Sunday, February 20, 2011
It’s been awhile since I have updated everyone on what I’ve been up to! This week has been very overwhelming to say the least. But Juan made bolas de coco (coconut balls), my favorite, on Friday for our postre (dessert) so that definitely made my week a little better!
Bolas de coco. One of the best things I've ever eaten.
I had a midterm exam in my Spanish 419 class, so I was up late studying material for the exam every night. This is partially my fault for deciding to go to the beach last weekend instead of spending the day studying. But you know what? I’m in Costa Rica, and the beach just sounded too good to pass up. :) My 419 class is a Latin American culture and civilization course, and the course is taught in Spanish. It’s definitely a difficult class, but I’m really enjoying what I’ve learned so far. I just wish that I didn’t have two classes, and on Wednesdays three, every day. It’s exhausting to take two classes in 3 weeks that usually take a semester to complete! Needless to say, I love my professors and am learning very quickly.
Here are some random pictures from my week:
I saw these ants while I was walking to my internship in San Jose. Look closely at the top left ant. I definitely do NOT want to get bitten by one of these guys!
Anne and I were fascinated by this Siamese banana
A sunset on my walk home after school.
On Friday night I worked on some homework and went to bed early after an exhausting week. Saturday was a lot of fun! After being shut in a classroom all week in the windy, misty mountains I was ready to go outside and enjoy some Costa Rican sun! Whitworth South is up on Monde de la Cruz, and is situated right in the middle of a rainforest, so it’s always about 20 degrees cooler up there than it is in town. It rains, or mists, every day. I learned today that the mist on the mountains is called pelo del gato, literally translated to “cat hair” in Spanish. It’s a Costa Rican phrase.. There are a lot of slang phrases here that the Ticos and Ticas use that I need to learn.
Anyways, my friend Bree and I walked around San Rafa for awhile. We could not have picked a more perfect day to be outside. The sun was shining, and there was a slight breeze to cool us off. The farthest I’ve walked in San Rafa is from my house to the bus stop, so we adventured to the OTHER side of the bus stop and walked around that part of town for awhile. We found a smoothie shop on one street called Cosechas, which means “things” in Spanish. We bought a huge orange, pineapple and mango smoothie for $2, and it was fabulous.
Bree and me in San Rafa with our smoothie
So. Good.
The park in front of the church in San Rafael
Closer picture of the church. I could stare at this building all day, it's so beautiful!
Bree had to go back to her house after awhile, so I met up with my friend Amy, and she and I took the bus to Heredia to go exploring. The bus is always an adventure, let me tell you. There are two sensor bars when you first walk on the bus, and they “count” how many people get on and off the bus. At the end of the day, if the bus driver does not have enough money for the number of people the bars sensed got on the bus, he has to pay the difference out of his own pocket. And yes, all of the bus drivers are men. When we all first arrived in Costa Rica and took the bus the first few times, we didn’t know about the sensor bars on the bus, and definitely got some dirty glares (and some incorrect change) from the bus driver for standing in between the bars while waiting to pay to get on the bus. Oops. Did I mention that all of the buses here are stick shift? Who in their right mind ever thought that it would be a good idea to make a stick shift bus?! I mean really, common sense here people. Let me tell you, going up the mountain to school Tuesday-Friday on a stick shift bus is quite the experience. The driver starts to gain some momentum, and then the bus lurches forward as he shifts gears, and then he gains a little bit more speed and then BAM, shifts gears again. By the time he gets up to a decent speed, we have reached another stop, and the process of gear shifting starts all over again. Balancing on a bus while standing up is hard enough, standing up in a moving bus that is constantly shifting gears is nearly impossible. I’m just waiting for the day that I go flying down the aisle and start knocking down people like bowling pins. Trust me, I’ll blog about it when it happens.
Amy and me in the park at Parque Central in Heredia
Where was I? Oh right, Amy and I got on the bus without standing in between the sensor bars and held on for dear life as the gears grinded on our way to Heredia. We met up with our friend Callie from Whitworth who is studying at the National University in Heredia. She lives in Heredia, which is a much larger city than San Rafael, so she showed us around the city and her school. It was a gorgeous day, so we decided to go to a local café to get some cool drinks. Callie and I got a mint latte sort of drink, and Amy got a frozen blended brownie drink. The waiter brought out our drinks and I was sooo excited to drink mine, until I realized that it was a hot coffee drink, not a cold one. Oops. It pays to read the fine (or really big) print that says “Café Caliente” (hot coffee).
