Birthdays, Pérez, and other nonsense

Hola!

The 13th was Corrylee's 21st birthday! We celebrated in true Costa Rican tradition by going out to eat after Spanish class, then to Trigo Miel for birthday cake, then to Tutti Fruity for smoothies.

Then that Thursday Abby and I made a cake during our weekly baking time and brought it to Corry's house before we left for Cholo's for even more celebration. Hooray birthdays!

These pictures are of my host sister, China, and her little dog, too. (Just a side note, the dog, Gandhi, is a wiener dog, which they call in Spanish a "perro salchicha", which literally translated means sausage dog. It makes sense, but I still find it absolutely hilarious.) China is absolutely in love with her puppy, which is pretty amusing to me. I mean, the dog is cute and all, but she smells like feet on a good day, and when she barks it makes you want to tear your ears right off of your head. China's fierce love does not go one way, though. Gandhi goes crazy barking anytime she hears the front gate to the house, but always knows if it's China coming in, because instead of barking she stays quiet and stands by the door. It's pretty ridiculous how cute they are together. Just be glad these pictures aren't scratch and sniff.

Two weeks ago I had a class trip to Pérez Zeledón, which is Laura's hometown. The bus ride lasted a few hours, so we stayed overnight at a hotel next to the campus branch in Pérez. The picture below on the left has a shot of the hotel in the back. The educational part of the trip was to teach a class of your peers along with your group members (my group is in the picture to the bottom right) about various topics having to do with a culture of peace. The idea was good, but the execution was not. The professor is always very unorganized, so the trip felt a little hectic.

After all of the groups had each taught their classes, there was a talent show. Yes, a talent show. Hello, middle school. A few of the students performed dances, skits, and one kid even told a few offensive jokes. Good. Poor Corry got roped into doing something for the show, and the only thing she could thing of to do was do different accents in English. She did a Southern accent, one from Chicago, and an English accent. Pretty sure nobody understood what she was saying, but they loved it nonetheless. Then one of the professors did a sort of interview, asking her how she liked Costa Rica, where she had traveled, and what she thought of Costa Rican men. Ah, we American students are somewhat of an oddity for the Ticos.

But alas, the trip wasn't a total waste. A friend of Laura's took me and Corry out that night to a few of the bars around and we got to sleep in the next morning. Hooray!

Thanks for reading!

Coffee Gira

Oh hey.

On Saturday the 9th, my Spanish class and the other took a joint field trip to Santa María de Dota, a coffee plantation south of San José. I was a bit tired because I went out the night before with my host sister, China, but otherwise it was a fun trip. First we toured the coffee plantation and learned all about how it is grown and roasted. The pictures below are of coffee beans before they are roasted and the roasting process.

Then a few baristas made different types of drinks and let us taste them. There were hot drinks, cold drinks, drinks with different flavors, all of them. Mmm coffee. My favorite ones to look at were the ones with the designs made by the barista by pouring milk or cream in a certain way.

Then we went to an organic coffee plantation nearby. The fields covered the mountains all around and the view from the path of our tour was breathtaking.

Our tour guide was slightly crazy, but he was so passionate about the things about which he spoke, that it was hard not to be interested. He talked a bit about the treatment of indigenous peoples, and we met some of the ones working and living on his plantation.

I know this post is lacking in explanation, and I know you all must be quite sad from the lack of witty comments on my part, but I promise I will get back to it soon. First I have to deal with these finals.

Ciao.

Sissy's Visit

Hello all!

Long time. I have a lot of updating to do since the last time I posted. So, I’ll start with my sister’s visit.

On Tuesday, September 14th, my sister came to visit after a few days at home after her Peace Corps adventure in Benin was over. It was a lucky coincidence that her trip coincided with the Costa Rican Independence Day, which was the day after she arrived. After I picked her up at the airport, we went back to my host family’s house where my Mama Tica had a ridiculously delicious lunch prepared for us, then we checked into a hostel just a few bus stops away from my house. That night the Independence Day festivities started, and we walked the few blocks from our hostel to the Parque Central. There, we met up with a few of the other students from my exchange program and we sang the national anthem and watched some traditional dancing. But the real excitement started the next morning with a parade around the Parque Central which was absolutely jam-packed with people. And it was hot. I mean really hot. We met up with some other students there and we all chose a spot on the curb on one side of the road which we soon realized was in direct sunlight all morning. Awesome. But despite the heat, the parade was fun and I was glad to be able to share the holiday with my sister.

