After the disaster that I’ve experienced trying to actually get days to work, it didn’t surprise me to find out that I actually have an entire week off because the teachers are busy. Here in Costa Rica, taking the census is the job of the school teachers and, as a result, students get a week off of class. I was disappointed, to say the least, but I talked with the Projects Abroad office and nagged them until they promised they’d find something useful for me to do. At the end of my teaching placement, I’m planning to go to Barra Honda National Park to do conservation work with Projects Abroad. Since none of the schools are open, those of us who aren’t going on vacation have been offered the opportunity to do a week of conservation work there. So Monday morning, I was picked up to go to Barra Honda. Theoretically, I’m returning from my week of saving the world on Friday evening. This post isn’t actually live, I wrote it before I left because I currently have no internet gasp. Contrary to popular belief you’ll probably find that I’m still alive at the end of this time, though I might be experiencing some withdrawl symptoms. Lots of stories of the jungle when I return!

Pictures from Playa del Coco, Poás, and Guayabo HERE. (The new pictures start at number 34, just after the ziplining.)

It seems that I don’t like to start trips anymore unless they’re a semi-spontaneous, half-planned, mad dash for the bus station. This weekend was no different. Poppy and I left the house a grand total of 35 minutes after I arrived home from work. My bad memory of the bus schedule made sure we arrived to the terminal sweaty and out of breath a full hour before the next bus was scheduled to leave. Since we hadn’t decided what the weekend would look like, we took our time to lay out an activity plan for the following 48 hours which we proceeded to destroy for two days as we changed our minds and readjusted.

The 4 ½ hour ride to San José landed us in downtown just after midnight. NOT the time to be wandering around San José. Poppy and I are both pretty bold independent travelers and we were both instantly nervous and extremely uncomfortable in the city. Our ever-faster steps carried us the five blocks to the “hotel” where we’d planned to stay. I put “hotel” in quotes because, whatever schema you might have of a hotel room, this is a million times worse. Unlike the nice hostels for a couple dollars a night, this was…interesting to say the least. Our tiny room had windows that opened directly into the lobby of the hotel and which couldn’t be latched so anyone could reach into our room any time they wanted. All the noise of slamming doors and loud conversations was right in our room. It was across the street from some sort of kareoke bar that was open ‘till all hours of the night and a block away from the hospital (I’m assuming that’s where all those sirens were headed). The “hotel” overlooked the main San José bus terminal and every time a bus would pull in, the whole room would shake and the windows would rattle. The cockroaches looked pretty friendly though. The “bathroom” consisted of 4 stalls opening in towards a single sink. The labels read “Women’s Toilet,” “Men’s Toilet,” “Women’s shower,” “Men’s Shower.” Poppy and I reached a mutual agreement that we wouldn’t shower on our trip because we felt like we’d come out of the shower dirtier than we went in. I slept with my purse tied to my arm, cuddled like a teddy bear. On top of all of that, on our second night, we were woken up at 3:00 am by a man shouting  “¡Fuego! ¡Fuego!” (“Fire! Fire!”).  I woke Poppy up so we could run out if needed, but nothing happened and we tiredly went back to sleep.

After such a charming introduction to the city, it was no wonder that our first order of business was leaving. For such an ugly city (my apologies to anybody who likes it), it’s located in a beautiful area of the country. Green mountains and cloud forests cut up sharply around the outskirts of the city. After a wonderful Costa Rican breakfast of gallo pinto, we caught a couple of buses headed to Volcán Poás (Poas Volcano). The short walk from the visitor center to the crater lookout smelled increasingly of sulfur and other unpleasant gases. But when we reached the top, we had a great view down into the crater. The billowing steam and gas pouring out of the top partially obscured our view of a turquoise-green acidic lake nested in the center of the crater. To the right, had there not been so many clouds, we could have seen the Carribbean coast. And to the left, the encroaching mists separated layers of mountains of the cloud forests. The strata inside the crater ran from red to brown to grey to black and back again. When the clouds started getting too thick, we took a second trail to the other lake on the volcano and looked out until it too was made invisible by the descending clouds. As we started back, the heavens opened and we were drenched by gallons of water, the thick tree cover only providing moderate shelter. When the rain stopped half an hour later, Poppy suggested that we go back up to the crater overlook. What an awesome idea. Some of the clouds had cleared and the wind changed drastically. We had a way better view into the crater and got to see parts of it that had before been clouded with gases.

