day 6 camineta nocturna

class was pretty much the same as the past few days but i was especially impressed with my ability to carry a conversation with my professor with only the occassional english or spanglish would thrown in. based on the advice from a guy in my class i decided to take a night hike throughout the forest. many of the animals there are nocturnal and youre suppose to be able to see all sorts of insects, snakes and even a few mammals. the hike began at 530, right before dark, and lasted just over 2 hours. at the beginning we saw a porcupine sleeping in a tree and our guide said we should wait because she would be coming down soon to deficate (how do they know the animals bathroom schedule). well anyways we waited and the dang thing never came down for me to take a picture of it. right after that we saw costa rica´s largest rodent which is the equivalent of a 6 or 7 lb rat, nothing too cool. the rest of the walk was fairly uneventful because we didn´t get to see many cool things except for a pretty big tarantula. i met a couple from d.c there and they were fairly interesting. they both got their undegrad from cornell and mba from georgetown and wanted to discuss foreign direct investment in vietnam which i found unusual. one of the coolest things about the trip was hearing all the noices coming from the trees and air, it was sortve like a scary movie. after the hike i headed home to hang out with the family and eat. my ipod had died earlier today so i asked if i could charge it in the house because my room only has 1 plug and i have to unplug my alarm clock to charge my camera, ipod, razor etc. the 2 kids eyes lit up when they say my ipod and they immediately started asking if i had videos or any tatu songs. who knew tatu was popular in central america (insert question mark here because the computer im using doesnt have one). i let them listen to it for about an hour and they especially enjoyed the one ricky martin song i had and all the things she said by tatu, yes im embarassed i actually had that on my ipod. i let mi abuela tica listen to some rock and roll and she danced for a while. after that got old i showered and went to bed around 10pm. it was raining like crazy so that made it pretty easy.

day 5: enough complaining

i'm not really used to eating breakfast and here it seems to be their main meal of the day, this will take a while to get use to. i'm also trying to be very polite to my family so no matter how much food they put on my plate i try to eat it all. classes went well again, i won't bother boring you with the details, and i feel like i'm learning a lot but it's very tiring to focus on spanish for so long. for my hour lunch break i decided to try out a new restauraunt that's connected to a gas station, this should've been a hint. i try and eat a fairly normal meal for lunch b/c for breakfast and dinner i eat comida tipica, ie rice + beans + other item of the day. i decide my safest bet was a sandwhich, man was i wrong. there had to be at least 4 different sauces on there - one red (not ketchup), one brown, one white (not mayo), and one color yet to be determined. i ate it anyway which is another thing i've noticed about myself here, i'm a much less picky eater here than in the states. back home i'm very particular about what i eat but here not so much. after class i get online to talk to tay and then head out to do my homework and hang out with the family. i can tell they really want to get to know me better and i'm improving on my modes of communication. my favorite way to talk to them now is sign language and using the few words i know in spanish. the school i'm at, cpi, has weekly activities for us each night like movies, cooking lessons, trips etc. and i decided i should test them out. tonight's activity was a soccer game with the students and professors and i figured i needed the exercise. it ended up being a lot of fun, we played 5 v. 5 indoor soccer for about an hour or so. after that i headed back to hang with the family, eat dinner, and watch csi: miami. i must say one of the more funny experiences is hearing american shoes with the voices dubbed in. my personal favorite is the simpsons. on the whole today went a lot better and i'm starting to acclimate myself a lot more.

