lives on) and the main act. The headliners were a band from Columbia called Terciopelado, and they were a whole lot different than what I was expecting. They seemed like they should have been playing at Woodstock forty years ago instead of in Costa Rica 2009. The lead singer was wearing this really weird get-up, it was sort of a one-piece wizarding robe with a giant heart on the chest, a yin-yang at the knees and a huge peace sign on the back. She was wearing giant peace-beads around her neck and had jewels on her forehead. She also had the goofy hippie-dance down for sure. All-in-all though their music was pretty good, although they weren’t very good at getting the crowd into the show which made the concert a little-less than optimal. Plus, unbeknownst to me, cigarettes were not allowed in the field and I had a fresh pack plus my lighter taken from me by the friskers at the entrance. I was pretty ticked about that one, especially since it was obvious that all the ticos knew about this rule and had carefully hidden their packs before entering. After the show I was feeling pretty beat since I’d stayed out really late on thursday, so I went home and watched a movie on TV before hittin’ the sack. And finally, today was another good experience as I went to the San José farmer’s market with María. It wasn’t a whole lot different than any other farmer’s market I’ve been to in my life, except that a lot of the foods being sold were new to me and it was a whole lot bigger than any I’d been to before. We bought a mountain of fruits, veggies, and some fish for less money than I would spend on a single meal in Boulder…I was pretty amazed. I also have come to realize (through wandering around the market with María and a few other encounters in my time here) that if I keep my mouth shut people will assume I’m a tico, as long as I’m not out with the other gringos. However, my Spanish has not gotten good enough yet to where I can talk and not make it obvious that I’m a foreigner. I think my accent is good enough, but I talk too slowly and don’t have a big enough vocabulary to carry a conversation without having to ask people what their really talking about. This is especially true when I’m talking to people my own age who use a lot of slang (known as pachuco down here). So, I will continue to work on this and hopefully by the end of the trip I’ll be able to get myself around without anyone thinking I’m a foreigner.

More beaches and some random thoughts

Jesse — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 17:08:12 +0000

This weekend we took our last group trip before the real semester starts. We left at about 1:30 on thursday after giving our final presentations for our “cultural contact” class. Our presentation dealt with the interactions between the catholic church and the government here in C.R. Apparently, according to the statistics, 77% of costarricenses profess to the catholic faith, but only 45% or so are practicing. However, never has there been a non-catholic president, and Óscar Arias is the first president here to be divorced. Also the Sala Constitucional (Supreme Court of C.R.) in 2000 changed the definition of life to begin at conception, which wholly went against what had already been laid out in the constitution itself that said, in so many words, that a person has to be physically present to receive protection from the law. Thus all forms of abortion are ilegal in C.R. Anyway, the presentation went well, capping off an easy month of intro classes. For our last group trip we went to Punta Leona to spend some quality beach time. As with the rest of the beaches I’ve seen here it was pretty amazing, but I have to admit I kinda felt bad about the place we stayed. For our other beach trips (not organized by the grupo) we stayed at a hostel and a rundown hotel (Ericha, you would have been apalled). For this trip we stayed at a private, gated club with multiple swimming pools, tennis courts, mini-golf and two private beaches. The whole time I was there I kept wondering whether the club was owned by a costarricense or if it was run by a foreign company because we’ve had a couple of discussions here among ourselves over the merits of tourism. I’m sort of glad I never got an answer as to the ownership of the club, because yeah, it can be argued that tourism produces a huge income for costa rica, but if places like this are run by external businesses the best you can hope for is that they employ a lot of locals who make minimum wage. But, all-in-all the trip was pretty fun, although I definitely would have gotten bored after more than a couple days. In other news, mushrooms in this country totally suck. I think it’s impossible to find a fresh mushroom anywhere down here. All of the ones I’ve eaten are canned and taste like crap, and every time I have to eat one I miss being in Colorado and eating mushrooms that were grown just a couple miles from my house and are super fresh. But, with everything like this there’s also a plus side to the equation, and for every nasty, canned mushroom I have to eat I also get to eat a mountain of the freshest, tastiest fruit you’ve ever had. I’d tried one papaya in my life before coming down here and thought it was disgusting. Down here the papayas are awesome. Same goes for mangos, bananas, pineapple, and avacados. I’ve never seen such enormous mangos as they have down here. I probably get twice the amount of edible fruit off a mango in costa rica as i would back in the states. And I eat lots of fruit. When I first got here María would make me a big breakfast every morning with gallo pinto (rice, beans, tomatos, cilantro, etc) or pancakes, with eggs and fruit and bread and butter. It took me some time to convince her that I almost never eat breakfast and that all I really need is some coffee. She still can’t let me just have that, but I’ve gotten her to agree to a plate of fruit with my coffee and nothing else, although occasionally she can’t resist and throws a bunch of food at me that I have to struggle to eat. And now to get to the business of the day, locating my classes on campus so I’m not totally lost tomorrow. Keep it classy everybody.