That weekend after my classes we traveled to a Manuel Antonio National Park, which is famous for its beautiful beaches and fearless monkeys.

We stayed at a cute little hostel just a short bus ride from the public beach. But the really nice beaches were inside of the park, which was about a ten minute walk from the public beach.

We also did a bit of hiking in the park, and all-in-all had a really great weekend.

Unfortunately we had to go back to Heredia for my classes on Monday morning. But, we made the best of our time and ate some good food, spent enough time together to get sick of each other, and even went to go see Sissy’s first movie in a theatre in over two years. I’d say it was a successful trip.

Paz y amor(sh)

Volcán Poás

Hello all!

Here is my apology for my more-than-a-month long hiatus: sorry. Now leave me alone.

I know you all are dying for me to talk about myself, so here is a quick update on me. Not a whole lot has changed, actually. My family is great, my host mom still thinks I don't like her cooking (which is not true), and I still can't understand my host dad; apparently the rest of the family can't understand his mumbling most of the time either, so no big deal. Classes are... well, classes. School is boring in any language. My university hasn't had any marches recently, so classes have been pretty regular.

A few weeks ago, the ISEP program had the second excursion of the semester, this time to Volcán Poás, which was absolutely beautiful! The park consists of an active volcano with two lakes. The picture below is a picture from an observation point at the top of a 30 minute hike. We were lucky to be able to see as much as we could, because most of the time this entire area is covered by clouds and smoke.

This next picture is a picture of one of the lakes. According to the information I included in a project for my Spanish class, this lake is calm and cold. The other is warm and acidic.

This next picture is of my friend Caitlin with these giant leaves which were everywhere at the park. I must say, this was one of my favorite things about the day.

After the volcano, we went to a place called La Paz Waterfall Gardens. We ate at this really nice resort restaurant. It was a buffet and it was glorious. Besides being a beautiful covered area in the middle of all of the plants around the resort, the food was absolutely amazing. I would have taken a couple pictures of it, but I was too busy stuffing my face with two plates full of food and a bowl of pasta. So for the rest of the day I had a stomach ache, but the sites were still too good to be ruined by that.

There was a nice hike that led to three different waterfalls, hence the name. The waterfall in the picture on the left wasn't the biggest, but it is the only one I got a decent picture of. The path to the 120 foot waterfall led right up to the side of it, which allowed you to pretty much look right up underneath it. Then it looped around to give a full view, but still pretty close, so if you went to the observation point, the mist from the waterfall was so thick it felt like rain, so I didn't want to take out my camera.

The resort also had birds (including an incredible number of hummingbirds), butterflies, sloths (my favorite), monkeys, snakes, frogs, and a traditional ox-pulled Costa Rican cart, which all-in-all made for a pretty interesting day. Here are some pictures below.

The rest of the pictures from my trip will be on my facebook within the next couple of days, so if you are still interested, you can go there to look at the rest, and I will leave you with one of my favorite pictures from the day. Check back soon though, because as soon as my sister sends me the pictures from her trip here from her camera (like she was supposed to do earlier today) I will do a post about her week-long visit which ended a few days ago. Also, I will put up a short post about the protests on my campus for those of you who haven't heard about it.

Nos vemos!

Happy birthday to me!

Today is my birthday!! (Ok, technically it isn't anymore since it's past midnight; but y'all get the idea.) My birthday has always been special for me because I fully believe that my birthday should be entirely and only about me. The end. So I have to admit I was a little depressed last night thinking about being away from my family and friends back home who would humor me and my (justified) selfishness on my birthday. However, so far I have been pleasantly surprised today! My host mom, father, and sister were excited to tell me happy birthday this morning, and all of my fellow exchange students have been telling me happy birthday all day.

A few of my friends went with me to get lunch and desert, but really what happened was they watched me eat. But that's ok, because I'm the birthday girl. The terrible picture of me to the left is a picture from a cafe slash pastry shop near campus called Trigo Miel. The giant slice of cake I am eating is pure chocolate. For real. I wish I had a better picture and one of all of us, but as usual, I was a total slacker when it came to taking pictures. I stole this one from Abby's blog (which is really cute and everyone should go read: http://mipuravida.tumblr.com/).

