Sunday, September 30, 2007

Coronado

Today Steph and I took a bus to this part of town called "Coronado". There is this beautiful church there that reminds me a little bit of Notre Dame.

Here are some pictures:




My Neighborhood

Friday, September 28, 2007

Macha Rica

So "Macha" or "Machita" means "little blonde/white girl". As you can imagine, I get it a lot. Yesterday was a record. I got called "Machita" 7 times while walking downtown to catch my bus. I keep track everyday because I think its funny.

I just joined a group on facebook titled "Costa Rica Love" because the description of an experience in Costa Rica is SO accurate it made me laugh:

"The sentence 'I have much itch' makes perfect grammatical sense to you... You think a $3 dollar meal is too expensive... You eat beans and rice for breakfast and drink coffee at night... You have either almost gotten hit by a car or attacked by a dog every day... You frequently answer English-Speaking people with Spanish, and vice-versa... You´ve grown accustomed to parroting "PURA VIDA" whenever you don't know what the heck is going on... You can immediately curl into the perfect position on the public bus and pass out for four or five hours... You like that you can finally be the foreigner talking crap about people who don't know what you're saying... in the course of one day, you expect to: sweat profusely, freeze to death, feel like the rain will wash your house away, and burn your poor gringo skin... you know where the nicest Internet cafes are in every single city... and you know that Costa Rica isn´t a place; its a lifestyle."

Pura Vida.

Songs

I was going to my i-tunes today and realized that I have a lot of favorite songs. In case anyone cares, some songs that I will never get sick of:

Bebe- Siempre Me Quedará
Ben Folds- Not The Same
Ben Harper- Forever, Please Me Like You Want To
Bob Marley- Waiting In Vain
Brand New- Okay I Believe You, But My Tommy Gun Don't, Me Vs. Maradona Vs. Elvis, Degausser
Coldplay- Warning Sign
Copeland- When Finally Set Free
Counting Crows- Anna Begins
Damien Rice- Rootless Tree
Dashboard Confessional- Bend And Not Break, The Ghost Of A Good Thing
Dave Matthews Band- Some Devil
Death Cab for Cutie- Summer Skin, We Have The Facts and We're Voting Yes
Emilie Simón- Opium
Enrique Iglesias- Dimelo
Imogen Heap- I Am In Love With You, The Walk, Hide and Seek, Glittering Cloud
Iron and Wine- Upward Over the Mountain, Gray Stables
Jack Johnson- Rodeo Clowns
John Mayer- Split Screen Sadness, I Don't Trust Myself, Back To You, Why Georgia
Led Zeppelin- Kashmir, That's the Way
The Manchester Orchestra- Colly Strings
Muse- Map Of the Problematique, Exo-Politics
Norah Jones- Nightengale, Humble Me
The Postal Service- Brand New Colony, The District Sleeps Alone Tonight
Regina Spektor- Samson, On The Radio, Hotel Song, Edit, Loveology, Somedays
Something Corporate- Konstantine
Tegan and Sara- The Con, Nineteen, I Can't Take It, When I get up, Back in Your Head, Call It Off, Downtown

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Food For the Hungry

Thursday I went to the place where I will be volunteering for the next two 1/2 months. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays I will be helping teach a class, one in the morning one in the afternoon. We do crafts, play games, and talk about Jesus. All of the little kids who attend are so cute, but very malnurished and are provided lunch also at the feeding center. Its easy to tell when they are malnourished, their eyes just dont seem right. It is very sad, hopefully I will be able to see some progress in these children's health while I am volunteering here. My boss is a really nice girl from Korea. The only language we have in common is Spanish, so that's pretty cool! I'm going to be traveling by bus to the ghetto of San Jose for this. Dont worry, I have my mace and I will be traveling with people.

Para mis amigos que prefieren español:

Jueves fui al lugar donde voy a trabajar por el proximo mes y medio. Martes, miercoles, y jueves voy a ayudar ensañar una clase, una por la mañana, y una por la tarde. Hicimos arte, jugar con juguetes, y hablamos sobre Jesus. Todos los niños que atenienden son muy lindos, pero tienen desnutricion y comen en el comedor en el almuerzo. Es muy facil ver que tienen desnutricion porque sus ojos se ven mal. Es muy triste, pero yo espero que yo pueda ver el progreso en el salud de estos niños mientras estoy voluntariando aqui. Mi jefa es de Korea y es una muchacha muy simpatica. El unico idioma que tenemos en comun es español, asi que es muy chiva. Voy a viajar por bus al sector de San Jose para poder llegar ahi. No te preocupes, tengo mi macis y voy a viajar con otras personas.

Friday, September 21, 2007

Sidewalk Chalk Art

This kid at Escuela Del Mundo showed me this website, if you have never seen it make sure you check it out. This guy does these incredible 3D drawings with sidewalk chalk. Its wild!

