First we Work and then we Play: Practicum and the beach!

Dearest Costa Rachel Readers:

Buenos Dias! This entry will talk about two things: first, practicum here in Orosi (aka my first actual teaching experience in Costa Rica) and then also my group’s weekend vacation to Puerto Viejo, on the Caribbean. Both experiences were super intense and ultimately very positive for me, and I’m excited to share them with you. :)

ANYWAY…. Last week was practicum, meaning that I got to teach elementary school students for 40 minutes a day, 5 days in a row. The 18 volunteers were divided up into groups of 3, with each group teaching a grade (my group taught 3rd grade Mon-Wed and then 5th Thurs-Fri). We taught 3 lessons in a row, with one person teaching each lesson and the other two observing and giving feedback.

Note: the Costa Rican school system hasn’t actually started for the year yet. Though practicum took place in the school, it was essentially a free English summer session for the students here—pretty cool!

… Practicum was important and great practice for all of us, and also pretty nerve-wracking! It entailed a lot of planning and practicing for students who we weren’t familiar with and we were also being observed by our team members and ultimately also by the director and assistant director from our program (they came in twice and gave us feedback, too.)… so, a lot of pressure, but it was also reassuring to see everyone else teaching and to discuss how the lessons went every day.

Here are two practicum pictures, first of me teaching:

...and then of me and my teammates with our third graders:

Anyway! On Friday we had the last day of practicum, then graduation for the students (so cute!), then went home and packed, and we all met up at OTIAC (the hostel where we had our Spanish lessons) to leave for the beach in Puerto Viejo. We piled into our two rented vans and headed out as the sun was setting. The drive was a good 5 hours and a lot of it was on curvy mountain roads or roads full of potholes, so it certainly wasn’t relaxing…

But then we arrived at the hostel on the beach, with the air full of reggae and the palm trees casting beautiful shadows all over, and Graceanne and I went down to the beach in the dark and sat and looked at the stars (more than I have EVER seen in my life, I think) and puppies circled around us in the sand and it was beautiful, so beautiful, so beautiful!

I slept, woke up early, and went for a walk on the beach with Sara. That was awesome—everyone else was still asleep and the sun had just come up, so we got to see the beach when it was almost deserted, to see the first surfers out catching waves, and to take pictures and collect shells and coral from the sand. There was an abundance of pink coral all around, which I hadn’t known would be the case. Very cool.

We went back to the hostel, breakfasted, and then most of the group decided to walk down to another beach a good half-hour away to go watch a surfing competition. I don’t remember why, exactly, but Jeff and I got separated from everyone else. I think we’d hung back at the hostel for some reason, and then we went left instead of right, or something… but whatever the reason, he and I ended up walking without the rest of the group. We just verrrrry veeeeerrrryyy lazily walked down to the surf competition, walking and then stopping and then taking pictures and then walking and then swimming and then walking some more.

Here's a picture Jeff took of me that morning:

...It was a fantastic way to spend the morning, and exactly what I would have done had I been alone. It took us quite a while to get to the surf competition (I think it was pretty much lunch time by the time we rejoined the group), and we decided that we’d hang out with them only for a little bit before getting food. We swam for a while with the others and I played some guitar on the sand, but then the two of us left to go find us some vittles, this time taking Sara’s guitar with us.

Jeff and I walked down the street parallel to the beach for a good fifteen minutes before we saw a little roadside restaurant saying it had casado (that’s the rice/beans/meat/salad/plantains dish sold everywhere in Costa Rica)… went in and this beautiful waif of a woman from Luxembourg who worked there came over and sat with us at our table-on-the-floor (we sat on cushions!) and played guitar with us and talked in German and English. The food was alright, and I had my first patacones (twice-baked green plantains.) Yummmm yum yum. We walked back to the store, picked up money and ran into Drew, who had been doing a diving lesson in the morning and so hadn’t gone to the surfing competition. Drew decided to hang out with me and Jeff for a while instead of going directly to the others, which was awesome :)

The three of us walked down the edge of the water til we’d found a more secluded area and then sat and played music, wrote lyrics and poetry, talked some more, and just enjoyed the shade and sand and water, away from everyone else. My favorite moments and photos from the weekend are from that portion of the afternoon—it was beautiful and simple and easygoing.