day 4

today was not a very good one. classes are good because they take up a good chunk of the day but after that i was at a loss of what to do. you figure i'm living in the middle of the cloud forest i would never run out of something to do but one of the cons of taking afternoon classes to is that when i finish everyone else is already out and about exploring the town. next week they are giving me the option of going to class 7:00-12:30 instead of 8-12 and 1-230 which i think will work except i'd have to wake up at 5:45 or so, but i guess no pain no gain. i got out of my afternoon lessons, got on the internet, and headed home around 4. it was my first time to walk home by myself and of course i got lost because i'm horrible at directions. i really could've used henry the navigator (aka winkler) to help me find my way back. i was only lost for about 15 minutes before i realized i just hadn't walked far enough. the great thing about monteverde is they don't believe in naming streets or putting up markers of any kind which would make life much too easy. when i got home i did my homework which took about 45 minutes. i haven't really had homework since freshman year so it's fairly annoying but i know it will pay off in the long run. after that i layed around, ate dinner, pitied myself some, made a few phone calls and was asleep by 9pm out of sheer boredom.

day 3: my first day of class

i wake up at 5:45 and feel like im 5 years old and its my first day of kindergarten. i feel so many different emotions, excitement, nervouse, eagerness etc. i wasn't sure when breakfast was so i went into the house around 6 and ate some granola and pineapples, i was very grateful that i didn't have to eat rice and beans. left the house a little before 7 and ricardo showed us the way to school, it's about a 15-20 minute walk which isn't too bad. i got to school at 7:15 to take an oral and written exam so they could tell me i don't knwo any spanish. i was put in the class for the beginners and i have 2 other students with me. richard is a 65 year old retired man whos favorite activity is to ride his motorcycle down to mexico with his friends. diana is a 40-something first grade teacher who has an esposa (lesbian?). on wednesdays her first graders have "wild west wednesdays" where they dress up like cowboys and sing songs. these 2 people make for a very interesting class. i know slightly more spanish than them but not much. we go over the alphabet and verb conjugation and some high school spanish comes back slowly. finish class at noon and have an hour break, grab a pizza at the most expensive place in town (which is only like $10) and i'm late for afternoon private lessons. i have a new teacher for my conversation class which is fairly self-explanatory: she talks, i talk, she corrects me and i learn. i'm signed up for 2 weeks of private lessons which should be really beneficial but 5 1/2 hours of school is too much like high school. brad and i wander around town, get lost, jump in a taxi with some texans who pay our way. we go to santa elena (the nearest "town", using that tearm loosely) to buy groceries, get on the internet etc. i get home around 5:30 and sit around some more with my family feeling like an idiot because i can't communicate with them. i say maybe 6 sentences and we eat dinner. ricardo asks me to play dominoes with him so we play a few rounds. he teaches me that the double 6 has a stained "ojo" in the back so he always picks that dominoe so he can start of the game. on game 4 i decided to show him up and take that domino first. i walk to the pay phone to call taylor and start to feel semi homesick, which is really weird because i never felt this way at school. i guess its because costa rica is so much different than what i'm use to and i have basically no way of communicating. i have no doubt it will get better with each day but it's just incredibly frustrating to not be able to talk to anyone. i talk to taylor and that makes me feel a lot better, i go home shower and i'm asleep by 10.

