Despido

September 25^th, 2012

Friday night my school hosted an event called El Despedido.  I was dictionarryless when my friends asked me if I wanted to go, which was actually a rare occurrence as my dictionary has become a constant companion, so trusting my luck and figuring that I was here to have new experiences, I jumped at the chance.  I later found out that 'despedido' translates to 'farewell'.  The big night turned out to be a dance type thing exclusively for Juniors and Seniors, essentially the equivalent to Prom.  I suppose its actually a stretch to ­call them the same thing.  I should say that the idea behind the events are essentially the same, but most of the similarities ended there.

The school bus was supposed to pick my cousins and I up around six, tico time of course, and getting to the bus however, proved to be an adventure all on its own.  I had been told to dress up a little, but my mom found both of the dresses that I brought to be to racy (too short)...  Luckily, the dress code for the dance here is nothing like what people wear to dances in the US and I was perfectly fine in jeans.  I did end up in high heals though.  I already have problems with tripping over invisible obstacles, but in heals that coordination is greatly reduced.  I'm not entirely sure what happened, but one moment I am sitting on the porch talking to my cousin (it was about 6:30), and all of the sudden she realizes that the bus has arrived so we have to run to the stop. To get to my house you turn off the main road and then onto this little dirt road which goes down a hill to my house, so not only was I trying to run to the stop in high heals, I was on an uneven dirt road, in the dark, and of course, it was raining.  I'm sure that it was amusing to watch, and although I was absolutely positive that I was about to face plant into the mud, I pride myself on staying on my feet!  The bus drove the normal bus rout picking up the rest of the kids and then finally dropped us at the local “Salon”, where basically all events around here happen.  It has a concrete floor, probability a little bit larger than a Basketball court, and like all other buildings in Costa Rica, is covered by a giant tin roof, but thats about all there is.  Its enclosed by walls about four feet tall and bars reaching the rest of the way up to the roof. 

We walked in to find that tables had been spread across half of the floor and we quickly pushed four together so that our class could all sit together.  They gave us a gigantic dinner of, wait for it... RICE AND BEANS!  Whats new?  They also gave us like five different types of meat and enough Coca Cola for the entire state of Texas.  (You can choose to interpret that however you choose ;) When people were finished eating they turned on some music and every one stared dancing.  Somehow everyone here is just an amazing dancer, and this served as yet another reminder to me that white girls can't dance... Or maybe just this one can't...  At one point toward the end some belly dancers showed up and the teachers handed out fun masks and kazoos.  Of course there was no way that we were going to be able to drink all of that Coke, so kids started throwing it in the air and at people which made for a rather sticky mess. Sometime around 11 people started singing some terrible karaoke, and by 11:15 we were back on the buses heading back home.

Independence Day

September 16^th, 2012

“Bajo el límpido azul de tu cielo ¡vivan siempre el trabajo y la paz!

These are the last lines of the Costa Rican national anthem, a song I must have heard three times a day for the past  two weeks, and for those of you who are curious, I will save you the time of pasting the lyric into a translator:

“Under the unsullied blue of your sky, may labor and peace ever live”

Ask anyone who has lived in Costa Rica to describe Ticos and I bet that 'proud' will be one of the first words out of their mouth.  Its true.  Most of the pride is justified; Costa Ricans have a lot to be proud of: gorgeous white sand beaches, magnificent waterfalls cascading into turquoise pools, virgin rain forests protected by an unbelievable number of National Parks and Refuges, and, of course, some of the best surfing in the world.  Not only is it a country graced by nature, the small country is rich with culture that has been shaped by a very unique history, but I don't really like history so I'm not going to go into that.  The important part is that for many years they were the forgotten stepsister of the Spanish empire, and on September 15^th, they were declared free.  Now, the entire first half of September is devoted to celebrating Costa Rica's independence, a small but proud country. 

Everyday this month, we have “Acto Civico” at school, which was basically just an assembly.  The PE area (a concrete floor sheltered by a tall tin roof)  was transformed into a stage  adorned in red white and blue, where they started by carrying out the Costa Rican flag and the flag of Guanacaste, before playing the nation anthems.  I couldn't help but notice the considerable increase of enthusiasm while the students and teachers sang the anthem of Guanacaste after the anthem of Costa Rica.  In my short time here I have come to understand that Guanacaste dreams of becoming an independent nation, but  its merely that, a dream.  Costa Ricans are peaceful, shown by their lack of army, and will generally do anything just to avoid confrontations. Guanacastecos are no exception, and declaring independence would not be “pura vida.”  The rest of the celebrations were rather boring and lasted about an hour and a half.  Teachers spoke and students read aloud but unfortunately I understood very little while they were speaking so I can't say much about what they were presenting.

