Puerto Viejo y más

(Puerto Viejo and more)

I had a long and fun weekend - so prepare for a long post with lots of pictures!

Another picture of my school

On Thursday (Jueves) we went to downtown San Jose. They have Payless stores here!

A typical Costa Rican meal - At the bottom a mix of potatoes, going clockwise, fried plantains (platanos), rice (arroz), chicken (pollo), beans (frijoles) and salad (ensalada).

This is what you get when you ask for an enchilada. This has potatoes inside, and sour cream (in Costa Rica - natilla)

Off to Puerto Viejo!

This was by the bus stop - I just think it's funny they tried to mimic Starbucks

Driving through rainforests

Banana Farm

Views of Puerto Viejo. There are a lot of bougainvilleas here, but also a lot of tropical plants, such as bananas.

The Carribean!

Pretty photos =)

Breakfast on Saturday - Toast with butter, guava jam and cream cheese. Yum!

Coconut Palm

False Bird-of-Paradise Plants

This tree grows grapes

There's a monkey (mono) in the middle of this picture. We saw about 10-ish of them climbing through the trees on our walk to the beach.

It's a bit hard to see, but there is a sloth chillin' in the middle of this photo. I saw three sloths in the wild in the National Forest!

Sloth again - he's looking at you!

This iguana is a master of disguise... he's in the center of the photo and is bright green. Even though I saw him in person (it took a couple  minutes to see him) and I knew I took this picture, it still took me a while to find him!

More pictures tomorrow!! Puerto Viejo was a lot of fun!

¡Baila conmigo!

(Dance with me!)

Yesterday at night my roommate (who lives in the room next door to me) and I went to Dance Class. It was an hour and a half long and we learned Merengue and Salsa. The school is indoor/outdoor, and it had just rained, so it was really humid and because we were dancing so much, we were all pretty sweaty. =P It is really hard to dance for that long! But it was definitely super fun. We learned a couple of different spins with Merengue, and we learned three different steps with salsa, as well as a spin. I like salsa a little bit better because it has more rhythm, but it is fun to learn both of them. We switch partners after every song, so you have the opportunity (I almost just wrote out oportunidad, the Spanish word) to dance with a lot of different people. It was a ton of fun!

Today was another day of classes. Typically, here's how my schedule goes:
Wake up at 6:30, get ready for school, have breakfast
7:45, walk to school (it's about five minutes from where I live)
8:00-10:00 Class
10:30-12:00 Class (It's the same class, we just get a break)
12:00 Eat at the burrito stand next to school. I'm going to try something new everyday.
1:00 On Wednesdays, Cooking Class
3:00 On Wednesday, Conversation in Spanish
8:00-9:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Dance Class

Since classes get out at 12:00, I have time to do homework, talk with my host family and explore Costa Rica. Or even watch television in Spanish. (My goal is to understand it by the time I leave Costa Rica, which is a challenge!) This Friday we are leaving at 1:00pm to go to Puerto Viajo. We will be there all weekend, and when we are there we are going snorkeling!

Today, I had cooking class. We learned how to  make a typical Costa Rican dessert (postre) called Cajetitas de Coco, literally little soft candies of coconut, or basically Sweet Coconut Balls. They are so good and so easy to make. They are similar to macaroons, but they are gooier on the inside. I will post the recipe over the weekend while I am Puerto Viajo.

My friends with their Cajititas de Coco



What I ate:
Cena de Ayer: Hamburger meat (carne) with some kind of white beans, I believe Garbanzo beans (garbanzos), refresca, rice and beans. We also had salad (ensalada) with another new vegetable (verdura) in it called chayote. Slices of it looks like a pear, and it has a similar texture and taste, but with more flavor and less mushiness. It is also less sweet than a typical pear, since it is a vegetable. After googling and asking around, I discovered that chayote is a type of squash that is usually found in Costa Rica.

Desayuno: Cereal, Coffee

Almuerzo: A burrito with beef (carne) and Costa Rican sour cream (natilla) and tomato sauce (basically ketchup - salsa de tomate). The burrito was good, but I didn't like the ketchup on it, it was super sweet. The burrito stand guy offered to put ensalada or salad on it, but I declined. The ensalada at the burrito stand is basically sauerkraut - sweetened cabbage. It seems weird to me that they would put that on their burritos and empanadas and stuff, but it is unique.

Bocaditas (Snack, or literally "little bites")- Cajititas de Coco

Cena: Baked Fish (Pescado) - I don't like fish, but this was delicious! It tasted less "fishy" than fish we eat in Arizona, and the breading had a nice flavor. We also had mashed potatoes. When I asked if they were potatoes or yuca (it's hard to tell the difference without tasting them), they called them "potatoes" and not the Spanish word "papas". And of course, we had rice.

A Costa Rican stop sign

Escuela y Empanadas

(School and Empanadas)

So far, today has been a great day. It's raining now (está lloviendo), as it tends to do every day in the afternoon/evening. I had classes earlier today, and I (think I) am getting better at Spanish. I can read or hear a lot of it without having to translate it to English first. Instead of hearing pan and having to translate it to bread and then understand what it is, the words bread and pan are the same in my head now.

