Music: Makano & Monica - Su Nombre en Mi Cuaderno
All right, let's talk about my first "real" week here. And by real, I mean the first week that didn't feel like an awesome vacation, but instead involved long classes and taking the bus everywhere. Okay, so Saturday was still kind of vacation-y, but whatever.
Monday:
I went and swam laps at the pool with Kelsey. It was nice to swim again, but as Kelsey swims for the team at AU, she put me to shame, ha. The only not nice thing about the pool is that there are constantly large, hairy old men also swimming laps, and like all old Costa Rican men, they seem to think it's their god-given right to stare at gringas. The fact that we were in swimsuits only made it worse, of course.
After the pool, Kelsey and I found a pupuseria near UNA, but, horror of horrors, the pupusas weren't going to be ready until four o'clock. I wanted to die inside a little, but the lady informed me that it was only like that on Mondays, since they aren't open on Sundays to prep.
I had my first class at 5:00 - The History of Women in Costa Rica and Latin America. I'm pretty sure this class is going to be my favorite. The professor is very accommodating to the gringas in the class - she doesn't mind when one of us asks her to explain something three times over. She's also a feminist "from the highest hair on her head to the calluses on the bottom of her foot" (her words, not mine). She reminds me a lot of Amy M. back home, ha. Also, the readings seem interesting - the one I read for class today was called "The Creation of the Patriarchy", and it discussed how women were actually forced into a subservient role long before the creation of social castes. Good stuff (the reading, I mean, not the forced subservience of women).
Tuesday:
I had class all day, from 8:00 AM straight through to 8:20 PM. Okay, not quite that late, but only because the prof for the last class let us go early, being the first day and all. As if twelve hours of class wasn't bad enough, it's only THREE classes. Here in Costa Rica, classes are only taught once a week, usually in three hour blocks. My classes for the day are Advanced Spanish (8:00 - 12:00), The Costa Rican Cultural Identity (1:00-3:30), and Costa Rican Spanish (5:00 - 8:20). Okay, so I do have a couple of breaks, but that doesn't mean that Tuesdays will not constantly make me want to drop out of school and go work as a guide for a canopy tour.
Wednesday:
DAY OFF!!! God knows I deserve it after these Tuesdays I'm going to have. Honestly, I didn't do anything interesting on Wednesday - I only went with Sofia while she ran errands for a couple of hours, in order to get out of the house for a while. We had delicious gelatto though.
Thursday:
Last school day for the week. I had Advanced Spanish again, from 8:00-11:00 AM. It's my only class that meets twice a week, and that's only because it's through the IFSA-Butler program and not through UNA. We watched the most awful movie, an Argentinean film called "El Asadito." This movie was actually the WORST movie I have ever seen. Released in 2000, but filmed in black and white, this movie has terrible lighting, little action and even less plot. It's just a bunch of fat, old, hairy, shirtless Argentinean men sitting around for 18 hours, arguing about nothing. Of course, I couldn't actually tell you what they were arguing about for about half of the movie, because this particular Argentinean dialect happens to be completely unintelligible. The half I did understand came from IMDB and an indie film discussion forum. Apparently, there are people who actually really liked this movie. I hope they're all sterile.
Moving on. From 2:00-5:00, I have Cultural and Development in Costa Rica and Latin America. Well, it's technically from 2:00 to 5:00, but the prof likes to end around 4:15, which is nice. We already got assigned group projects in the class, but fortunately my group isn't until the ninth week of school. We've got a presentation on the presence of the US in Latin America. It's going to be easy, as long as I remember not to go off on a tirade against United Fruit company, ha.
Thursday night, a bunch of girls from the program got together for drinks at Heredia's most popular bar, Bulevar, to celebrate having survived the first week of classes (nobody, and I mean nobody, has class on Fridays). I was excited for us to order a beer tower, but somehow, the beer taps for draught beer weren't working, so beer towers were unavailable. It was upsetting. However, there was a "6 bottles of Imperial for ¢5000" promotion, so it was okay in the end. We didn't stay out too late though, because a bunch of people were leaving Friday morning to go to the surf competition in Jaco.
Friday:
A mostly lazy day. I did go into Heredia; 5 other girls and myself met up with a girl who works for a tourism company. She got us a discount on a canopy tour - 2 people for $50. We made reservations to go Saturday at 13:00. After that, Corin and I wandered around Heredia for a couple of hours, just poking our heads into stores and eating ice cream and chatting. Like I said though, it was a lazy day, so when I went home around 6, that was it for the day.
Saturday:
Sarah M., Sarah L., Meghan, Jen, Liz, and I went on the canopy tour. It's in the province of Cartago, outside a town called La Carpintera. The tour has eleven platforms (so ten ziplines) and 2 rappel lines (one of which is a 90 foot drop - sooo awesome). The hike up the mountain was kind of grueling, and I think we all thought we were on the brink of death (except for Liz, who followed two steps behind the guide and didn't need to take a break the whole way up). But we finally made it to the top, thank god. The first lines were pretty easy, but poor Meghan was really scared, and ended up going across attached to one of the guides on about 7 or 8 of the lines. As for me, well, I think it may have been one of the coolest things I've ever done. I was all ready to let go of the line entirely and slide across upside down, ha. I did let go once for a half second, but Leo (the main guide) gave me hell for it when I got to the next platform, so I didn't do it again. The guides were both really nice, and at the same time very bad ass. Leo is in his mid-forties, and has been doing this his whole life. He has a degree in engineering, and actually designed all of the lines. As a side note, he has a ponytail. Ranier, his assistant, is nineteen, and a bit of a practical joker. He thought it was great fun to let Liz and I fall almost all the way down the 90 foot rappel line, both of us shrieking the whole way down. Of course, he and Leo both knew 100% what they were doing, so they stopped us with about ten feet to go. The last line was probably the most awesome, as it was the longest and the fastest. I was upset that it was over, ha. But it was totally worth the $25 dollars. Hell, I would've paid double that, it was a great tour. If you're reading this and are interested, send me a comment and I'll get you the info for the company.
Also, we saw a sloth. And that was it for my week, ha. The end.
Pura Vida,
Sarah
New Words for the week:
rifa - raffle
eje - axis
juicio - trial
soborno - bribe
tocador - dresser
cajón - drawer
estantería - shelves
apretarse - to make out
abatido - miserable
sicario - hitman/thug
mora - blackberry
defenestrar - to throw out the window
bucal - oral (as in mouths - adjective)
lesbica - lesbian (adjective)
travestis - transvestites
borroso - blurry
nuboso - cloudy
capa - film
genero - gender/genre
rollos de genero - gender roles
peripecia - incident
afán - zeal
coterraneos - compatriots
susodicho - above-mentioned
indagar - investigate
P.S. - Congratulations to my host Abuelo and Abuela on their fiftieth anniversary, and also to my own parents on their twenty-eighth!!! Love you Mom and Dad!!!
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