Pura Vida Baby

4/16/09 Friday Morning
BLANCO
I’m falling behind. Gotta get around to writing in this more often. Nothing much to say, though. Lots of class. We’ve been spending lots of time in the classroom, which is surprisingly tiring. We were about half asleep most of the way through Frank and Fede’s talks. At 330 we walk to Spanish. It’s fun cos I’m in the advanced group. We just read something to stimulate conversation and then we just keep talking. It’s nice that it’s right next to the fabrica de quesos.
Yesterday was more of the same. The exact same. Except we had tostadas for dinner!
Oh. And I’ve started running. People have been running in the morning, which is hard for me cos I go to bed late. But on Wednesday I woke up at 6 and ran with Ryan, Emily and some others down the hill, a little over, back and up the hill. BITCH! Bigasshill. About a milelong, if you remember. I was proud that I made it all the way up (and down, as a matter of fact) without stopping. And I kept up with Ryan. Good stuff. And yesterday I ran back from Spanish with Ryan and Randall. Same deal, but I felt the previous day’s workout. Whoo. It is interesting to note that Chris, who bikes to and from class, raced Calvin who’s the runner (the fast one, anyway) in the group. Chris got a good headstart on the flat part from the Instituto to the gas station. And the bottom of our hill. But there was no way he could keep his lead going up that bigasshill. He narrowly lost out. But it was a good race. I’m going to start running in my boots I think. My sambsas are too lightweight for the rocky roads here.
Last night was a break in routine. We went salsa dancing. I barely finished some of my hw (fuck identifying plants. Fuck hw) and left the toher stuff to do today. A sizable group of us went to MoonShiva for salsa night. Drinks were cheap, which was good. I spent a good portion of the night hanging out at the bar. Another room had a nice television which was playing Pulp Fiction. Sweet.
Us guys were reluctant to try out our moves on the dance floor, but it eventually happened. I spazzed around and immediately regretted it, or rather regretted trying to improve salsa. Oyvey. Later on Morgan actually taught me how to dance properly. Which is actually kinda fun. Maybe I’ll keep it up. Probalby not though. She taught me how to do some basic leading like a spin or two. So I tried those out for the remainder of the night.
Highlights: Lots of smoke. Tiberones hambriosos. Bartender from Oakland. Darts. Walking home. Getting picked up half way up the mountain.
Today I finished my paper and now we’re at the fabrica de quesos! Vaminos!

4/19(20!)/09! Sun (Mon morn)

Happy Bicycle Day and then 420. Chees factory was cool. Got to eat lots of cheese. The byproduct (whey) is sent down the road to be processed by pigs. They can apparently handle the lactose very well. They eat the whey and some corn, and their shit gets filtered for the remaining corn (still pretty intact( and fed to the cows. Whooboy. Gross. And it really smelled.
We got a ride into town afterwards and I bought 2 goddamn machetes. Hellz yea. Also I met this guy that Lorren met at MoonShiva the night before. Turns out he rode a motorcycle from Oregon to CR. Sick. He was kinda lovestruck for Lorren.
Took a nap, almost slept through the night. Liz woke me up right before everybody left. Went to a festival! I heard music and paid 2000 colones to get into some place and it turned out to be completely empty except for a handful of some lonely, depressed, or otherwise weirded out tweenies. Got out of there quickly.
Carnival was fun. There were a few rides, like the spinsofastmakeyousickride and trampolines. There was a bull arena too, but there were only dancing horses that night. We soon left and went to Chanchos. Fun. Then La Taberna. Dancing! Mob dancing! Cool. I got sick of waiting for a group to leave, so I decided to walk back by myself without a flashlight. I walked about a mile and right before I had to start going up the hill, a cab stopped and beckoned me to get in. Alyssa, Lorren, Erick and his wife were already inside. GOOD SAVE.
Next day I learned how to climb a tree. Big trees. With the use of ropes and ascenders. Gotta shoot a lead weight with a fishing line attached to it over a high branch, tie a bigger string to the line and pull it back over the branch. The tie the big rope to the string and pull the rope over for the 3rd time over the branch. Climed to the top and then belayed down using a fig. 8. Sweet.
THEN! ZIPLINING! WOW FUCKIN WOW! COOLEST. SHIT. EVER. The company (Extremo Ziplining) picked us up from the Estación and yea. It was a tour of sorts, meaning there were several ziplines and we followed a path. They were intense! Some of them were half a mile long., hundreds of feet off the ground and you went so goddamned fast and you had to break with your hands (which were gardeners gloves with a pad on them) and the wind was blwing and it was just CRAZY. They even had a tarzan swing. Fun. The last zipline was so goddamn crazy. You couldn’t even see people when they got to the end of the line b/c it was so far away. They told us not to brake at all because you need all the momentum you can get to make it to the other side. Otherwise you go hand over hand waaaaay above the ground. It was windy as hell though so I was twisting in the wind and in order to right myself I had to grab the line a little bit, which was scary because it caused me to brake a bit. I was really scared that I wasn’t going to make it. My god it was a RUSH and the whole 3 hour tour (I know. Gilligan had a 3 hour tour as well) was only $30. I’m going to do that again for sure.
Got back and got ready to go out again. Back to the festival except this time there were actually toros en la plaza del toros! It was cool, but the riders sucked and so did the wranglers. Whatever, still cool. Tried moonshivas for a couple mins but it was lame. So I took a scooter/trike/taxi with Melanie and Erick up the hill.
Tried to watch WallE but I fell asleep, much to the amusement of everybody else in the room.