After a couple more hours cutting through the mountain roads on our bus, we were back our favorite city (not). We were surprised to find everything closed at 5:30 pm on a Saturday, even in downtown in the capital. We resorted to American fast food before heading back to the “hotel.” Party animals that we are, we were asleep by 9.

Sunday was a slightly more complicated trek to see the most important archeological monument in Costa Rica. A couple taxis and a bus ride later, we’d arrived at the Monumento Nacional Arqueológico Guayabo (Guayabo National Archeological Monument). While all I saw was a bunch of piles of rocks, Poppy was super excited about the ruins. The Guayabo people were apparently known for their civil engineering of aqueducts and roads. Beyond that, the park ranger said to check out their Facebook page (That’s one I haven’t heard before).  We did get to enjoy the walk through the dense cloud forest spotting a couple bright flowers and a lot of ginormous leaves and ferns.

Our ride back cut us super close to missing our bus back from San José to Liberia. We had a great cab driver who got us about 25 blocks in just over 5 minutes arriving at 4:02 for a bus that was supposed to leave at 4:00. I bypassed the ticket office and ran straight at the front of the [now moving] bus determined to get OUT of San José. Fortunately, the driver was gracious enough to stop and even to let us on the bus. Feeling I had cheated death in some small way, I grinned the whole way back to Liberia. I still can’t believe we actually caught the bus.

Most importantly: New Pictures!

My apologies for the sudden radio silence. Wednesday night, I got a call from the school saying “Don’t come in on Thursday or Friday” which for me translated to “Surprise 4-day weekend!!” This started a couple mad hours of planning, packing, coordinating with friends, and literally having to run to the bus station. But once the initial chaos was over, it was a beautiful weekend. I hopped on a bus on Thursday morning, headed for Monteverde, Costa Rica: Map.

My first transfer found me contentedly munching away on a fresh mango from a local farmers’ market while waiting in Cañas and I managed to wedge myself into my bus seat, even full of fresh fruit. The woman who sat next to me on the following bus decided that I wanted her to talk to me for 40 consecutive minutes and, after ranting about education, conservation, and natural medicines, started pulling plants out of her bag and shoving them in my face saying “Smell! Smell!” while jabbing me in the arm to demonstrate different kinds of bug bites. Meanwhile, I tried to continue read my book, but kept getting pinched by the giant woman who was slowly swallowing up my entire [very tiny] seat the more demonstrative her actions became. I happily escaped from her clutches at the next terminal where I saw a fellow backpacker. Thinking I’d seen her somewhere before, I awkwardly asked her if we’d met, but she had no recollection of me and neither of us could figure out why we’d have crossed paths before. Her name was Tanya, she was from Germany and she’s on Month 2 of a 6-month backpacking trip through Cuba and Central America, ending in San Francisco. It took us the remainder of the day to figure out that we’d met last weekend in another hostel where one of the volunteers I was traveling with [hides face in shame] peed on her (long story). Fortunately, she didn’t hold that against me and we ended up spending the rest of our weekend together. Our next bus that took us to Monteverde traverses one of the 10 worst roads in the country. It took us about 2 ½ hours to cover the 20 miles of rutted mountain roads before finally arriving to the little twin towns of Santa Elena and Monteverde. Upon stepping off the bus, we were immediately accosted by people trying to drag us off to one hostel or another. We stood back silently and let them try to outdo each other until we had a room for $6/night with hot water and free breakfast. Not bad for not saying anything. When we got to our [very nice] hostel, we met an Englishman named Joe who was also staying there. The three of us stuck together until Saturday morning when he left. After “cooking” a simple dinner of nachos, Joe, Tanya, Earnest (another traveler), and myself sat around talking, sharing travel plans, swapping stories, and enjoying the cool night mountain air.

Friday morning, Joe, Tanya, and I woke up at 5:30 and headed out to the Santa Elena Cloud Forest Reserve. Being in the rainforest was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. The early morning sun barely filtered through the dense canopy cover and leaves bigger than my torso covered the trails. The whole place reverberated with a continuous buzz from all the insects, big and small, that crossed our paths. It didn’t smell “earthy” like I expected, but rather fresh, like the oxygen factory was on output overdrive. The air was damp, but cool- a welcome relief from the heat of Liberia. Strange birdcalls echoed through the trees, one in particular that sounded like a poorly-oiled machine, but was eerily beautiful. Vines dangled from every branch and everywhere were fallen trees, crushed by the weight of the moss they had once supported. The cloud forests lived up to their name and had a cloudy misty fog in all of the valleys. The treetop islands reminded me of the floating islands in Avatar, minus the eagle-dragons and the blue people. We spent six hours hiking the deserted national park, looking for monkeys and sloths (with no luck), spotting strange and colorful birds, centipedes, and frogs, and nearly stepping on a snake and a pretty nasty looking tarantula.

