On the Run

Hello again! It´s hot, hot, hot here and I hear that it´s below zero in a lot of parts of the U.S. How are we all on the same planet? I just got back from Nicaragua on Thursday night so I have a lot to share, so get a drink and a snack before you start reading this! Actually, the keyboard I am on is a bit uncooperative, so it might not be that much after all.

In Costa Rica, as with a lot of Central American countries, when you enter the country, you are automatically given a 90 day visa to stay in the country. After 90 days, you have to leave the country for 72 hours and then return so as to renew your visa. People who live here call it doing a "visa run." I didn´t actually have to go on mine until January 1st, but the town will be absolutely packed by then, so I figured it would be easier now. I went with two of my neighbors, one from the states, one from Germany, and we decided to go up to Nicaragua (the other obvious choice being Panama). Another neighbor from El Salvador also went with us, but left us and kept heading north after we stopped in Nicaragua. He had been in Costa for a month or so and decided to go back home.

We left Monday morning, caught the 630 AM direct bus to San Jose (about $12, we got ripped off because that´s the price to go all the way to San Jose, which we weren´t doing). From Mal Pais (where I am, in case you haven´t been paying attention to all the Spanish names), the bus took us to Paquera, on the eastern side of the peninsula. From there we took a ferry to Puntarenas, a port down across the gulf, got back on the bus, got off up the hill from Puntarenas at a little cross roads called Barranca. Then we caught a bus north to Penas Blancas, Nicaragua. As we stepped off the bus at the border town, we were bombarded with guys waving handfuls of money in our faces. "Cambio! Cambio! Cambio!" they yell, as your trying to successfully get off the bus, hold onto your money and guard your pockets, and collect your bags from underneath the bus. It´s a little overwhelming, but not nearly as bad as it is in some places, like some airports in Mexico that I´ve been through. Nicaragua uses the cordoba, which is an easy conversion from the dollar, 20 cordobas is one dollar. Costa Rica uses the colone, which I´m not a huge fan of. It fluctuates all the time and is worthless anywhere else. The exchange rate goes anywhere from 525 to 580 for the dollar. I never really know how much I´m spending in dollars, unless I do the actual equation. It´s all rough estimation. Anyway, we changed a little bit of money, thinking we would just go to the bank in San Juan del Sur the next day.

We entered a little building, filled out a piece of paper, got our passports stamped, then walked across the border to Nicaragua. It´s kind of a funny experience, you walk down this little dirt road, come to a hut on the side of the road, show your passport again, and then again at another one, fill out another piece of paper, pay $7, an then you´re in Nicaragua! It feels simultaneously monunmental and yet so trivial. I was so excited to be another country, but borders are always a little bit of a let down because there´s nothing immediately different, and you end up thinking, "What was the point?"

So then we got a cab up to San Juan del Sur, a little colonial town on the coast of Nicaragua. We drove right next to Lake Nicaragua, which is HUGE!, and has a volcano island sitting right in the center of it. Next trip, I´m definitely going there! The landscape reminded me a lot of Cuba, something that I kept feeling throughout our trip, so of course I took a shine to the country immediately. As we drove out of the border, we passed miles and miles of semi trucks lined up on the road, waiting to cross. They were from all over Central America and they wait for days to cross the border! It seems like such a waste of time and money that I wonder what they are transporting that the receiving country couldn´t just make or grow it themselves (cocaine? people?). We also passed huge wind turbines, so yay for wind energy! There is a strong wind that comes off the lake, as Marcilena kept saying, "Offshore winds means barrels at the beach!" (She´s a really good surfer, and has only been doing it for 11 months!). Anyway, we got into town, checked into our hostel, and set out for dinner. Dinner, yes, because it took us roughly 14 hours to travel approxiamately 300 kilometers. Efficiency in transportation is a huge theme in Central America, can you tell? But Nicaragua actually has paved roads! And I mean really paved. Smooth asphalt, light reflectors, and painted lanes! Joe guessed, and this sounds good to me, that it´s probably because they have an army, so easy and quick travel is not only important, but probably in their national budget.

The town is a lot more touristy than I would have thought, but really cool, colorful, and I could definitely see the colonial influence. They were having a huge festival there, I´m still not sure what it was in honor of, but something very Catholic. All the little girls were dressed up in very fancy white dresses with gloves and white shoes for their First Communion. There were religious floats and statues and a marching band that played all. night. long. On the hill above the town there is a monstrous statue of the Virgin Mary, I guess as an imitation of the famous statue they have in Brasil. Is that where it is?