Here's my favorite picture of me and Drew on the beach:

...anyway, Drew left us after a while and Jeff and I sat around musicing, scripturing, writing in the sand, and just doing absolutely nothing. It was great :) :)

That night, a bunch of us went out to dinner together at a tiny roadside restaurant with a woman who spoke the Caribbean dialect and looked and cooked like Aunt Jemima (I think that was Jeff’s description, not mine… but it fit.) Good food, albeit greasy and sweet. And I remember thinking—how cool it is that I’m here at the beach in Costa Rica with these awesome people, about to embark on our adventures alone but still connected like this. How fantastic!

After we were back from dinner, I took one of the hostel’s guitars upstairs to a little alcove to play and relax and think. The acoustic was amazing, as was the general vibration of the evenin: Jeff, Drew, me, David, and a few other people from the hostel, just sitting around and chilling with music.… then one of the hostel guys took the guitar and I lay on the bench for a few minutes while he played (he was very talented) before going downstairs to go to bed. I was SO tired, just completely exhausted, because I’d walked literally miles and miles that day and hadn’t slept well the night before. But it was a Good Feeling. The weekend was going well.

Sunday was: getting up, walking in the other direction down the beach with Jeff and taking more pictures, the sand was black instead of light brown, then it started raining like whoa and we took shelter under overhangs but then there were sketchy guys so we got a taxi back into town… a taxi who hit dogs and almost everything else :( … got back, went to lunch with a group of people, ate a ton of food as always, piled back into the vans to leave….

Then, after 2 hours or so of driving, our van broke down. In the mountains. In the rain. We ended up standing under the overhang of a roadside car repair place for an hour and a half before another van came, and we amused ourselves by playing guitar and also a game where we all stand in a circle and each has a ‘sign’ and we pass an invisible ‘ball’ between each other and the person in the middle has to guess who has the ball (if you know this game, you’ll be like OH YEAH THAT ONE and if you don’t know it, I’m betting that that description didn’t help :P)… ANYway, it was a fun experience, then we got into the new van (which had a TV for us that played an awful bootlegged Hugh Jackman movie in Spanish, muy entertaining).. .and Graceanne and I talked a bunch bunch bunch in Spanish (which I’d gotten to do with a bunch of strangers over the weekend, too… awesome!) and we got home and I showered and ate yummy gallo pinto and CRASHED into bed because I was so exhausted!!

ANYWAY, dearest readers: Thank you so much for reading and caring! Tomorrow is the last day of Orientation, and then Wednesday I leave for Boruca, where I’ll have a week free before school starts on the 8th. I’m so nervous and excited about what is to come, because this is the meat and potatoes of why I am here in this beautiful country. I’m here to serve and to teach and to help this community, and though I am scared, I know that one way or another, I will leave my mark. And that’s a pretty incredible thing!

I couldn’t be doing it without you all. THANK YOU SO MUCH.

<3 <3,
Raquelita (as the guys at the hostel in Puerto Viejo called me!)

Boruca: my first visit to my new home!

Dearest Readers!

What a crazy weekend this was! The other volunteers and I went to our sites for the first time, meaning that I got to see Boruca, which will be my home from February until December.

(First off, there is a NEW album of photos from this weekend ... check them out!!)

The trip to Boruca took 13 hours and 4 bus rides. Friday morning at 5 AM, I left the house and left Orosi with Drew, Meggie, Sara, Aeriel, and Graceanne (other volunteers with sites relatively near mine). Got to Cartago, got on another bus, went to San Jose, waited in the San Jose bus stop for a good while, Meggie got on a different bus, the other 5 of us got on our bus to Buenos Aires. THAT ride was instense… gorgeous, from hot to cool temperatures, up and down mountains, SO high up and then down and down again. The driver was crazy and sped past multiple other buses at a time on blind curves. Crrrrazy. We also had to stop for 15 minutes or a half hour because there was a dump truck in front of us across the room getting filled up with dirt. Ahhh Tico life.

