I'm Finally Here!

Hello! Welcome to my blog about being in Costa Rica this summer. It’s been just two days since I left the U.S. and so much has happened already! I arrived yesterday at my host family in Portero, where I will be teaching English for the next 3 months. Since so much has happened in the first few days, I ‘m going to write about my stories and adventures so far. You won’t be getting daily updates all the time, but it has been a fun few days. Grab a cup of coffee-this might turn out to be a little long.

Monday:

My adventures really began Monday night when I realized that I was going to Costa Rica in the morning. With all of the whirlwind packing, moving, finishing the semester, and grading papers, I really hadn’t had much time to think about my summer. Monday night I somehow got packed with the help of Mom, Dana, and Hanna. Hanna made a delicious chocolate birthday cake that I got to eat as my breakfast in the morning at the airport too. I had a lot to do and way too much stuff to fit into my bags. Yes, as soon as I started unpacking I wondered why I had brought so much stuff. It’s like 90 degrees here all of the time. Why did I think I needed 3 pairs of pants and about 4 or 5 cardigans?? After packing and finishing up last minute emails and to-do lists, I finally went to bed around 1:00am. I needed to be up at 2:30am to get to the airport. I didn’t sleep much in that hour and half because I kept waking up to see if it was time to get up yet! Finally it was time to get up and Dana and I were off to the airport.

Tuesday:

My trip was pretty uneventful. I checked in easily (at 4am!) in Philly and crashed as soon as I got on the plane. I slept the whole plane ride to Miami and then had an hour layover. There was an adorable little girl with her mom sitting next to me that I enjoyed watching. The family was from Costa Rica and at one point told me the plane was late and I pretty much just nodded not wanting to speak Spanish. Yikes, I realized I hadn’t been immersed in Spanish for 6 years! It was a little scary thinking in a few hours I would need to only speak Spanish!

As soon as I got on the Miami plane, I also went to sleep because I really hadn’t slept too much. As we were landing in San Jose, I talked to the couple sitting next to me. They were about my age, from Boston, and on vacation in Costa Rica for a few weeks. It was their second time in the country and they were planning to rent a car to go to the beach. They were very jealous that I was going to be here all summer! It was nice to hear about where they had gone and things to know about right before I got off of the plane. I passed through immigration pretty easily, although the lady wanted to see my return ticket once I said I was here for 3 months. I am very glad that I asked for specific documentation of my return when I was in Philly! This is something I need to remember to tell my students when they come. I walked right through customs (so glad I bought a nice backpack!) and I was in Alajuela, Costa Rica!

As soon as I walked out into the airport, I was overwhelmed with men saying “taxi, taxi, taxi official.” I was ready for this and just told them that I did not need one. I did in fact need a taxi, but I wanted to choose the driver after I had a moment to think things through. After a minute or so, I asked someone for a taxi and I got into a big red van. The official taxi company of Costa Rica has all red cars, which is really nice, but it’s still slightly scary to go alone. The hostel was less than 10 minutes away and I got taken straight there. I checked into the hostel (all in Spanish! - even though I could have done it in English) and fell onto my bed. When I arrived in Costa Rica, I had no hostel reservation or bus reservation so I was happy to know that the hostel had space for me. My next task was to figure out how to reserve the bus to Portero the next day. That involved going to the supermarket and asking about how to get a phone card. I was either asking for the wrong thing or the person didn’t understand me because she said that it wasn’t possible to get what I wanted. I ended up going back to the hostel to ask about how to do it. After I had more instructions, I went to a different store and got a phone card (actually just a piece of paper with a code on it). Then I went to the first public phone I saw (on a street with very loud trucks!) I called the Interbus company and luckily was able to reserve everything over the phone in English. Now that I had figured out the hostel and bus, the next task was to find food.

 The hostel I chose was in Alajuela, which I quickly found out was not a town with much to do. There are many tourists around, but only because they are on their way to or from the airport or going on a tour of the volcanoes. I walked to the center of town and found a place that said Soda. I knew from reading my students’ reports that Sodas are cheap little restaurants that usually give you the plate of the day. I walked in and ordered “gallo chicken” (I knew gallo pinto was rice and beans). The man asked “con carne” and I said yes just because I figured he was asking about chicken. After a long wait, he brought me a plate with a huge steak on top of a tortilla. It was definitely not what I was expecting, but still delicious and I was very hungry! I walked around a little bit more trying to find the center of town (I never found it) and then went back to the hostel. There, I went to the huge supermarket and bought cheese, bread and fruit for dinner and spent the rest of the evening watching terrible TV with other travelers. 

I shared my dorm room with 4 pretty obnoxious Canadian college girls in who were leaving to go home (at 5am!) the next morning. I just wanted to sleep, but they needed to pack their stuff, etc. One of them did give me a huge bottle of aloe (she said I would need it!) and I fell asleep even with them all talking in the room.

