Adios tortugas, hola san jose

Well, I've left Ostional and made my (long and torturous) way back to San Jose! The trip was hellish - I woke up at 4:30 for the first bus, while waiting for my bus connection in Santa Cruz I went to get out some cash and the machine ate my credit card, while dealing with the bank I missed my connection and had to wait three and a half more hours in the horrible hot bus station, and on my final leg the immigration police boarded our bus and were not pleased that I only had a copy of my passport so I had to get out and undergo questioning (angry fast questioning in Spanish by scary police with giant guns), and everyone on the bus hated me because they had to wait over half an hour in the sweltering heat until the police decided I was, in fact, legally in the country. Gahh!! But I eventually made it safely back to my host family and was surprised at how glad I was to be back; I thought that I hated San Jose but it's nice and cold here and my host family was very happy to see me. They've decided that I got too thin during my stay in Ostional (psshh) and are trying their very best to fatten me back up, so I'm being fed nearly every hour. Looking back on my stay in Ostional, I'm extremely pleased with the way that my experience turned out: despite a lack of support for the MINAE staff (they never seemed to care one single whit that I was there or had any interest whatsoever in the library), I reorganized and made a record of all of the books, got kids coming into the library for homework help, English lessons and craft projects, I more than doubled the number of Spanish novels in the library (thanks to help from Scott Drucker's donation) and I co-organized a successful read-a-thon! I don't remember how much I told you all about that - I made a bunch of signs and put them around town advertising a read-a-thon every day from 3-5 in the school, so I showed up with a bunch of books everyday and kept track of how many hours kids kids were reading over the two week span of the read-a-thon, and the three kids that logged in the most hours won skateboards! Kids were very enthusiastic, though I suspect that they came more out of hopes in winning a skateboard than a love for reading, but I was still happy - kids were reading! The read-a-thon also gave me an excellent excuse to spend a solid two hour block of time every afternoon reading; I promised myself that I'd read in Spanish to improve my language skills and tried to read an Isabel Allende's "Cuentos de eva luna" and gave up in despair after a single day, but Harry Potter proved to be much easier. Hmm, I just read over what I wrote, and it makes it sound like I was a busy worker bee (and a bit of a braggart, sorry), so I must admit that I also got to spend quite a bit of time lolling on the beach, reading in hammocks and playing with sea turtles. Doesn't get much better than that! I was sad to leave my beachside paradise and host family in Ostional, but I'm also really looking forward to everything that's coming up in the next couple of weeks. This week, I get to hear everyone else's presentation about their internship, which should be extremely interesting because everyone was doing really different stuff. Then, Charlie comes and we get to travel around here for ten days or so, and then I come home for Christmas!! Hurrrrah! I'll see lots of you in less than twenty days! Love you! The first picture is the three read-a-thon champions, the second is the classroom I held the read-a-thon in and the third is some of the new books that I was able to get with donation money.

ARRIBADA!

Remember when I said that I didn't take that picture of the arribada, but I probably would?? Well, I did! The arribada finally came! YAAAY!! And it's every bit as cool as promised! It's just the first day, and apparently more and more will come for the next couple of days. Everyone here is really excited, but also a bit stressed because they're all working from 8pm-4am. Since I technically work at the library, I am exempt from this work and get to roam about taking pictures instead. Great deal!! My trip to Santa Cruz, however, was fairly disastrous: since the arribada came this morning, none of the volunteers could come with me and I had to fly solo, which was a bit lonely, and then once I got there (a two hour bus ride) I learned that the town didn't actually sell any books at all! I had asked several people if there were any librerías in town, and was told that there were four, so I thought that surely I would be in luck. However, all the stupid librerías sold was office supplies, like paper and pens and stuff. Very frustrating. People seemed confused when I said I wanted to buy books and said that perhaps at the supermarket I could find some. And I could - Harlequin romances. Gah! And I put up signs yesterday for the big read-a-thon that starts tomorrow at 3pm, with new books promised, so I'm a bit stressed about that. I'm going to Guiones (another nearby town) tomorrow morning with some of the volunteers, I heard there were some bookstores there. We'll see if they actually sell books. Cross your fingers for me! The two other American volunteers are coming with me to buy some Thanksgiving food supplies, we're planning on preparing a Thanksgiving meal. We don't have an oven, though, so it should be interesting. Anyway, check my facebook for more pictures of the arribada (YAAAAY!) and I'll let you know if I'm able to find any books. Love you all!

