Puerto Viejo and Panama

September 20th, 2008

Jaime was here this week, it was fun, we went to a place called Puerto Viejo (which is in the Caribbean). Puerto Viejo was really Rastafarian looking…weed stuff everywhere, one love, and green yellow and red stuff, it had a different vibe but I liked it. From there we went to Panama to a place called Bocas del Toro. We took a tour to these really pretty islands that had white sands with turquoise water…gorgeous! Oh! We also went bungee jumping…it was pretty awesome! Oh…we spend prpbaby about 2 full days in busses traveling from one place to the next, but it was worth it though!It was super cool to see how people live with soo much less and are just as happy...I think thats one of the main things that I was reminded of this week...

Right now (Tuesday 22nd) Im in my Spanish class and Im about to go crazy! We’re going over “ser and estar” WoW! And the teacher talks soo slowww….

So Jaime brought the new camera for me and after a week of working just fine the battery wont charge the camera, its weird cause ill turn on to view the pictures but as soon as you try to change the mode to be able to take pictures, it just turns off…Horrible luck, I had to have him take it back, he brought the headset too so that’s cool though cause now I can talk to people through skype!

You know whats really cool about going to places we went to this week?? That we met tons of travelers or backpackers that are either traveling th world, or through central America so everone talks about the places they’ve been and how much they loved it, so it just makes me want to travel more! In Panama like 6 of us (everyone in our hostel room) bought stuff to make dinner and they’re the ones that went to the Island tour with us!

In another note…I’m thinking about Chico every once in a while, I really miss the feeling of walking through our pretty campus, wearing a sweatshirt, drinking hot chocolate or coffee…and of course the people too…I cant wait to go out with everyone overthere!


Until the next update…take care everyone and hope everyone is enjoying the fall semester!

Check out pics on facebook, I update those pretty often, theres some on myspece too but not as updated..

Santa Teresa and Venado Island

Hey there! 9-10-2008

So I’m sitting at my dinner table attempting to do some homework but my nose is killing me…I don’t know if I’m allergic to something or what it is but I have a semi runny nose, and I keep sneezing for the past 2 days…ughhh! And…I’m venting a little BUT…since last week weird things are happening to my body. A week ago (sat) I had this ugly, weird dryness right under my nose (above my lip) and it lasted like 4 days…Then, over this trip to Venado Island and Santa Teresa (Ill talk about the trip more in a bit) I had this little bubble looking this on my chin, when it popped it was just water but then it just got really red. And eventually peeled (I figured out that Neosporin got rid of the thing on my nose so I used it on my chin…) then the same thing on my jaw on the left side and another on my right cheek (today I only have one left on my jaw) but in a course of 2 weeks I counted 26 of these weird red circles…tons in my right leg, a couple in my arm, and so on…(I think I need to go to the dermatologist) AnYwAy…to top it off I was dancing the like a week ago and my big toe nail is about to fall off, someone foot hit it, oh and theres something wrong with my ear (first it was the right one, and now it’s the left) AND my stomach was feeling horrible a few days ago…WTF??? I almost laugh about it now that I’m writing about it cause its just too many things going wrong at once. That’s not to say that I’m not happy…I love it here!

But on a better note…what happened this week?? Chriss and I went grocery shopping but we were careful on the number of bags we would end up with so the same thing that happened the first time would happen again, haha!

This weekend we went (as a fieldtrip) to an island that not many people go to (tourists at least). We took the same ferry we too to Montezuma and from there we went on this little motor boats for like 45 minutes into the Island called Venado. Mind you the total population of the island was about 1,200 (talk about small town). When we got there out teacher had a bunch of random stuff for us to have for lunch (it was like 30 of us) from there…oh! We stayed in these tiny rooms that fit about 4 people per room (bed bunks) that had 1 bathroom and 1 shower for like 7 rooms with no running water…ha! I took a shower in someone else’s sleeping area. So…we attempted to do fishing that same day (Friday) with these nets, (well, we didn’t do it but we watched how some of the locals did it), I say attempted cause we only caught 1 little fish, 2 crabs (small) and 1 HUGE shrimp. So, since we didn’t catch anything after enjoying the views we went ack to the island.

Our teacher had told us to bring toys or whatever for the local kids, so we got whatever we ended up buying for them, I bought some coloring books and chalk, and met the kids at a school. There were 50-60 of them just sitting there waiting for us to give them stuff…it was cool, they were happy. That night we went to the local bar (probably the only bar) and just danced till the bar started to close, oh and I saw a fight between 2 ticos (that’s what people from Costa Rica call themselves).

The next day, instead of going back home, like 20 of us or so decided to do to this place called Santa Teresa, (its in the pacific side, in the Nicoya Peninsula). Our teacher had arranged for the little boats to pick us up from Venado Island and take us to where 2 mini-van taxis were waiting for us. THEN, we took those for almost 3 hours until we finally got to Santa Teresa. The drive was super pretty though, but SuPeR bUmPy. Most of the streets here are full of holes (at least the streets that take you to far places) so its funny how the drivers go way of the right side or way on the left side of the street to where sometimes you just feel like the whole car is just going to flip over!

Once we got to Santa Teresa, we found a hostel, we stayed at this place called “Casa Zen”, it was actually super pretty, if you guys ever come I would love to take you there, besides the fact that the beach was really close too. The hostel had hammocks in the 2nd story and there was this other area with pillows and stuff above the restaurant area…(its hard to explain). ..Anyway, that day we spent the day in Santa Teresa and we just waled into town to check it out, it’s a surferish kinda town and its really pretty. We liked it soo much that like 10 of us decided to stay an extra night. So basically all day Sunday we spent just laying out at the beach (under the palm trees cause it was too hot), this guy named Andy was playing his guitar and the rest of us were just laying there reading or just enjoying everything around us. It was so calm and so quiet apart from the waves and the guitar…I loved it! That night we got some pasta and spaguetti sauce and a pineapple, oh and some bread and we split the cost between 6 of us, and we cooked there, so it was basically the cheapest dinner ever! That night we also has a bonfire at the beach, BUT again, it was waay too hot. Oh! And we saw all these little crabs…they were everywhere! It was crazy, apparently they really like lime cause there were like 20 crabs surrounding a piece of lime.

Monday morning, we took the bus back to Puntarenas at like 6am and got the 8am ferry. Hmmm…what else?? Last week was good. Sept 8-12th was just school. Oh! I went to a 3rd grade classroom to met the kids and the teacher that I’ll be volunteering with to each English or help with English.

I need to keep up with writing 1 letter a week because its really hard trying to remember everything that happened 2 weeks ago.

Today is Friday the 19th, so everything above happened like 2 weeks ago already.

Second week

So…today is august the 31st, and August has already gone by fast, isnt it?!

As of today I’ve been here a little over a week. This weekend was a lot of fun. So this weekend started on Thursday for me cause I don’t have class Thursday’s. We had made plans on like Tuesday I think, to go to Jaco which is a beach where a lot of people fo surf but I later learned that that is a really Americanized beach. Anyways…plans changed and Thursday about 1:00pm we headed to a place called Montezuma. We took a ferry (for like @1:50) which was about 1 ½ hours to a place called Paquera, from there we hopped on a bus that was extremely crowded to MOnetezuma which took about another 2 hours cause it stopped at like 4 different places. Ho and the bus was like 2 dollares so it was super cheap!It was 14 of us that ended up going so it was def a good crowd. As soon as we got there we started going p this massive hill looking for a hostel (we did ass a few but none had anough room for 14 people). We ended up finding one on the was back down, more towards the bars and restaurants for like 10.00 per person so that was cheap too. After we put our stuff down we grabbed some food (pizza) and right before we were done eating, the power went out! It was like 7ish so it was already dark so we kinda just sat there with candles. Oh! And it was raining outside too.

Oh! Really quick…on the bus ride to Montezuma, it totally it totally reminded me of the movie “touristas” because it was a bunch of young people, not from Costa Rica, gong to a place we had no previous knowledge of, plus, mind you it had rained so it was kinda muddy and we were going down a super “steep, rocky, and trying to curve” looking street! Ha, ha! Okay. Anyway, after dinner we bought some been at the grocery store and hung out in our hostel (it was 2 people per room with a fan, so it wasn’t bad) Later around 9ish or 10ish we walked to a bar called “Chicos’s” there, they were playing Reggae music and it was right by beach so it was pretty cool!

Okay…the next day (fiday) we found out that no buses were heading back to Paquera (which we needed to be there by 7:30pm to take the ferry) so we finally figured out some taxi mini van deal that would take all 14 of us back. After we did that, we started our hike to the waterfalls. It was some crazy hiking! Half way I was bare fot because of all the mud between my feet and my sandals was making it super slippery, it was pretty steep at parts too. The group split, some of us went hiking closer to the watr and others started going more towards the uphill. Sooner than later , wemade it to this rocks kind of in the middle of the river but we thought we coulnt get any further because there was water EveRyWheRe…We were barely able to see the waterfall until this guy (Will) decided to just get in the water (we were in our bathing suits) and swim to some other rocks and go from there. Long story short after he came ack from being literally behind this huge waterfall, the 4 of us told him to go again and so we followed him into the water and to about 5 ft max from where all the water was falling!! It was soo beautiful cause everything around was soo green! There was even another little waterfall coming fom the mountain that had water coming out. BUT I coulnt take any pictures because oviously of the fact that we went swimming and because of the mist…BumMer!!on the walk back we were hopping that it didn’t rain because it it rains here everyday, even though its still super hot. Thank God it dint rain because we ended up crossing the river one way, walking until we coulnt go anymore cause og how steep it was, then crossing it back. It was funny seeing 4 girsls and one guy going across the river, making kind of an assembly line to pass the backpacks from one rock to another cause we had stuff in there that we didn’t want to get wet! So afer a while of hiking, swimming, and sliding in the mud…we made it back! We had adrink or two while we waitied for everyone else, which it was a hiile because they ended up going to this other spot where you can jump off the waterfall (a different one). I’llpost people’s pictures so you can see them. We also went swimming at the beach when we hiked back down. I don’t know if I already said this, but the beach was gorgeous! Because of the rockson the side view, the jungle in the back and we even saw a rainbow!!
The taxi was witing for us around 6 so around that time we started our journey back to Puntarenas.

Saturday…there was tour that was included in what we had already paid in tuition so I took advantage and we wnt on some type of nature hike like 1 hour from here, and after that we went on some river in a boat and saw crocodiles! We got soo close to them, actually too close! They were literally right next to the little boat.. They were HuGe too!
So yeah, last night we went out to a bar and then we went to a place that had salsa music…we were there dancing till like 2:30 am …it was tons of fun but God it was a long night! Haha!

And that brings us to today…SUnDaY. We watched a futbol game today. Theres a little stadium like 2 blocks from my house and apparently it was this huge deal and so we went to the game. It was pretty col watching how much into it people were. There were people playing drums, yelling and screaming. But I have never in my life sweted as much as a did ttoday….it was gross how hot is was, especially with the humidity. Some days I think im used to it but im really not. The game was over, Puntarenas won! And a few of us went out to lunch from there. Other than that, im ready for school again tomorrow 1-4…not too bad. The class im in has some tours that I already told you about to I think thm going to go for it and pay the extra $200.00. oh! And guess?! I think im going to have another camera because mine runs out of batteries ridicously fast like it wont even last 1 day…and we’re gong to go to soo many beautiful places, its super annoying not being able to take pictures like all or most of the ones from this weekend I’m going to have to steal from other people. So that kinda sucks but at the same time I’m sure in the long run I’ll be glad I spent a little eextra money for the memories!

The first week

So as you know, I’m writing all the way from Puntarenas, Costa Rica!! Its been an interesting couple of days…we got to San Jose like at about noon and waited for the group flight that got there at around 1:00pm by the time I got the san Jose I had already met (thank God) a few people that were catching the same flight as I was and they were young so we figured we were all from USAC, there was about 5 of us.
We took the bus to Puntarenas, it was about a 11/2 to 2 hour drive…there were so many mountains and trees, everything sooo green! So Puntarenas (like I expected) it’s a super small town, very dirty (trash everywhere) and life here is super simple. It reminds me a lot of Mexico, there’s always people in the streets. As soon as I got out of the bus, everyone’s “families” were waiting outside…before getting in the bus, I met one guy who’s name is Chriss, he’s from Reno and the only one that didn’t have a family either…so when I figured that out, we agreed that we would look for places together, and so we did.
When we got to Puntarenas we checked out a few apartments, they showed us a one room apartment cause I guess they thought we were together, and then we looked at a two room which was tiny, everything in that place seemed minimized in size, and we ended up with a little house (not so little compared to everything else). It has three rooms, a VERY narrow/long bathroom, living room, a kitchen/dining room, its not bad at all. Rent is $600.00/month so that’s only $300.00 per person, but we’re hoping that someone else gets tired of their host family so they can move in and that would drop the rent to $200.00 each, which would be perfect! If not then maybe we can talk to the land lord about renting the place to $500.00 total instead of 600. The house was already furnished with everything that you would need: 2 beds in each room (in two of them) sheets and everything (of course I did bring my own), a little tv(which we found out it doesn’t work), chairs in the living room, a dining table with chairs, fridge, microwave, toaster, pots, pans, plates…etc. So of course that was super nice! So basically by 7:30pm we already had a place to stay that same day. Oh! The one bad thing is that we don’t have a phone so getting a hold of anybody is ridiculous…we just walk down the street and hope we find someone out (which they usually are at least 5-10 people out.) The house is 4 blocks away from the school (to the left) and 2 blocks away from where all the restaurants and bars are right across the street (which is where the beach is so I live a whole 2 minute walk from the beach!! The school is also right across the street from the beach so on breaks or whatever we can just walk down.

So…Friday night we went out to check out the town and had a couple of beers an walked hoping to see other people from USAC, after a while we did. There are about 5 other people that got here about a week before everyone else and they all rented a house that is literally right next door to the school…so we went there and they were all having little party, they’re house is kinda cool cause they even have a pool…after that we went to town (again) and went to some bar with one of the locals (someone’s host brother). I keep saying “we” cause Chriss and I got only one set of keys until Monday so we were basically attached to the hip all weekend.
On Saturday I woke up and I read Scotts birthday card. It was really nice to have something to read! I got one from my mom too so that made me a little teary eyed too…I had told people that is was my B-day the day before so we were supposed to go to those people’s house after and have a party but I never made is cause we were at some fiesta (someone’s host grandma’s B-day) we were there from like 4:30pm cause they told Andy (Chriss’s friend) to be there at that time but we didn’t take a taxi till like 5:30 and the actual party didn’t start till 7:30 or 8pm. ((that is called Tico time)) people from Puntarenas are called Ticos, and they have the same mentality on time as Mexican’s do, they say one time but in reality its like ½ hour to 1 hour later…Anyway, by the time we left the party (around10:30pm) people at the house had already left and were out at the bars…they said they bought me a little cake and I felt horrible because I wasn’t even there…We were all at this bar with life “reggae music” it was tons of fun! I didn’t have to pay for one drink cause it was my birthday and everyone was super nice about it.
Oh! We went grocery shopping earlier that day, we walked for like 10 blocks an didn’t think about carrying the bags on the way back, so we were walking (Criss and I) with like 10 bags, 2 huge water jugs and a 12 pack…some lady saw us struggling and offered to help us, so her son took the water jugs in his bike while she helped us carry like 3 bags, so that was super nice of them!
Today is Sunday…we had orientation from 10 something till like 4 something, and before that we took a tour around the tiny town. Oh! In the orientation they were telling us that going to Cuba from here is super cheap, apparently $400.00 for a whole week including transportation, lodge and food…we’ll see, it would be kinda cool but we’ll see.
So here is my schedule: Mon class 1-4pm, Tuesday class 8-11, and 4-6 (a dancing class!) , wed class 8-11, no class thurs unless I decide to add this one class which I’m debating, and Friday class 8-11… How perfect is that?? I don’t think I’m gonna know what to do with all that free time, I’m used to going to school, working, sorority stuff, boyfriend, ect…busy busy busy. And now its like okay, I guess I’ll read a book, or sit here and write my life story in the past few days, and just travel on the weekends…I think I can definitely get used to that!
mmm…what else?? We had a few people over a little wile ago and then we went to some bar just to hang out with like 10 people or so. “Downtown” is 2 blocks away from our house and so is the beach!
Its sooo humid here. I take a shower in out super narrow bathroom and getting ready is pointless cause I’m sweting by the time I’m done! I have 2 fans in mu room on at all times!
Haha! They weren’t kidding when they said they didn’t have street singns, not one house has numbers and not one stret has a sing so its really weird, I wonder how people get mail and nills and stuff?! I

I have some pics up in my room so its nice seeing familiar faces every day!

Today Monday was the first day of class. I didn’t start class till 1:00pm so I cant complain. I had a class in Latin American Culture that lasted till 4:00pm. The teacher talked about all these awesome fieldtrips that can be added for $200.00 and it gives you 1 unit…so I’m kinda thinking about it but I first have to put the money for rent aside and then figure out how much money I would have left and go from there. Two of them would be overnight fieldtrips and one would be a one day flied trip. I think he said one was to a coffee plantation, one was overnight in San Jose, and one was to some islands that are kinda hidden (also overnight). Today it started raining sooo much, lightning, thunder, wind, and tons of rain, and tons of wind…crazy! I took some pictures but they don’t make justice… After class I went to the house next door and went swimming for a little bit, four of us decided to go get some food (I got café con leche) and we sat there waiting for the rain to stop…it never did! So we decided to just start running from the restaurant to our own houses! I was just running with my backpack, wearing a skirt, a spaghetti strap and sandals…haha I was laughing at myself! I was only like 5 blocks away but by the time I got home I was completely socked! Considering the fact that I ran the wrong way for like a block before I figured it out…haha. Later on today we went to the house with the pool again and some of us were thinking about going to this place called Jaco on thurs (cause we don’t have class, cuase we’re in the advanced spanish)

Oh one more thing…I have a gate before getting into the fron porch, a gate before the door and then the actual door…imagine forgetting something! It’s 3 locks to go through!! I’ll update everyone in the weeks to come…

So far its been great though! Everyone is super nice and life is super slow which I love!