So that night we had some inexpensive Nicaraguan rum and beer and explored the town a little bit. The next day we walked around, went shopping, because everything is cheaper than in Costa Rica, swam a little bit, and went out to explore the bar scene again. We also found out that the banks weren´t open because of the holiday, so our bank accounts dipped a little as our wallets were still full of useless colones. We figured the next day we would be able to exchange them for Nicaraguan cordobas. Well, the next day, we discovered that the banks in Nicaragua do not change colones, despite the fact that we not that far from the border. Apparently there is a little bit of tension between the Ticos and the Nicas, so they don´t want to accept Tico money anywhere. So we had to get into a cab and pay $20 to drive to Rivas, a town farther north, to find a street money changer in order to get rid of our colones! Rivas is a really cool, busy town that feels like little Tijuana or something because of all the markets and street vendors. It was so different than our village in Costa Rica! And we got a few lessons in the politics of Central America. There are a lot of illegal Nicas living in Costa Rica because they earn twice the money doing half the work. The Nicas think that the Ticos are lazy and don´t want to work out in the fields or in construction or any manual labor. So basically, the Nicas do all the jobs the Ticos don´t want to do. Sound familiar yet? Every country has their version of Mexican immigrants. As a side note, because I bought a newspaper while we were in Rivas, the newspapers here show everything. In the states we don´t really show gruesome pictures, not even dead bodies, or bloody injuries. Remember the newspaper that got in trouble for having pictures of Virginia Tech students being carried out of classrooms after the shooting? Well, here, car crashes, shootings, drunk driving, they show it all. It´s a little hard to get used to, but maybe I´m just an oversensitive American.

Anyway, because it takes a full day to get there and back, we only had those two full days in San Juan del Sur. The trip on the way back was even longer, partially due to the fact that we were stopped three times in one hour by police checking for illegals on our bus! At one of the checkpoints, I also saw them looking in the back of a transport truck for people hiding in there. They are really serious about illegals here, although not so serious that some dollars might be a good replacement for a legal passport stamp.

In a about a week Mal Pais will be bombarded with Ticos from all over the country on Christmas vacation. There is a huge festival going on here, supposedly in order to raise money for paving the road in January, and they expect 20,000 people to show up between December 22 and January 4! This is a town of a population of about 700 locals. The beaches are going to be packed to the gills with campers. Where is all their trash going to go, where is everyone going to go to the bathroom. I think it´ll be a lot of fun, but at the same time, the town is going to be destroyed after they leave! If anyone is still reading, I hope you´re staying warm and enjoying the holidays!

Montezuma´s Revenge

I have a bad habit of writing everything in emails before I write them on my blog. So, I´ll try to include everything, without repeating myself too much!

Dave and I got really sick when we got back from Montezuma. I don´t think I already mentioned that, as I haven´t been on the computer much since then. I don´t know if it was some bad food, bad water, or just very strong tropical germ, but I have never had a fever so intense. It was one of those mind-bending delusion causing fevers. I was so out of my mind that I couldn´t understand, logically, why I was sick. I thought the Costa Rican government, or the US government, was making me sick so that I would be weak and vulnerable and they could rebuild me how they wanted to, as a slave to their system. I think I have been reading too many of Dave´s political science books and having too many discussions with Canadians about American politics. That being said, it was a very strange feeling. I am glad I am feeling better.

I am tutoring a little 7 year old girl here. Her name is Soleil and she´s intelligent and fun, but has the average attention span of, well, a 7-year-old. I am supposed to be teaching her how to read English, but sometimes she just likes to tell me how good she is at reading, rather than show me. I´m not buying it, chiquita! Her parents are Tica and American and she speaks both Spanish and English. She goes to the private bilingual school here, but apparently half her classmates can´t even read in either language, and she´s the youngest in her class. I guess she´s probably better off than the locals, though, who apparently only go to school for three hours a day. George Bush wouldn´t approve- I bet there are children getting left behind.

They are also paving the road here, a first for this town! Their version of paving, however, is not like ours. As another Oregonian said to me, "This isn´t I-5 they´re paving." They also seem to do a lot of work, very repetitively, and hold up a lot of traffic. See, there is only one road that goes through town so when the road is shut down, nothing moves. The funny thing is, no one seems to mind that much, not even the busses, from what I can gather. You don´t really need to go anywhere here. Everything in town, you can walk to, and no one commutes to go to work, so it´s not as though people aren´t getting things done. It´s fun to watch, too. They have been working on the stretch outside The Bakery for the past few days and every day a bit more gets done. They´ve done a lot of filling, flattening, filling, flattening, laying gravel, laying a tarry oil, molasses substance, flattening, filling, and then somewhere in there a semi-flat road gets built. I would take pictures of the process, but no one will ever see them anyway!

Dave and I are now living in a little one bedroom house that has become the tin foil and us the baked potato. In the morning, by about 8 AM, then sun starts beating down on our tin roof and baking us into little French Fries. I usually retreat to the porch (now adorned with a hammock!!) and read my book until Dave emerges from the oven.

Well, the Internet Cafe is closing for lunch so I´ll have to write more another day! I hope everyone is well and enjoying the onset of winter! That could be snide, but winters where some of you are are so pretty and snowy! Although I will be the most tan I have ever been in December!

The Travel Bug took me to Montezuma

After coming straight to Mal Pais without traveling anywhere else first, the travel bug finally caught up to me. On Wednesday, I got off work early and headed to Montezuma with Dave and Brady. Montezuma is a really small, hippie, artsy town (there is an organic coffee shop! and a book store!!!! Guess which one I went for first!?) Montezuma is on the tip of the Nicoya Peninsula and actually only about 15 miles by beach from here. However, the roads here are so bad that it takes much longer than seems rational to get there. We first took a bus east to Cóbano, a slightly larger town than ours. Well, actually, I shouldn´t say larger. Everything you need to find, you can get in Cóbano, so that is why I assume it is larger. However, I don´t think the town is actually that much larger, just more centrally located and more accessible, so that´s why every thing you need is there. Davey and I have this joke that you can get anything in Cóbano because everytime you ask someone where to find It, It´s in Cóbano. "I´m having trouble finding cheap clothing, do you know where I can get some?" "Cóbano," "Okay, how about the vet, for this homeless dog I seem to have adopted?" "Cóbano," "Hmm... okay. I really want to buy a jetpack, so when I go back to the states, I don´t have to take the bus all the way to San Jóse. Cóbano, right, that´s what I figured." I´m off on a tangent.