Hello all! Time is going so fast, I can't believe that I only have two weeks left here in Ostional! They're going to be very busy. I'm going tomorrow to Santa Cruz to buy new books for the library and Scott Drucker and I are going to put together a reading rewards program in the afternoons. He brought four skateboards with him that we're going to give away for the final prizes, but we only have ten days or so for the readathon to take place, so it's all going to be very fast. I've been spending my days here working on art projects for kids with Domenica (one of the biologists) in the mornings and contacting International Book Donation places in the afternoon (so far I've gotten in touch with five, but none have emailed me back yet...sigh) and teaching classes and such. This weekend I had a good time going with Scott and his film crew to film some of the local guys here surfing in Guiones, they're really good! I didn't surf, I just bobbed about in the waves and generally got in everyone's way. But it was very fun. Yesterday, I went with my host family (sans Pablo, who had a big meeting here at MINAE) to Junquillal, a small town outside of Santa Cruz, to watch a game of soccer. The bus ride was wild! Two soccer teams (mens and womens) along with fans crammed onto this creaky old schoolbus and we bounced around for two hours through rivers and over mountains to get to the town. First we watched the men's game and had a picnic, arroz con pollo. They were very impressive! Ostional won, 3-1. Then came time for the women's game, and Merylin informed me that I would have to be playing, since some of the women couldn't come to the game. I tried to explain that I would almost certainly be detrimental to the team effort, but she thrust a uniform upon me and herded me to the bathroom to change. It was quite an experience! We played at 1 in the afternoon - 95 degrees and humid, and there were no subs! I thought I was going to have heat stroke. For some inexplicable reason, the coach put me as their center offensive player, so I was forced into a good deal of action. Good grief! Mostly I just ran (huffed and puffed) back and forth and tried to look like I was doing something useful. I don't think anyone was fooled.
But I did get two shots on goal! Close,ish. I was very proud. Unfortunately, about half an hour into the second half, one of our players had a disastrous crash with their goalie. Our player was rolling around on the ground screaming bloody murder (something about her knee), and their goalie's head was bleeding! Someone conked out our player with chloroform or something right on the field and hauled her off. Everyone was screaming and children were crying and everyone was too traumatized to continue, so they called the game. After everyone calmed down a bit, people were very nice to me, telling me that I did a great job and all. I think it's because they were concerned about the purple hue of my face and wanted to make sure that I wasn't about to pass out or something. I didn't get any pictures, so you'll have to imagine it. On the way back, we had to wait for our player to get treated at the only hospital in the region, so we didn't get back to Ostional until around 10 at night. Whew! Quite a day. They've invited me to play again next Sunday, but I don't know if my heart can take it. We'll see. I'll probably post soon about how my book-finding adventure in Santa Cruz goes. Love to all! The photos are of the film crew in Guiones, my host mom Merylin and Alvaro at the soccer game, and Brisle watching the game. More on facebook!

Hello everyone! Hope all is well up north. My daily routine has settled into the following: I wake up at around 4 with the roosters and turkeys, grumble, fall back asleep, wake up again around 7 and have breakfast, go to the Refuge and work on researching book donation organizations around the world and help the biologists here with English (I'm editing someone's thesis for English mistakes and translating their tourist brochure into English), then I go home for lunch, and then I come back and teach English classes to the various students who come in. It's been really interesting to teach, and I've discovered that the English classes at the high school here are completely sub-par. The kids that I'm teaching have been supposedly taking English for three or four years and are still struggling with "How are you?" and simple vocabulary. Their homework is also completely ridiculous - things like "Read this paragraph on computer programming and answer the following questions" and the questions are like "In what ways does a computer differentiate from a mechanical calculator?" Absurd!! They can't even remember what "read" means!! It's clear that they're just supposed to look for similar words in the paragraph and copy the answers without understanding them. How on earth is that even useful!? So they come here to learn the basics so that they could actually try to communicate with someone rather than talking about mechanical calculators and blade accessories in blenders (another assignment). There are a few older students who have a pretty high level of English thanks to their own hard work at home and I've been struggling to teach them, because I am woefully ill-prepared to teach and don't really know what I'm doing, but we make it work. Then I go home for dinner around 6 and either go back to the Refuge from 8-12 for turtle patrol or watch TV with my family here and fall asleep by 9. Of course, that is a very productive day that leaves out all of my reading for fun and swimming that happens most days. Hurrah! Also, exciting news! Scott Drucker, the ICADS student from five years ago who set up the foundation for this little library during his internship, came back to Ostional this week because he wants to make a documentary about Ostional and he brought with him a $200 donation that he's giving to me for the library! So I get to take the bus into Santa Cruz soon and visit bookshops to buy new books and games for the library!! I'm very excited. In less exciting news, I'm going completely bonkers with my rice-and-beans three meals a day for five weeks menu. I've also been feeling a bit nostalgic for some other things at home, namely a comfortable bed sans bugs and clean, dry clothing. And of course all of you! I don't think that I could ever live here permanently, everything is covered in sand and bugs and nothing ever dries and everything smells a bit like mold. Ahh! But of course on the flip side, there is a gorgeous ocean and monkeys and turtles and iguanas and fruit trees galore, so I shouldn't complain. Love you all!! Oh, and I'm still waiting on the arribada - they've been telling me that it will arrive any day now since I got here five weeks ago, I'm beginning to think it's all a myth.

