A Day in The Life...

So...I decided that I was spoiling all of you with my fancy weekend photos. Just so you don't get greedy for more fancy schmancy pictures, I thought I'd show you what my weekdays are like.

5:30a.m. I wake up because the sun is shining into my room through the skylight. I lie in bed until 7a.m. trying to go back to sleep because it's too early to wake up.

7:00a.m. My host brother, Manuel, is getting ready for work, which means he has turned on his salsa music and it is impossible to try to sleep any more. I get up and walk into the kitchen where I find my tasty breakfast waiting for me. This is fresh, homemade juice that my host mom, Maritza, made for me, a bowl of fresh mango, papaya, strawberries, bananas and pineapple, and a plate of gallo pinto (rice and beans) with scrambled eggs and bread. Yum!



8:15a.m. I leave the house to walk to the bus stop. Here is a picture of the house. By the way, the car belongs to the neighbors. I was slightly surprised to learn that Maritza does not know how to drive and doesn't have a driver's license. Manuel is just starting to learn how to drive because here you can get your license when you're 21. You'd think that by waiting to give people their licenses until they were older, there would be fewer accidents and safer drivers, but that is just not the case. Drivers here are crazy. Stop signs mean drive faster. Pedestrians NEVER have the right of way, and there are very few crosswalks. I'm still working on my street crossing skills.

This is a picture of the street where I live. I love all the different colored houses.



This is the sidewalk I walk down every day. You can tell it's the rainy season because the sidewalk and gutters are so green. Although the sidewalks are not well maintained (there are lots of big, random holes) and I am pretty accident-prone, I haven't fallen down yet. And at the very end of the sidewalk, across the street is the park where I catch the bus.




8:50a.m. I get off the bus and walk to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights or the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights where we have class until noon. This is the Court. I don't have a picture of the Institute, but it is equally white and impressive.



12:00p.m. I walk to Costa Rica Language Academy to have a cheap lunch (about $2.50 for a burrito and a drink) and try to get my reading done for the next day. Pretty, huh?


2:00p.m. It starts to rain. You can watch the video of the scary rain. It is so loud. And 2:00 is also when I make my daily phone call to Garrett. Sometimes the rain is so loud that I have to wait until it lightens up to call Garrett because even though I'm inside, he wouldn't be able to hear me.




3:00p.m. I have my Spanish class and then wait for the rain to lighten up enough for me to walk to the bus stop. When I finally get home around 5:30, Maritza is usually home from work and in the kitchen making a yummy dinner. I continue to read and study for class the next day.


8:00p.m. Maritza, Utako (the other girl who is living in the house) and I all sit down and watch Maritza's favorite novela, Nuevo Rico, Nuevo Pobre. I'm glad the acting is way over the top because it make it really easy to follow the story.



9:00p.m. Manuel comes home from the dance class he goes to after work. Maritza always meets him at the door. How sweet!


11:00p.m. After finally finishing my reading and outlining the cases for the next day, I finally try to sleep. I always put on my headphones so I don't have to listen to the neighbor's dog cry all night. I've never disliked a dog so much. He is sad because he is outside, but the porch is pretty big and covered and it's only around 70 degrees. So he's not wet or cold or cooped up, he's just sad that he's outside and has to let everyone know it. I really do not like that dog.

So that is my typical day. Pretty exciting, huh? No monkeys or rainforest, only nice people and lots of studying. But I'm really having a great time. If you've noticed, I added a new song to the blog. My Spanish teacher introduced me to this one, and I thought it was pretty cute.

Adventures in the Rainforest

This last weekend I went to Monteverde to hang out in the rainforest. My adventures began with a five and a half hour bus ride from San Jose to the forest. Half of the trip was on windy dirt roads in the mountains and there was no air conditioning on the bus. Ugh. Then I finally made it to my hotel. This cute, little, old, grouchy dog was my hotel's little guardito. He is adorable, but he bites.

On Saturday, I took a trail through the rainforest. It was so green and beautiful.


I know it is hard to see in this picture, but this a picture of one of the bright green suspension bridges I walked on to see the forest. They are really, really high, and they sway a little in the wind. I was trying really hard not to look straight down, but looking out was beautiful.


This is a fallen tree. As one of the guides said, "Everything in the rainforest is recycled; trees, leaves, even lost tourists, so don't get lost!" You can see all the vines, ferns and orchids growing off this dead trunk.


This plant is called Lady's Lips. The guide joked that they call it the Angelina Jolie plant. These grow all over in the forest.


Later I went to the Ranario, where they have different kinds of frogs. Unfortunately I had to go during the day, so most of the frogs were sleeping and were very difficult to photograph. This is a picture of the red-eyed tree frog that you see in so many postcards and t-shirts. It looks different because it is sleeping. Doesn't he do a great job blending into his environment during the day?