Here's a view from that beautiful bus ride, driving past and above clouds in the mountains:

We got to Buenos Aires, the ‘hub city’ I’ll be spending a good amount of time in this year (it’s where I’ll go to get school supplies/etc, about an hour and a half by bus away from Boruca. I say ‘hub city’ in quotes because Buenos Aires is TINY. It would be a small town by any USA standards… it’s just there here in Costa Rica it’s significant. From Buenos Aires, everyone went their separate ways, leaving me and Drew to wait for our Boruca bus to get there an hour or so later.

The bus was PACKED. There was standing room only and we luckily had insider tips from Graceanne to run to the back and fight our way in. For most of the bus ride, Drew and I were yelling random stuff back and forth to each other (we weren’t sitting together) and being amused at being The Gringos (meaning people stare at us.)

The drive to Boruca was incredible. Truly the most beautiful vistas I’d seen so far in Central America, and probably in my life, which is saying something, given that I just lived in the Alps for two years. I couldn’t get photos because the road was so bumpy and the bus so full of people and my hands so full of stuff… it’s not a far distance to Boruca from Buenos Aires, but because the roads are so steep and unpaved, the bus has to go super slow and stops a lot. But I will be hiking around the area taking incredible photos this year, of that I am sure. Drew got off after a bit, and then I was left on my lonesome in a bus full of Ticos, on my way to Boruca…

I got off the bus in a dusty square in the shadow of a large green building and roofed-over cement courtyard. There was a smiling, neon-pink clad woman with a kind face waiting for me holding the hand of her daughter. Marlen (the sister of my host father) and Sharon (her 5-year-old daughter) became without a doubt the highlight of my weekend in Boruca, and I am glad to know that they live nearby and will be there often. This way, even if I don’t click with the rest of my host family, I will have them… they’ve already invited me to visit, and I’ve promised to come over. …. I find amazing people everywhere!

Here's a picture of Marlen and Sharon:

The house is right by the bus stop, and it’s quite large:

The tin roof does not always meet the walls (in my room there is a significant gap, a good 6 or 8 inches) and there are a lot of insects, moldy places, and holes. But that’s typical of a Tico house, and it’s apparent that this family is well-to-do by Borucan standards. Not all of the houses in Boruca are this big… in fact, many of them are only a fraction of the size of my family’s house. I saw houses which were comparable in size to my host family’s kitchen (which, though large, is still a kitchen.)

Anyway… my host mother’s mother lives in a house directly next door to ours (it might even be attached) and there is a ranchero (wood, hay, and leaf-built open-air pavilion thing) there, too, with a place for cooking over a fire and with lots of hammocks, too. Overall, it’s very tranquila :)

My room is separate from the rest of the house, which is pretty cool. The family room, sleeping area of everyone else, and kitchen are in one section, then there’s a souvenir shop full of masks, then there’s my room, so I have privacy. I also have my own bathroom and shower, though my shower does not have hot water (I used the family’s shower this weekend, but may have to suck it up and get used to freezing when I wash.) As you can see from the photos, my room is square and gray, but I’m working on making it more colorful and happy. And when the window’s open, it’s got this gorgeous view into the jungle:

I'm also hanging up lots of stuff on the walls to make the room more Me:

A note about the food: when I got there I was served rice, French fries, and pasta. Not balanced at all… so I made a big deal of talking about how much I love beans, just to make sure I got some balance the next day. Luckily, it worked. I never thought I’d be so excited to be handed a plate of white rice and boiled beans, but man, are they good…

Also, Marlen made this delicious drink out of oatmeal. Just water, sugar, and some instant oatmeal, I think… but it was amazing and refreshing.