So we took the bus through Cóbano and then south to Montezuma. The reason people really go to Montezuma is because of the Montezuma watefalls. If you hike up about 30-45 minutes of steep trail, you´ll get to the top of a gorgeous watefall in the middle of the jungle. The first waterfall is a jump (I did it!) of about 15 feet. The second (no way), of about maybe... 40 feet, and the third, I don´t think anyone jumps from there, is about 70 feet, I would guess. So we hiked around on Thursday, then ended up at a little organic coffee shop, where we met a girl from Portland, and stumbled upon Montezuma´s film festival.

The town is very different than Mal Pais. When I told my boss that´s where I was going, he called me a "god damn hippie," with a smile on his face. The town is a little more condensed, and actually has more than one street! It´s also a little quieter, but there are still enough people wandering around that it doesn´t feel deserted. We stayed in a little hostel on the beach, and after making two trips to the book store, I spent all of Friday afternoon laying in a hammock on the beach, reading my new books. It was so nice, and of course now I´m back at work! Now I have a really strong yearning to do more traveling throughout the country, though. I´m saving up to go to the other side, the Caribbean side, for a week or so. I´ve heard it´s really pretty and actually has a lot of culture to it because of the Jamaican roots that have mixed in with the Spanish Costa Rican routes. Last night someone described to me perfectly how they would define the history and the culture on the west coast of Costa Rica, "Christopher Columbus´ships came, dropped people off in Costa Rica, some of them travelled here, and they´ve been surviving every since."

That´s all for now. Look for me trying to swim to Cuba from the Caribbean side!

ABC, easy as... uno, dos, tres?

This is day two of four of having to get up at 630 for work. I really cannot even say that I dislike getting up that early. In fact, besides the fact that I only get about two hours of daylight outside once I get off work, I really enjoy my job, and the 630 shift. The Bakery has been immensely popular and is in a very good location so I get to meet and get to know a lot of people. With traffic becoming more common every day, walking to work at 6 am down a dirt road, with only the sounds of monkeys rustling in the treetops is my favorite time of day.

At the beginning of last week I met a girl named Franki from South Africa who is here in Costa Rica doing a volunteer ESL program. I met her the same day that I asked my coworker's boyfriend if he knew of any volunteer help needed at the local school. I was just eating my lunch in the Bakery and Franki started talking to me about my job. How strange that things work out so easily sometimes. So I asked her if I could come with her to her class and see what it was all about, or help her out. I think I made a mistake in telling her about my last semester of experience teaching Spanish in an elementary school because she suggested I make my own lesson plan to take up about 45 minutes of class time! Well, I wasn't too sure about that because I had already decided that I was a better assistant than a teacher, but I figured a new country called for a new attempt. So, armed with the most basic outline: working with verbs, I got to thinking. I finally came up with the idea to play, "Mother, May I?" with the kids. Anyone who doesn't know what it is, someone is the "mother" standing at one end of the play space, the rest of the group has to move towards the mother as per her instructions. Anyone who forgets to ask permission, "Mother, May I?," has to go back to the beginning. I was so excited to have come up with a learning activity all on my own! Then I found out that I was going to be teaching adults, rather than children! We ended up playing the game anyway, though, and the class loved it! It was more rewarding than I could have anticipated to watch people learn from my instruction. When we started the game, some of the students didn't even know what the verbs meant that we were using, but by the time we were done, they were looking back at their notes, coming up with lots of different actions to use for the game. I was so excited to see everyone else excited by their new knowledge. It reminds me of my friend Ridley, who told me one time that she is awestruck by watching children learn new words. Thirty seconds before we played this game, someone didn't know the word for "steps" in English, and now they do! This happens to me all the time at work, too. I have learned so many new Spanish words for things in the kitchen, vegetables, pastries, and coffee. They're little things, I know, but it's so cool to be able to speak to someone entirely in Spanish about the ingredients of a salad!

I think my Spanish is definitely getting better since I've been down here, and I attribute that almost all to work. But really, one of the best experiences I've had so far has been helping Franki teach her class on a covered area of pavement while the lightbulb hanging above us sways in the evening thunderstorm. That was more real than any other Costa Rica I've seen.

Tonight Davey and I are going to a bar where our neighbors are going to be doing fire dancing for a reggae themed night. I'm so excited to see it! And in a few days we are taking off for a couple days in Monteverde, which is a huge jungle reserve across the bay from us. We're going with our friends Brady and Andrew and I can't wait to go hiking, and maybe even a canopy tour, in the mountains!

And I also found a toy store a few days ago so Davey and I got colored pencils, which keep us occupied for hours! They also sold jigsaw puzzles there, but they were almost twenty dollars! I got a kids activity book of word searches, one of the closest things I can get to crossword puzzles here! The word searches help me learn new words in Spanish, though, so it's educational. Something worrisome, though, one of the wordsearches was KKK themed. That's kind of strange.

