Estableciéndose ......Settling Down

I can’t believe it’s been like 6-7weeks since I have been here. Ahh time is going by super fast and it seems like I am updating this blog once per month… Do bear with me… The first week was the longest one and then pow two months have already gone by. A good week and a half after 50 minutes of walking to school and back I was like um… why not take the bus like any other regular person… so yes I haven’t been walking 1hr 40 mins every day. But hey, I still walk back, so I deserve partial credit for that. It was just too exhausting to walk soo much lol.

Spending more time with the same people makes you learn a lot about them and a lot about yourself and your flaws. I realized that I use ‘so’ more than necessary and this was pointed out to me while I was speaking Spanish, just to emphasize how much I use it. Another flaw that was pointed out to me was that I complained a lot, I feel like I complain unconsciously for no particular reason… so I have learnt to suck it up, which is really not hard here.

One of the funniest nights I had was when we had a sleep over at Patis’ house (super cool instructor). We were planning on watching the stars and ‘motor cycle diaries’ with no subtitles… instead we spent the whole night imitating each other and everyone at the institute and for anyone who knows me, I love making imitations. It gives me the freedom to show people how I perceive them without being offensive. Linn and Cally; our two musicians were playing their guitars, it was a super chill night and we had great pasta made by Allison and Natasha… with their special ingredient that worked astoundingly !

La rutina diaria: On the other hand life here has been super tranquilla, it involves a lot of going to cafes to use the internet and ‘trying’ to get work done, cooking, hanging out and a lot of field trips… I feel like Im in IB Geography again!!! Every weekend there is always something planned; nothing has been repetitive despite having the same class schedule each week.

Monteverde is blessed with artists. I’ve never seen such a high concentration of amazing artists in such a small place. Everyone seems to have a talent… I won’t lie marrying an artist and moving here has crossed my mind a few times, but my Spanish teacher from Spain from her own experience ;) told me to make sure that they could do more than just paint con sus manos (with their hands) … so I am still looking for my handy man lol. 

La Vida Nocturnal

The night life here is muy interesante. There are actually two very distinct bars, one is mainly for ticos. Oh I know I wasn’t clear about what I meant by tico’s in my previous post, Costa Ricans are known as “Ticos” for the usual –tico- they add after the end of every possible word, ‘un pocotico’, ‘delgatico’,’gordotico’ etc. And so that is the story behind “ticos”. Anyway where was I… Bar Amigos is the local bar, very lively, we usually try to get there before the cover charges. The music is mainly the latin version of every possible music you know. So our first Saturday I went out ‘dancing’ to find out that …Oh boy I really don’t know how to Salsa… That was one thing I forgot to prepare for. Yes folks, if you’re planning on coming down to Central America or any Spanish speaking country for that matter learn your salsa before coming. Especially guys, because ladies can get away with following- it doesn’t work the other way. The other bar is Mate Cana. This is the tourist spot, owned by gringos (foreigners/white people) , it has a more loungier feeling, and regular salsa classes on Thursdays. The one time we went I was surprised/ disappointed that the instructor was from England, forgive me but I wanted the real thing. Watching passionate couples dance away on the dance floor made me fall in love… yes I have found a burning passion to become a dancer here lol… I wanna learn it all; salsa, meringue, bachata, cumbia, swing and each week I learn something new. Best way to dance I’ve learnt is just say yes when a ‘tico’ comes and asks you to and just go with the flow ;)

Anécdota; Insects here are pretty bearable. There are none of those annoying mosquitoes. Except there are these small little black bugs that come and bite you and leave a small red spot that hurts and itches for days! Especially depending on where they bite you the pain differs. Other than that I have accepted the presence of insects as living creatures in this earth. NOT Scorpions though! I hate them! One night I was leaving to go out to Bar Amigos (typical Friday night routine) I found something black on my bedroom floor, ‘curious’ me I tried to move it aside to see if it was alive… not only was it alive it grabbed on to my foot, but I was too fast for it as I kicked it off. But then I didn’t know where it went so I had to stay another half an hour or so to hunt the scorpion down, I was not about to come home to a scorpion waiting for me… alas I found it under my bed. The bad thing was that I had to pay the cover charge at Bar amigos that night :/

La vida de los ticos

Everyone here wakes up so early. I am really surprised with myself also. I have started getting up at 6am every morning. (clap clap clap). Noemy, my host-mum is such a great cook, I am motivated to learn how to make tortillas, frijoles, arroz con pollo, empanadas etc. … even though I walk to school every day, I'm not sure how much weight I can possible lose since the food is so great. I might have to start jogging to school…vamos a ver. Being here really reminds me of being in Ethiopia the weather, roads, stores, plants and how welcoming and warm the people are. The ticos are very chill about everything. I love how they are always “tranquilla”.  