The picture to the right is a birthday card that my sister made me which was just too stinkin' cute to not make the blog. (By the way, Kendra, it is definitely my computer background.)

Then, this evening, I went out to the kitchen after skyping with my parents and grandmother and my host mom and sister were sitting down waiting for me to come in and see the cake on the table for me! They sang to me and then we had dinner and I opened presents.

My mom got me a pair of yoga pants which is really awesome because I am going to start going to yoga classes with my sister. My sister got me a shirt with the word tuanis written in big writing with a definition underneath. Tuanis is Tico word which means great, nice, what have you. Apparently the word is adopted from the phrase too nice. Also, a pin with the Tico word mae on it, which is like dude in English. Everything was perfect.

Then, as if my day wasn't already fabulous enough, my friends from school back home called me up on skype and video chatted with me for a while. Seriously, I couldn't have asked for a better birthday. Of course, I wish I didn't have to be away from my family and friends at home, but I'm glad I got to spend it with the people I did.


Also, I need to update everyone on my last trip. During my long weekend (two weekends ago), three friends and I took a trip to a beach on the pacific coast called Montezuma. It was a cute little touristy hippie town with a bunch of cute cafes and restaurants and of course, the beach. After leaving at 4:30 am in a taxi for San Jose, we caught a bus, then a ferry, then another bus, and finally reached our hostel, which was a cozy little place right on the ocean. It was absolutely breathtaking.

The second day we were there, we went on an all-day trip by boat to a nearby island for some snorkeling, food and fresh fruit on the beach, and relaxing in the powdery sand. Sound like paradise? Yeah, it was. The snorkeling was fun, though it didn't offer too much of a variety when it came to types of fish.

Mostly we saw these aqua colored fish with yellow stripes like the ones in the picture above. I did get some pretty good pictures with the awesome waterproof HD camera my parents gave me before the trip for my birthday. The one that I ruined while snorkeling. Yeah. That one. Oh well, I suppose that happens.

We also hiked up to some nearby waterfalls one morning. It was a lot more treacherous than any of us thought, especially since we only had three pairs of tennis shoes between the four of us. But we all agreed that the hike was worth it when we saw the beauty of the incredible waterfalls. I have included a picture, but honestly, it doesn't even begin to do it justice.


After a swim and some jumping we headed back down with the help of a local who told us the way we came was extremely difficult and there was a much easier way. Go figure.

Ok! Now that this post has officially reached a sufficiently obnoxious length (you know I wouldn't have it any other way), I will leave you itching in anticipation for my next exciting post.

Paz. Amor. Pura vida.

Pictures from Sarapiquí

Hello all! I am finally getting around to posting pictures from the group excursion the first weekend.

Ok, well this picture is not from the excursion, but this was from one of the days my host mom took me to orientation. We were walking with a few other students and their host moms when we passed KFC. Without hesitation, my host mom sat down right next to the colonel and snuggled up, prompting me to take a picture. Then later that evening, she urged me to show the rest of the family. Yeah, she's pretty cool.

I have to admit I was a little worried about my host family before I came. Nothing having to do with them specifically, scary ideas like them not liking me or them being super crazy and the like. I must say, though. I was definitely pleasantly surprised. My host mom is so great and even though my host dad works during the day and I don't see much of him, he is still really nice and accommodating. Also, my host siblings are great. I have a 30 year old brother, and 28 year old sister, and a 16 year old brother who all live in the house. They all speak English which is really convenient when I don't know how to say something in Spanish, but also really dangerous because sometimes I will start speaking in English to them.

These are some pictures from the first place we stayed at in Sarapiquí. The river was just down to the right of this area. One of my favorite things about Costa Rica is the scenery. Obviously, it's beautiful out here, but it is also like this in unexpected places. For example, When I am sitting in Spanish class on Monday and Wednesday mornings, I can't help but stare out the window sometimes because it looks like a rain forest right outside. In the united states, you have to go to a wildlife preserve or a national park to see things like this. Here, all you have to do is look out the window.

Until next time!