Dave and I have pretty much adopted a dog. I don't know what we'll do when we get ready to leave here. I don't want to think about it, but I really would like to bring him back with us. He's black and white with no tail and he follows us around all the time. Dr. Doolittle (aka Davey) thinks that the dog was beaten by his previous owner because whenever we put down food for him, he hangs back until we walk away and leave it. He probably used to get beaten when he tried to go for any kind of food. He never begs, and never barks. He is really skinny, though, no matter how much we feed him, and I think he has some vision problems because we have to get really close to him for him to recognize us in the street. If he strays too far away from us, he can't seem to find us again. When he sees us, though, he gets so excited and does kind of a horse-like pawing. I love this dog so much! We named him Skeeter, after a cartoon character in Doug. I don't really know why, since they don't look alike, but it seems to fit him.

One more thing, today while I was at work, a woman who owns a group of rental houses here asked me, while I was ringing her up, what I went to school for, and if I would like to tutor her daughter in English. I said sure and she said, "We'll talk," before bustling out the door. I have no idea if I'm even up for the job! And she is Costa Rican, but speaks perfect English. Who wants to learn American English, anyway?!

I'm about to go enjoy the last few minutes of daylight. I miss you all!

Either Or

I've been thinking a lot about 'either or' lately and the absolutes that people place on things. Sports for example, is a small example of how people become very absolutist. If you're a diehard Yankees fan, for example, then the Red Sox absolutely must lose the game they are playing against opponent X. But why does the Yankees fan have to turn it into such a negative experience? Instead of swearing at the television every time the Red Sox get a run, lamenting their success and seeing it as a reflection of the Yankees, why not cheer for the the Red Sox opponent? Why does that game even have anything to do with your love for the Yankees? I have been spending a lot of time in the sports bar lately, can you tell? But for lack of anything else to do when I get bored of games, I started to watch people watching sports. And it relates to a lot more things in life than just sports. I have been thinking since I got here, either Costa Rica or the United States. I've had some trouble adjusting here to the slow surfer nightlife and the strong prevalence of pot and alcohol to pass the long nights, something that gets old really quickly, for me. So I put myself into an unwinnable situation. I was going to consider myself a failure as a citizen of the world if I left here and returned to the United States. Because, I kept thinking, what would be next after this but settling down somewhere in the States? This travelling experience should not be either Costa Rica or the United States. So I've been thinking about where else I would want to go.

I was trying to remember this morning what I expected of Mal Pais, Costa Rica before I came down here. I couldn't remember what I had expected, all I know is that it wasn't really what I found. I love that it's different than I expected, though. I mean the phrase, "Expect the unexpected" is not really profound in any way. When are expectations really met in the exact manner that we had assumed? Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that my next goal is to try and save up some money here and maybe go travelling somewhere else in the spring. That depends on a lot of things, mainly how much money I can save here, but it's a tentative plan that keeps my thoughts going.

Other than that, Dave and I tried surfing last week. He's a complete natural, of course! He was standing up on the boarding, catching waves all on his own on our friend Cedric's short board the first day out there! Meanwhile I'm trying to drag the 7'10" board through "small" waves just to get a chance to catch one! I think surfboards must have a strong magical power to change your mindset because as soon as I got into the ocean, the waves looked a lot bigger than they had seemed on the shore. Hmmm.... must be that surfboard leash pulling my ankles out to sea, it just couldn't be my own fears.

We also didn't have water for about two days. Some woman crashed her car, leaving it hanging perilously over the bridge near our house. I'm not sure if that was the cause of the water line break, but both were unfortunate circumstances for sure. Our landlord now has to come by everyday, pay someone for water, and fill up our well. The woman who crashed her car was fine. Half the town was gathered around the bridge at 6 am when I was on my way to work, watching this woman screaming at the backhoe driver (what could he do anyway?) to "levantalo todo!", "Lift up the whole thing!" At The Bakery, Rosa told me she knows this woman and is quite a partier so I'm guessing guarro (a local alcohol which seems to roughly equate to liquid crazy) or maybe too many cervezas drove her off the bridge.

One of the owners of The Bakery got into a really bad crash on his quad on Friday night. Unfortunately there was also a really bad storm that night so the air support couldn't land in the ocean to come get him and the ambulance took 4 hours, and about $4000 dollars, to get here. By the time he got back to the hospital in San Jose, he was in really bad shape. He has recovered and is mending and resting in San Jose and will hopefully be back in a week, but Halloween at The Bakery was very tense and I felt awful for all his friends just waiting by the phone there. I will be so grateful for the day that I walk to work and see him there!

I'm at Zula Restaurant right now, using their computer, where I had an amazing Israeli breakfast of Shakshuka, I think it was called. It came with pita, hummus, poached eggs in an onion, tomato, garlic sauce, a salad, and french fries. I am also now on my third cup of Israeli coffee, which is a lot like the strong, sweet Cuban coffee we had, but earthier. Some of the best coffee I have ever tried.

Have I mentioned before that there is a large community of both Belgians and Israelis in Mal Pais? Davey and I are about to go try surfing again! Well, I try, he does.

Oh, and I met a girl yesterday who is here for six months doing volunteer work teaching English at the school here. I had been trying to find a way to do just that thing so I think I'm going to start helping her out with her lesson plans and classes. Exciting!