After six mammal-less hours of hiking, we headed back to the hostel for a nice afternoon nap in the grey drizzle that had set in. After sitting around outside for a bit and chatting, we FINALLY spotted our sloth…climbing on a power line of all places. We ooh’ed and ahh’ed and took lots of pictures. A good thing about the sloth’s lack of speed is lots and lots of time to take pictures. One of the volunteers, Poppy, finally made it to Monteverde that night and  Joe, Tanya, Poppy, and I all went out for dinner together.

Saturday morning was, by far, the high point of the trip. The main attraction in Monteverde, besides just seeing the rainforests, is the canopy tour. Five separate companies run canopy tours of various excitement levels and qualities. Tanya, Poppy, and I picked “Extremo,” the most intense of all of them.  After some delicious pineapple and banana pancakes prepared by the hostel owner, we were picked up and driven way out into the mountains and into the cloud forest. After getting strapped into a million harness straps, helmets, and gloves and listening to a quick safety briefing, we were out on the lines. I’d never been ziplining before and it was a tremendous experience. The 3-hour course was made up of 12 cables, a rappel, and a Tarzan swing. The cables stretched over tremendous valleys- the longest were 1968 ft, 2460 ft, and 3280 ft- and had an average height between 225-540 ft off the ground. All of the shorter cables, we did solo, and two of the 5 longest we did tandem. Flying across these valleys, I could see cows, little houses, fields, and lots and lots of trees out below. The crosswinds were strong and sometimes it was hard to keep going straight. I would have loved to spin around, but I was a good girl and followed the safety rules about holding on. The rides were really beautiful and you could see over the treetops or down into the trees in someplaces.

One of my two favorite things was the Tarzan swing. Looking down a hundred feet from the platform, attached only to a rope like a giant pendulum that swings you out over the valley. Falling a hundred feet is quite fun, especially when it’s instigated by a shove off the edge. Even those of us who wanted to jump were pushed (probably so we’d swing instead of just drop) off the edge of the platform. There’s a brief moment where you’re just in freefall before the rope catches your harness and swings you back on course another hundred feet in the air, looking out over the cloud forest valley. There’s something wonderful about the feeling of just dropping, a bit of fear, but mostly just adrenaline, waiting for the jerk, knowing that everything is going to be okay. Somewhere on my bucket list: bungee jumping.

My favorite part of the whole experience was the Superman cable. This was the longest and highest cable of all of them: half a mile long, 540 feet off the ground. Instead of being strapped in sitting, the harnesses were reversed so I was strapped in at my shoulders and waist and ankles, suspended stomach-down over nothing. On the other lines, we had the option to brake if we were uncomfortable, but not with the Superman. Once I left the platform, there was nothing between the ground and me flying overhead. The noise of the wind and the whistling cable left my ears ringing from the speed. Below, I saw more cows and a little farm and my tiny little shadow, arms out like a wannabe airplane. Speeding headfirst, facedown, suspended over a valley with no way of braking whatsoever ranks reaaally high on my list of exhilarating experiences.

The rest of the afternoon turned grey and we napped before hanging out with some new friends we met while ziplining for the remainder of the evening, swapping stories and lying around in hammocks. I took off the next morning to catch the only bus going north for the entire day and made it back in time for lunch with Yelba. This weekend gets all five stars from me.

Last weekend, I tagged along with five other volunteers to go to Playa Conchal and Tamarindo on the Northeastern coast.  We made our way by bus and taxi to Playa Brazilito and walked to the surprisingly-crowed Playa Conchal. For a beach that doesn’t even have a bathroom, I don’t understand how there were so many people there. We still managed to enjoy the sun, water, and powerful currents and only left around sunset. With some artful manipulation of the bus system and the help of many friendly locals, we made it to Tamarindo for the night. We found beds in Pura Vida Hostel before heading out for the night, grabbing dinner on the way to Club Aqua. I headed back early (wasn’t my “scene”) and caught some sleep before waking up a little after six and packing up to leave. One of the other girls was also up and we decided to split up from the rest of the group (who didn’t leave until about 10:30) and head off for the day. We enjoyed breakfast beachside before realizing that the clouds were far too menacing to make for an enjoyable day in the sand. While waiting for the bus, we started hiking our way back but only made it a mile or two before taxi/busing the two hours back to Liberia.