Tortuguitas!

Hello all! This week I posted signs at the school and made an awkward announcement to all of the students to invite them to come to the library. Something like, "Hello everyone, I am working at the library at the Turtle Refuge and love visitors and can help with English homework and I have games and I have books and on Saturdays there are art projects and a movie and I hope that everyone comes because the library is fun and I like people visiting and I can help with homework and English." They looked dubious that anyone as grammatically challenged as I could help with any sort of homework, but I assured them that my English was better than my Spanish. And now kids come, almost every day! After school gets out at 3, there is a group of high school kids that comes for English lessons; just lessons, not homework. We've been working on the basics, like the alphabet, simple sentences, animals, body parts - a big group of awkward teenage boys sang "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" on Thursday, it was great! Also, last night something wonderful happened! I was on turtle patrol as usual with some other guys that work here (Greddy, Fran and McDonald) and we found a nest of hatchlings just starting to come up out of the sand. We were all excited, and then we looked around with our flashlights and found...HUNDREDS of hatchlings! Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds! We counted over thirty nests just in a small portion of the beach, with 50+ babies from each nets. It was incredible! It was all of the hatchlings from the September arribada, and Greddy said that I was lucky because it was the largest number of hatchlings that they've seen all year! We stayed there for over five hours, chasing off vultures, crabs, and one ENORMOUS toad that was hopping about and gobbling up baby turtles as fast as he could. The only problem was that we stayed on the far end of the beach for too long and the tide came up, which meant that the river that we have to cross to get back to the Refuge (usually knee high during low tide) was over chest high and we had to swim across, clothes and all. And there are CROCODILES in that river!! Not going to lie, I was completely petrified. Then, this morning, things were pretty slow at the library because kids won't show up until later this afternoon for the movie, so I decided to go for a walk down the beach. And I found MORE babies hatching out of a nest on the beach! Nobody was there and the vultures were going to town, so I had to run around wildly throwing sticks and shouting to get them to go away. Eventually someone saw me prancing around like a lunatic and came over to help me. The turtles must have been partially dug up by the vultures or something, because they hardly ever come out to hatch in the middle of the day because it is way too hot for them, so the babies were having a lot of trouble making it to the ocean because the sand was boiling hot. So I gathered them up and sprinted back and forth to the wet, cooler sand to help them make it. I hope that they're ok! It certainly is an uphill battle for the poor little things. Since these babies hatched during the day, I finally got to take some pictures! Hope you enjoy them. More on facebook! Love you all! Happy Halloween!

Hey everyone! Just a quick update to say that everything went really well yesterday - almost 20 kids showed up! The power went out (not unusual, the power's usually out one out of every three days), so we couldn't show the movie and the kids were forced to be creative. Yay! We did puzzles, drew pictures, played some games, and read books! Well, really, they just looked at the pictures, but hey, books were open. The cook for the Refuge even made everyone crepey things with delicious delicious jelly! Also, more kids showed up today, so we've been doing more drawing and games. I told the kids that they could come in here anytime to get help with English homework and lots sounded interested, so I may be doing some tutoring as well. Hurrah!