A little about this last week…

Jesse — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:28:52 +0000

It’s been a while since my last post….my apologies, but not a whole lot went down this last week except homework. Our big paper for our history class was due (sort of) this last friday. The way it works is that we turned them in first to our writing professor so he could check it for grammatical errors and whatnot to make sure we have it nicely polished before we turn it into our history prof this wednesday. So my group and I spent quite a bit of time last week putting this all together. It was a bit strange, though, since we were working on this in groups of four I only had to write a little over two pages of it. We talked about the TLC-CA (CAFTA in English). This was an agreement between the US and Central America/the Dominican Republic similar in nature as NAFTA. The agreement was highly polemical in all countries involved, with riots and protestors left dead in many. Due to the controversial nature of the agreement Costa Rica decided to take it to a referendum, the first in the countries history. It ended up being passed by a slim margin of 51.x%-48.x%. The funny thing about it is that the margin was so slim despite heavy support on the “yes” vote by president Oscar Arias and the fact that his camp spent somewhere around $10 million on the campain while the other side spent a mere $40,000. After working all week on this it was nice to get away this weekend. A few of us made a trek via bus to the pacific side of the country, staying in a town called Quepos and taking a bus on saturday to the Manuel Antonio national park to beach it up. The hotel we stayed in can hardly be called a hotel, it was more of a hostel except we had a private room/bathroom. To save money we packed six of us into one room. It was a little cramped, but well worth not paying so much. The national park was awesome. We could have gone to some free beaches, but were all glad we paid the ten dollar entry fee to the park. To get to the beaches you strolled through a good bit of rain forest, and although we didn’t really see any animals on the trail (we didn’t contract a park guide to show us around) there were a few different animals hangin’ out on the beaches. The capuchin monkeys are really brazen down there, and they have long been aware that they can get some tasty treats if they run out onto the beach and steal from peoples’ bags. And sure enough one stole a banana from Erin within ten minutes of us being on the beach. The raccoons are also a bunch of thieves. Later in the day one snuck up and stole a bag of bread from Rachel and Julia—it was pretty funny. Other than that we saw hordes of hermit crabs and many an iguana and on the way out we saw an ibis. We all agreed we liked the beaches better, and the waves were much more relaxed than they were in the Caribbean. There was no rain, although it was much hotter and there was a higher level of humidity in the air. Just sitting around doing nothing and I was sweating a lot. Anyway, other than beaching we didn’t do a whole lot this weekend—beaches and lots of time on buses. And, I need to do some work on a project due this thursday. This is our last week of intro classes then we take a group trip to Punta Leona where we’ll actually be staying in a real hotel—that’ll be nice. After that next week is the beginning of the semester here at the UCR, and I’ll be in my first real class next tuesday. Until later—Pura Vida.