Because of my crazy/non-existent work schedule, I was lucky enough to have yesterday off because of the Costa Rican census that’s going on this month. I’d heard of a waterfall close by that’s listed by the guide book as the “If you see one waterfall in Costa Rica, it has to be this one” waterfall called Llanos de Cortes. I packed up my backpack with a suimsuit and other essentials and headed for the bus station. It was only supposed to be a half-hour bus ride to the stop for the falls and the bus driver promised me he’d tell me when to get off. But when we reached the town I knew came after the falls stop, he realized he’d forgotten about me and apologized before telling me how to catch a return bus. The second driver over-charged me, but at least let me off where I needed to go. The two-mile walk to the falls followed a pitted dusty dirt road carved through the middle of a forest. Every couple feet, I’d stop and just listen to the sounds around me: bugs buzzing, an assortment of birdcalls, lizards crackling through the undergrowth. After the short walk, I reached the trail part which was basically just a steep 50-meter decent. On the way down, I stopped to take pictures of monkeys and a variety of lizards big and small. I was really blown away by the number of lizard species in such a small area. There were red, blue, green, gray, black, striped, spotted, solid, giant, tiny, medium, waddlers, scamperers, hind-leg runners, and every mixed and matched variety just in a short walk down the hill. When I reached the bottom, the sight of the waterfall finally matched what I’d been listening too the whole way down. The sunlight caught the water and the rocks covered in thick green hanging moss and the slight mist made it seem like something that doesn’t really exist except in calendar photos. Here I was, in a forest in Costa Rica with this gorgeous waterfall all to myself, lizards darting around, monkeys overhead. Absolutely stunning.

If you want to see pictures of any/all of the above, this link includes the pictures from my last trip to Sámara too:  Click HERE!!

Behind the waterfall was a cave that was totally accessible through the pool in front. I carefully navigated my way over the slippery moss (I only fell once!) and climbed behind the falls, following the whole width of the cavern. It was an impressive sight to say the least. I dried off on the beach and sat down to enjoy my lunch: an entire pineapple. I brought one of my handy knives and butchered and ate the whole thing. By the end, my mouth hurt terribly, but it was delicious and I got bragging rights for consuming an entire pineapple. (Also, the idea of spending only forty cents on a pineapple makes me very happy.) A little sticky and very full, I laid in the sun for an hour listening to the water and enjoying the warmth of the sand under my towel.

When I changed back into my clothes for the trip home I learned that a plant of some sort had viciously attacked my shorts while I wasn’t using them. I found my skin suddenly embedded with a couple hundred millimeter-long spines, finer than hair, too short to grab, and with a sharp end perfect for wedging under my skin. With every movement I made, the tiny spines rubbed my shorts and tugged at my skin resulting in burning itchy skin, mottled with red spotting and zillions of tiny dark spines. Not my favorite moment of the day. That made the walk back reaaaaaally comfortable.

The bus home turned out not to be as easy to catch as it was to get dropped off and my walk towards home brought my roundtrip total up to about 8 miles walking. Not too bad for a daytrip. Hopefully I’ll have the chance to go back and enjoy the waterfalls again; it was definitely worth it.

Tuesday was my first day actually getting to play teacher. Clara (the teacher I work with) asked me to step up and lead a lesson. Unfortunately, the lesson was sex-ed with sixth graders. Because those are the words you reeeeeeallllly want to teach a bunch of giggly elementary kids. (Not!) I think I was far more uncomfortable than any of them. I pulled together as much non-awkward confidence as I could muster and went for it. Fortunately for me, this English unit corresponded with their health lessons in science so I didn’t have to introduce the whole topic. Disaster averted. Still not my favorite way to start teaching English.

Thursday and Friday, the albino gorilla made a comeback. We had a school assembly for some sort of patriotic day and another for Farmer’s Day. They started and finished with about a million songs and pledges and flags and hands-on-hearts. And then there’s me. Hands clasped, not singing, and not pledging allegiance to another country’s flag. The kids, of course, thought I was weird. I know there’re plenty of internationals in the US who don’t sing the Star-Spangled Banner or say the pledge, but those instances are infrequent enough that it’s not something I think about. And it’s certainly not a position in which I’ve ever found myself. But now at least I can understand a bit more of what they go through any time we honor our own flag and country.