This is the website: http://www.etntalk.com/sidewalk/



Acts

I just got done reading Acts last night. It was kind of like a good book that I didn't want to end. Now I dont know what to do. When I was done I set my bible down and looked around kind of lost. To be honest, the Bible has never been that way for me. I would read maybe 2 or 3 times a week when I was home in my little comfort zone. Here, reading is just a part of my day as eating. I never used to understand people who just couldnt wait to read their Bible, I would have moments where it really stuck a nerve, but in general it was kind of a chore. Acts was seriously amazing. Reading this stuff and then thinking, wow, that actually happend. Paul was actually in jail for years for spreading the truth. He actually got flogged like 4 times in the same chapter. Woah...

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

San Jose

I'm all moved in with the Gomez family in San Jose. I really like it here. It is nice to have a family again, and to eat warm food. I have a cute room in the basement that I share with Theresa (the daughter of the other GCM pastor in Costa Rica). She is studying in San Jose so she stays here Tuesdays-Fridays. They have two daughters, Valerie (17) and Stephanie (16) who I get along with really good. They also have a 7 year old son named Carlitos. He is such a cutie-pie. (He is sitting right next to me) He wanted me to write in here that his dad eats a lot of chicken. :)

This week I will start volunteering at an orphanage for abused children. I will play with kids and help them with their homework. On other days I will be volunteering with an organization called "Feed the Hungry." I will be helping feed malnourished children at a nutrition clinic and then educate mothers on how to provide their children with proper nutrition. No one there will speak English, so that will be good for me, it will force me to speak in Spanish all the time. It is kind of tiring at the house because they are all bilingual. I keep switching between languages and it makes my head feel like its going to explode. It might be easier to just stick to one language. To get to the nutrition clinic I will take a bus for about an hour each way. The orphanage is very close to the house.

This city is really beautiful. The streets are windy and the hills are covered in bright colored houses. There are many beautiful Catholic Churches around the city, it reminds me a lot of Europe. On Sunday Stephanie and I went to a Crepe shop, went to an art museum, walked around down town, went to the mall, and went to a really pretty church. Socialist countries are like heaven because the public transportation is so nice. We just hop on a bus and go wherever we need to go. It costs like 30 cents each way. I would post some pictures, but my lap top is back in the Toshiba store getting fixed again. It should be back soon because there is only a small problem this time.

So there is a small update... more to come when I get my computer back.

Monday, September 17, 2007

Día de la Independencia

This place is so rich with Culture...




Friday, September 14, 2007

Tortugitas Corriendo al Mar





Last wave for awhile

Tomorrow I am waking up at 6 AM to go with some other people from the school and watch baby sea turtles hatch and then run to the ocean. I am really sad to leave the beach. I got piped by a wave yesterday (where the wave breaks over your head and makes a tunnel that you can see down like a pipe) FYI I suck at surfing, I can do it, but I suck. It was just REALLY cool that the wave happend to break over my head like that, it was nothing I did because I suck.
So my last wave for awhile today. After I was done I sat on the beach and watched the sunset while my surf instructors caught their last wave. Wow I am going to miss this place. There is so much beauty that comes with an ocean.





Thursday, September 13, 2007

Goodbyes suck

Tomorrow morning at 9 AM I will take a bus to San Jose, and I will be living there for three months. No more surfing everyday, no more seeing the people that I met here, no more beach, at least during the week. Jacó really grew on me, I'm going to be so sad to leave this place... but I am really excited to get to San Jose.

Last night we went to this little bar on the beach and just sat in the sand watching the waves. I think I have to live by an ocean when I have a family. I just have to.

Yesterday my surf instructor Estevan took us to the waterfall about an hour away. It was huge with three different cascades. It was possible to jump into the second on because the water had cut this pool that is 18 feet deep. It was so fun, it was such a long way down. My surf instructors were so much fun, I'm going to miss them so much, goodbyes suck!

Chau Jacó




Un Fin de... Muy Loco

Holy Moses, last weekend made a great story to tell my future grand kids someday…

A group of 5 of us from the school decided to go to this town in the Nicoya Peninsula named Mal Pais. There were beautiful beaches, the sunsets were amazing, and we met some really cool people. First we took a boat taxi from Jacó to Montezuma on Friday morning. It was crazy because this little boat was like catching air on every wave that we hit. Our butts hurt SO BAD but we were laughing the whole time. We made it to Montezuma, which is this gorgeous little hippie town, ate lunch, and took a cab to the other side of the peninsula. It was gorgeous, undeveloped, REAL Costa Rica.