 

Wednesday:

The next morning I woke up to have breakfast with an Israeli girl who was traveling Central America alone before going to university and a French couple who were leaving for the airport. Breakfast was not at all interesting- cookies and orange juice- but I also ate a mango that I had bought at the store the day before. My bus was at 3pm so I had most of the day to wander around Alajuela. I took my trusty Lonely Planet book with a map of the city (second largest in Costa Rica) and set off to find the center of town. I did find the center of town and attempted to find the museum of Juan Santamaria (an unknown liberator of Costa Rica from Alajuela). I even asked someone where this museum was and he told me it was around the corner, but I could not find the door so I finally gave up. I found the Mercado Central and wandered around it a little bit, but decided to leave pretty quickly because I had my camera and wallet with me. I drooped that stuff off at the hostel and then went back with just money in my p0ocket. It wasn’t dangerous but I felt better not carrying a purse there. I went out a different door and got pretty lost in the bus station area of Alajuela. That was definitely a little scary, but I’m really glad to have seen it in the daytime without my luggage. I’ve been told it’s fine to travel on the local buses as long as you keep your stuff with you at all times and go there in the daytime.

After a lunch of odds and ends that travelers had left on the “free food” shelf at the hostel, I took a taxi with the French couple to the airport and then to the Hampton Inn Suites.  At the Hampton Inn, there was a couple that had lived in Malvern and Villanova and now live in Scottsdale, Arizona. They had rented a beach house in another part of the country and their whole family was there (they spoke no Spanish). The woman was very upset that people did not speak more English and she was quite concerned about not being able to use her cell phone here. I’m not sure why they didn’t just get a beach house in the U.S. somewhere. 

Ok, the next part is the scariest part of my adventure so far (hoping nothing goes beyond this!) I got on the Interbus (tourist bus company) at the Hampton Inn after the bus driver confirmed that he had my reservation and there were other people on the bus- two Dutch guys, a German girl, and a middle-aged Costa Rican man. It seemed great and I was happy that other people were on the shuttle. I had a great conversation all in Spanish with the Costa Rican man about the country and everything was going well. We stopped at a rest stop and had an empanada and saw monkeys throwing mangoes from the trees which was fun. Everything was going well until….The driver came up to me and told me that I should go on a different bus because the other driver was going directly to Portrero. The rest of the people were going to Tamarindo (very touristy beach) and I knew that I would probably be the only one going as far as Portero. But it was still good to have company for most of the ride and I was not happy about getting into a van alone with someone for the 3+ hour ride that we had. The bus was also an Interbus and there wasn’t much else to do (after all I had paid for the expensive tourist shuttle) so I changed buses. The next 3 hours were somewhat terrifying since we were driving through the middle of nowhere and I really had no idea where we were going (and it was pitch black at this point). I started following along on the map I had and we kept getting closer to my destination so eventually I decided everything was fine and if it wasn’t there wasn’t much to do about it. It would have been nice to share those few scary hours with someone else for sure but I arrived safely in Potrero around 7:30 at night. I had about an hour wait due to miscommunication between the volunteers, who were picking me up, but they finally found me and I was taken to my homestay- very tired and not quite sure about my decision not to live in the volunteer house with other English speaking people!

I got to my house about 9pm, which is really late for people here. One of my host sisters was awake and she was very shy around me. Janet, my host grandmother, asked me what time I wanted breakfast and that was the end of my night. I was too tired to speak much Spanish anyway, and I think it was probably a little frustrating to the family that I came so late.  

Alright, it’s bedtime for me tonight (Thursday). I’ll finish writing about today tomorrow. I feel like I already know most of the town and am very happy in my host family now (big difference from last night!) I just put up the mosquito net so I don’t have to sleep with bug repellent on. The bugs aren’t that bad, but I am already pretty bitten up. It’s only in the morning and at night that they are bad so I must remember to carry bug stuff with me at all times because I don’t want to be without it at 5:30pm again! If you’re still reading this, goodnight for now. I’ll post this tomorrow.

 

Thursday:

Now it’s Friday and I’m going to try to finish this up quickly. Yesterday was my first full day in Portero and I met most of the volunteers and attended the kids’ classes. Meradith and Drew, the founders of Abriendo Mentes, aren’t here right now so I’ll learn more about what I’ll be doing when they get back this weekend. There were about 15 (very wild) kids in a class and there were two different classes. They both learned about family in English. My two little host sisters- Hilary and Joselina- are in the 3^rd/4^th grade class. Today (Friday) is Fun Friday (every Friday) and we are making kites with the kids. Then we’re flying them on Sunday at the beach with everyone.

After classes, I went to Flamingo beach with two of the volunteers because they needed to go to the ATM (the one in our town doesn’t have any money in it right now) and I wanted to know how the bus worked. It was an easy ride (on very bumpy, dirt roads) and we walked back on the beach (45 minute walk). Then I headed home and got there in time for dinner with my host family. I met my other host sister who is 13 and got to really speak Spanish with everyone. I really like the kids in the family. I also gave them the gifts I brought and they were excited about the notebooks and pencils. I went to bed early to get up for an early morning beach workout.

It’s time to end this enormous post because I doubt anyone has gotten this far anyway. I haven’t taken many pictures yet and it’s cloudy today so I might wait until tomorrow. I’ll add some soon. I’m in the office right now also writing a blog post for Omprakash and also an article for the AFS Returnee newsletter. I think it’s going to be a busy summer!