This is another cute little tree frog. I say a lot more, but they were really hard to get pictures of, so you don't get to see any really poisonous or colorful frogs. But this guy was definitely posing for my picture.


I also went to the Orchid Garden which was incredible because all they had to do to grow the orchids was tie them to a stick, and they just grow there. That is also how they grow in the rainforest. They attach themselves to the trunk of a tree and their roots pull moisture out of the air.


This pretty orchid is the one that smelled the very best. I wish I could put the scent on my blog too because it was so nice. Most of the orchids only put out a scent at night to attract insects to pollinate them. And some of them definitely have better scents than others. One smelled like soap, but the strangest one was a little orchid that smells like blood at night to attract insects. Yuck!


This orchid is an endangered species and can only be found in Costa Rica. Isn't it pretty?


And I had to take a picture of this Lady's Slipper. Do you think this slipper would fit on Cinderella?

And last, but not least, instead of trying to take pictures of the hummingbirds (which resulted in many, many blurry shots and a severe headache), I took a video of them. I hope you can see them all right. Their colors are so vibrant and different from the ones we have at home. Enjoy!

Indiana Box and the Jungle of Doom

I thought I'd tell you all about my wild weekend adventures in Costa Rica. I did feel a little like Indiana Jones at times because my weekend involved both ancient artifacts and tropical jungles. On Friday, I went to downtown San Jose with a couple of my classmates. First we went to the National Museum which is housed in this amazing Spanish fort:


They had a great collection of ancient artifacts, including gold and jade pieces, pottery and metates.


Metates are used for grinding corn, but these intricate metates were buried with the dead so that they would have food in the afterlife. They are made of volcanic rock.



Some of the English translations in the Museum were pretty interesting, but this was my favorite.


This is the view of downtown San Jose from the balcony of the fort. You can tell that is is almost lunch time because it is so cloudy, but generally it doesn't start raining until around two or three in the afternoon.


This is a beautiful statue in the plaza in the middle of the fort.


After visiting the museum, we ate lunch and then starting walking around downtown. In the parks and pedestrian streets of San Jose, they have a bunch of cows that have been decorated by various local artists. This is a Frog-Cow:


This is the Cow Diva. Isn't she fancy?


There were also some beautiful artistic cows:




And some goofy cows:


I loved the Taxi Cow, complete with license plate:


Next, Cow Kabob and Butcher Shop Cow. These two are a little morbid, but so funny:



And that was basically the end of Friday. After spending the whole day in the city, my classmate, Bette, and I decided to get out of town on Saturday. Our tour left at six in the morning for breakfast in a coffee plantation. This is a picture of how they lay the coffee out to dry:


This is a picture of a coffee plant. Can you see the little coffee beans? They are green, like almost everything else in Costa Rica.


And in between the rows of coffee plants, they plant banana trees to take up the extra moisture from the ground.


After Bette, the coffee aficionado, loaded up on coffee to bring home, we went to the crater of Poas Volcano. Here is a picture of the crater:


Don't worry! Although the volcano is active, it's main form of activity is emitting a fumarole, not lava. And here is a closer picture of the fumarole:


After visiting the volcano, we went to La Paz waterfalls. They have very pretty recycling containers there. After all if they can recycle here in the rainforest, can't we be better too?


This is a picture of the very awesome bathroom sink! You turn the little rock with a frog on it, and the water comes down the little waterfall. I thought it was so cute, but I can only imagine what the bathroom attendant was thinking as she showed every single person who used the bathroom how to turn on the water.


At La Paz, we went to the aviary where we saw some beautiful little birds:




And some beautiful big birds. I was three feet away from this toucan, and although there is wire behind him preventing him from flying away, there was nothing between me and the bird. His huge beak made me a little nervous, but isn't he beautiful?


After the aviary, we visited the butterfly garden where there were hundreds of butterflies fluttering by the lovely flowers:




There was also this friendly little monkey who wanted to say hello:


After the butterfly garden (can you tell this was a really long day?), we went to the hummingbird garden. Unlike the other gardens, this garden was not surrounding by any kind of net or wire to keep the hummingbirds in. There were just tons of feeders that attracted them. So all the hummingbirds flitting around were native to the area, but only one of them would hold still long enough for me to get a decent picture:


And during lunch, I had a little visitor. Mmm. . . tasty!


Here is a cute little (not poisonous) tree frog we saw:


As you can tell from the pictures, we really were in the jungle. Here is one of the three incredible waterfalls:


And here is a cute little guy (I can't remember what the name of the animal is, but our guide said he is in the raccoon family) who decided to say hello:


And last, but not least, we ended the day by taking a boat ride down the Sarapiqui River. We saw a lot of iguanas and howler monkeys, but none of the pictures turned out very well.


I guess I'll have to try next weekend for some good monkey pictures. I hope you enjoy these pictures, and I'll keep them coming!