More volcanoes, hotsprings, and soccer

Jesse — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 20:33:14 +0000

So on Wednesday we went as a group to check out another volcano, volcán arenal, which was about a three hour drive out of San José. The trip sucked, at least on the way there, because there was a DVD player in the bus and the only movie that the group leaders brought was Sex and the City. I tried to read as the movie played, but it was very distracting. I’ve never been forced to listen to such pointless drivel. The materialistic attitude that permeated the movie was nauseating. But, finally, we arrived at our destination. However, the sky was cloudy all day and we could see naught but the very foot of the volcano until when we left. By that time the clouds had lifted some, and we could see more of the mountain, but still the upper portion was covered. The hotsprings we spent the day at were part of a huge, really fancy, hotel. They served us a buffet lunch with a huge array of food to choose from. I ate from all the options, and by the end of it was so stuffed that I wasn’t hungry until the next day. It was amazing. The pools themselves were so much more impressive than the last hotsprings we went to. There were pools of differing temperatures and individual mineral contents—some as cold as the high seventies/low eighties up to one that was 103 degrees. The grounds on which the pools sat was extensive, and in many cases you had to walk a decent ways to get to them. Although the area was super nice I decided quickly that not only would I feel guilty staying at such a place, but also that it would get really boring after any more than a day. In much more exciting news both the semi-final matches for the Gold Cup took place last night. In the first match, which i didn’t get to watch too closely the U.S. beat Honduras 2-0. I’m surprised at how well our national team has been playing lately. First they took out Spain and now they’re in the finals of the Gold Cup, amazing. And the other match was between Costa Rica and Mexico. I got the feeling very quickly just from listening to people talk during the days leading up to this match that these two teams are huge rivals. So a few others and I went out to a sports bar to watch it and it was much more exciting than watching it at home. It was a great game, although Costa Rica lost in the penalty kicks. Although Costa Rica had control of the ball for a much larger percentage of the game and had way more shots on goal Mexico put together a nice play to break the scoreless game with only a minute and a half or so left in the game. Everyone was utterly disappointed. But, with only fifteen seconds left in the three minutes of stoppage time Costa Rica put in a beautiful goal. So disappointing that they had to go out with penalty shots. When they scored everyone was totally freaking out, and since the bar was so loud that we had been yelling the whole game anyway, while cheering after that shot I felt my voice give out. It still is pretty rough today. Anyway, that’s about all I have for now, today was just more class and now relaxing, so, Pura Vida and until next time.

Puerto Viejo

Jesse — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 02:24:02 +0000

So, this weekend a big group of us (13 out of 16) took a bus out to the caribbean coast to the town of Puerto Viejo, and I gotta say it was pretty damn awesome. This was the second trip of my life in which I actually saw the sea (i would say ocean, but alas the caribbean is not an ocean), and it was the first time I’d ever actually been IN a sea. The trip started off not so well for me, as I lost a couple of important pieces of paper before I ever got on the bus. The first of these was my bus ticket, which I realized I had lost before I ever left Sabanilla. I was pretty stressed about that, since odds were against me on there being open seats left on the bus, and we had tickets for the last bus out of town on friday. But, I went into San José anyway, running on pure hope. When I got there I found out that yes, the bus was sold out, but because there was such a demand for seats to Puerto Viejo they had added another bus for that evening, leaving just fifteen minutes after the four o’ clock trip. So, i bought another ticket. Thank god they were only about seven dollars each. However, after purchasing my second ticket I reached into my back pocket to find that once again I was missing another important document—the photocopy of my passport. We had been informed that the immigration police would stop the bus out of Puerto Viejo and check passports, and if you didn’t have it you would be detained and hassled for quite some time. So, I called Zaida—one of the directors of the group here in San José—and was able to get a copy of my passport sent to my email in the hopes that I would be able to find an internet café or something similar in Puerto Viejo to print out the copy. Luckily the hostel we stayed at had both internet and an available printer. So, everything worked out fine in that respect as well—moral of the story, however is never, NEVER put important pieces of paper in the back pocket of your jeans, they seem to like to worm their way out. Funnily enough, however, that same pocket managed to hold onto the one unimportant paper I put in it—a receipt for some cigarettes. Supongo que así es la vida. The bus ride itself actually turned into another adventure in-and-of itself. I ended up sitting next to possibly the most stoic man I have ever seen in my life. I had put my baggage underneath the bus, only bringing with me some water, a book, and my spanish-english dictionary. This guy—tall, black, and a polyglot—only spoke a few words to me the whole trip, and 90% of those were said before we ever left the bus station. He asked me if I had some identification on me, since the tourist police would be asking for one before we left. I explained my story to him, and to the tourist police—who shrugged me off without a second thought. The rest of the trip the man sat next to me with a huge red duffle bag on his lap that must have weighed over twenty-five pounds. And he never moved, nor spoke. My ass was killing me after some time, and I think I must have looked like someone from a Preparation-H commercial, but this guy just sat, and looked ahead. I’m glad I got the window seat. And, after about two hours on the road I wake up to the sound of people hollering and whistling at the driver from the back of the bus. The back door was open and they were trying to get them to stop. After we stopped confusion ensued, people piled off the bus and tried to get information from eachother in an array of tongues. I ended up talking to some ticos who saw what went down, and it went a little something like this: The bus driver, unbeknownst to him, opened the back door while cruising down the highway. Not too much time after doing so we came upon a man riding his bike on the highway—and i have yet to see a road with even a hint of a shoulder in the entire country. Thus, as we go by the poor dude gets cracked in the back by the door to the bus, leaving a bit of a dent in the door, and I can imagine it left a pretty good sized dent in him. According to the ticos it was several kilometers back from where we had stopped that the incident actually took place. And so, we hung out on the side of the road for a good hour at least, drinking some rum, smoking cigarettes and waiting for the transit authority to show up and take down the incident. I never got any word on the cyclist, and I don’t know that anyone else did either. But, a good hour and fifteen minutes after the rest of the group, I arrived safe and happy in Puerto Viejo. It was a great time after that. Although the town was definitely a tourist haven (all the restaurants were pretty much charging american prices translated into colones) I got to do several things I’d never done before. I stayed in a hostel—new experience. I ate an octopus—new experience. I swam in the sea—new experience. I had a piña colada—new experience. I saw two nights of the hardest rain I’ve ever seen that didn’t stop the whole night—new experience. Luckily, the rain stopped through the better part of saturday, giving us more hours than we needed of beach chilling and body surfing.We also caught a sand crab and a gecko, met some real life beach bums, another girl from Colorado who was travelling with a kid from Germany who looked like a Nicaraguan (he said his mom is german and his dad is moroccan, i thought it was a pretty sweet combo), and drank what has to be the blackest, thickest, most delicious coffee I’ve ever had at a restaurant run by some folks from Barcelona. It was called Pan Pay, and the walls were covered with more Barca paraphenalia than i had ever seen before. I was truly disappointed that I hadn’t brought my Jersey. Anyway, it was a truly awesome weekend, and I’m sorta disappointed to be back at the grind doing research and such here in Sabanilla, although I can’t really complain. Anyway, until next time—Pura Vida.