DINOSAUR

Hey everybody! Everything is going well - I'm manning the library by day, turtle wrangling by night. Last week I took a little vacation to Nosara with the other girls that are working here, and I took a surfing lesson! And I wasn't even eaten by a shark! Success! We also went to a rodeo, but I didn't really like it. I felt bad for the bulls the whole time, though at least they don't kill them or anything here. Still, they just seemed bored and irritated. It was quite an experience, though - the whole arena was built out of this horribly rickety wood and everyone was quite intoxicated and hanging off of the sides and falling into the arena. Anyone was allowed to charge on in, so all sorts of drunk people kept stumbling in and shouting at the bull and then running like mad. On the home front, not a soul comes into the library here (well, once two Australian tourists came in) so I've been reorganizing all the books. Fascinating, right!? I've also been composing letters begging for more novels to send to various libraries and universities around the country, because right now all of the books in Spanish are educational books on turtles and legislation. So I don't really blame the youth for not leaping at the chance to read the "Manual de Procedimientos para la ejecución de Plan de Manejo." Bleh. Also, today, I've set up a movie day (I wanted a reading day but the woman who supervises me here says that if I advertise it as a reading day not one person will show up) and I put up a poster in town, so I hope someone shows up. I tried to go announce it at the school, but apparently the teacher had decided to take a vacation this week, so classes were off. Hint hint, Mom! I'm hoping to ambush whoever comes with books after the movie ends. We'll see how it goes! But, the big news is that last night there was a LEATHERBACK TURTLE on the beach laying eggs!!! It was completely incredible! We were all sitting around waiting to go out on our normal turtle duty when we got a call from André, who was already out patrolling, and he said that a tortuga baula had come up on the far end of the beach. We all ran literally over a mile down the beach to see it, because they're really rare and endangered. I couldn't BELIEVE IT when I saw it! It was absolutely enormous! It was one of the top ten coolest things I've ever seen in my whole life. I wish I could've taken a picture to show you, but it was laying eggs and we're not allowed to take pictures because it might bother them. It was over six feet long and like four feet across, and its head was much bigger than mine. It grunted like a dinosaur, too. I asked how much it weighed, but to understand the answer I would've had to understand some horrible conversion and also numbers in Spanish, so I can't tell you how much it weighed. I'd estimate ten billion pounds. It dug a mammoth hole for its eggs (I could've fit in there with room to spare), but we caught all of its eggs in a plastic bag, because a lot of people had come out on the beach to see it and they're very worried about poaching, because again, tortuga baulas are endangered and their eggs are valuable. After it lay the eggs and everyone was marveling at the turtle, André pulled me aside and asked if I'd like to go on a secret mission, and of course I said yes - I am nothing if not a queen of espionage. He had hidden the bag of eggs under his coat and we walked a long ways down the beach (making sure that no one was following us) and then dug a hole and I got to put all of the eggs (68) into the hole. We covered it back up and camouflaged the hole and sauntered back all casual like in time to see the behemoth working her way back to the sea. The tracks that she left looked like a tractor had driven up on the beach. Whew! It was absolutely epic, even the weather - it was clear with trillions of stars right above the beach, but farther out on the ocean it was really stormy, so there was tons of flashing lightning. Amazing! It felt unreal. Anyway, I'm still pretty pumped about it. I hope that you're all doing well! Love you! Oh, the pictures are of me looking dorky with our surfboards and then someone else's picture of a leatherback so that you can get a sense of it.

Ostional!

Hello everyone! I’m all settled in Ostional! After a harrowing morning of rickety buses and confusing transfers on Saturday, my host mom Marylin picked me up at the bus stop (that is, the only restaurant in town) and introduced me to the rest of the family: her husband Jose, whom everyone calls Pablo for some reason, her five year old son Brilles, and her adorable two year old son Albaro, or Borrito. The house is pretty similar to most houses I’ve seen in Costa Rica, though as an added perk the doors are open at all times, which means that chickens and turkeys (which are absolutely hideous animals, I might add) are free to gobble about as they please in the house (under my bed, for example), as well as pumas and anacondas, as far as I can tell. I truly love chickens, so this is quite exciting. Also, I’ve seen lizards of all size in their backyard, ranging from the miniscule to the positively dinosaurian. Iguanas over three feet long! We just don’t see that in Minneysohta! Saturday night, Marylin, Brilles, Borrito and I went for a walk on the beach and GUESS WHAT WE SAW!? BABY TURTLES CRAWLING UP FROM A LITTLE HOLE TO MAKE THEIR WAY DOWN TO THE OCEAN!! It was completely incredible! Although everyone but me seemed bored, I guess that happens all the time here. Borrito accidentally stepped on one and it stopped moving, so I picked it up and mourned for it, but then it started flapping its little flippers and waving its wrinkly baby head from side to side, so I quickly put it down and cheered it on to the sea. And guess what!? It was the very first of its brothers and sisters to make it to the ocean! The very first! Squashedness and all! When it got caught up in the first wave, I was so proud that I cried a little bit. Apparently Ostional is a big deal in the turtle world; one of only eight beaches in the world where turtles come for arribadas, which are times when as many as a million turtles (give or take some huge number, I don’t really understand numbers in Spanish) come to the beach and lay a billion (again with the numbers) eggs. There is supposed to be one in late October, I can’t wait!! On Sunday, I asked my host mom if I should go look at the library and start working, and she said absolutely not, Sundays are for soccer. So I spent Sunday watching soccer games in the field outside of my house, swimming in the ocean, playing with Brilles and Albaro and lying in the hammock reading. A taxing day. This morning, I went to the library to start working, and they seemed completely unaware that I was supposed to come, but pleased to have someone to help. The public library is a room in the building where the Refugio Nacional de Vida Silvestre de Ostional is (basically turtle refuge), and right now no one is working there; if someone comes to check anything out (which apparently never happens, reading doesn’t seem to be a priority here), a biologist comes and helps them out. Tomorrow, I’m going to start going through all of the books and organizing them, making lists of the titles, authors, etc. and putting stickers on them to identify them, because right now there is no system. It sounds quite daunting, but there are only two shelves of books in the entire library. It’s sad – I have more books in my room at home than the entire Ostional Public Library. In addition to working at the library, I’m also going to work with the turtle project several times a week. Tonight is my first shift, eight to midnight. I guess I’m going to be measuring turtles, counting eggs, and recording other turtley business. So that’s my life here so far! My Spanish continues to be somewhat sketchy – I realized yesterday that the word I’ve been using the entirety of my time here for puppy actually means sponge cake. There’s no Internet Café in Ostional, but there is Internet at the science center for the turtles, where the library is, so I should have access to Internet most days. I’ll keep you all updated! Love you all!
P.S. It is extraordinarily hot here. Hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot. Like Hades, but full of crazy animals, oceans and gorgeousness.
P.P.S. The pictures are my house here, the library, and the beach

To Ostional!!