What I thought was going to be a cool, refreshing coffee drink
Super excited.. and then I realized it was hot.
After that the three of us caught a bus back to San Rafael. My host mom Orella and I went to our pastor’s house for a Día de las Mujeres (women’s day) with the pastor’s wife and other ladies from the church. It was a lot of fun! The pastor at my church is from Michigan. He and his wife are missionaries and started the church several years ago. Since then, other American families have moved to San Rafael to be missionaries through the church there. It’s really neat to have the mix of Costa Rican families and American families in the same church. There were about 12 women at the house, and we played games and sang songs and ate dinner. It was great to get to know some of the women better, and to practice my Spanish. One of the women from the church gave a talk about how it’s important to take in God’s word as if we were thirsty in a desert and His word was a glass of cool water. “Tu eres el agua viva,” means “You are the living water.” We then talked about how we can use our gifts to serve in the church. After talking for awhile, the women asked me if I would be willing to help lead worship and teach Sunday School once or twice a month. Of course I said yes, and I’m really excited! It’s been awhile since I’ve lead worship at church, and leading in Spanish will be something totally new for me. After the women’s night, I came back home while Orella drove her sister and niece to their house. I walked into the house and heard a beeping noise. The alarm. Awesome. I punched in a few numbers into the key pad and hoped they were the right ones. Of course they weren’t. So the alarm started screaming, and then suddenly stopped. The phone rang a few moments later, and the guy from the security company on the other end of the line asked if everything was okay. The thing is, there’s a certain way you’re supposed to answer that question. Certain phrasing of the words, “yes, everything is okay,” can either mean that yes, things are fine, or it is code to the security company that no, things are not okay and I need the police to come immediately. Orella explained it to me on the first day that I moved into the house, and that the purpose of the different phrasing was so that if there really was a burglar in the house, he or she would think that by saying, “yes everything is okay” that the police weren’t coming, when really they were on their way. In my moment of panic I couldn’t remember which phrase was which, but I miraculously remembered the second code word to tell the security guy. I was obviously flustered, and apparently over the phone it was obvious that Spanish was not my first language, so the security guy asked me in very broken English, “Are.. you.. okay..?” To which I said yes, I just forgot the code to the house. For some reason he believed me, the code word must have worked, and the police didn’t show up to arrest me. All of those code words are so confusing! After my mini heart attack, I went to my room, finished my RA application (cross your fingers for me!) and went to bed.
This morning I went to church with Orella and Yara. The pastor has been speaking about Love for the last few weeks since it is February. I was actually surprised that Valentine’s Day in Costa Rica isn’t a big deal. I would have completely forgotten it was Valentine’s Day last week had I not seen people on the side of the road selling flowers. After church we went out to lunch at a small fast foodish restaurant in a neighboring town. Orella asked me if I liked ravioli, and I said I did, so she ordered it for me. I was expecting a little dish filled with stuffed pasta. That was not what the waiter placed in front of me. Apparently Costa Rica puts its own spin on ravioli. In the basket in front of me was a cole slaw type of salad covered in a mustard and mayo sauce, and under that was a deep fried.. something, sitting on a small tortilla. Really? Ravioli? Honestly I was less than thrilled. I’m not a huge fan of mustard and mayo covered fried grease, but I didn’t want to be rude so I ate it.
After lunch we came back to the house, and Orella drove to her brother’s house to drop her niece off. I decided to go to the park and do homework with my friend Rachel, so I lathered on some sunscreen and walked to the park, just in time for the clouds to roll in and wind to pick up. Perfect. Rachel and I ended up going into a little restaurant thing by the church where we bought coffee and worked on Spanish homework for a few hours.
My Spanish 419 text book. Doesn't it look like a fun read??
Rachel told me to take a picture of the people sitting outside of the bread store (panaderia), so I did. The bread there is SO good!
When I got back to the house, everyone was still out and about, so I sat down at the keyboard and practiced singing and playing some Spanish worship songs. It’s a lot easier said than done! But after a few times through the songs I started to get the hang of it. Orella brought some calzone-like food home for dinner, so we ate those and then I asked if I could practice singing and playing for her and Yara. It’s been such a long time since I’ve sang in front of people, I was really nervous, but they were very encouraging. While I was sitting at the keyboard, I felt a weird shaking in the floor. I thought Yara was kicking the keyboard bench, but it was actually a small earthquake! It was a super weird feeling; I’ve never felt an earthquake before.
For the rest of the night I have homework and sleep to catch up on. I hope everyone is having a fabulous weekend!
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