New Home!

Wow, a lot has happened since I was last able to write.  I guess I'll start out talking a little about classes.  Right now we are taking three classes.  Latin American Culture and Civilization is on Mondays from 9-12 and Wednesdays from 2-5.  We've talked a lot about social interactions and ethnicity.  There is an interesting culture here because lots of Nicaraguans come to Costa Rica and work.  They get paid less and do harder labor.  It is a little like Mexican workers in the States.  We've learned about the Nicaraguan revolutions with the Somoza, Sandinistas, and Contras.  Interesting stuff for the most part, but I'm not huge on history so it has definitely been challenging.  Spanish Linguistics is on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9-12.  This class is very difficult because of its detailed nature, but it is so interesting to learn about the phonetic alphabet and certain sounds that are used in other languages but not Spanish.  Also, we have looked at how the Spanish language evolved to become what it is today.  On Mondays from 2-5 we have Core 350.  We are looking at different policies in Latin America and especially Costa Rica and are thinking of and discussing policies that we think would be good to implement on campus, such as chickens and/or solar panels on the roof.  Overall I think the classes are interesting, but I don't necessarily like them.  I really want to learn the language, but I've realized that the subject matter of these classes is generally not in my areas of expertise.

As for other areas of life in Costa Rica, the biggest change has been my living situation.  I mentioned earlier that Marta had to work nights two days a week and was generally just not around very much.  I talked to the RA/TAs about it and we agreed to let it go a little longer to see if things improved.  I really wanted a living situation where I got to interact with my host parents and feel what it was like to be a part of a Costa Rican family, and I was not getting that with Marta.  Things did not get any better.  In fact, I would say they even went downhill.  Marta got used to me being around and as a result, when she was home she would go in her room, shut the door, and watch TV (at least that's what I think she was doing).  The next week I spent both Monday and Tuesday at Jill's house again because Marta had to work those nights.  They had an extra room in their house and things just seemed to work out, so this Friday I moved into Silvia and Antonio's house with Jill.  It has been so much better, and I feel like I am part of a loving family now.  I get to have good conversations about all different kinds of things and just basically be included in their lives.  Silvia grew up in Nicaragua and has a very interesting story that I got to hear.  The first night that I moved in I went with Silvia, Jill, and the neighboring family to the ferria (fruit and vegetable market).  It was HUGE!!  It was fun to walk around and see all these different types of fruit that I'd never seen before in my life.  I heard the names of most of them, but there are way too many to remember.  I've been working on remembering the more popular ones.  Then on Saturday night Silvia and Antonio showed us a bunch of photo albums from various times in their lives.  We got to see wedding pictures and pictures of their two boys and vacations they've taken.  I feel privileged to be a part of their family.

On Friday I went to Roblealto, where I am doing an internship, to get orientated and to see the premises.  Roblealto is a Christian organization that has been around since the 1930's in Costa Rica.  They have 5 different sights around the country, but this was the biggest one.  They have houses where a mom and dad and their biological children live along with 10 other "foster" kids.  They live on sight.  The kids are chosen because they come from abusive or unsafe households.  Whether it is verbal, sexual, or physical abuse, these kids need to escape.  The goal of Roblealto is to give these kids a good education and a good living environment, but also to help change their mentality about abuse and hopefully to change their families through them.  They see their families every weekend.  One weekend their families will come to Roblealto and visit them there and the next they will go home to their parents house.  They are all about loving the kids and cultivating a positive and healthy mindset in the kids.  Walking around with one of the directors, Pamela, it was clear how much love they give.  Kids would come up to her from all around to give her a hug and hear a few encouraging words.  It was beautiful.  I will be going there every Friday from 8 am until 4 pm to work in the school, do an after-school program, and just hang out with the kids.

On Saturday our group took an excursion to Volcan Poas (Poas Volcano).  We rented a 15 passenger van and drove there at 8 am.  It was about an 1 1/2 drive and once we got there it was a short hike to see the crater.  Poas is not an active volcano, but there is an amazing crater at the top.  It has a small lake in it and there is a lot of smoke/steam.  We hiked from there up to a little laguna and continued around a loop back to the parking lot.  It was a good little walk and beautiful.  First volcano I've ever seen!  I want to go visit Arenal sometime while I am here too.  It's supposed to be amazing.  On the way back we stopped at a seafood restaurant.  It seemed like all the fish was fried and that didn't sound good, so I ended up getting something called a Burra.  It was a rice/bean/meat soup that was delicious.  It also came with two baked corn tortillas for dipping. Mm mm!