Hello everyone! Just wanted to write a quick note to let you all know that tomorrow I'll be leaving San Jose (at 4:30 in the morning!) to go and work in Ostional, Costa Rica. Ostional is a small town on the Pacific Coast that is famous for all of the sea turtles that come to the beach to lay their eggs. I'll be working in a small reading library, teaching little kids to read, trying to collect resources and setting up book clubs and stuff. Cool, right!? Also, adding to the awesomeness, my host father is one of the directors of the Biology project there to work with the turtles, so I can also help out with sea turtles!! From my understanding, I'll get to chase away predators and examine turtles to check for tumors. I won't actually know exactly what I'll be doing until I get there, but I'm pretty excited about it. I may or may not have access to Internet, so we'll see! Love you all! Also, I didn't take that picture. It's from Google. But I probably WILL take that picture! Hurrah!

Hello! Goodness, I have ever so much to say! Be forewarned, this will be absolutely horrendously long. I’m back in San Jose now, but I’ve been in Nicaragua for that last week and I had an absolutely incredible trip. I hardly know where to start! The Saturday before I left, I went into downtown San Jose with Brenly, Alex, Rose and Christina (girls in my program) to go to the National Yoga Festival of Costa Rica. It was a blast! Once you get in and buy a ticket ($3.50), you can take as many classes as you want, but we got there a bit late and by the time we got there the only class available was acroyoga, which turned out to be just what it sounds like: acrobatic yoga! We did handstands and flips and flew on each other’s feet and stuff. It was insane but really fun. Then, Sunday morning at 6:00 a.m. we set out for Nicaragua! It was a long trip and customs was a bit of a pain, but we arrived at our hotel in Managua by around 7:00. Our first morning, we took a bus tour of Managua. I felt kind of weird about it because we were in this bus that said “Turismo” on the side and we were driving through people’s neighborhoods and gaping at them like they were in a zoo or something, but I did learn a lot about the political and social history of Nicaragua, which is fascinating! They have statues of Sandino everywhere, and huge Daniel Ortega billboards in which he tries to convince everyone that he is still the face of the true Sandinista party, but apparently they aren’t buying it. That afternoon, we went and met with a group of about 70 former banana plantation workers who have literally had their lives (and the lives of their children) ruined by a chemical called Nemagon that was banned in the United States twenty years before it was banned here because it was found to be so highly toxic. Some of the workers worked with the chemical for up to fifteen years, and all of the workers have severe medical problems, many have died, and most of their children have some sort of deformation or mental condition. They have camped out in a sort of permanent shanty town across from the Nicaraguan Congress in order to try and force the government to pressure the banana companies (Dole, Shell, Chiquita) to provide them with medical services, which the workers can’t afford. They have been living in absolutely basic conditions (corrugated cardboard/plastic bag houses, no running water, etc) for over five years, and so far almost nothing has come of it. We went around and interviewed various people, and they were all excited to talk to us to get their story out to a broader public. It was incredibly sad, but some of the people had hope that Daniel Ortega could get something done. After we met with them, we got back on the bus to head to Matagalpa, a city higher up in the mountains (and mercifully cooler - Managua was truly the hottest place I have ever been, even including that hideous stop at Las Vegas) where half of our group met with their families that they were going to live with for the next three days. The rest of us headed to a small town outside of Matagalpa called San Ramón to meet our families, and I am so glad that I got to be there! I absolutely fell in love with the town. It was beautiful, nestled in the mountains with flowering trees and chickens everywhere and horses instead of cars. My kind of place! My family was a woman named Aracely, her husband Augustino, her sons Eric and Elvis (25 and 18) and her daughter Rosa (16). That night, I went with Rosa to watch Elvis play in a volleyball tournament, and the entire town was there. Very fun! The next morning we had nothing scheduled, so we spent the morning with our families. I had an absolutely fantastic time! Augustino let me ride his horse Paquito up and down the road – only the second time I’ve ever ridden a horse!! Then, Elvis and his friend Alberto took me and Shulpa, another girl from the program who lived down the street from me, on a hike to a waterfall, where we went swimming! There were those giant blue morpha butterflies fluttering about everywhere! I saw the largest spider I’ve ever seen in my life! It was incredible! Then we met up with the rest of our group and we all hiked up a mountain to visit a cooperative of families (UCASAN, but I don’t remember what that stands for…) working to grow coffee and perhaps start some sort of tourist operation. We took a hike around their farms way up in the mountains, and we saw howler monkeys!! It was fantastic, but also a bit scary, because they apparently didn’t like us tromping in their territory and screamed at us like they were about to come down and rip our heads off. The next day, we stayed in the San Ramzón/Matagalpa area and went to the headquarters of the Movimiento Comunal Nicaraguense and heard a talk from their President about their project, which is fabulous and works to improve public health and basic services, with a strong influence on women’s rights in Nicaragua. Then we heard another talk by one of our program directors called “Retail-led Restructuring of Agri-Food Systems in Developing Countries,” and I am a bit ashamed to say that I didn’t listen to a word of it. I was tired! But I’m sure it was fascinating. In the afternoon, we met with the Nicaraguan counterparts of our ICADS program in Costa Rica to discuss internship options in Nicaragua, and I’m torn! I don’t know where I want to do my internship – there is a wonderful one in Ostional, Costa Rica where I could work with a small reading library and help biologists with sea turtles (yesss!!), but I fell in love with Nicaragua and would also love to work with a library here. Hmm. We’ll see! The next morning, we got back on the bus and headed to Granada, a beautiful city with a lot of colonial-style architecture, though it is very tourist-oriented. It is also an interesting city to look at because it has virtually no middle class; the center of the city is set up for tourists and rich people, with air conditioning and pools, but radiating out from the wealthy center are all of these really poor barrios (many of which don’t even have electricity) and there isn’t really much in between the two. On the way to Granada, we stopped in Chaguitillo, an indigenous community that has set up a museum and a walk for tourists to go see indigenous petroglyphs. I love petroglyphs. In the afternoon, we went to a volcano! A real live huge one called Volcano Masaya. Very exciting! We got to Granada that night and stayed in the swanky tourist area in a really nice hotel called Hotel Cocibolca, which had a pool and turtles in the fountain. Real turtles! Oh boy! The next morning, we visited La casa de la mujer, an organization that works with women in the Granada area. They’re having a bit of a struggle, because they work with reproductive/sexual rights of women, but under Daniel Ortega abortion is now illegal for women in Nicaragua even to save the life of the mother, so they are no longer allowed to counsel women about abortion. It was very interesting, and some of the people in our group want to go back and do their internship there. In the afternoon, we went to a humungous covered market and did some shopping – fun, but also kind of stressful, it was huge and dark with tiny passageways and everyone screaming at you to buy their stuff. That night at the hotel, we had a talk by two men who were around during the 1979 Revolution, Francisco Jorge and Elvis Fernandez. I was really excited for the talk, but I was a bit disappointed, for they mostly just went over the bare facts of the history of the Revolution, which I already knew. But they did tell a couple of really interesting personal stories. The next morning, we woke up at 5:00 and headed back to Costa Rica, and here I am! Whew! I’m impressed if you’ve made it this far. I suppose that I don’t have to recount every single thing that I did, but I’m excited about all of it and wanted to share! So congrats if you read the whole thing! Now, I have two weeks here in San Jose to decide what internship I want to do and then I’m off for the next eight weeks on a new chapter. Love you all! Missing you! Oh, and the pictures are of a howler monkey, the Masaya Volcano, me with the Nicaraguan parents, and a statue of Sandino. Yaay!