We arrived at our hostel, it was amazing. There were hammocks everywhere. Minus the moldy pillow, our rooms were really nice too. They were two story apartments, the boys upstairs, Bryony and I downstairs. There were no windows though so I got eaten alive by mosquitoes. We found Leffe Brune in the little store right next to our hostel, so we drank good beer and watched the sunset Friday and Saturday night. There were people there from every corner of the globe. Hostels are so cool here because all of the same types of people are staying there. I have met so many people that speak so many different languages so I have just asked them all how to say “I love you” so I can take a little bit of that language with me. So far I have 9: English, Hebrew, Swedish, German, Swiss German, Japanese, French, Portuguese, Spanish. We just relaxed in our hammocks the whole weekend. It was great to get out of Jaco and not have to see any old tourists in there giant beach hats and obnoxious voices. The old tourists here are just crazy. They don’t speak a lick of Spanish, so they treat the people here like they are stupid for not speaking English. They like raise there voice and do some form of crazy sign language to get what they want. Then they just get frustrated and like walk away. Sorry, but you are in Costa Rica?

So we set out at 9 AM Sunday from the hostel. We couldn’t just take the ferry back because it didn’t leave that morning. The plan was to take a cab form Mal Pais to this little town called Cóbano, catch the 12:45 bus, then take that bus to Parquera, catch the 2:30 Ferry across the gulf of Nicoya to Puntarenas, then catch the 4:30 bus to Jaco from Puntarenas. (look at the map of the Nicoya Peninsula posted below)

So we caught our cab to Cóbano ok, it only costed about $3 each. Then we tried to figure out this crazy bus sign in Cóbano, prayed that a bus was coming, it looked like it was written in like sharpie marker. We went to a soda for some quick lunch. While we were there this guy kept asking me and Bryony for a hair tie. I knew he just wanted to know where we kept our purses because he was trying to steal our stuff. The waitress told us to watch out because he was sketchy. He kept telling me that he didn’t want his girlfriend to see him with his hair down... Good one.
We made it on that bus ok and arrived in Parquera. Everyone on the bus was going to the ferry. This place was like the New York Stock exchange on steroids. We had to catch the ferry because it was the only way we would make the bus in the Puntarenas. We ran to the line but it was like 2:15 and the ferry left at 2:30 there was no way we were going to make it where we were at in line. Cars fit on this ferry too, and all of the people with cars had to get their tickets first before they sold tickets to the people who were just riding themselves over. Bryony and I came up with the brilliant idea to sneak into the car line and act like we didn’t speak Spanish and see if they would give us our tickets. We got to the front and they rejected us, and it was like 2:25. We were almost screwed, but Bryony (a 5’0 British girl) decided to just bust through these like 200 pound Costa Rican women and just scream for 5 tickets at the window, she did it after getting elbowed in the face, and we got our tickets! We sprinted onto the ferry just as the horn was blowing and they were closing the gates. We were cheering we were so happy, we didn’t want to get stranded there. So we rode this awesome ferry passing these islands all over the place and jumping fish.
We made it to Puntarenas at like 4:10 and we had to travel to the other side of the island to get the bus, so we thought “ok we will just have to take a taxi.” To our luck there were no taxis in sight and we ended up sprinting down the busy beach street while people are yelling "Vamos! Andale!"to make fun of us. We had heavy backpacks so it was more of a waddle sprint. We ended up making it to the bus stop and it was 4:30 on the dot, and no bus in sight. Another driver told us that the last bus had already left. I honestly wanted to cry, and just then it started pouring raining to add to our hopelessness. This crazy guy named "Louis" introduced himself to us and he was like "hey man I got a friend he take you to Jacó for 50 dollar." We were like umm no thank you I don’t want to be robbed and killed today. We found out from this street vendor that we could take a different bus up into the mountains, and then intercept a bus that was coming from San Jose, basically flag it down.
So we take a 5:00 bus to San Mateo in the mountains, and the bus driver dropped us off on the side of this rainy dark highway. He was like "Walk. that way, you catch a bus." I was thinking “holy crap, we are honestly going to walk like 25 kilometers tonight." So we are walking towards Jacó on this dark rainy highway with semis blowing past us every 5 seconds splashing more water on us. Keep in mind its pouring raining this whole time, like sheets of rain. And we are all in flip flops. We stopped and ate some fries at this little soda and just laughed at our circumstances. We started hiking again and right then a bus to Jacó came zipping by and we waddle-sprinted to flag it down. It was sooo packed we had to all stand up, we were soaking wet too. It was a good laugh because we were all thinking, there is no way this is happening, we are actually going in the right direction? We finally made it home at like 9. I couldn’t believe I was still alive. I at least got to see a lot of Costa Rica in one day. What an experience, like I said it will be a good one for the grand kids someday.

Here are some pictures from the weekend and a map of where we were: