Last night with ISA

Tonight ISA, the group I'm studying abroad with, took all of us kids out to dinner way up on a mountain. It was a beautiful view and great food. I gonna miss these guys. View from the top. This is San Jose when it looks pretty.
These dancers fascinated me.

Then they asked us to join them. The train is culture right?The whole group of us minus Kate Powers and Anna Bolton.
One of the goofiest things I've ever seen. These huge beings came out with a band and just basically danced around for about a 1/2 an hour. I did in fact join in when one of them asked me to dance.
Me looking pricelessly terrified before a giant woman slapped me.
Kate and I.
After dinner Nicole and I jumped in a taxi to head on over to play some Ultimate. Luckily enough for us it was still going on and I put on my cleats and played right in my dinner clothes, no time to change of course. It was quite a sight seeing me in my nice dress wearing cleats and running deep. This photo is of Kate and Fico eating a form of the Guyava plant. I'm gonna miss them too.

Goodbye Tibas

I decided that since I only have one or two more nights left to spend in San Jose that I'd take a few photos of what I see on my walk home from the bus. The first photo is of the playground that the bus stops at last, where I get off, that I love to go to in order to escape being inside. I find it's really nice sitting in the sun with the wind blowing in your face while eating an ice-cream cone and listening to children play. One time though, apparently two fellas noticed me walking there and so they left the bar they were at and climbed up to where I was sitting. And while sitting there drinking the two beers they brought with them these two shirtless black toothed guys started trying to talk to me about drugs and if I wanted to do any with them while 5 year old kids ran around them. So I've been a little more cautious of the route I take to get there since then.

The playground. Pretty much one of the most dangerous things I've ever seen kids allowed to play with, super fun though.

Typical street corner in San Jose.
The boy wants peace. This little girl was trying to get me to take her photo, but when I finally went to take it, she acted terrified. Cute little thing though.

Things I noticed tonight.

The great country of Costa Rica offers me new information every day. First of all concerning the photo, it appears as if the best way to pump gas is to go on the opposite side that the tank is. Secondly, while driving in the dark we noticed that we were being held up by none-other than a car towing another car of equal size and weight along a steep and curvy road...using a rope. Afer picking up a friend, the car had managed to pass along the road after us, and we saw it a second time but being pulled using a stronger cord by another car because the first rope apparently broke. Thirdly, while driving though a rather sketchy part of town at around 3 am, I was informed that the prostitutes I was seeing were all actually men. Then I was a little afraid, but mainly cause' Han leaned over and locked my door. I've actually forgotten now that other stuff I learned, but maybe I'll include it when I remember.

Qué oscuro

So I'm not completely sure how many nation-wide blackouts you guys have experienced, but until today I was at zero. Around 6 pm tonight(mind you while I was in the bathroom, not a good time) all of the electricity in COSTA RICA went out. This means that only those places with electric generators were able to produce light, and the rest of us played Rumi-Kub by candle light for 6 hours. Yes, 6 hours. Apparently something went wrong at some major power plant in Limon, and it took 6 hours to get a handle on, so score one for me. Oh, and apparently the last time the power went out like this in Costa Rica was 10 years ago when the aliens came to suck energy out of the volcanoes(I think there are 9 of them here), or at least that's according to my neighbors. Nicole and my host brother Daniel about to start up some Rumi-Kub action.

What a horrible combination of numbers and colors.

Mmmmm...doggy!

So this is the dog of the corner I live on. Here in San Jose there are slews of stray dogs, and I always wish that I could take every single one of them home with me. This particular one happens to be the cutest and nicest of them all, always waging his tail and looking up at me with those big brown take me home doggy eyes. I've grown quite accustomed to him seeing as he generally lives around 15 -20 feet from my front door. Don't ask what I'm doing in the photo, but it's compliments of Kate.