The two days leading up to it are kind of like their own holidays.  The 13^th is Día de la Antorcha, and the 14^th is something to do with Faroles.  We were all supposed to go up to Nicaragua as a school to meet the torch on the 13^th and then run it down to Belen, but unfortunately the earthquake kinda ruined most of the festivities.  I guess that some of the schools in Filidelfia got hit pretty hard and some of the them were still being fixed so they couldn't go, and since they weren't going we couldn't go either.   There seemed to be a lot of holes in this logic to me, and maybe it was just the holes in what I can understand, but I don't think so.  Instead, we just hung out at school and watched as the torch went past.  It was still pretty cool though, quite a procession.  It began with ambulances, fire trucks, and police cars all with their sirens blasting.  Then a huge group of kids with their faces painted with flags ran carrying the torch.  Next came a mob of bikers decked out head to toe in red, white and blue, and finally just a bunch of random cars who felt riding behind the torch.  But these cars were decked out!  They were covered in flags and had huge speakers strapped to the roofs blasting music.  You could still hear the “parade” long after it had past and disappeared out of sight.

On Friday night my brother and I drove down to Santa Ana, the little town I live outside of, where a crowd of people had gathered on the soccer field.  It was a pretty small pack as we started walking around the town, but the farther we walked the more people joined, and in no time at all our small group had grown to over 500 people.  Our journey led us around the soccer field, into one of the barrios and around the dirt roads in there, up past my house, and onto a little dirt road that wound its way through the cow fields and eventually looped its way back to the soccer field.  All of the kids had made little paper lanterns which supplied us with all the light we needed and made the parade look spectacular, but by the end most of the candles had tipped over and the lanterns were completely on fire making the whole thing even more crazy!  Everything was incredibly loud.  I mean I knew that Ticos were loud, but this was unbelievable.  Basically anything ythey had around the house that could make loud noises, they had brought.  People were banging on everything from actual drums, to just random pots and pans; there were even a few girls with xylophones.  Add in the kazoos and whistles, and you had quite a ruckus!  On top of that, they were all yelling and shouting and singing!  I may be partially deaf now, but everyone had so much energy and that made it so much fun! 

Saturday was supposed to be the big, important day that all of this was leading up to.  There was going to be a big something, though what I didn't understand.  We had been practicing marching for almost a month, but I guess they felt like it was still to soon after the earthquake and postponed it until November 30^th so I guess I'll just have to wait to solve that mystery.  

Earthquake!

It's a strange sensation when the one thing in your life that you have always felt you can rely on to be stable feels like its about to shatter under your feet. During the few first weeks of being here, it constantly felt like I was dangling on the edge of a cliff, struggling to keep from falling, learning, growing, and having an experience so different from anything I imagined, while still struggling to find solid ground, but today, for the first time in my life, I experienced what is like to feel like the world is crumbling around you.

It began with a small jerk, like a bus slamming on the brakes, only we weren't on a bus, we were taking notes while the teacher dictated in a slow, monotone drone. Almost instantaneously the unbelievably silent classroom (a rare occurrence in school here), was transformed into a zoo of screaming kids, bolting for the door. This task proved to be easier said then done though because as we jumped up out of our seats the floor began shaking back and forth with the intensity of a carnival ride. I didn't really register that it was a big deal. Before I came here I had been told that they have earthquakes fairly frequently so I figured we we just say in our seats and wait until the floor returned to normal, but as the rest of my class began fighting their way to the door I decided it would be best if I followed. Personally, I was having fun. It was like riding the train at the airport while trying to stand up without using the railings.

In reality though, I guess its this kind of thing doesn't happen everyday, and this earthquake was much bigger than anything they had experienced in a while. To the astonishment of practically everyone, I wasn't scared. All of it was kinda a blur happening so quickly, I didn't have time to get scarred. As I stood outside in the field with the rest of my school, I began to notice the tears in my classmates eyes. Many kids were clearly crying, while a few were even having panic attacks, but all of them were frantically trying to get a hold of their families, despite many of the phone lines being out. It wasn't really until that point that I realized how dangerous it actually could have been. Sure, I knew that earthquakes are dangerous, and sometimes even kill people, but it never occurred to me that I would be remotely close to a earthquake large enough to knock buildings over, but there I was. Nothing massive collapsed, but then again, there isn't a whole lot of giant skyscrapers in Costa Rica to collapse. A lot of houses have cracks in the walls, there are trenches in the beaches, a few ceilings caved, and there are some giant cracks in a few streets. My school is fine, but others weren't quite as lucky and more then fifty are going to have to be completly demolished and rebuilt! Our house is totally fine, although the floor was covered in broken glass when we got home and basically all of our cups are shattered. In my room everything feel off of my shelfs except, thankfully, my computer. Nothing of mine broke either so that's good.