When it rains, it pours....

So I have just finished my fourth day of work at The Bakery and I am really tired, although I feel as though I have no room to complain, probably for a lot of reasons, but mainly because the owners and bakers seem to get no sleep at all. To make what could be a very long story, shorter, I am now working at a place called The Bakery. It just opened on Tuesday so it has been very hectic, but also a lot of fun. I am one of the only ones that knows how to make coffee so I am in charge of the fancy coffee machine, which I love, of course! The food is Italian, European, Belgian, inspired with crepes, paninis, waffles, tons of pastries, delicious pasta, and of course, coffee. It is really the first of its kind in this town so it is already a really popular place with expats and tourists. Martin, the owner in charge of everything front of house is very nice and accomodating to everyone working there. He asks our advice on how things should be done and what the prices should be. Both him and Mossi, the other owner and the one behind all the delicious food, are from Belgium and have lived and worked in this area for a long time. Martin pronounces my name "Kate-Trin" which I laugh about until I realize that I´m sure I pronounce his wrong too. I could go on for a very long time about everything that has to do with work, but right now I am very tired, since working at 630 this morning felt very early.

However, I love the job and I´m already learning a lot more Spanish, from the patrons, but probably more from the staff. It´s so cool to meet so many different people from all over. Our store has people from Argentina, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Caribbean side of Costa Rica, Belgium, Israel, and Canada. The people who come in are from all over the place and are all so friendly and already know each other. It makes me realize what a small town this is. I think Martin knows almost every single person who comes into the bakery. One of the bakers is also from Belgium and very enthusiastic every time we talk because he is trying to get better at English. He´s really patient when I ask him questions about what´s in all the pastries AND he just got a tiny little rottweiler puppy that is only six weeks old. His name is Aluha, or Ahula, I can´t remember, after a French candy. He hates to be left alone and and whines every time Cedric goes inside. So I went outside to clean with the intent of really going to play with the puppy and as soon as I got close to him, he sat down right on my feet and curled up! I really will try and put up pictures of everything soon!

In other news, it has been raining like crazy here lately! It´s almost a nonstop deluge that reminds me a lot of Charleston during hurricane season. The only difference is, here the roads are mud and gravel so rain makes everything you own muddy, sticky, and wet for days because it´s so humid nothing ever dries. Last night I was very tired after work and came home so frustrated with the lack of a washer and dryer! Although as soon as I was done washing my clothes, I laughed at myself because this is all part of the experience.

I´m not making much money, yet, but maybe more in the high season, which starts in between November and December. In the past two days, both pair of sandals I brought broke, so all the money I made yesterday I had to use to buy new sandals. I had just a little bit left over to get beans and rice for dinner. I was determined that once I started workinb I would not take any more money out of my American account. Although I know that´s not going to be a reality because rent is due in a week and I won´t make enough before then. Honestly, though, I felt fantastic getting off work yesterday. I didn´t have a lot of money left, but that made me feel, for the first time, like I actually lived here. It´s strange, but using all the money I made that day just to give myself the bare essentials was so satisfying, for some reason. I think it really made me appreciate the difference between what is necessary and what is just extranneous purchases because I have extra money I can´t stand holding onto.

A few nights ago, Davey and I went to our favorite (only one we really go to) bar in Santa Teresa. It´s the sports bar, conveniently, right across from The Bakery. I found out the first day we went in there that the bartender and owner went to College of Charleston. In fact, he´s back in Charleston right now! So seeing as how there are so few people in town right now, and even fewer that actually care about American sports, we knows the bartenders and all the other bar patrons really well. We´re even on a first name basis with the town drunk, as someone called him, which I think is kind of a cruel term. His name is Emilio, but he responds better to "Michael Jackson" because he can dance just like him! Well, Emilio thinks he can, but when you ask him to do the moonwalk, he kind of just wags his feet, but his Thriller dance is good! Anyway, we went to the bar just to watch a baseball game and it started pouring so hard that we ended up being there way longer than expected. We kept waiting for it to stop raining, but it didn´t. I had to be at work at 8 AM the following morning for the first day the store was open. After a while Davey and I decided to just run for it. I took off my shoes and we pretty much sprinted the half mile back to our house. Not that it really mattered because the second we stepped outside, we were soaked!

One thing I don´t miss at all about the US is my least favorite company (after Comcast), ATT. I was just charged a ridiculous amount for reasons I cannot fathom, especially considering that for almost this entire past billing cycle, and my last ever with them, thank goodness, I have been in Costa Rica, not using my phone. Anyway, that´s my rant. I´m still trying to figure out what to be for Halloween because I have a very limited budget and even less to work with! Any ideas, anyone? I might just roll around in the street for a while and go as a mud monster or something. I hope to get back to the blog again soon!

The Bakery

This morning I woke up and decided that after a week of adjustment, it´s time to enjoy Costa Rica. What is that expression about idle hands and the devil? Well, I don´t want to invoke any evil spirits so I went on a job hunt! The hunt actually turned out to be very easy as the first place I went into hired me. It is a brand new bakery opening up next week and it´s called... The Bakery! I feel like I am summoning Tess, Kendall, and Shannon and that this must somehow be a prolonged Cupcake exposure effect. After watching Tess ice cupcakes to perfection for three years, I must have started to get jealous.