I’m beginning to be thoroughly convinced that these kids are never actually in class and am stunned that they manage to learn anything. Today was “political propaganda day.” No, really- that’s what it’s called. The students who are running for “student body president” of the elementary school are all affiliated with national student parties. The idea is to teach the kids about civic duty, the voting process, etc. But today was basically just an insane chaotic party under the guise of campaign propaganda. I was completely confused when our forty-minute class ended twenty minutes early because the humongous speaker stacks outside of our classroom starting blaring Spanish pop music. Outside, the kids were running around, having a dance party, painting their faces, eating candy, and sticking flag pins into anything stick-able. I got over the chaos enough to go to another courtyard where another political party was “campaigning.” This one consisted of a couple scantily-clad twenty-somethings dancing around in neon green and pink to the beat of their accompanying drumline. Piled on top of the two conflicting beats were the screams of the sugar-saturated children running around like always. Add to this random teenage boys in hairy old men masks and serial-killer jumpsuits chasing the smaller children around with belts in hand pretending [or not] to hit them. As if there weren’t enough chaos already, the music teacher opened up the drum closet so the kids could run around beating drums in a million different rhythms [or lack thereof].

The best part, I ended up finally getting a meeting with the principal…during all of this noise. I missed 30% of everything she said because of the drums 10 feet outside the open door. I’ve decided to take some initiative and start some smaller groups with students who need remedial English help. My teacher, Clara, is willing to help me find space, time, and students, but I had to meet with the director today to pitch the idea and get approval. She’s behind it and I’ll be able to start next week (There’s a couple more conflicting festivals and assemblies and teacher in-services.) I finally have some responsibility and independence to try teaching on my own with my own preparation and I’m really excited about the opportunity.

I’m at a point where I’m really frustrated with the seeming lack of order and class time.  I still don’t really get the class schedules or the “system” of how Costa Rican schools work. Comparing notes with other volunteers, it seems that my confusion is shared by volunteers working at schools all around the area. The difference is that I care. It bothers me that I have sooo much time off each day (or random days each week) when I came here to work. I’m working with Projects Abroad and Clara to see how I can be working more. It’s not the people who are holding me back, but simply the way “things are done.” Hopefully I can get plugged in before it’s too late. And while there’re some things I can be laid back about, not working isn’t one of them. But I’m not just going to sit here and watch the summer pass me by.

I’ve spent plenty of words explaining lots of things that are happening and lots talking about how Costa Rica is as a country, etc. But I thought I’d switch up the narrative a little and talk a bit about what’s going through my head during this experience thus far and some of the challenges I’m facing.

Firstly, and more than any of the other things I’m feeling right now, I’m really happy to be here. I’m so blessed to have the opportunity to be here and definitely wouldn’t rather be doing anything else.

There’s also a whole mix of other things going on too though. I do miss home (NM), especially since I haven’t been home since December. I would love to see Dad and Mom and Meredith but that’ll have to wait until the end of July. I also really miss my Rice/Agape/Hanszen friends. I know they’re all off having their own adventures and jobs and am looking forward to continuing to hear about those as the summer goes on. My attitude towards being away from the people I care about has been very different than when I was in South America. That time, it was 8 months away from everyone- an entire semester and summer. I knew I couldn’t maintain relationships with everyone for that time. But now, with only three months away, I’m making a much more concerted effort to keep in touch. I’m not so immersed in the I-need-to-be-here-and-not-tied-to-the-US attitude as I was before. I think that’s okay. It’s a different situation, a different time.

I’m not sure yet how I feel about my service. I think the kids are terrific, but I’m wondering what good I’ll be able to do long term. My goal isn’t simply confined to “teach English for two months.” I want them to see more purpose in learning English and instill a greater love for learning. All of my kids come from a really impoverished area and a lot of times, there’s a lack of parental involvement or support when it comes to helping them learn. Even if I can get them pumped up while I’m here, I really don’t know what kind of lasting impact I can have. I spend a lot of time being frustrated because it seems like the kids never have any time to spend in class- they’re either at recess, an assembly, on vacation, or just generally running around screaming.

This may come as a shock, but I’m actually incredibly quiet here (I know, I know, laugh it up). Talkative Megan got left behind in the States along with Obsessive Planner Megan, Unnecessarily Inflexible Megan, High Cleanliness Standards Megan, and Painfully Punctual Megan.  I just operate differently here. It’s strange. There’s really no point in making my own detailed plans and timetables because they will inevitably be changed by some outside force. Just because I’m in a hurry doesn’t mean anyone else is. And if I insisted on American standards for sanitation, I’d never find anything to eat. I’ve found that I can be much more laidback and “go-with-the-flow” here. Granted, if I couldn’t, I wouldn’t enjoy anything about this experience.