On Sunday I went with Laura's family (another Whitworth student) to visit their daughter.  She lives in San Marcos de Terrazu.  It was a 2 1/2 hour drive to the house, but we got to go through the mountains.  It was so green and there were some epic views!  While we were there we went to a little student art exhibit and I got to learn about some of the indigenous people that live there.  They work at different types of farms throughout the year, and right now it's getting pretty close to coffee season, so they were in San Marcos.  This area was voted on and ranked the number 1 coffee in all of Latin America at least, maybe the world.  Unfortunately it was Sunday so I didn't get to try it or buy any coffee there.  No worries, other Costa Rican coffee is excellent as well.  Laura and I hung out with their two 13 year old twin boys during the afternoon.  They had a Wii so we played that for a while and we also taught them some different American card games.  It was really fun:)  On the drive back I talked to Laura's dad, William, and tried to figure out which Costa Rican soccer team jersey I am going to buy.  There are the Saprissas which is a younger team and probably the most popular overall.  They are the Costan Rican champions right now.  Then there is the Heredian team, which is the province we are living in.  They are a more established team and have been champions for something like the past 18 years.  My host dad, Antonio, is a Heredia fan, but Katie's host dad who lives next door is a Saprissa fan.  Any suggestions?

ECU

On Tuesday night, my host mom Marta had to work the night shift.  She started work at 7 pm and got off at 7 am.  I didn't really want to stay alone at the house, so I decided to go over to a friend's house.  Jill and Katie live right next to each other and their host families are best friends.  That night was "karaoke night" and they apparently have it every week.  I took a taxi from my house up to their area and was warmly welcomed.  The moms had made a delicious soup together.  There were all different types of vegetables, most of which I had never tried or even heard of before.  You put the vegetables in the bowl and then pour the soup on top along with some squeezed sweet lemon.  It was so delicious!  My host mom doesn't really like to cook, so I haven't really experienced any truly delicious home cooked meals.  After dinner was karaoke.  The men got really into it and were belting out every song.  They always tried to hand us the mike even though we knew none of the songs.  They insisted though and we did our best.  After dinner, I headed to over to Jill's house where I spent the night.  They had an extra room down in their basement that I stayed in.  In the morning we had gallo pinto and fresh fruit:)

Yesterday, Wednesday, was el Dia de independencia, or Independence Day, in Costa Rica.  Because of this, every school is closed in Costa Rica, and we decided to hold true to that for the Whitworth campus too.  In the morning, after waking up at Jill's house, I went with their families to the parades.  Almost every school in the area has their band perform in the parade.  There were lots of drums and kids 12 and under.  Right after the parade we headed up to the campus to meet a group of Christian students from the University in Heredia.  They are an intervarsity group and call themselves ECU (can't remember what that stands for).  We ate lunch together and then played a ton of different games like Signs.  We hung out all afternoon and just had a wonderful time.  We built a fire in the fireplace in the dining room area and roasted these tiny little flavored marshmallows that one of them had brought for some reason.  They had brought a guitar and some songbooks, so we sang a lot of Spanish worship songs.  We all told some jokes, did a little dancing, and enjoyed some good Christian fellowship.  Hopefully we will get to spend some more time with them in the future.

This afternoon we planted some fruit trees on the campus right at the entrance.  I planted a naranja (orange) tree.  We've been doing a lot of little projects around campus to kind of make it ours and make it really great for years to come.  This is a picture of the whole group and a compost bin that we made.

Hope everything is going well back in the states!  I'd love to hear from anyone what's going in your life!

Getting to Know My Surroundings

This week we spent a ton of time getting to know each other and getting to know the area where we are living.  We spent Monday in San Rafael, Tuesday in Heredia, and Friday in San Jose.  We started in the smallest area and kind of learned the skills to get around a city that speaks a different language.  We did a "plunge." We were partnered up with people, groups of 2 in San Rafael and groups of 4 in Heredia and San Jose, and we were given a sheet of paper with places and things to find.  It was a great way to get to know the cities on a more personal level than a tour.  One of the best things we did was climb to the top of a fort in Heredia.  We had to walk into the munipality building and ask the guard there if we could get in. He unlocked the door for us (we think because we were Americans) and let us go to the top.  There was a tiny little metal staircase that wound up to the top. There were small little platforms every 12 feet or so and arrow slits that came out the side.  We made it to the top and had to push open a heavy glass door.  Thankfully Lars was in our group because I'm not sure us girls would have had enough strength.  At the top we could see over all of San Jose and San Rafael, and it was gorgeous!  When we were in San Jose it rained so incredibly hard.  I walked through a puddle that came up to the middle of my calf!  It's the year of La Niña so the rains are even more intense right now.

