Back to the ol' CR (and not the colorado rockies)

Well I'm back in Costa Rica for 6 weeks or so, though I guess it's down to 5 weeks given that I got here last tuesday. I don't suppose I've done much more than wander from café to café drinking coffee, reading and eating delicious bread items from bakeries. I don't really feel too bad about this though seeing as it is my vacation and all I was really wanting to do anyway was lay around beaches in the first place. So I spent this last weekend in Jacó, which is a small beach pueblo on the Pacific side. It's typically a bit more of a party destination than I prefer(seeing as I'm traveling solo), but after my first night I stayed around 2km outside the center of town and felt much more relaxed. Mom arrives today and tomorrow we will begin a slow meander on down to Panamá where we will meet up with Jack, Sendy and Sophia. I'm posting all of my photos pretty much here for June and here for July because it is much easier to upload and sort through when in a larger program meant for photography. A warning though, I am not picking and choosing which photos I post there due to the fact that I forgot to bring very much extra memory with me, and so have to delete photos weekly.

In following the last post about moving, here is an example of what it looks like to live out of a bag for 6 weeks...

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.

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.

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!

Monkey man scaling rocks to jump from at the waterfall.

Puerto Viejo

I had my second visitor of the semester and so in order to make the trip worthwhile, we spent 2/3 the time on the beach, and the other third in San Jose pretending we wern't in San Jose. I had 2 test to take or we would never have stayed as long as we did in the city. The first place we went though was Puerto Viejo, which never lets me down.
The sun casting interesting lights and darks onto the beach.

Josh going to play in the water just before what looks to be a thunderstorm.