4/20/09 For reals

Rede is lecturing right now, so I’m sorry if this seems a bit scattered, but I gotta write about yesterday in order to catch up in my journaling. UMM
Yea, woke up really refreshed. We to the fig tre! So a couple meters down the road, there is a gulley with a waterfall. Really really pretty and the other side of this super steep. IT’s almost like rockclimbing, but not so much. When you get to the top of the other side, there’s a hollow strangler fig. It’s a really big tree that has a really long tube that you can climb into. It extends for amaybe 30m and juts out over the gulley. When you get to the top, you can look down at the waterfall and the gully 50-70m below. I KNOW! IT’s so far down! You can pop out of the top of the tube and climb on top of the tube, but since I was first up, I kinda chickened out. It’s kinda hairy and the consequence of failure is a 20 story drop at least. I’ll go again soon and go with someone who has been before and we’ll see how it goes.
HW, nature study walk, and then soccer vs CIEE kids at the indoor field. I was excited to go, but I guess I fucked up a lot and that kinda got me down. After Rober’s spectacular run as keeper, I subbed for him and allowed 3 goals in about as many mins. Lame. It didn’t’ help that none of our top players were on the field at the time, so I had very little protection. Next time I came in, I did pretty well as forward, but I got pressured into being goalie in a short amount of time. No goals scored at least. At the very end of the game I kinda forced Morgan out so I could get a last minute as forward, which I guess was really bad timing. She was kinda pissed that I took her out cos she was only in for a couple mins. I was just really disappointed in having to play goalie and sucking so bad at it when what I really wanted to do was actually get in the game like everybody else. Oh well.
Came back and did hw and stuff. Doesn’t look like the weed fairy is coming today. I hope it doesn’t have anything to do with the soccer game…

4/22/09

Currently watching bug movie. Kinda like the trippy part of Planet Earth rainforests. Where the bugs and plants do their crazy thangs. Right now two snails doing it in high def. Wow. It looks like two old ladies scissoring.
Hmm. Yesterday was pair projets. Sophia and I started off with a good project question. We wanted to see if altitude and production in extrafloral nectarines were correlated. But it was hella windy and apparently the wrong time of the season. So that didn’t’ workout so well. I did get to watch an ant drink from multiple nectarines, which is cooler than it sounds. Presentation went okay.
Hw and stuff
Today was lots of class. I accidentally read the daily nexus today and read an article implying that potheads are murderers because of the drug war in Mexico. I wrote a letter to the editor saying that that is bullshit cos we only buy Norcal or medical or organic. Whatever. Fuck that guy. Class, Murcielagos,. Gotta figure that out. Tonights