On Saturday we moved in with our host families.  All of them came to the center for a catered lunch and tour of campus.  We ate Brasilian food from Bossa Nova in San Rafael.  It was really weird to just meet my host mom all of the sudden and then go to her house that is now my home too.  My host mom's name is Marta. She is in her mid-forties, owns a motorcycle, works as a police officer, and lives alone... kind of.  Her family used to own a cafetal (coffee farm), but since other countries sell their coffee for so cheap, it was not a goo business in Costa Rica anymore.  So several years ago her family sold most of their land, but kept a chunk to build houses on.  There is the "big house" where Marta's mom Julia lives and Marta's 22 year old son José lives there as well.  He is mute and just kind of does whatever he feels like.  This big house is connected by a big empty covered garage area to Marta's house.  Right outside the big house is another small house where Marta's sister Euhenia lives.  Euhenia has a 10 year old daughter named Alexa who is really cute.  Across a field there are two more small houses where Marta's sister Eloisa lives and in the other house Eloisa's daughter Lisa lives.  So there are a lot of related neighbors basically.  It's nice to have them around because Marta has to work a lot and I don't like being alone.  I get a small room to myself and share a bathroom with Marta.  When I first got there she showed my all around to the different houses.  Then we took the bus into Heredia and picked up a microwave that she had just bought to replace an old one.  We just kind of hung around the house that night and talked.  On Sunday she had to work from 7 am to 7 pm.  She told her sister Euhenia to make meals for me, but other than that I didn't have much to do.  I went to the Catholic mass in Heredia at 11 am.  Euhenia told me how to walk there so I didn't have to worry about catching the bus.  There was a big carnival thing going on at the park because of Día de los niños (Kid's Day) so there were tons of games and music.  I played marbles for a little while!  When I came out of church there was a drum line.  I walked home in the rain.

Now classes have started so I actually have homework and reading to do.  My vacation time is over and now it's time to learn.  I will give more information about my classes in a different blog soon.

First Day!

I arrived last night at 6:30 pm mountain time.  All my flights went really smoothly and customs was a breeze.  When we landed it was totally dark outside and pouring down rain.  It gets light super early in the morning and gets dark around 5 or 5:30 apparently.  Lindy and Dinorah, the directors of the Costa Rica Center, were there to greet us.  Katie and I caught a taxi with Dinorah which took us all the way to the center.  It was dark so it was really hard to see much.  They don't have any addresses here so they measure everything in relation to landmarks such as city parks and the Hiper Mas (basically WalMart).  They caught things by blocks and each block is 100 metros.  So they might say to go north (always uphill) and turn left at the central park... Go 500 metros and head north again.  It seems very confusing but they swear that it's not.  We got to the center around 8 and ate some leftover chicken and pizza.  They threw a lunch for all the workers that day and there were a few leftovers.  Pretty soon we headed off to bed. We layed down right about 9 pm.  It is pretty chilly here because we are in the mountains, so there were nice warm comforters on the bed.  The center is under construction still.  They were hoping to have it completed 10 days ago but the rain and changes in architectural plans has slowed it down.  Despite that it is beautiful.  This morning we went on a walk in the surrounding area.  There are so many roads that wind around and lots of nicer houses.  We wandered through this beautiful chalet.  Apparently last year the World Vision leaders had a conference up there.  We also stopped at Carlos's house.  They have free-roaming chickens, so we have been buying a kilo from them about every week.  Today we were there for at least 45 minutes getting the grand tour.  He showed us every tree and fish pond and picture in their house.  It was really cool how ingenious they are and how they use what they have.  He is originally from Cuba but also has lived in Miami.  He speaks great English and encourages us to talk to his wife in Spanish so she can learn English too.  It is super hilly around here so we were all pretty tired when we got back.  Now we are just taking some free time.  I am borrowing a laptop to write this.  I am listening to the clouds and thunder roll in.  It is the rainy/winter season right now so it absolutely pours at about 1 pm every day.  We are getting oriented this week and next week we will move in with our host family.  Hopefully I will have internet there as well.

Hasta pronto!