As far as clicking with the other volunteers, I haven’t yet.  The high turnover rate makes the relationship dynamic interesting here. Most people are just getting here or on their way out and you’ll only know each person for probably a couple weeks max. The temporary state of everything combined with how different everybody is makes for interesting [shallow] group dynamics. Lack of connections with people here certainly makes me miss my friends back home all the more.

On the physical side of things, the heat is still trying to smother me, but I’m doing better with dealing with it, or at least getting used to it. I seem to be a magnet for bugs, even with bug spray on and am covered in a bajillion bites. Still not as bad as whatever I got in South America, so I’m great.

All that said, I’m still so thrilled to be here.  I’m looking forward to more time teaching and more weekend adventures. Growing in emotional stability and independence is/has been one of my goals for this trip and I think there will be plenty of room to develop in those areas.

That picture up there ^^^^, the one of the beach at the top of the blog? That’s not stock footage, it’s a picture I took last weekend in Sámara.  It makes me happy, so I thought I’d share 🙂

Rice, beans, beans and rice, rice and beans. Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.

Blog Post: completed! Oh wait…

I’d be lying if I listed anything besides rice and beans as the staple diet of Costa Rica. It gets manifested in every possible form. Sometimes the beans are ground up instead of whole. For breakfast, the rice and beans get stir-fried together (gallo pinto). Sometimes, you find them in soups, other times as “side” dishes to an entree. But the main point is: rice and beans.

After that comes an abundance of fresh fruit. I LOVE the fruit. A pineapple costs as much as three eggs (pineapples are cheap and eggs are expensive). It’s awesome- my host mom always has fresh juice for us that she makes each day. Every restaurant and roadside stand has a full menu of fresh fruit and juices. My host mom makes fruit juices from mango, papaya, manga (a bigger version of the mango), pineapple, passion fruit, banana, orange, lemon, guanabana (no, there’s not English for that), cas (still no English), carrot (which goes with more fruits than I’d have guessed), apple, and other random fruits I can’t name or translate. And then mixed and matched juice combos of all of the above. So delicious. There’s also plenty of fresh veggies including avocado on eeeeeverything. But, luckily, not in my juice.

A popular breakfast is gallo pinto, is a stir-fried combination of rice and beans served with a strange cheese or with sour cream (natilla). This can also be accompanied by an egg or a corn tortilla.  After a bad tortilla experience in Argentina, I wasn’t too hopeful for Costa Rican tortillas but they’re actually way better than what I’m used to in New Mexico: a little thicker, more flavorful, and a little softer. An easy dinner or lunch is a casado which includes- you guessed it- rice and beans along with some meat and a salad. A popular dish served at basically any get together is arroz con pollo (rice with chicken) which is affectionately called arroz con siempre (rice with always) because of it’s frequent appearance.

While meats and dairy are around, beans are the main source of protein with most meals. Milk, like in Argentina, comes in a box and has an absurd shelf life which still kind of weirds me out. There’s also plenty of sandwiches available. An interesting one I tried included bacon, lettuce, tomato, ham, cheese, onion, zucchini, and some sort of pink dressing. Strange but tasty. The white cheese served with dishes like gallo pinto is soft and extra salty and definitely doesn’t mesh with my mental concept of “cheese.” There’s also decent availability of fish dishes like ceviche and a variety of soups.

Besides all the fresh fruit, my new favorite food is definitely fried plantains. While the greener ones can be fried up and salted for a drier salty side dish, the mature plantains are a delicious sweet treat to accompany any lunch or dinner. My host mom also makes another delicious dessert of mangos with honey. Think of marinating sweet tiny mangos in something like apple butter and then eating the sweet saturated fruit plus mango infused sauce.

Costa Rican coffee comes with a high recommendation and I’ve found that I’ve really enjoyed all the coffee I’ve tried while here. We don’t drink coffee here in my family, so I’ve ended up having it at a variety of different venues, but all tasty. I’ve found it to be milder and smoother than the coffee I’m accustomed to and really like it.  A popular drink I haven’t gotten to try yet is agua dulce (sweet water) which is made with sugar cane juice. I’m sure I’ll get around to it eventually, but I’ll keep enjoying my fruit juices until then.