day 2: san joaquin de flores to monteverde

woke up at 6am and ate your typical costa rican breakfast, guapo tico (rice and beans) and fruit and juice. i can not eat rice and beans twice a day for 36 days, on way jose. hung out at the b&b and met some more coole people. watched england vs. netherlands, boring gave except for beckham's goal. walked around the small town for a while by myself for about 20 minutes and then came back and picked random fruit off of trees. a guy on the trip, jason, is a biologist or something and let us know what we could and could not eat. i liked the passion fruit it was really sorry. sat around some more got bored because we dont leave for monteverde till 1pm so i went back into town with 3 of the girls to go to the supermercado. 2 of them are 17 and since they're minors they have an 8:30 curfew, pretty rough. the girl from the uk buys 3 packs of cigarettes, she's 18 and has been smoking for 6 years - dang brittish. there you only have to be 16 and can smoke them from birth. van is 45 mins late to pick us up and it's a 3.5 hr drive to monteverde even though its only 200 km (approximately 120 miles). apparently to lessen the number of tourists that visit they made the road one of the worst i've ever seen (even worse than lousiana). it is covered with potholes and at some point oru driver antonio had to slow to under 20 kmh. halfway there we stopped forlunch and i had conrne con rice which was semidecent and cost only $2. antonio then let us stop to take pics at a butterfly garden (man, i dont know why ol ags never built one of these they're awesome note: sarcasm). most of the ride i just sat in silence listening to my ipod because i'm really the only one who doesn't know any spanish - it was pretty frustrated. i got to my homestay around 5:45 and met my family, theyre really nice but don't speak any english which should force me to learn more quickly. we have abuela hermelinda whos 56, mama elena whos 33, hijos andres (14), ricardo (12), and melania and melissa (3 year old twins). ricardo is the coolest of the bunch, he laughs at me a lot which i can respect. the fact that they don't speak any english makes for many long, awkward pauses and giggles. dinner was spaghetti which was fairly good but i'm not a huge fan of their food so i can seem myself losing some weight while i'm here. i moved in and got situated, i live in a sm,all outside room, tin roof with my own entrance, a bed, desk, and drawers - not the greatest but better than i expected. from my first conversation i can already tall that family's in costa rica are more affectionate and express their love much more frequently than in the states. i gave my familia tica there present (a picture boo of texas) and the kids loved it. i showed them houston and corpus and their eyes just lit up wonder, it was really quite incredible. if someone were to give me a book of costa rica i'd have been like, yeah cool. after i finally gave up on trying to communicate with my family for the night and prayed that i'd learn something tomorrow so i wouldn't feel like a huge idiot on monday. showered and went to bed by 9:30pm.

day one: college station, tx to san jose, costa rica

lee took me to the airport, got there around 4:10 and was suppose to depart at 5:55pm. got checked in etc. and went to the fox sports bar to watch overtime of the argentina vs. mexico game. ordered a sam adams and saw perhaps the greatest goal of the worldcup thus far and argentina won 2-1. while in the airport i also saw a huge black guy yelling at someone on his phone saying it was "f'in over" and went on a 5 minute tirade. plane ended up leaving 50 minutes late, typical continental, but we cut the flight time by 40 minutes to 3 hours 5 minutes. lucky me got the middle seat which is not as cool as it sounds for a 6 ft 4 guy. the whole flight i was disturbed by the talking on the intercom because they had to say everthing twice: once in english then in spanish. met some girl from lsu on the flight who was sitting next to me, a sophomore and an avid t.u. fan (go figure). she's studying at the same school as i am but on the coast instead of the cloud forest. i noticed she was reading a physics book and she had to be the slowest reader i've ever seen. on the entire flight she read maybe 15 pages tops. we get to the B&B where we will be spending our first night around 10pm and i get settled hahain. i'm staying in a room w/ 4 bunk beds and 2 other guys. both of them are fairly cool and one is an aggie, class of '08 which made things cool. brad, the aggie, is studying 3 weeks in monteverde and 2 more in heredia, the exact same schedule i'm on. i hung out outside for a while and talked to everyone; they seemed much more cultured than me. i talked to a guy who is moving to his 4th different country and he's 22 and a lady who's visited egypt 5 times. i was tired from travelling and went to sleep around 11:30.

sweet irony

if this isn't ironic i don't know what it is - http://apnews.myway.com/article/20060617/D8I9RL7O0.html
way to make texas proud

monkey chow

an interesting, and obviously extremely bored, guy has decided to see if he can maintain a diet of strictly monkey chow for a week straight. if you are as bored as i was this afternoon go read about his experiences at http://www.angryman.ca/monkey.html, don't worry he even has a daily "poop report"

cell phones are necessary for the following reasons...

1. to call people.
2. to save lives. http://www.boston.com/news/odd/articles/2004/09/06/phone_saves_mans_life_in_crossbow_attack/

if this happened to your family what would you do?

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-06-01-vanryn-cerak-cover_x.htm