At the park

San Jose is surrounded by mountains, so it doesn't matter what direction you look they will be there.

The inside of a pavilian at at La Parque Nacionalidad.

The president of Costa Rica.

MMmmmm....

The food here is delicious, but of course very different. The lemons my host mom has me use as salad dressing are orange inside rather than green. Muy estrano, pero delicioso.
This is a chicken combination wrapped in cabbage and topped with a very mild but flavorful salsa. It's super stange getting all of my meals prepared for me. Going from ramen to having more food than I can belly that I didn't even have to fix is awsome though. I don't know what I'm going to do when I come home. I suppose I'll just have to catch me a servant. But in a very non-offensive way ofcourse though.

Palmadres es loco

Evan Billingsley I have a job for you, and I will explain later. So I suppose I had my first semi-crazy night last night. Most of us study abroad students went to a huge fiesta called Palmares. I do believe Palmares is also a town, but maybe is only known for its parties. When we first got there my initial thought was, is this a fair? But no, it was only similar to one on the outside. As we walked we noticed loud music coming from one specific direction, and so of course we headed towards it. It turned out to be three huge structures that were concealed to the public except for its dancing balconies and large entrance with scanty girls dancing seductively. We of course entered to find a huge dance floor just waiting to be used. The place we entered was only one of the three possible structures, and ours wasn't even the largest. It was early when we got there but very soon the crowd made its way in and the dancing began. Right after I started dancing myself I looked up on stage to find two young ladies dancing Costa Rican salsa-ish style on stage. This is a new one for me, being from Arkansas, and so I suppose I just stared in humor for a while. As the night progressed more dancers appeared, all wearing interesting costumes. But the highlight of the night’s stage performance for me was when the silver and fire statue man appeared. I looked up on stage and out of nowhere came Evan Billingsley's twin. I have never seen anyone dance so similarly to Evan in my entire life and the best part was that he was covered from head to toe in some sort of silver body paint, and was holding a disco ball with fire protruding from his hands. He came out on stage in a position similar to the statue of the thinking man, and then slowly began to disperse from his form and dance....just like evan but more slowly and suavely perhaps. But after the silver man it was time to go so we all met outside and shuffled onto the bus. Unfortunately while doing a role call to make sure no one was left behind with a couple thousand aroused Latinos and a man covered in silver spitting fire, someone was missing. So we ended up spending over an hour searching for a lost girl in crowds of thousands. We were all pretty worried though because of the warnings we had gotten about robbery and other crimes. When we finally found her we made the trek back to San Jose and ended getting there around 4:30 or 5 in the morning. Not exactly a safe picture because we all had to wait on a street corner to hail down a cab to get back to our host homes at kind of a bad time at night to be doing so. Oh well, we made it home safely, and the cab fare was only about a dollar. I also swear though that I heard a monkey outside of our house last night early in the morning. It was most likely just a bird, but I've never heard an animal make such noises and the only thing I could connect them to was perhaps a monkey. Alrighty well I'm going to go ahead and stop here for now.

Two of the dancers.
The structures.

Don't worry, I hadn't had anything to drink and no I don't have pink eye here.

Meg and Nicole.

These are the lights that were outside.

The man of fire. Oh by the way he was wearing angel wings too.

It's Evan!

Safety first

Costa Ricans are no exception when it comes to countries that keep robbers out with lots and lots of barbed wire and bars.

And I made it alive

Wow. So it's kinda hard to believe but I'm actually here. It hasn't even completely sunk in yet, but I'm super excited. Already my spanish has improved greatly in the less than 24 hour period I've been here. But it's still not that great. My host parents don't speak any english, besides a few random words, so I'm forced to speak spanish in order to comunicate with them at all. My housemate's name is Nicole and she is wonderful. She goes to Washington State and is a more experienced spanish speaker than me so that is working out great for me. Anyways, there's so much I want to say, but most of it is most likely not quite as interesting to anyone that reads this as it is to me so I'll spare you all until I have good story. I havn't taken any great photos yet, but I did manage to sneak just one at school of one of the courtyards, and also included are a couple of my quarters. I have my own room and lucky enough for me there is wireless internet. So I'm actually sitting in my own room at my host house using wireless internet. Well I hope everyone in the states is enjoying the cold weather, and wish me luck on classes that start on monday.
One of many courtyards at my school.

It's pretty simple, but that's what I love about it.

Adios amigos!

In my last days in Fayettenam everybody showed me a great time and I appreciate it more than you all know. I will miss you guys, but don't worry I'm not suffering too bad...

Both pictures are at my going away party at Jades. Thanks Jade!

Maximum Capacity: 13

One day at winter league

My last day of ultimate for a while, but with any luck I'll find some down south. Our orange team won both games so I'm sad to be gone. But I'm bringing my cleats with me, and my bucket.

Colorado New Years

Well I just got back from a week long trip to Colorado with Josh. The big highlights were seing Yonder perform, and going skiing. On the way to Idaho Springs, we stopped in Colorado Springs to see the Garden of the Gods. It was beautifull, and these pictures don't really capture what it is like to see it in person.

Despite the weather we did manage at least one day of skiing. About 3 hours after hitting the slopes a huge snow storm rolled in and so we had to leave do to white out conditions. I didn't get any real pictures of the skiing, but that's ok. The picture below is of the conditions while driving back to Idaho Springs from Loveland ski resort. It was a mess, and I think it ended up being 17 inches in all that the snow storm brought where we were staying that night. The next day though we got out of the mountains and headed on over to denver where we stayed the night. I had previously bought tickets to the Yonder Mountain String Band show, where Keller Williams opened for them. The show was great, but no photos from there either because cameras wern't allowed. Oh well, it was good fun.

There was a cute little restaurant with a bar about a block from our hotel, so that's where we hung out most of the night after skiing. Those two old air brass gadgets are actually the taps. I thought it was cool.

When we tried to leave the cities, or colorado period, here's what we ran into. It took us a couple of hours to get from denver to Pueblo(which isn't very far), when we ran into road blocks in all directions. So at 3 in the afternoon on the 30th we were forced to rent a hotel in this dead town. The next day we set off in the morning, but ran into the same road blocks that we had been told would be clear. I talked Josh into taking business 50, which looked kinda small and snowy(sorry mom), and we made it back onto the main hwy 50 within 20 or so minutes. Unfortunately, the next road block was only 63 miles past Pueblo, and we were forced to get a hotel after only 2 or so hours of snow driving. In the town, La Junta, everything was closed exept Wal-Mart, and so we settled for some t.v. diners, fruit, and a six pack of killian irish red(it's all they had besides bud flavors) for a new years celebration in the middle of nowhere in a hotel room. Nothing like the Animal Planet Channel for 7 hours!

This is a picture of one of the stuck cars at the hotel we stayed at in Idaho Springs.
The road conditions.

Our car. Luckily with the help of some friendly mexicans, we got this beast out and on the road in no time.

On our third and last day of trying to make it home, everything was covered in ice. The first picture below is just of some grass, but it has an inch of ice covering it.

Tower crushed

There were lots of trees you would have assumed were bushes because of the amount of bending.

Beautiful Texas? hhhmmmm....

And now racoons....

Everytime I fix the old holes they have made to get into the front porch, they make new ones. But I havn't the heart to harm them, similarly I suppose to the time my cat brought into my house a throbbing half eaten, half alive baby rabbitt. What was I to do?

Death of a Tims waitress

Whyisapossumeatingmymulch?

What the snow and ice left for me to photograph

Hey look!

It snowed! But it's too cold, I'm not going out there. I suppose we got a good 1/2 an inch at least.