The foods I most miss are breads and spicy foods. While breads are readily available at bakeries, rice is the staple starch, sometimes supplemented with tortillas and potatoes.  Spicy foods, on the other hand, are pretty much a no-go. Apparently, some exist on the Caribbean coast, but I haven’t made it that far yet. In the meantime, I’ll content myself with lots more sweet pineapple and passionfruit.

I’ve now been working at Escuela General Tomás Guardia Gutiérrez in Bagaces, Guanacaste, Costa Rica (whew!) for just over a week. I’ve learned so much just by watching, but there are still so many things I’m constantly learning. I’ve finally cycled through all of the classes I’ll be working with bringing my total up to 302 students in 10 classes: 3 first grade classes, 4 fifth grade, and 3 sixth grade. I’ve decided that learning all their names is a completely unachievable task. The most important are those of the trouble-makers and class clowns. After that, the kids who really like me and will find any excuse to come talk to me. After that long list, I’ll probably end up with a rotation of José’s and María’s for everyone else which, statistically, gives me pretty good odds of getting a lot of kids’ attention simultaneously.

Friday, instead of having classes, the majority of the morning was spent on a school-wide speech competition. The students and all the teachers assembled in the main courtyard area to watch 11 students give speeches in hopes of representing the school in the provincial speech competition. Each of them spoke on something related to why Guanacaste (the province) is great, what makes it special, etc. It was actually a very informative morning for me. I got to sit up with the judges and two other teachers and tally scores and look official. What I realized with the entire student body and staff in one place was rather profound, if I do say so myself: I’m really white. Yep- I’m admitting it- I’m just incredibly Caucasian. I hadn’t noticed how weird I looked to everyone until I was in front of everybody and getting a lot of strange looks. Surrounded by a bunch of dark-skinned, dark-haired, mostly-tiny Ticos, I stood out like an albino gorilla in a schoolyard.

Standing out and generally being weird seems like it’ll be a common theme of my teaching experience. The kids have a fascination with this stranger in their classroom and take great delight in making jokes about me. Unfortunately, my “I’ll just play along” attitude only works so well. It’s one thing to pretend to understand an explanation about something and mimick someone’s facial expressions. It’s another to accidentally laugh along because you don’t understand when they’re making fun of you.

The kids have decided that I don’t actually speak Spanish OR English. They like trying to give me words or phrases in English, usually that they’ve heard in songs and then asking me to translate. But when you take something you hear in a song in a language you don’t understand and then take it out of context and repeat it in a heavy accent, it becomes completely incomprehensible. And since I don’t understand them when they speak “English,” they’ve decided that I obviously must not actually speak English at all. Not that they think much of my Spanish either. I can communicate myself very easily, but can’t understand 20 of them quickly shouting words I’ve never heard at me simultaneously in the midst of a school yard full of screaming, yelling children. And so, apparently I don’t speak Spanish either. But they haven’t given up on me yet. I wonder how long their patience will last.

One of our discussions about music evolved into a conversation about dance. I absolutely LOVE dancing and told them about some of the styles I know. While Salsa and Meringue had some redeeming value in their eyes, what they really wanted to know is if I could dance Reggaeton. (Reggaeton is a super sexy non-partner Latin dance that I have absolutely no inclination to ever learn.) Here are these sixth grade girls, shaking things they don’t have and “dropping” in the middle of a classroom, showing off their moves to music from a cell phone speaker. The teacher I work with was laughing so hard she was crying and they were trying to drag me into it to try. I was trying desperately to convince them that I was completely incapable of dancing like that and that, even if I could, I had no desire to…ever. But here are these little girls with big Latin attitudes having a dance party in a classroom in the middle of the day with a cell phone DJ. While it was really funny in a lot of ways, it was also sad that these young girls have already become so engrossed with such a sexualized cultural element.

In my last class today, the class smart-alec asked me if I liked Coke and I responded using the word coca which is a perfectly acceptable name for the drink. Unfortunately, it’s also the word for the plant that’s used to produce cocaine and within seconds, he’d managed to announce to the entire class that their new teacher likes cocaine. More laughing at Megan ensued. I guess that’s something I’m just going to live with. They’ll continue having their jokes about me, I’ll keep trying to keep up and maybe even teach them some English along the way. Or so I hope.

After being in Liberia for less than five whole days (and only working three), this weekend I set off on my first trip in Costa Rica. I spent the weekend in Playa Sámara (<– map), a beach on the west coast of Costa Rica.