Anyway, The Bakery is owned by two men who have worked in this area for a long time at many different restaurants so hopefully they have figured out what works and what doesn´t. One of them is Flemish Belgian and the other is Italian. They will be serving nice, big breakfasts in the morning, lunches, dinner with good Italian pasta, and coffee and pastries all day long! I start tomorrow passing out flyers to all the hostels, hotels, and other restaurants in the area. My pay is 700 colones per hour! Which is only about a dollar, but in the United States as a waitress I only got about 3 dollars and that was all taken out for taxes. Let´s hope the tips are good!

Last night Dave and I met up with a friend, Tasha, who we met one of our first nights here. She is from London and is travelling all over Central and South America before journeying onto South Africa and then Australia in a couple months time. She´s leaving today for Peru so last night we got together with her for a goodbye dinner.

Before dinner, however, Dave and I went for a swim in the ocean right around dusk and as I was coming out of the water, I heard a low, gruff noise that sounded almost like dogs barking. It was coming from the highest branches of a tree that I can´t identify and it was a family of monkeys! Apparently howler monkeys are most active at dawn and dusk and I was lucky enough to see this family running through the trees, grunting at each other. They are amazingly quiet when they want to be, though, sneaking across the tree limbs with cat-like stealth.

I am working on getting pictures up. I think I might try to use my neighbor´s computer to upload them so I can at least have them somewhere on a computer. I want everyone to see where we live!

Tourist season must be right around the corner, there is a lot of construction going on in the roads and on a lot of the restaurants and hostels.

I can´t wait to start my job tomorrow! I´m off to paint my room something tropical!

La Pura Vida en Costa Rica

So we made it to Costa Rica! First and foremost, a caveat to anyone interested in coming down to visit, it´s not a quick weekend getaway like some of you had hoped, because it takes at least a day just to get here.

Davey and got an early flight out of Atlanta last Saturday, landed in Liberia at around noon or one, we were unsure of the time so I´m not sure which, and started our trek south. We had read that you can travel by bus directly south from Liberia to the Nicoya peninsula and to Mal Pais, but as soon as we got here, everyone told us that was impossible. That link is the route we finally took coming down here. Of course the Ticos (Costa Ricans) also had money on their mind, not convenience, but they were adamant that we couldn´t just get a bus to Mal Pais. So we got a bus along the Interamerican Highway down to Puntarenas, to a ferry to Paquera and finally a crazy cab ride at breakneck speed over potholed, dirt roads to Mal Pais. We finally got in around 8 pm, I think. Apparently in a few weeks when the rain stops, they start grading the road so it´s a little better, but it´s still very windy and not ideal for quick travel.

We stayed at the Cuesta Arriba hostel for four nights while we looked for an apartment. Every apartment we looked in was usually one bedroom, dark, with few windows and not always a lot of security. The first one we checked out I fell in love with. It was like a treehouse sitting at the top of a hill overlooking the ocean. However, too much like a treehouse it was, and didn´t have walls or locks. The loft where we would have slept would have been great, but it probably wasn´t the safest place to store our passports. Davey and I figure we could make a great little retreat down here if we just had the capital because the rooms that Costa Ricans rent are definitely livable but have all the wrong amenities for American travelers. And if you´re looking to make money, you have to be realistic about your target audience. As in a lot of places in Latin America, Ticos would rather have a TV in a dark, small room than their own space with natural light. I found the same thing to be true in Cuba where people sit in the heat of the day inside with the TV on, an entire family crowded around watching sports or soap operas. It´s interesting what different cultures consider to be prime real estate.

Anyway, we found a place in a cool little neighborhood off the road with lots of security. I couldn´t have found it without Courtney because it´s the same place she lived when she was down here. There are three other apartments, one occupied by a couple, her from Minnesota, him from El Salvador, who have been there for a while and make and sell jewelry on the beach during the high season. The other is a newly transplanted couple from Utah who blow glass. The third apartment is three guys, one each from the States, Mexico, and Argentina, who work at a resort a little way down the road. Everyone is really nice and welcoming and although this is meant to be a cultural experience, it´s kind of nice to be surrounded by some English speakers.

Our first night there we all had a bonfire on the beach and had a lot of fun getting to know everyone while surrounded by thousands of busy little hermit crabs. And we have already seen howler monkeys as well! They were playing around in the trees the second night we got there and sometimes at night the males make this deep, gruff noise that would be a little frightening if you didn´t know it was coming from a relatively small animal.

We´ve met a lot of nice people so far, through our hostel, our apartment and just going out. And we have walked a ton! I think next week I might try a surf lesson because it looks like so much fun. I have a lot of other things to add, but for right now my Internet bill is getting pretty high!

The Toothless Wonder

So Davey and I were all ready to go, passports in hand, excited faces looking to the sky for departing airplanes, and... I had to get my wisdom teeth out. Well, that certainly put a damper on things! Anyway, this was a long time coming I suppose and something that should be done before I get down to Costa Rica and they fall out on their own.