Everything is so dusty in Boruca! I got up and mopped my room of my own accord (maybe this means I’m a grown-up now?) and I think this will be an at least bi-daily occurrence.

In the early morning I went for a long walk with Sharon (the 5-year-old who by then had decided I was the coolest thing since sliced bread). We got into the school through a hole in the fence and she showed me around, pointing out her favorite places and telling me about how the school works. There are several school buildings for the different grades and subjects, all brightly painted in blues and pink/purples, connected by a maze of paths. Here's the main building:

My room where I’ll be teaching has a wall consisting almost exclusively of bars (essentially a big window) and is large and open. I like it, actually, which I had been worrying I wouldn’t.

I had the idea of getting some big rocks to use as bookends because there was a dearth of usable furniture in my room. I like my brain for things like this! Marlen and Sharon helped me find suitable rocks with flat sides outside, and then Sharon asked if we could paint little rocks from the stream, so I decided to combine our ideas: we went and got some colors from the little store up the mountain (which we visited several more times during the day for snacks and drinks) and then painted my new mini boulders! One says SMILE….BECAUSE YOU CAN and the other one says ALL AROUND YOU IS LOVE. The two that I’m using as doorstops say I WILL NOT TAKE THESE THINGS FOR GRANTED (I almost painted GRANITE instead of GRANTED, but decided not to) and the last one says WHY NOT? :) …I had been walking with Sharon and suddenly she started RUNNING and I started RUNNING with her and I asked her WHY ARE WE RUNNING and then the answer came to me so crazy clear: WHY NOT? :)

After painting the rocks, right as I was painting a picture frame for my room with MAN LEBT NUR EINMAL (YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE), the cry went up: Hay otros gringos en la calle! (There are other gringos in the street!) I went out to talk to them and they turned out to be a bunch of Germans!! So, I went to the bar and had a drink with them and got to talk some in my favorite language. It was awesome and they were very chill. They even came from an area close to where I lived in Deutschland. Definitely icing on my cake of a first morning in Boruca!

In the afternoon, I went and sat in the shade of the ranchero with Ligia and Paulina (my host mother’s mother) and Sharon and shucked beans and cleaned them for dinner. It was hours-long process, very tranquila:

I sat on the dirt ground and in a hammock and helped, and talked with Paulina, who is a tiny, wrinkly, ancient old person. She said she doesn’t know how old she is and that she was in Los Angeles once and did not like it because there were so many people and no one talked to each other or knew each other. I like Paulina… and I wish she’d let me take a picture of her!

Moral of the story, it was a very relaxed, easy day, very simple, not connected to the outside world, very full of life. Very much the feeling of: THIS is life. Life is living, life is this moment right now, life is living and breathing and holding hands and sprinting down rock paths towards nothing in particular, life is running water and trees and smiles and learning languages and reaching out to others and family.

Overall, my Spanish went better than I’d worried that it would. The first night, when I went and got to know some of Graceanne’s friends in Boruca, my Spanish was quite impressive, and people were complimenting it… but the next day didn’t go as well, mainly because I was talking about things I’d never talked about before. It’s getting better, slowly but surely... I just can’t wait to get to the point where I actually SPEAK it, you know?

I went to bed early, slept like a rock, woke up and listened to music. Left early in the morning, took the bumpy bus back to Buenos Aires with Drew (this time without a seat) and waited for our bus to San Jose… the bus driver wouldn’t let us get on until the bus was packed (literally, let everyone else on but not the gringos) and we were the ONLY ones he asked for money. SIGH. There were no seats so we had to either stand or sit on the floor for 3.5 hours… I spent the first while working on trying to forgive the bus driver in my head, sitting on the dusty floor with my long legs folded up in front of me, then looked out the window and thought about how awesome it was that I was in Costa Rica and about how lucky I am. I put in my earbuds and the first song was Travis Tritt’s “It’s A Great Day To Be Alive”… I passed the mp3 player to Drew, and it made him smile, too. I think we both needed some deep breaths and to stop being mad at the driver. I guess maybe he’d had bad experiences with gringos, or something…. For whatever reason, he didn’t treat us like everyone else, and it kinda hurt.