Volcan Irazu

So after realizing I only have 2 weekends left in Costa Rica, I decided I needed to do something today. Nicole and Kate went on an Ecology field trip so I happily went solo to Volcan Irazu for a day trip. I barely made it to the bus, seeing as I decided where I wanted to go today at around 7:45 am, and the bus left from downtown at 8 am. I was on the bus less than a minute before it took off. Also, the bus fare made me realize how much of a penny pincher this place has made me. The subtotal for transportation both ways all the way up to the Volcano(2 hours each way roughly) was 3,100 colon, which in dollars is around $6. I was very unhappy with this price and felt ripped off and taken advantage of. Then, after about a minute I realized how easy it used to be to drop $10-20 on eating out any time I felt like it in the states. This made me feel rather silly for two reasons. One, exactly how much I did in fact used to spend on stuff in the states, and two, that $6 wasn't in actuality a bad price at all for the trip. I have a feeling that when I go back to work in Fayetteville that it's going to be that first job feeling, to where you could care less how much they payed you, but felt excited to actaully be making money on your own.. At least that's the way I felt. Anyways here is the Volcano I visited today, where I ran into a couple of Peruvian fellows that kept me company the whole time and helped me further my spanish.

Into Irazu's vent. I was lucky to get this photo considering how cloudy it was.
On the bus ride there, due to the clouds the landscape had an interesting mood to it.

Kinda interesting I think. Fence line surrounding part of the volcano.

After a light rain while there.


And then when back in San Jose while walking to my bus stop, I noticed one of my city's "beautiful" rivers running through town. Sadly, this is what almost every one of the water systems going through San Jose looks like.

Day trip

Instead of going stir crazy today in my room, I ventured out with some Frisbee friends of mine into the Costa Rican country. We went and visited a church that had people constantly circulating in and around it since it's Semana Santa, ate at delicious restaurants and also swam in a river(not me though) that was full of ticos enjoying their vacation.
Jenny, Quincho and Jeffy walking in.
Jenny and Kin Cho at breakfast with one of the beautiful views.
The floor inside the church.
There was also a man in the loft playing guitar.

Pan of the two rivers coming together.
Walking through a coffee plantation to get to the river.
Coffee beans, that I was informed won't be red until around December.
Jeffy insisted on taking a photo.
What is interesting about this photo is that it's slightly panned, but very much accidentally.

The dandelions here are tiny.
Flower, wood, plastic, and rusting barbed wire.
Thanks Shell.

Soon to bloom flower.
View from the restaurant at lunch.

I thought this was cool cause' it looks edited. Not though.
How lots of people make coffee here. Yummy!

I live in crazy town

So today one might say that I experienced the heaviest steady rainfall yet since I've been here. There was one other time in the rainforest the first week I got here, but that doesn't count, come on it's the rainforest. So, today Kate and I were walking around downtown, eating ice-cream cones(mine fell on the ground within minutes, sadly), watching pigeons and their goofy ways and noticing that the sky looked rather ominous. So ominous in fact that we decided we'd better get a move on back to school before it poured on us. To my delight, though not to Kates', the sky did in fact open up on us on the way home. But, thus far the story told is not the point of my posting, and I'm not gonna get there for another minute. While on the bus on the way home I glanced out the open door(the windows were totally fogged over), and I noticed that apparently part of the road had decided to switch on over and become a little lake. None-the-less of course, our bus driver thought the best route was straight through the mess, and the waves of the water were nearly spilling into the bus as we plowed through(though I'm sure we were actually floating). So the real point is, if after only about 45 minutes of rainfall a lake had formed at a high traffic point, what the heck do these people do during the rainy season. It was as if the gutters had never experienced such a downpour, and this city gets rain every day during the winter. Winter here by the way is between May and November. Traffic jams were forming and the water spilling from tunnels next to the sidewalks were like fountains, shooting upward and beyond. Oh, but speaking of traffic, my bus driver yesterday decided the best way to make a left turn on the busy street was to go ahead and pass the 10 cars in the left turn lane and cut in front of on-coming traffic(might as well have been a U-y) to get around the cars in the left hand turning lane to get to the road he was even aiming at in the first place. This place is crazy. Here's what we looked like(also though I was the only passanger on the bus):

Also though, before you pin me as the crazy one for drawing pictures on my computer of a bus situation, remember that it's Semana Santa this week here, and the whole country including all of my friends and classmates are at the beach. I though, am not allowed to go for healing purposes of my body, so am stuck in my room alone for the next 5 days...

Josh visits and the avoidance of school

While in San Jose I tried to come up with things to entertain my guest with, though for me proving dificult since I am not a fan of the city. About 2 blocks from the hotel there was El Teatro Nacional, meaning The National Theatre. While not quite as exciting as anticipated, it proved a least a little entertaing for me and my camera. Not to worry though, once out of the city the beaches were very worthwhile indeed, and we had a great time.
4 or so levels of seating.
Don't know why, but I like this one.