So as I'm healing, which is actually pretty painless, I'm also packing! Tomorrow morning Davey and I will head up to Portland for a 6 AM flight (meaning 1:30 AM wake-up call) and hopefully get to Atlanta by mid-afternoon. We'll spend the night with Cindy, who also housed me on my trip out west, and hopefully Kendall will show up at the airport to get us! On Saturday morning we'll get on a plane to Liberia, Costa Rica and get in around midday there! My friend Courtney gave me a ton of great information about where to stay, who to see, and how to get a job once we get down there and without her we would really be traveling aimlessly. So here we go! I hope everyone decides to come visit once we get a place down there!

Camping on the Coast

So I made it to another coast! Well, actually, it's still the same coast, but another area- I'm in Oregon! Monday night my dad, "his friend" Barb (Aren't you past the "friend" stage when you have a house together?), and I went camping on the coast. This is one of my favorite activities to do in Oregon because it combines three of my favorite things: the coast, camping, which I really enjoy, but do very infrequently, and marshmallows, which I experience a lot more often than camping.

Our usual camping spot is the Tillicum campground a little south of Waldport. It is not a state park, but part of the national forest camp community, in case anyone reading is interested in the classifications of campgrounds. It's not one of those campgrounds that is just parking spot upon parking spot with a little picnic table and a plug for a massive RV. At Tillicum, each site has enough room that if you need to get up and relieve yourself in the middle of the night, you can do it in the privacy of your own grounds without being on someone's doorstep. That's not the main reason we choose this campground, but it is a perk. We're out in the wilderness, acting as one with nature and the animals, right?

Anyway, we stayed for one night and actually had beautiful weather. At one point while roasting marshmallows, I stepped out of the site for a minute to look up through a break in the trees and was awestruck by the stars. Oregon is known for its constant cloud cover and mist, with the coast trying to best the rest of the state by adding wind to the usual climate. That night, however, it was so calm and clear, I could see the outline of every little star winking down on us. It was one of those moments that caused me to wonder what was on the other side of that huge blue blanket covering the earth. Seeing something so vastly unknown and out of our grasp is pretty refreshing in a world that seems to be shrinking at an increasing rate.

The next morning proved to be just as clear as the previous night had been. I crawled out of my tent to clear skies and the sun trying to poke its way through the trees. The ocean was a beautiful Caribbean aqua and if it wasn't for the 60 degree temperature, I might have thought I was back in Cuba! If Robert had been there, he probably would have wished he had brought his surfboard (and a wet suit, of course). The waves were moderate and clean, not that I know what I'm talking about, but the lack of wind made for a beautiful coastal setting.

After a delicious breakfast of coffee, bacon, omelets, and of course, bagels, prepared excellently by Chef Bob, we all went for a walk on the beach. On our beach scavenger hunt we found a sand castle fit for the Hugh Hefner of sea creatures, complete with moat and grotto, a few starfish, some washed up jellyfish, a sea lion (are they following me?) and a bunch of little sand crabs that scuttled into the sand with the last of the receding tide.

I also noticed that sea gulls on the Oregon coast seem to take after their human counterparts as far as diet (Oregon is consistently rated the fastest state west of the Rockies, although not to be too harsh, there aren't that many states to choose from.) Oregon gulls are very robust and well fed, probably due to their diet of delicious crab. They scour the shallow waters for crabs and when the time is right, they dive, snatch them by the claw, drag them up to the sand and pull them apart with their beaks until the crabs can no longer run away from them. It's equally as disturbing as it is fascinating. And really, I can't blame the gulls because they get to eat crab all day! Delicious! If I had a beak and better eyesight, I would do the same. So we came across a sea gull that had nabbed a monster crab and was trying to eat his meal while also guarding all the dismembered parts from the other gulls. Of course my dad being the Republican that he is, he wanted to step in and distract the gull who caught the crab so that all the other gulls could get a fair share of his catch. Oh wait, that's not how capitalism works, is it, Dad?

After we all enjoyed a good read and snooze on the beach, we ended our trip having clam chowder and a locally brewed Rogue at Mo's. Dessert at the local candy store and we were on our way back to the valley.

Sailing and Sea Lions in San Francisco

Blogging is a lot more difficult than I would have expected. Well, the writing part isn't difficult, but organizing and making the layout and deciding on the settings is a challenge for me! I've just spent the last three hours at the computer trying different things out, editing photos, and trying to figure out computer coding just to put captions on pictures (obviously I gave that one up). I never would have thought I would be trying to work out computer codes, but I'm determined to give it another try. My dad, whose computer I've hijacked for the afternoon, is probably expecting the outcome to be a lot more impressive than it is! Oh well, what else is an unemployed college grad to do?

I spent the last week in San Francisco enjoying the beginning of fall, which in San Francisco is actually like the middle of summer. When I was there in June, it was in the 50s and 60s while Charleston was already in the 90s, but this past week, San Francisco was as nice as any east coast city, but without the humidity.

Robert has learned how to sail in the past few months so we went out on a boat in the harbor a few times. I've discovered that there's no better way to see a city than from the water! Even in a usual layer of fog, San Fran looked gorgeous. Of course we also got to see a lot of sea lions and have nice conversations with them ("urt! urt! urt!"). I think I've perfected my sea lion-ese. Of course Robert's been practicing since he was really little, seeing as how he will someday be born again, or just transformed, into a sea lion. So obviously he's much better than I am.