Anyway, the rest of the ride was ok. There was a nice man standing by me who talked to me about the parks in Costa Rica that were the most beautiful, and his smiling eyes made me grateful. Then there was another man sitting beside me who talked some English and told me that we would stop in Cartago before San Jose, which was perfect and shortened our trip. Drew ended up sleeping lying down in the aisle for a while, but I couldn’t nod off because I didn’t have anywhere to put my head…

We got to Cartago, walked to another bus stop, and got on a bus to the city center to catch another bus back to Orosi. This bus ride into the center of Cartago was everything the previous one was not—spacious, quick, friendly, and comfortable. The bus driver pulled over on the side of the highway to buy fruit (which was when we got the zapote) and everyone on the bus chimed in to describe the fruit for us and encourage us to get it and try it and to tell us stories and offer us a knife to cut it and laugh about how it was our first zapote:

.... zapote is similar to papaya, but looks like a potato. It's also... creamier? I dunno, hard to describe. But REALLY rich and delicious!

Then, the driver asked us who we were and why were in Costa Rica and drove us around Cartago showing us the buildings and describing them to us (by then we were the only ones on the bus). Turns out he was from Boruca :)

After the bus driver dropped us off, Drew mentioned that he was craving Wendy’s… so, as there happens to be one in Cartago, we went. I felt like SUCH a gringa, but I got a frostie because I figured it would be months and months before I had that chance again.

Finally, Wendy's behind us, we met up with some other people from our group and took the 45-minute trip from Cartago back to Orosi :)… there was definitely a feeling of ‘homecoming’, and now I truly do appreciate that this is a bigger city by Costa Rican standards. Plus, I cannot WAIT to eat Ligia’s gallo pinto again. Man oh man.

I think I want to start a project in Boruca and the surrounding areas to pick up litter. Drew’s host father owns the buses, too, so we could put up signs in them encouraging people not to throw their trash out the window (which they were doing all the time… it made me really sad.) The area’s so beautiful, but people put their trash everywhere. … it was a good feeling in my head to realize that I was not only being frustrated about the littering, but also wanting to do something about it. :)

ANYway, thank you if you actually read this! Thank you for caring. Thank you for being interested. Please check out the other photos and feel free to comment or email me!

Besos!
Raquel

Hola, querida gente! (Hello, dear people!)

First things first: I’m feeling a lot better! Muchas gracias to everyone who has been sending me emails and chats and love and thoughts. The meds seem to be doing their job and bit by bit I’ve had more energy and voice. I can’t wait to be able to sing normally again!

I’ve been in Costa Rica for almost two weeks now. It’s amazing how quickly a new day-to-day schedule becomes a routine—it’s normal for me now to wake up before 5, to eat beans and rice for breakfast and lunch and dinner, to walk to school on an unpaved road lined with palm trees, to look up and see towering mountains covered with coffee plants, to speak in Spanish to my family, and to have no cell phone and only have internet for an hour or so a day. My skin is darker, my brain is fuller (hi Matt :) ), my spirit feels free—it’s easier somehow to focus on the day-to-day when you are plunged into a world so intensely different and at the core similar to the one you’re familiar with.

My brain can’t help but automatically compare and contrast this experience with my times in Germany and Austria. Costa Rica really reminds me of Austria, actually, with all the mountains and greenery. It’s just that where Austria had evergreens, snow, and large, multi-family houses, Costa Rica has palms, sunshine, and tin-roofed single-family homes. The air has a similar clean taste to it, the clouds roll in over the hills, and the people go to market each day just like in Austria. There are a lot of parallels that I can see, and I draw comfort from them.

That said, I’m also reveling in how incredibly different Costa Rica is from anywhere else I have ever been in my life. I feel like I’ve jumped into a page from The Jungle Book sometimes when I see the orange and cassis trees full of fresh fruit and the palms with their leaves bigger than my body, when I turn the corner to find animals running around the roads and hear tropical birds singing in the trees, and when I see the Turrialba volcano spewing ash on the horizon:



This is a developing country, which means that by any standard I am rich, not just in money and technology but also in resources, connections, education, and potential for upward economic mobility. The average annual income of a person in Costa Rica is around $6,000. The diet consists mainly of starches, and it’s a struggle to get all the nutrients I need. The houses are small (tiny by DC standards) and often in disrepair (my 9’x7’ bedroom, with its fantastic mauve-colored walls, has holes in the ceiling and a door that won’t shut properly). Every house has a metal gate and fences wrapped around it to thwart the abundance of crimes of opportunity that exist in this country. Dishes are hand-washed, laundry is hung outside to dry, and many homes do not have hot water—mine does, but only in a small heater attached to the shower head that turns the shower-water from cold to lukewarm if you learn how to use it right (which I am still in the process of doing.) My host father does not know how to read, and my host mother spends her days cleaning, cooking, doing laundry, and watching TV.

I can’t imagine what it is like for my host family to have me come in from the outside, a 24-year-old gringa, multilingual and university educated and with my own computer and camera and Kindle… but it’s fun and important that I try to put myself in their shoes and understand what their world is like. We have innate, human similarities that make living together a pleasure, and at the same time we also come from such distinct cultural backgrounds that sometimes we just sit together in the kitchen and laugh. They laugh at me because I like to be barefoot in the house. They laugh at me because I like raw vegetables so much. They laugh at me because I eat so much, and because I go running. (Why in the world would you get up early, put on shoes, and go running—just running—all over town? Americans are crazy!) … but I think my favorite moments so far in Costa Rica have been those where I am just sitting in this tiny house with Ligia, Mila, Walter, Yesalyn, Yesi, Brittany, Antony, and Jose, talking in Spanish about life and our days, playing with baby Lara, listening to music, and eating together.

...like this:

:) :) :)

It’s also been incredible to bond with the other volunteers form Worldteach and to attend our charlas (seminars on teaching) every day. I feel more and more excited about why we are all here, more and more committed to the program and teaching, and also a tad more nervous because with each passing day as the start of the school year draws nearer. … this has already been an adventure and will only continue in that way, and I feel blessed and thankful to have this opportunity not just to experience but also to give back.

…. Yeah, moral of the story, I’m a really, really lucky girl. And a big part of that has been the support of everyone who is reading this—you are with me! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for supporting me.

ANYway… it’s time for me to go to Spanish class, now.

Adios! Hasta la proxima! Besos y abrazos,
Raquel

What I've Learned So Far In Costa Rica!

Alright, folks, I love making lists, so here's one of the random stuff I've learned so far from my aventura in Costa Rica! First things first, though: There are NEW PHOTOS at the facebook album! So go check them out.

Now, without further ado: THINGS I HAVE LEARNED IN TICO LAND!

1) It is painfully obvious that I am a gringa, and there is nothing I can do about it.
2) Pedestrians do NOT have the right of way in Costa Rica. If you want to cross the street, look right, then left, then right, then left, then RUN.
3) It’s not always clear where the street ends and the sidewalk begins, but what IS clear is that there will be a 1.5-foot-deep gutter (literally) in front of all houses and shops, and if you don’t watch where you are going, you run the risk of seriously hurting yourself.
4) Toilet paper doesn’t get thrown into the toilets here. Instead, it goes into the trash can beside the toilet. Takes a while to get used to.
5) The best colors for houses, bathrooms, and clothing are: fuschia, turquoise, bright peach-pink, red, yellow, and anything else you might find in a box of Runts.
6) Almost any question or statement in CR can be responded to with the most ubiquitous word: “tranquila!” Tranquila describes the Costa Rican way of life to a T (har har.) Everything (Except crossing the street) is tranquila, tranquila, tranquila. That’s probably why Costa Ricans are famous for arriving to everything 15 minutes late (we call it Tico Time!) … the other phrase that’s used most is “pura vida” (pure life). You can even use it to respond to the question “como esta?” (How are you?)
7) In Costa Rica, the word ‘tu’ is rarely used (that’s the normal form of “you” for most Spanish-speaking countries.) Instead, Ticos use “Usted” (which in other countries is normally reserved for formal interactions.) Gotta say, it’s hilarious to hear babies and pets being referred to as “Usted” 
8) Costa Rica has poisonous snakes, caterpillars, frogs and scorpions! Yay. Part of our training, in fact, is to teach us to look in our shoes before putting them on and in our sheets before climbing in to bed, to not touch colorful insects, and how to slow the spread of venom through a limb. Whee. At least the pumas have generally moved away from inhabited areas…….. or so they tell us.
9) Breakfast is gallo pinto and eggs. Lunch is gallo pinto, potatoes and chicken. Dinner is gallo pinto, noodles and beef. No other food groups exist, and your argument is invalid. …no, seriously, Ticos eat an abundance of starches and very little else: their diet consists mainly of rice, beans, and sweet things. That said…
10) Tico women are curvy and they OWN it. When I say “curvy”, I mean “many are quite obese”, and when I say “OWN it” I mean “wear brightly colored Spandex without shame.” It’s actually kinda awesome, though. Again, part of our training is teaching us how to respond when our host mothers attempt to fatten us up because we Americans are too delgada (skinny.)
11) Ticos are open, friendly, and brutally honest—but would rather make up completely false directions than admit that they have no idea how to get where you need to go. (I’ve experienced this already—and again, part of our training is to teach us to ask for directions from several people before following any of them.)
12) The Machismo culture is alive and well in Costa Rica, though it hasn’t been that bad so far for me. Some cat calls, some cars slowing own, the guy at the hospital insistently trying to get me to give him my number, and the words coming out of my host father’s mouth: “women don’t know anything about that.” (I’d like to note, though, that I really like my host father… it’s not that he’s mean or anything, I think it’s just a product of the culture? I dunno. He makes me laugh, and he and I had a fun evening together talking about politics and such when the rest of the family was out.)
13) Costa Rica is SO LOUD. There are roosters crowing ALL THE TIME, dogs barking, cars driving by, people yelling ‘Upe!’… truly, for such a tranquila place, it’s quite loud. I’m glad I brought my earplugs so that I can get some sleep!

....I know that there will be more. This list will be updated!

In other news, I ended up having to bus in to San Jose by myself to go to the doctor and get antibiotics for my throat/lung microplasm infection that I had this week. THAT was quite an adventure-- especially given that almost everyone I talked to only spoke Spanish! I've now learned words like 'formulario' and 'receta' (receipt/prescription) and 'bajarme' (get off a bus) and 'parada' (bus stop) and 'mocos' (mucus!)... you know, the important things ;). But, yeah, I am PROUD of myself for doing that, because it was scary and I was quite sick. I had a bit of a breakdown in the bathroom at the hospital because it was overwhelming and I was sick and alone in the middle of Central America... but I think that's all part of this experience, you know? And not only did I survive, I learned and grew and am slowly beginning to feel better :)

Then today, we went for a hike up to the top of one of the mountains here in Orosi. We were literally hiking through the jungle, and there are pictures in the facebook album-- so check them out!

Lastly, as always, THANK YOU EVERYONE for your support and emails!

Besos,
Raquel

Orosi: Volcanos, painted roosters, and allergies: OH MY

Dear readers!

This entry marks my third full day in the beautiful sueño hecho realidad (dream made reality) that is Costa Rica.

We left San Jose on Monday and drove past beautiful vistas such as these:

to get to Orosi, where I will be for the rest of January.

Orosi is a beautiful, mountain-and-volcano surrounded town of ~12,000 people. One of the views out of the hostel where we have our seminars and Spanish classes looks like this:

My days are full of 3-hour Spanish classes, seminars about teaching and culture, and family bonding with my host family.