4/25/09

Oh shit. It’s been so long since I’ve written, I have no idea what happened three days ago. Project discussion? Woke up to ttalk in a group about what I thought I wanted to do my independent project on. I had 3 good ideas, but they just didn’t click for me. Bats and coatis and army ants are cool, but I just couldn’t get behind them all the way. We talked about them for a really long time though. Kinda didn’t do much for me. The rest of the day was free for me, so I went to Santa Elena with Chris and Ryan. I went there in my rain boots so I could test them out. FUCK they were too small and they hurt my feet the entire way down to town. We gought some booze and some mamotes! Bought them from a guy on the corner. They’re a little fruit that you crack open the skin and eat the fleshy part that surround the seed. They’re tasty and kinda fun to eat. We got one of the scooter taxis to take us up to the Estación. We were almost too heavy for it. It really is a treacherous journey up this biggassupavedhill.
Yesterday we went to the milk farm! We got to milk a cow and take some incriminating photos while drinking the milk. It tasted like warm ice cream.
Saw some cow shit.
Had the practical test. It was pretty easy but I also missed some easy questions. Whatever.
Got drunk. Yeaaa. Beer pariy came and we played beerpong and had a cake fight. Hid some pizza and went to town. Danced, played with dogs, walked home. The walk home is long and scary as fuck without a flashlight. Shit. But a taxi with everybody showed up and picked me up pretty close to the top.
Tried to watch Jurassic Park, but I was asleep on the couch before it even started. That’s where I woke up this morning.
So this morning was supposed to be preliminary observations for my experiment, but I hadn’t narrowed it down yet. So I just hung around. I hung out on the lawn with Emily and we sat and talked and ate mamotes. I got really sunburned in that short amount of time. Sun is pretty intense when you’re closer to the equator.
Climbed the fig tree again. This time I went topside. Sick. Scary. I could have gone higher, but it was still scary as fuck. I think I may have figured out what my research project will be. I read something about these 2 girls trackig capuchins and their movement through biological corridors. Yea. Sweet. Watched Air Force 1. FUCK YEA HARRISON FORD USA! USA!

4/26/09 Sun

Ehhh. I tried to do preliminary research today in San Luis. Calvin, Emily, Christina, Time and I hitch hiked (dabamos un dedo) in the back of a truck. We found finca la Bella and asked if we could look around for our animals. Hilbert wasn’t there, but some kind was. He had no shirt on and his boardshorts were hanging far off his ass. Thanks a lot America. Anyway, he showed Emily and I some trails where we could maybe see some monkeys or coatis. No dice. Fun hike though. We got back and chilled while waiting for Time. We gave up a few taxi rides to wait there, but Tim didn’t end up coming. So we walked back from San Luis. Fuck it was far. And uphill (big surprise). The whole goddamn county is like this. We got a milkshake on the way back though and I bought some cheese. Got back and did hw. Sweet. Wee fairy still hasn’t come.

4/29/09 Weds

Oh 3 days, where have you gone? It seems that I only write in here every 3 days, so I’m surprised this trip isn’t over by now. I guess I have some stuff that I can write about now. Monday was very class-y, not to be confused with classy. At night we wrote our proposals for our projects. I was a little proud of mine, although I wish I had left some time for corrections or editing. I specified that I want to do my experiment in San Luis, so I guess it’s set! I’m excited. I really want to live somewhere that’s rural. I want to milk a cow or pick fruit or plant crops, or just hang out outside the front door.
I guess I’ll say this now rather than later so this flows better, but today we actually filled out homestay questionnaires that are designed to put us in with a famly that we’d get along with. I specifically requested that my fam have a dog and a horse, so I hope that works out. They asked a lot of questions that were hard for me to answer. “Share something about your family.” Uhh.. “We get along?” I added that all family activities revolve around the dog.
My letter to the Nexus got published on Monday. Fuck that Sforza guy. He got it all so wrong and was so smug about it. I hope he was at least mildly pissed about my response.
Yesterday we had a long Excel workshop. I actually learned a couple neat tricks.
Class today. No internet. Learned a little bit of Here Comes the Sun by the Beatles. We had a little study powwow where we went over lots of document. It was a rare time where a bunch of friends and I had a really serous study sesh. It’s refreshing, to be honest. Maybe I should find a study group for bio classes back home. Gonna call EK.