Volcán Irazú y las aguas termales

Jesse — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 02:08:25 +0000

Yesterday was the first of the group trips outside the city of San José. We took a bus (privately operated) out of the city to the mountains to visit the Irazú volcano. Although there has been some volcanic activity in the area lately, Irazú has been dormant for quite some time now. One volcano, however, has gained some recognition here on the local news as it has recently become active again, accompanied by UFO sightings above the mountain. While up on the volcano it was cold, windy, and raining, so nobody really wanted to stay too long. We hung around long enough to snap some photos and quickly headed back to the bus. After that, however, we descended to a coffee plantation that also has a hot springs pool. This was one of those places you see on tv and think “wow, that must be one of the most beautiful places you could spend an afternoon.” And it was. The water was perfect, neither too hot nor too cold, with a beatiful garden surrounding it. They served us a home cooked lunch with rice, beans (obviously—rice and beans are the daily staple of a large percentage of costa ricans), chicken, potatoes, and salad. The food was awesome, and the pool and surroundings even more so. When we arrived everyone was past the point of simple hunger, but we informed we would have to wait another half hour to eat. So, to stave off thoughts of hunger several of us took a turn through the coffee plantation to check things out. It was a really cool place, and pretty interesting since I’d never really seen a coffee bush before. Most of the beans weren’t ripe, but occasionally you could spot a bright red one among all the green. We found a few frogs, a lizard, and a couple of us even saw a little black chicken scurry across the path to be invisible once again in the bushes on the other side. Since Jon still has my swimsuit that I lent him I was forced to jump in the pool in my boxer-briefs—luckily they were dark blue and not white. However, I was informed that a couple of years ago when they brought the group to the springs some guy didn’t have a swimsuit and decided instead to dive in buck naked. Apparently nobody got too many pictures of the pool that year. And, while chilling in the pool all the Ticas started singing in chorus, and then decided that since they had sung songs for us (although wholly unsolicited) it was then the Americans’ turn the sing something for them. It was a little bit embarrassing since we just couldn’t come up with a song that all of us knew the lyrics to; eventually they had to settle for “You are my sunshine,” and only the first verse at that. And yes, I did get some pictures of the volcano, the plantation, and the pool, but still have yet to purchase a card reader for my camera. One of the other guys from CU has a pretty sweet Canon dSLR, and he said he may have a card reader that will work, but we haven’t gotten the chance to see if it will. This weekend the better part of the group has decided to make a trip to Puerto Viejo on the Caribbean coast, which should be a blast. A couple of us made a trek down into San José central today to buy thirteen bus tickets. We leave tomorrow at four pm. So, I’ll be posting again after the weekend is out, or maybe Sunday night. Until then, I love you all. Pura Vida.