My host mother, Ligia, is short, shy, and sweet, with ever-smiling eyes and tiny hands and feet. My strongest mental image of her so far is of her sitting in her rocking chair on the patio with one granddaughter on one side (Brittany, 5) and another on the other (Yesalyn, 10?), smiling as they brush and put cream in her hair (there was no shampoo in the house-- the girls put oil and cream in Ligia's hair.) The children are affectionate and open, and I've been bonding with them over headbands, photos, computer games, and painting our nails. Living with kids is a fantastic way to improve my Spanish, and it's been getting better every day.

I really feel like I lucked out with my host family!

Every day I eat rice and beans (gallo pinto-- "painted rooster") three times a day. It's generally accompanied with plantains, some kind of protein (eggs in the morning, chicken or fish at restaurants), and another kind of starch (bread, noodles, potatoes... or all of the above.) It's going to be a challenge to have a balanced diet here, but luckily, I love gallo pinto!

I'm in the second-highest level Spanish class, and it's basically up to me whether I want to switch to the highest (I'm between levels.) I might switch part-way through, but I really like the group of people in my class (Sara, Meggie, and Drew) and don't want to leave them :)... Sara has been the person from the group that I've felt most drawn to so far, which is AWESOME because not only is she open and friendly-- she's at one of the closest sites to mine!

The biggest downside of being here so far is that I seem to be allergic to Costa Rica :(. My sinuses and throat are rebelling in a very annoying, phlegmy way :(. However, the upside of that is that I've already successfully navigated my way through one Farmacia visit en español.

ANYWAY, going to leave y'all with one last picture: when I woke up this morning to go for a run, I turned left and saw this:

...the Turrialba volcano, a-steaming away!

Anyway, more later, amigos.

BESOS Y ABRAZOS de Orosi!
Raquel

ps: I think that I just got my first Costa Rican bug bite while writing this blog post. Thanks, folks ;)
pps: I will be uploading photos from my aventura to This Facebook Page!

Entrada primera de Costa Rica!

Querida gente! Mujeres y caballeros! Amigos, ranas* y cinturones de seguridad*!

*some of the new words I learned yesterday (rana = frog; cinturon de seguridad = seatbelt)

I have safely arrived in San Jose, Costa Rica after 18 hours, 3 flights (including a stop in El Salvador), adventures in immigration/customs, and a supremely rickety bus ride.

Some highlights of my Aventuras so far include:
-sitting next to a spanish speaking couple and their 2yo daughter Isabella on my first flight. she and I practiced our colors together en espanol :)
-the german-speaking woman sitting behind me on the second flight, who was from Bielefeld (right near where I did my study abroad in Germany!)... she and I talked a bunch in German and Spanish as well
-helping my new friend AnneMarie through customs in San Jose. She's a beginning spanish learner and her customs guy didn't speak English and had a strong accent, so I got the honor of explaining to him (in spanish that came out a lot better than I expected it to) that we were volunteer teachers entering as tourists and that we would apply for a visa within the alloted 90 day period.)
-so many palm trees! so much barbed wire!
-being woken up by interesting sounding birds this morning
-creepy steam coming from the ceiling of the shakey airplane at takeoff (the group bonded over our terror)
-moment when i realized that 'adios' means 'to god' ...


...........aaaaaaaand much much more. There's a girl here (Graceann) who is my height, has a similar body, similar features, similar hair, similar style, lots of tattoos.... and a site very near mine. We're debating pretending to be sisters. Boruca is apparently a fantastic, awesome, laid-back place where tattoos are no problem, the people are friendly and very dark-skinned, and the children are ridiculously cute (according to the people who picked us up and had been there.) Sara, Drew, and I all live relatively near each other and brought our guitars, so I have a feeling that jam sessions will occur at some point.

ANYway. it's 6:13, aka time to pack my stuff together and grab breakfast before my first full day in America Central.

BESOS!