5/3/09

Ouch. That’s a big gap. I’ll see what I can do. A lot of people went out Thurs night to go Salsa dancing at Moonshiva. I was too tired, so I watched Ghostbusters with Noodle and Germy. Ghostbusters 2 was better.
It was the last day of Spanish class. Que triste… We have some hw though. Gotta write a paper about something we dont’ know about MV, but isn’t common knowledge. We gotta interview our fam and 2 neighbors. I think I’ll ask about Nicaraguans.
Riday we went to a farm for AgroEco. It was a prime example of permaculture. They guy who owned it was really cool. He let us eat his cabbage and carrots straight out of the ground. Delish. There was even a dog who followed us. Cute. The farmer had a crazy strangler fig and a cool tree swing. During lunch he recited a poem for us. And then he sang a song he wrote. It was beautiful. I don’t use that word too often, but that’s what it was. This guy is so in love with his farm and fam and country and countryside. Kelsy atually cried.
Saturday was our test. 8am. Fun stuff. It was pretty easy since we all studied a lot. And then again, it was all open note open computer (internet still bronken, but you could look @ the slides) and open library. It was a fun test. Long though.
Peñas blancas orientation and homestay orientation. We found out who we’re homestaying with. I’ll be living in San Luis with and old lady, her bf, and her 13 yr old son. He other children live closeby and visit everyday. The lady, Doña Xinia, makes handmade dolls and sells them in town. Kiiiiiinda creepy, but we’ll see. The other people staying in SL aren’t too far away.
Went into town and bought some botas that actually fit, as well as some “happy food” as Frank likes to call it, for the trip. Beer faerie threw us another party. This time outside, so we spent a lot of time wrestling. Also, Chris taught us a game called ULTIMATE. FUCKING. NINJA. MOVE. You take turns trying to hit eachothers hands. But it’s verry freezetagesque. Totally going to play that in SB. Apparently we were making a lot of noise and Frank’s CIEE counterpart got pissed and called Frank. We were wrestling outside when he heard Frank come, so we skedaddled.
Woke up this morning around 6. I had already packed the night before and was more or less ready to go. Except I was hungoooover. Ugh. Always on an important day. Crap. I was feeling better by the time we got to the trailhead, though.
BTW. Saying goodbye to the half of the group was a little sad. Yea. The Cuajiniquil people are going to have soooo much fun. Randall is going to live with Rodolfo near the border. I hear it can get pretty intense there.
Yea so traildead. Wow. 14 km hike. Sheeeit. I’ve never done a backpacking trip before and I guess I didn’t know what to expect. It was a long goddamn hike. It started raining too. Today begins the rainy season! Good thing I brought my new botas de hule and my poncho! CLUTCH! I walked through the mud and the many streams along the way. We stopped at a little station se llama el aleman. Fucking long hike, like 5 horas. At the end we crossed this kinda sketch bridge that went over a river. Kinda like at the end of Temple of Doom.
We finally got here and set up shop. It’s a little field station with bunk beds and a dining room. It’s actually Eladios old property. It’s really cool. Eladio is here and guy named Javier. Sofia and Fede are our instructors here. There are bugs her too (surprise!) Big, bloodsucking flies. TABANIDS. Lots of them. They’re huge. And they bite. Hard. And then chagas bugs. They’re called kissing bugs cos they bit your lips in your sleep. You may or may not get a disease from them which will kill you in 20 yrs. Great. Look for updates when im 40. Oh, and they live in the wood of the beds. Nice. EAP provided us with bugnets though. Hopefully they holdup. I moved my mattress and net outside. I’m excited to sleep outdoors and just to sleep.It’s 9pm and I’m tired as fuck… All caught up though.

5/4/09

It’s easier to remember to write in this gournal when we’re camping. Probably because I go to bed so much earlier. Wow. Just changed the batteries on my headlamp. It’s like daylight bursting forth from my forehead.
I woke up early this morning and jung out on the bench on the proch, drinking coffee. After breakfast and before orientation walk, I asked Eladio to sharpen my machete. On the walk we saw a billion butterflied. They’re really fun to catch. Also saw an anteater.
When we got back, my machete was ready. It’s really fuckin sharp. I almost wonder if I should trust myself with a tool like this. I practiced hacking shit and then at some lunch. It started raining again, so we chilled on the porch for a while. I tried to whittle something, but it was way too hard. I tried to make a crocodile, but I fucked up, so I tried to make a smaller crocodile, but I fucked up again I tried to turn it into a snake, but it ended up looking like a sperm cell. And then I fucked that up too.
Ate dinner, played harmonica, saw a terciopelo (using the machete to chop shit down) and caught a bat. The bat was really cute. It looked like it was screaming, but we wouldn’t have been able to hear it even if it was. Nightwalk was okay. Saw a frog that was thought to have been extinct for a while before it reappeared. Also saw a molting grillo (= huge). Thabanids are trying to get me in the net. I’m scared!