Pictures from the outside of the University

Pictures from the "inside" of the university. And there's no window in the second picture, just a pole.

Here's the study area, connected to the library

Oh, and there are coffee plants just chillin' in the library, no big deal.

The other girl who is living at this host house arrived yesterday. Her name is Barbara. We are going to walk back to the school tonight for dance classes (think salsa and merengue).

What I ate:
Cena de ayer (Dinner of yesterday): Beets (remolacha) - I didn't know they got so big! One slice can be five inches across! But they were delicious. =) Boiled plantains (platanos), salad (ensalada) with tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, onions, dressing and some unidentified vegetable, chicken (pollo), refresca and rice and beans (arroz y pintos), of course. There are rice and beans with every meal - I even get offered rice and beans for breakfast.

Desayuno: A sandwhich (still sandwich in Costa Rica) with warm bread, margarine, ham (jamón), and tomatoes (tomates). It was actually really good. I also had pineapple (piña) and coffee (cafe) again.

Almuerzo: An empanada with chicken (empanada con pollo) from the burrito stand outside the school. The food is cheap and delicious, and I believe I will just try something new from here every day. The empanada was very good and I think it has cheese and tomatoes inside of it, but I'm  not sure. I also had iced tea with lemon (té frío con limón), which was refreshing.

Empanada!

Rain! Barbara and I ate lunch outside under a canopy with a Costa Rican girl named Graciela.

First Day of School

Hola! I don't have as many pictures today, but I have a few, and hopefully I will get more tomorrow.

Today was my first day of school here. The university (Universidad Veritas) is a five minute walk from my house. It's pretty much a strait shot, except I turn at the second park (parque) I pass. I will get a picture of the University tomorrow. It's not that pretty from the outside, but is pretty nice inside. The university is an indoor/outdoor sort of university. There is a lot of covering from rain, but most of the temperature control is through breezways (you can feel the Costa Rican breeze through most of the hallways) or a fan and the window. Besides the humidity, the weather is cool enough that this is possible. We began with a tour of Veritas, which is a school that specializes in foreign language classes for any non-native speaker of Spanish, and in product design/graphic design etc. for Ticos (Costa Rican people).

We then had an orientation on what we are doing at Veritas. We are placed by skill level into classes (I'm honestly not sure which class I'm in, but I do know that since NAU places more emphasis on writing than on speaking, I'm still going to get the credits I need no matter what class I end up taking here.) On weekends we are going on Excursions. Coming up is a trip to Puerto Viaje and Monteverdi and Voclano Aracan. (I hope I spelled those right!)

Then we went for two hours of class. Normally we will have class from 8 am to 12pm, with options of extra curriculars in the afternoon. There are only six people in  my class, which is really nice because we get a lot more practice and there is less stress in the class. My teacher's four rules were 1) No English (Only Spanish), 2) Homework everyday except Saturday and Sunday (This is an intensive, six week class), 3)Pay attention and 4)No stress. I'm pretty excited. The class seems to be at my level of Spanish and although the class is conducted entirely in Spanish, I can understand pretty much everything that my professor says (I can't say the same for my host family, unfortunately).

After that I went with a couple of other girls from NAU (there are about 30 of us total) to downtown to get lunch, although in the future it would probably be cheaper to eat at the school's cafeteria.

What I ate today:
Desayuno: Cereal. I know, not that exciting. In Spanish the word is still cereal and the cereal box still says Corn Flakes, so that's what they're called.

Almuerzo: Pizza. Which was still called pizza peperoni. It was delicious, but not exciting as far as Tico food goes. I had a milk shake with it, which they just called a milkshake (in Spanish it could also be called un batido con yogur, I believe). It was made with strawberries (fresas) and guanabana, which I just googled and it turns out that is soursop fruit. Anyways, it was delicious (delicioso!).

Another interesting thing - they have you taste a sample of the milkshake before they serve it to you to make sure you like it. Then they come back with the milkshake in a cup with a plastic cover on top.

Cena: Haven't had it yet, I'll let you know tomorrow. But I did have a nice cup of coffee (cafe) with milk (leche) and sugar (azucar). Oh, and there are three coffee bean plants growing in the student lounge at Veritas. I'll try to get a picture of those as well.

Lunch was my first opportunity to use Costa Rican currency, or colones. (Colon if singular) 500 colones are roughly equal to one US dollar, so 10000 colones is equal to 20 dollars, 1000 colones is equal to 2 dollars, etc. If you want to go the other way, multiply US dollars by 500; for example a penny (.01) is equal to 5 colones.

Here's a picture of the colones I have at this moment:

The bills (billetes) I have right now are the 10000 (diez mil colones or 10 thousand colones), which is roughly equal to a $20 bill, the 50000 (cinco mil colones), which is roughly eqal to a $10 bill, and 2000 (dos mil colones), which is roughly equal to $4. I also have coins (monedas) worth 100 colones or about 50 cents and 50 colones, worth about 10 cents.

I'll leave you with another random thing - Google has already figured out that I am in Costa Rica. Google creeps me out sometimes

Google Costa Rica