After the trembling subsided we stayed outside for another 20 minutes waiting for after shocks. Then the buses came and took us home and we had the rest of the day off, and the rest of the week off. Within an hour after the initial shock I guess there were 25 more small after shocks, though we only felt three, and sense then there have been Later we felt two more. The earthquake was a 7.6 on the Richter scale. We keep having little tiny earthquakes everyday, but they are so small that generally your not really sure if it happened or if you just imagined it. That certainty doesn't stop everyone else from freaking out though... I think these were the little ones that happen all the time that I was told about before I left.

Hot Showers and Iguanas

While it seems hard to believe that I have been living in Costa Rica for a month and a half, its almost impossible to believe that I am already a quarter of the way through my trip! Never the less, it is finally time for the eagerly awaited meet up with the other exchange students to discuss our adventures thus far. 

The weekend started bright and early, or maybe just early as I had to leave before the sun had even begin to rise.  I woke up at 3:30 and by 4:15 we were in the car speeding towards Santa Cruz.  I caught the bus at 5:00 and... Got to take the bus by myself!  While it wasn't exactly the independence that I am desperately starving for, it was a start.  The bus ride was 4 and a half hours which meant we arrived an hour after AFS wanted us too, fully accepting the Costa Rican culture of “hora tico” (Costa Ricans call themselves Ticos).  Friday was spent filling out paperwork for our VISAs' and talking to the other students until dinner time when we walked to our hostel.  

The hostel was nice and as soon as we got there we all headed strait for the pool.   The pool was cold, and San Jose at night is also cold, making for a rather freezing experience for which I only cared to endure for 10 minutes.  After my last trip to San Jose, I was considerably less then happy climbing into the shower, already anticipating the ice water that shocked me last week, but to my surprise, the water wasn't cold, in fact, it was hot! I didn't realize how nice hot showers are until I no longer had them. 

Saturday morning we had pancakes and corn syrup for breakfast and then jumped on a bus and drove to  the BIO Park.  With no shortage of nature reserves and national parks, even close to the capital, I expected something a little more... Wild.  The park looked like the inside of the butterfly pavilion, just without the butterflies, and wayyyy bigger.  The whole thing was man-made, and we wondered around on paved walking paths through fake tropical forests for most of the morning.  Don't get me wrong, it was still really pretty, just not what any of us had been expecting.  It was actually hard hard to tell how big it was because the paths were so windy and I immediately lost my sense of direction.  In Boulder I relied on the mountains being always to the West so here I have no idea which direction is which.  While there wasn't exactly “wildlife” at the park, there were some animals.  We saw snakes in tanks, and there was a little fenced area with crocodiles.  There were turtles, and every so-often we would turn a corner and see an Iguana sunning himself in the middle of the path.  At one point we saw a big ball of fur way up in a tree and were told that it was a sloth, but we really couldn't make out any kind of shape.

For breakfast Sunday morning, we had Gallo Pinto, a typical dish in Costa Rica composed of rice and beans, eaten by practically every Tico every day for breakfast, sometimes lunch, and sometimes dinner.  The morning was spent doing more “orientation stuff”, before we boarded our buses and began the long journey home.  It takes three and a half hours by car to get home from San Jose, in a public, express bus that drive is stretched to four and a half hours.  I should start by saying that the roads in Costa Rica are far from direct, and as we zigzagged our way across the northwestern region, dropping kids off in different towns, our ride dragged on, lasting almost six hours, but I didn't mind because it meant that I got to see a little more of Costa Rica and talk to the other students.

The point of the orientation was to get VISAs, but for some reason we never made it to the fingerprint office on Friday, and I guess it was closed on the weekend, so we have to return to San Jose “sometime soon.”  AFS's organization never ceases to astound me!

Orientation stuff...

Iguana!

Wildlife!