After work on Friday, I caught a couple buses from Liberia to Nicoya and then Nicoya to Sámara. Unlike the air-conditioned, bathroom-equipped buses I was used to in Argentina, Central America’s buses aren’t nearly so luxurious. Only the special, over-priced tourist buses have air-conditioning and bathrooms on buses are unheard of. The times scheduled for leaving are more of a suggestion than a reflection of reality and it would go against a drivers’ instinct not to stop every couple hundred meters to let someone off or pick up a Tico on the side of the road. The bus I took to Sámara was no more than a retrofitted school bus, with a rope buzzer strung along the top and space for a hydraulic bus door chopped out of the back end. Driving up and down the mountains, I was definitely questioning whether or not the bus would make it. Picking up tremendous speed going down hill and taking blind corners at what-had-to-be unsafe speeds made me question whether the brakes even worked at all. With a little help from some kind Ticos, I got off the bus in Sámara only 3 ½ hours after leaving home (a surprisingly short trip).

Maybe it makes me crazy, but busing is one of my favorite parts about traveling. It’s a constant puzzle. “Where do I get on? When do I get off? Will the driver stop or do I have to ask? Am I going to end up at a terminal or just on the side of the road? What if I got on the wrong bus? Where does the next bus leave from? Do I buy a ticket or just pay the driver? Is the stop anywhere close to civilization or do I have a hike in store? What do I do once I get there? Where is “there”? What if I screw it up?” It could be the combination of anxiety and adrenaline that keeps me coming back. That or the incredibly low travel costs. I also find the reflection time enjoyable. I love not being responsible for anything for an hour or two and just enjoying the view. Buses are great for people-watching too. It’s usually mostly locals and it’s fun to get a glimpse into people’s lives simply by watching: Grandmothers, moms and children, boyfriends and girlfriends, even perfect strangers.

Sámara is nothing if not small and touristy and the main street where I ended up walked directly into the beach. I spotted a travel agency and got a recommendation for a cheap hostel only two blocks from the beach. (To be fair, nothing was further than four.) “Checking in” consisted of telling the old man in the rocking chair that I’d like a bed for two nights, him handing me a key and me giving him $20. I ended up with a three-bed private room with a bathroom and a working fan. A pretty good deal for the location-price combination. No hot water, of course, but I’m coming to expect that here. You know how sometimes you can’t figure out new shower faucets right away? “Do I turn and pull? Or just turn? Does this pulley-thing plug the drain or start the shower?” This wasn’t one of those. Turn the knob. Cold water comes out of the pipe at the top. Yay simplicity.

I arrived after the sun had already set, so I spent a short night wandering the little town and the beach before heading to bed early. The sun woke me up at 5:30 (just like normal) and I had time to hit a local bakery for breakfast before my morning started. I had arranged for a tour of the area on horseback and my guide met me across the street from my hostel at 8. I was lucky enough to have the tour to myself and I got to enjoy a three-hour ride on beaches and over small mountains with my guide. We saw birds, monkeys, iguanas, wild horses, and plenty of beach overlooks. Pictures show more than I can describe so check them out here!

After a wonderful, dehydrating ride, I was ready to hit the beach. I earned myself a nice sunburn enjoying the waves and the warmth for the afternoon.  The sunsets in Sámara are supposed to be pretty noteworthy so I set out early to try to find a good spot to watch. While I did enjoy a nice sunset, I also ended up a couple miles away in my quest for a good watching spot. I walked so far that I ended up in a neighboring area outside of Sámara. The sand flies were so bad that I had to find a local hostel where I could call a cab to go back to central Sámara. I ate dinner at this restaurant where no one else was eating. I noticed they were playing Spanish Christian music on the speakers, but mostly songs I didn’t know. Then Hillsong came on, in Spanish! Songs I knew in English, sung in Spanish, by a band I listen to. Not only was the food good, but I just sat there laughing while I was eating. Of all the places/songs to find something familiar. After that, I started again from the hostel and spent a while just enjoying the sand and the sound of the waves before calling it a night.

They say that good things come to those who wait. And if “good things” include rickety school buses, they’re right. Forty minutes after it’s scheduled departure time, the bus that was going to take me back to Liberia showed up at Sámara‘s only bus stop.  A couple hours later and I was back home safe and sound with Yelba in Liberia. In a little more pain than when I left (sunburn + horseback riding), but having enjoyed an incredibly pleasant weekend.