Auntie Mary and Uncle Tom and I went down to Half Moon Bay for an afternoon and spent a few hours walking through a marina just watching all the activity. We found a dock on which a group of sea lions (see the common animal theme in San Francisco?) had taken over the entire place and were playing king of the mountain to gain the most space in the sun. Every time one of them would move, the others would protest in loud screeching barks, nosing each other and clumsily batting at one another with their flippers. They were only willing to give up their sunny spot when a huge school of fish came through the marina, causing every pelican, gull, and swimming creature in the town to take advantage of their "safety in numbers" and feast. Poor fish never stood a chance.

On Thursday, we all went into the city for a regatta that promised big boats and lots of activity. As a new sailor, Robert was really excited to see the boats heeled over, waves splashing over the sides and sails ballooning with wind, but Mary kept asking where the big ones were. We heard "big boats" and were expecting something Christopher Columbus would be taking across the ocean. Apparently to people who actually know boats, "big" is a 40+ foot boat with a couple of huge sails. They're nice to look at, but I'd rather have the Pinta or the Santa Maria any day.

After a few races, we retreated to North Beach for an afternoon beer and crossword puzzle. Perfect, as far as I'm concerned.

The Beginning of Blogging

I owe my inspiration to start a blog to Tess, my college roommate and adventurous traveler (so you can either thank or blame her). We both graduated from the College of Charleston in May and she, almost immediately, took off for Oz and is now recording her adventures on a blog. So in a few weeks time my brother, Davey, and I will be starting our own adventures in Costa Rica. As a Spanish and communications major, I figure I have some skills that might help us down there, and of course, we're escaping our college diplomas that are now taunting us from overly expensive frames on our walls. Every morning The New York Times tells me the job market isn't good and it's getting worse so instead of waiting around, we're escaping.

I lived in Charleston for four years of college, enough time for me to fall in love with city's southern charm. I had great friends in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, interesting college classes and a close proximity to bars. But in August my lease ran up, Kendall headed home, Tess left for Australia, and I stayed with my friend, Larrissa, sleeping in a G.I. Joe tent on her spare bed, while I worked to make some more cash before becoming officially jobless.

After a few weeks, I packed my life's possessions (three suitcases of clothes, a bag of shoes, three boxes of books, one box of (unused) cookbooks and kitchen supplies, a coffee maker, and a blender) and headed west, well, south, and then west.

I drove down to Bluffton, South Carolina and stayed with Kendall, my first college friend and future doctor, and stayed for two days. We went to her local farmer's market and loaded up on local peaches and scuppernones, variably spelled. Apparently scuppernones are a local grape, kind of like a muscodine, that grown in the southeast, or at least in Georgia. They have a tough, whitish skin, that you split open by pressing the grape between your tongue and the roof of your mouth, which gives way to the meat, kind of the texture of a peach. They're delicious, but watch out for the little seeds!

Next I went on to Atlanta. I stopped in Pooler, Georgia, first, though, to have lunch with Ruthie, a mom of a friend of a friend, long story, but afterwards, I went to Grego's drive-through liquor store off I95. If you're ever in that area, you have to stop and go through because a drive-through liquor store is something you can't miss! With some housewarming gifts of Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka added to my collection of traveling companions, I made my way to Atlanta (with armadillos on the side of the highway! In Georgia?!). I stayed with Cindy, another friend from college, and we enjoyed the beautiful bars of Buckhead as well as the Atlanta Farmer's Market where we tried aloe juice! My brothers and I have a long running joke about aloe, courtesy of the 80's surf movie The North Shore. The juice is actually pretty good, but the pulp is strange and kind of chewy. Does anyone remember the drink with jello bubbles in it, called Orbits, or something like that? Well, the pulp is like the jello bubbles.

So after that I made my up to Nashville to stay with Kate, my oldest friend in the world, or most long standing, she's only 22. I've never been to Tennessee and was so surprised at how pretty it was! We spent the night drinking sweet tea vodka, sneaking into graveyards, and catching up, of course. The next morning before I left, we went to Cracker Barrel. Kate is a lifelong Oregonian just recently transplanted to the south. Once we sat down and she looked over the menu, she looked up and said, "What are grits?" Now, I didn't know what grits were until I came to school in the south, but now that I know, I can't imagine life without grits, and that's not necessarily a good thing. For anyone who doesn't know, they're made of corn, I think, and are ground up into a Cream of Wheat look-a-like. The only way to really describe them is that they are... gritty. At best, you can put cheese on them, or just butter and salt. If you have to eat grits, though, the best way is with thick, creamy grits, laden with shrimp. Mmm... delicious.

Full with country fried breakfast, I got on the road for a long day of driving through western Tennessee and Arkansas. I reached Arkansas around sunset and was shocked at how pretty it is. Arkansas is one of those lost states that people forget when naming all the states. It's never a travel destination, or even a retirement destination, surprising since people seem to pick the quietest, flattest, places to retire in.

I ended in Corpus Christi, where my mom currently lives and works for the Red Cross. Corpus Christi is a weird little city that seems like it was once a popular destination for a lot more people than it ever sees now. There are big buildings and miles of coast, but no one in sight. We visited Mustang Island and South Padre as well and ate our hearts out on sights of white sand beaches and oil rigs.
After a few days I abandoned car travel for plane travel and flew to San Francisco to meet up with the rest of my family. It's a little more scenic here than the plains of southern Texas, but also a little cooler.