Well, its been a few weeks. A very eventful few weeks, so eventful that I've been unable to attend to my duties as ACM global ambassador. But now I'm gonna do it.
So last i wrote, we had just finished painting the gate, which seems like a long time ago. The entire house has now been stuccoed(sp?) and looks muy hermosa. The weekend at Sarapiqui and Guapiles was pretty cool. My favorite part was probably going into the rainforest at night, turning off all the flashlights and being quiet. You can truly appreciate how much stuff there is in the rainforest. The next day I tried hot chocolate with chili pepper, which was much better than it sounds.
Life in San Jose has become more day-to-day than it was during the first week. The ACM is truly great though. I couldn't have asked for a better group of kids than the ones who have ended up here for 3.5 months of learning spanish.
This past weekend we went to a volcano called Poas, which was pretty cool. After buying the La Teja, a newspaper which only costs 20 cents but contains some questionable content, for the ride, we set off from the coca-cola station. We nearly got to the park when the bus stopped and they asked us to get off and shop for twenty minutes. Having heard enough stories from my dad, who was a tour bus driver in Europe for a while apparently, I knew that the driver/tour guide was going to get a cut of whatever we bought, so I abstained from buying any overpriced shot glasses/flexible wooden snakes at the small souvenir store at the sid of the road, just to foil his plan.
When we finally got there, we thought there had been some sort of mistake. We got out to the viewpoint where the crater was located and you couldn't see five feet in front of you, due to a mixture of fog and steam from the laguna at the center of the crater. We were just getting ready to start complaining when a break in the clouds came! It was a pretty incredible landscape, unlike any I'd ever seen before. The crater was literally huge, and I would've loved to hike down into the crater. Unfortunately, a man working for the park was standing there just to make sure my wish wasn't fulfilled.
Then, we did a short hike up to a lake thats on top of another part of the volcano, and ate lunch in an area that wasnt a designated lunching area, which is apparently a no-no. Basically everyone contributed something to the lunch, except for Stuart, whose mediocre strawberry cookies were roundly scorned. My "te frio" was a success, i guess.
Then we headed back to san jose, and decided we would stop in the central market again in order to find a cheap jersey of the soccer team "la liga deportiva de alajuense" or algo asi, which is the equivalent of a costa rican coming to america and buying a yankees jersey. Its easy to be a fan of the best team!
Unfortunately, we got there and were informed that it would cost treinta mil colones, which is about 60 dollars. I am positive i can find a knockoff for cheaper than that, and so i told the shopkeeper "me falta plata" which is Costa Rican for "I lack money" and got out of there.
Then we went and saw "agente salt" in mall san pedro. and afterwards, we were too tired even for an olaffo at pueblo viejo, our favorite bar, which means we were REALLY tired.
After a sunday filled with work and naps, the quest for a cheap la liga jersey continued. Stuart told me his host brother had said that during the day before a liga game at night, as was the case yesterday, you can find guys selling knockoffs "on the street" near the subaru. We made the 20 minute walk, only to find no such men.

The Quest continues.

Well, another week or so has gone by since the last one of these, and it was a pretty eventful one. On friday we had a field trip to downtown San Jose, which was pretty eventful. There were some beautiful buildings, but all of the buildings in the guidebook were kind of surrounded by more modern architecture, and looked more than a little out of place. In the guidebook that they gave me at the beginning, they said that 18th century Europeans referred to San jose as "a national theatre surrounded by a village", referencing the relative decadence of the architecture of the theatre in comparison to the tribal lifestyle of the rest of Costa Rica. Now, it seems that San Jose is a national theatre surrounded by not entirely attractive modern architecture.

But, to be sure, there were a lot of interesting things in San Jose. We went to a huge marketplace, which was actually really reminiscent of some places I had been in Europe over the summer. It was indoor, and had everything from a pet shop to a seafood store to an incredibly touristy t-shirt store, but was a lot of fun to look around in. After that we went to a very beautiful church that was painted to look like it was marble on the inside, like a lot of churches in italy. Right after that, however, we got onto an air conditioned, private bus, which promptly yanked us out of the culutural experince. Following a delicious lunch of sandwiches and a failed game of "beach ball", we headed back to the ACM.

That night about half the group headed out to a kind of club called "el jazzcafe" which featured expensive drinks and a kind of pop jazz band playing songs, including some american ones. I sang along to a michelle branch one that i knew (which, I was later informed, was actually Vanessa Carleton).

Then the weekend came, which was pretty fun. Apparently there will be a house painting project going on while I'm here, and this weekend we started with the gate, which took much longer than it would seem. Also, we can only paint until about 2 pm, at which the downpour starts, without fail. Its gotten to the point that I'm a little uncomfortable if its not raining after 2. I think my family is getting to like me a little better every day, which is a good sign, and which probably goes hand in hand with the improvement in my spanish, which is slow but steady.

This weekend we're going to Sarapiqui y Guapiles, which is like a protected tropical forest, so I'll finally be doing what everyone probably assumes that I'm doing when I tell them I'm going to Costa Rica. Hope its fun!

Al principio

I've been in Costa Rica for five days now, and it's been a lot different then i imagined all summer. My host mom, Lily, and my sister Graciela, picked me up from the airport at about 7:00 Costa Rica time. It had been a long day. I had gotten up at 3:30 to catch a flight from SFO to Phoenix "Sky Harbor", where i had a five hour layover. Both of the people next to me on my flight were going to costa rica for vacation, one for a week and the other for two weeks. They were shocked when I told them I would be here until December.
After landing I went through customs, and was granted a visa for 90 days, although I'll be here for something more like 110. Apparently, ACM is going to take care of any legal problems. I hope so, because after I showed the customs worker a letter saying that i would be here a little longer than 90 days, she took one look at it and said "No! Va a estar aqui por noventas dias!" And stamped my passport with authority.
My host family is really nice, but I realized almost immediately that I'm not nearly as good at spanish as i thought i was during the summer. But Lily and Graciela were very nice as i stumbled my way through the most basic phrases and words. When they asked if i was hungry, I said yes, and they asked what i wanted to eat. I said "comida tipica" and they laughed. Apparently, in Costa Rica there are restayrants like Applebee's, pizza hut, and wendy's, but the only ones i've so far have been burger king and mcdonalds, and even then only one of each. We settled on a mexican restaurant, ate quickly, went to their house and i went to bed almost immediately.
I spent the next day hanging out with the family. I met my host brother, Andres, who is a really cool guy. He's likes to play poker, el "texasholdem", and I think at some point he's going to take me to play with this friends. We had gallo pinto for breakfast, and arroz con pollo for lunch. I was really excited about the arroz con pollo, because i've read about it in my spanish textbooks for years but never, to my knowledge, tried it. We watched movies for the rest of the day, including happy gillmore and the da vinci code.
The first thing I saw when Lily and I left the house the next day was a dog chasing a car down the street. I laughed, but Lily didn't; I don't think its that unusual here. The first day of ACM was actually pretty nice. Lily rode with me on the bus to school to ensure that I didn't get lost. We got out at the UCR and walked a couple blocks, past "el outlet mall" which is exactly what it sounds like. All of my classmates looked pretty tired and nervous, like me, but its a good group of people and I dont think we're going to have any problems getting along, although its difficult to get to know someone if you have to speak in a language that you know only at a kindergarten or first grade level, if that. Basically our first day we jsut had a lot of information thrown our way, but i think the teachers are great and obviously committed to helping us learn spanish, which is good because every time i try to say something remotely substantive to my host family, I end up sounding like an idiot. Oh well. The spanish will come.