Ox carts are kinda a big deal here, and are soo pretty

May or may not be a sloth...  I like to believe it is

Finals

The combination of my classes being in Spanish and the fact that usually we don't actually do anything in class, means that I learn very little at school.  This week, however, I did learn something.  I learned that I absolutely hate taking finals. 

We took two finals a day, each was an 80 minute test.   Mostly, they were multiple choice with some short answers at the end.  I was planning on just filling in random bubbles, but then my mom became overly invested in my grades so I had to actually think about the answers.  The only problem was that I didn't actually know many of the answers because I haven't been here for much of the trimester, and also I just didn't understand the questions.  The strange part was that when I didn't know an answer, I would just raise my hand and the teacher would come over and give me the answer.  Sometimes they would even write it down for me!  During the psychology test the proctor didn't know the answers so he just asked the rest of the class or consulted someone else's test.  But, the amazing thing about living in Costa Rica is that after a stressful week of finals, you can spend the weekend lounging lazily on the beach, which is exactly what I did.

 

San Jose!

After a scenic four hour drive over mountains, past oceans, and through jungles, we finally arrived in San Jose. San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica, is a humongous city, divided into small “counties” sprawled over hillsides and houses haphazardly stacked up against cliffs. The whole city is surrounded by luscious green mountains, towering over the city, making the capital look more like Dr. Seuss's who-ville. Being in the presence of such overpowering monsters made me long for snow, fantasizing about the amazing skiing! The weather here is perfect, like spring in Colorado, and there aren't any mosquitos!

San Jose has everything. Its got the slums like practically any other city. I guess this area is fairly dangerous (according to my mom, which doesn't really mean much...) and as we drove through this part my brother rolled all of the windows up and locked the doors. He pointed to people and proceeded to tell me that they were all killers, which I find hard to believe, but maybe I'm just sheltered Boulder kid.

On the other side of the spectrum, were the houses with white picket fences and fancy new SUVs. As we entered the city, we were greeted by huge tourist resorts and shopping malls composed of entirely American stores. I am still at a loss to understand why someone would come to a foreign country just to stay in a resort the whole time, especially a resort without a beach, and then even if they do escape the monstrosity, they are instantly trapped by Taco Bells and Macy's.

The metropolis also has small markets, large apartment buildings, small parks like those of New York, and areas of severe poverty. Here, the houses were constructed by stacking spare scrap metal and rusty sheets of tin up against cliffs, somewhat resembling the gypsy caves in Spain. The 'houses” were stacked up on top of each other, how its kept from collapsing is far beyond me, and at the top it looked as if they had just thrown random scraps of metal on the roof to keep it from blowing away.

On Saturday we went to a huge farmers market. Tents of all different colors stretched on for what seemed like forever and the street was packed with people. Each tent was filled with different types of fruits and vegetables, some I had never even heard before.

Its giant!!!! I am standing like in the middle of the market...

Mamones! Strange little fruits that look bizarre but taste soo good! The first person to try one bust have either been really hungry or really crazy though... 

You can't really tell, but there is a baseball field behind those trees!  The first one I have seen  sense I've gotten here.

School!

School is an adventure... After a week of school, I still have no idea what is going on. Ever.  I don't know when we have school;  I have yet to figure out the class schedule;  I'm not really sure what class I'm in even while I'm in it (which is rare).  As a general rule, school in Costa Rica is five days a week from seven in the morning to four in the afternoon.  Unlike in the US, you have one group of classmates, and you move together from teacher to teacher.  We also have to wear a uniform.

In reality, there seems to be at least two holidays a week, and therefore no school.  Even on days that I have school, I may only have two or three classes because not only are we given like 4 hours off in free periods, if a teacher isn't at school, then there is no class, and more often then not, the teacher isn't there.  Furthermore, when there actually is class, the times are flexible.  A class might be supposed to start at 7:40, but the students don't actually get there until eight.  Then the teacher will talk to students for another ten min (usually unrelated to class),  then spend another ten minutes attempting to gain control of their class, which leaves five minutes for actual class time.  It's no wonder that half the class generally doesn't feel that it's worth their time to show up. 

During off periods kids will hangout in the library or out in the “hallways”.  Teachers don't give homework too often so very little work is done, but I'm not complaining. These times generally get rather boring for me as I don't understand Spanish so I sit with my friends generally confused.  I found it amusing that when kids don't go to class, they really don't have anything better to do or anywhere else to be, so they end up still at school, sitting outside a different classroom. 

My friends, or rather the people I follow around ;)