Las classes

So I am only taking 4 classes this semester (as I have learnt my lesson from the previous one). Even though the psychology of environmental issues sounded very interesting I thought tropical ecology would be much more fascinating here in Monteverde. Sustainable Development with Pati, which involves going on field trips and working on a final project of making a documentary to share with the community. Social Change and Development with Jim, who is actually an Anthropologist and Spanish of course, with Christina from Spain! I really don’t know how I feel about my Spanish I thought I knew enough, but I still have a lot to learn.  The thing I love about the institute is the free coffee and tea in the kitchen. And of course let’s not forget the cheese factory that is right by the school which has the world’s best ice-cream!!! Flavor of the month has to be macadamian .. Que Rico!!!! After walking so much who doesn’t deserve ice-cream!

Primero día

I found out the hard way exactly how far the institute was from St. Elena. I was personally planning on taking the bus, but since everyone else wanted to ‘walk’, I thought why not. But this was not a walk! It was more like a hike up the mountain. It’s not how far the institute was that got me so tired but how steep the road was. But by day 2 I was much more comfortable walking, and by day 3 I became a natural …and so we all started walking to the institute every day back and forth… My favorite part was definitely walking back, not only because it was downhill, but because of the gorgeous atardecer; Sunset.

La Casa de la familia de Santamaría Villegas

Noemy my host-mother came to pick me up from the institute. I was so excited to see her and I was looking forward to going home, unpacking, having my own room. When I got home I met Antoni the youngest son who was about 16, very good looking but again he was 16, Suzi who is here for vacation, and Estibali is in the process of applying to Uni. Noemy also had two other daughters who were living with their husbands and a son who lives in San Jose. Of all the people on this trip who like dogs I don’t know why I had the house with the three huge dogs.

¿Dónde está?

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Coming to Montverde!

Friday January 14th, yes I am very behind with the blog, but finally we were going to go to Montverde to meet our host families, which by the way we knew nothing about , until Anibal gave us a brief letter describing our family and where we lived. I was going to be staying with the Santamaria Villegas Family. The house was 15 minutes from down town St. Elena and 50 minutes from the Institute. I was happy about the first part, but I was still processing the later part. The housing arrangement turned out great because Cally and Jacqueline were going to live 2 seconds away for me. However I was concerned about the dogs that bark when they see people walking in at night.  

We got to Montverde around noon and I really did not know what to expect. We passed by St. Elena which is a small tourist town with one main road with restaurants, souvenirs shops, small hotels, internet cafes, supermarkets and various travel agencies. Then we drove through Cerro Plano which also had fancier restaurants and hotels… then finally we got to an unpaved road and we were finally in Montverde. The institute was very nice, it had lots of space and it was very clean, I have never seen so many different categories for trash.

Veragua Forest

Right before we were about to leave for Monteverde we went to the visit The Veragua Lowland Tropical Forest in Limón, the Caribbean side of Costa Rica. We went on the trams to the heart of the forest it was incredible. We saw a few interesting creatures whilst we were there, the strawberry frog, sloths and many types of birds. The guide was very entertaining to watch. You would not think he did this a couple of times during the day by the way he would get so ecstatic the second he saw a living creature. We learnt about all the medicinal qualities the rainforest has to offer and that there is yet so research to be done to learn about all the species that exist there. On the way back I learned the Costa Rican word for cool was “twanies” from the guide. It was from the first surfers who came to Costa Rica, who repeatedly used the word ‘too nice’ for everything they saw.

Guayabo

We also visited the Guayabo Archeological Monument located at the base of the Turrialba Volcano. It used to be a major settlement around 1000-1100 years ago until the whole settlement vanished right before the Spaniards came in the early 1500’s. The site was found by Michael Snarkis who was exploring through the forest before he stumbled upon the remains of the settlers. One can tell that from its geographical strategic location it was a key trading point in the past. It seemed to have been such a developed community, the consistent diameter of the foundations of the houses; they even also had their own underground aqueducts.