Hello!! First off, I wanted to say that if you’ve been emailing me most dutifully and lovingly and I haven’t been emailing back, I’m sorry! I’ve been really busy and I only have access to the Internet every couple days, and only for short periods of time. So I love you, even if I haven’t been the best at keeping in touch. Anyway, I just wanted to fill you in quickly, because this Sunday all of the ICADS leave on a trip to Nicaragua for a week and a half and I’m not sure how well I’ll be able to keep in touch. The trip sounds really exciting – we’re going to Managua, Matagalpa, and Granada and some other places that I can’t remember off the top of my head. We’ll be staying with families and attending some workshops about immigration (Nicaraguan immigration is a big deal in Costa Rica, very similar to issues of ‘Mexican’ immigration in the US), as well as some workshops about women and development. I’ll be sure to take pictures while I’m there! On Tuesday, we visited an organic coffee farm way up in the mountains (on horrible, horrible HORRIBLE little tiny roads on sheer cliffs) run by a Costa Rican farmer named Egerico Mora who is part of a cooperation of 30 different families. Egerico gave us a talk about his experience switching over to organic coffee – a brutal process. In the first year after he switched, his production fell from 25 fanagas (some sort of bag measurement, from what I understand) per hectare to only 5, and farmers can’t sell coffee as organic for 3 years after switching because there are still chemicals in the ground, so they aren’t even getting the inflated rate for the little that they are selling. At least that’s what I think he said, he was talking incredibly rapidly and using all sorts of complicated coffee vocab. We got to see a processing plant and we all got lots of free fresh coffee, which everyone said was exceptional, but I never have coffee so it tasted pretty much gross and bitter. But I did finish my cup (for you Dad!). After the talk, we all hiked up to his cattle fields, which were quite literally on the side of a mountain – the slope was over 35 degrees! I felt like I could fall right off of the mountain. We did some testing of soil and something with clinometers and pH tests to test land use capacity. I felt ever so scientific, even though I had absolutely no idea what was going on. Nonetheless, I was very proud of my field work. I even wore one of those silly little hats with the brims on all sides that you like to wear, Dad! Who knows, I may be a scientist yet. Just kidding! Ok, hope that you’re all doing well! Love you all!

Manuel Antonio

Hello all! I wanted to write and tell you about my absolutely fabulous weekend! On Saturday, Alex (another girl from Grinnell), Brenly (a girl from Hampshire) and I woke up at 4:30 to catch a bus to Quepos, a small town on the Pacific Ocean. Though it was incredibly early, the bus ride was actually very exciting, for it was the first time that I was out of San Jose and in the countryside. There was a harrowing journey through the mountains that I tried my best to sleep through, but the rest of the bus ride I didn’t want to fall asleep, because everything was so beautiful! It was interesting to look at billboards as we got closer to the coast – all of the billboards for local businesses and such were in Spanish, but the billboards advertising expensive oceanfront real estate and luxury accommodations were in English. Hmm. Once we had bounced about in the bus for four and a half hours, we made it to Quepos, where we caught a bus to Manuel Antonio, a town with gorgeous beaches and a national park. In San Jose, our taxi driver had told us that he liked Quepos better than Manuel Antonio because Manuel Antonio was usually full of tourists, but we didn’t have a problem with this because a) being tourists ourselves it’s a bit hard to complain and b) it isn’t tourist season, so almost all of the tourists who were in Manuel Antonio were Costa Ricans on vacation. The first thing that we did in Manuel Antonio was locate our hotel – one of the professors at ICADS had given us a coupon for a student special, a room for only $45 or so dollars. The hotel, Hotel Verde Mar, turned out to be spectacular! It was right on the beach and our room had a little kitchen and geckos. And right outside the hotel was a tree where sloth and her baby lived! I took a million blurry pictures of them. We spent the whole first day swimming, lying on the beach and exploring the tiny little town. Sunday morning, we woke up early again to get to the park so that we could go hiking. The jungle was breathtakingly beautiful, although it was about a million degrees with 100% humidity. We saw monkeys, lizards, more sloths, raccoons, unidentifiable giant rodents, and lots of lovely birds and flowers. The park also had three beaches, so we spent a bit more time swimming and lying on the beach. I’m proud to report that I was not eaten by a crocodile, shark, or snake, dragged out to sea by a riptide, or even sunburned (very badly). Mom – I was ever so diligent with the sunscreen! I applied on at least three separate occasions. We even made it back home safely, though online it said that the bus station that the bus from Quepos came through was in the red light district of San Jose and was known as being the most dangerous station in all of Costa Rica or something. So all in all, a thoroughly successful, most excellent weekend! This morning at school, we had a festival of fruits, and I wish I had had my camera with me, for the table that they laid out for us was truly spectacular. Every kind of fresh fruit imaginable, and many that I had never ever seen before. We all gorged ourselves – I have certainly never eaten that much fruit in one sitting before. Tomorrow, it’s Costa Rica’s Independence Day, and it seems to be quite a big deal, for people have been celebrating all day today (shooting off fireworks, shouting, general air of festivity) and all schools are cancelled tomorrow. We don’t have school, but we’re taking a field trip to the mountains to visit an organic coffee farm. It should be wonderful! Anyway, this has also turned out to be very long, sorry. Missing you all! Oh, also, it takes forever to post photos here so I’ll only do a few here of Manuel Antonio - it´s really confusing to post pictures, I think that the first is a monkey in the jungle, the second is a picture of Brenly on the beach that I accidentally uploaded and can´t figure out how to delete, the third is our hotel and the fourth is me on the beach - and most of the rest on Facebook. The ones that I posted last time are of the ICADS school (all the little rooms on the right-hand side are our classrooms) and the front of my house here. Yay!

I’ve almost made it through my first week! It’s been a bit overwhelming – my brain is a fried from the effort of translating everything in my head into Spanish, so this is likely to be utterly incomprehensible. Bear with me! Every morning at 7:30, I walk to the ICADS building in San Pedro (part of San Jose) with another girl in the program named Alex in time to get to Spanish class by 8. I tested into a class with three other students and a marvelous teacher named Gabi who makes all of our lessons into games, but our teacher changes every week so I won’t have her for long. At noon, all of the students (there are 17 of us from different schools around the US) are then released into San Jose for an hour to go get some lunch. Every day, my host mom packs me a sack full of fresh mangoes, pineapple, strawberry and banana (the fruit here is completely amazing and we eat it for every single meal!), so I usually just go to the grocery store and get a sandwich. After lunch, we have a class called Latin American Perspectives on Justice and Sustainable Development from 1-5, but the first few afternoons we went over a lot of orientation information, so I’ve only had two days of the class. Every day we have a guest lecturer, and so far it’s been really interesting. On Tuesday afternoon, all of us were shipped off to downtown San Jose on a bus sans directors with a scavenger hunt type activity in an attempt to force us to get a feeling for the city and the bus system. We were in groups of three, and my group was fairly miserable at city navigation and mostly wandered about aimlessly, but we had a good time. We went to the post office to buy stamps, one of the POPS restaurants that are absolutely everywhere to get ice cream and a fish market to look at the sharks. The sharks had no heads, and therefore no teeth – rather a disappointment. But still, sharks! Oh, on a random note, the program directors told us that the beaches here are unlikely to have many sharks but that the crocodile population has been booming. Also, riptides have drowned something like half of all of the people who have gone swimming this rainy season. Happy swimming! Anyway, Tuesday was the birthday of a girl in the program, so that night most of us went to a bar near my house called Ciros and drank Costa Rican beers that all seemed to be called “Imperial” and tried hard to fit in, but the bartenders kept laughing at our attempts at Spanish and playing the Spice Girls. I fear that I shall never be mistaken for a native. Ah well. It was very fun, but we all stayed out until 1:30 and then had to get up at 6:30 for class. Blech. The rest of the week has been fairly uneventful as days in Costa Rica go, which is to say quite eventful, but I am very tired and don’t want to write much more. On weekends, the ICADS program doesn’t have anything planned in the way of group tours, so we are encouraged to make our own travel plans if we want to explore. This weekend, I’m planning on taking a bus to a rainforest next to the Pacific Ocean called Parque Nacional Carara (I think) on Saturday morning with four other friends and staying until Sunday afternoon to do some hiking and sightseeing. Buses here are very cheap – taking the bus all the way to the coast only costs something like three dollars! One of the program directors recommended to the park to us and told us that we could stay in nearby Tárcoles in a run down old house that was likely to have moldy pillows but be very cheap – perfect! Anyway, this has gotten quite long and, as promised, entirely incomprehensible, so I better sign off. Hope that everyone is doing well!

Arrival!

Hello!

I’ve made it safely to Costa Rica! My flights went surprisingly well, considering my hatred of flying: everything was on time, I only had to wait ten minutes at my connection, and on my second flight I sat next to a little boy named Salvo who kept sharing his KitKats with me. After I navigated myself through customs, my bag was the very first one I saw at baggage claim and Don Fernando was waiting as promised to pick me up. The only snag was that I wasn’t able to call home (sorry Mom!) because I didn’t have time to look for a phone card and my cell phone doesn’t work here after all (Mom – it gets no service, it just keeps saying “searching”). Anyway, Don Fernando herded me and another ICADS student named Matthew into a rickety old yellow bus and drove us to our host families. The road situation is a bit crazy - at one point, he took a wrong turn but simply drove down and through a ditch to get back onto the main road. It is very hot and humid here but incredibly verdant and beautiful! There are palm trees and mountains everywhere. And cows. And people riding horses all about public parks! This is something I hope to partake in. Anyway, Don Fernando dropped me off at my house, which I took some pictures of and will post if I can figure out how to. The family is extremely nice, but it was a bit intimidating at first, for there were dozens and dozens of them all talking at once and introducing themselves – I don’t remember any of their names! In addition to the throngs of people, they have a little dog that looks like a Chihuahua with very long legs named Mini and a cat named Satcha and a parrot named Carolina (they keep warning me that she bites) and three other birds with incomprehensible names. Thus far, my Spanish has proved to be rather patchy – I told one of the women living here that I liked her garden and she took it to mean that I was some sort of master gardener and I think that I may have accidentally agreed to skip my group trip to the beach this Saturday in order to transform her trash heap into a florid paradise. Luckily, no one in the family seems to care that my Spanish is hopeless, they just smile at me and offer me more food - as soon as I got here, they pressed a big bowl of arroz con leche (like rice pudding) into my hands and an hour and a half later, they served me a large dinner of fried rice with chicken and vegetables and fried yucca – delicious! Immediately after dinner, they told me that I must be exhausted and scolded each other for keeping me up so long and ushered me into my room and closed the door. However, it was only 7:30 and I wasn’t not sleepy at all and I’d already finished my only book (aaahhhhh!!!!), so I didn’t quite know what to do with myself, so I decided to write my first blog post! There isn’t any internet in the house, so I won’t be able to email anybody or post this until tomorrow. I hope that you aren’t panicking about me, Mom! Love you all!