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A Bout of Homesickness

10:46 PM | Labels:

The first night, while my roommate was busy getting physically sick and dealing with stomach pains, I was busy with my own bout of homesickness. My roommate went to bed early to try and feel better and I was left awake alone, working on my blog. I was fine; I had no worries or qualms then. It started when I finished writing and it was time for me to get ready for bed.

I had left the light on in the bathroom for no logical reason to be completely honest. Our bathroom has a window leading outside which essentially works like those rigid hanging curtains some people have where you pull a string for them to turn left or right to let more or less light in from the outside. What this means is that it is pretty easy for a bug to get inside our bathroom, and therefore our room as well. Since it was nighttime, our light was one of the few the bugs could find, so fly to it they did. When I got into the bathroom there were at least 10 moths banging themselves against the uncovered light bulb, and more were flying in along with the occasional mosquito.

Occasionally they would settle down, but if I produced any sort of air current by moving, they would start buzzing in circles again. Not really a pleasant experience if an insect doesn't really fall under the category of being your favorite type of animal. As I moved through the bathroom, I stayed low to the ground, doing my best not to disturb the annoying moths.

When Julia and I arrived at the house, our host family showed us how to use the shower, but somehow, I just couldn't get it right. I could not get the water to be any warmer than freezing no matter how long I waited, or which way I twisted the knob. So at some point I just jumped in and out to douse myself in the Lake Michigan worthy water and repeated the process after I soaped up. I was cold, kind of miserable, and felt a lot like our chihuahua did after it poured rain and he was stuck outside. I kept thinking, “what went through my mind when I decided that Costa Rica was right for me?” and “I only have to jump in that shower twenty-eight more times, twenty-eight more times...”

Today, though, I made an effort to make adjustments. I avoided turning on the bathroom light completely if possible and asked for additional help in figuring out the shower. Hot water is possible! It works differently than in the United States. Here, showers are very much just a mechanism of cleaning yourself. They are not a place for relaxation or reflection. The way they warm the water is different as well. They use a sort of “on-demand” hot water system. Above the shower head is a sort of box. When one turns on the water, they also turn on the box. Water runs through this box before coming out of the shower. In this box is a set of coils that heat up. As water runs over them, the heat is transferred to them. As a result, the less water you use, the warmer the water, since it has more exposure to the coils. The more water you use, the colder the water, so it ends up being a sort of trade-off.

The moths ceased their spirals around my head, and the water ceased to be cold, all before the week has even begun.

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Posted by Cougs

Exploring

10:08 PM | Labels: ,

 That sea of gringos you saw walking up and down the streets of Heredia today? That was us. As we toured downtown Heredia, our 48 person group passed by the various parks and plazas of Costa Rica that I'm sure we will be extremely familiar with by next week. Of course, no one knew where they were within the first fifteen minutes, so figuring out our way around will be a trial and error process, as always. And if you're looking specifically at me, it'll be a “tell my friends where I need to go and have them lead me there” process.

There's a mall right outside of our university, complete with various stores that are similar to those in the United States, but with different names, as I believe I mentioned before. A walk down a single long street brings you to the center of the city. You must be careful as you walk, however. In order to accommodate for the endless rain that pours during the winter here (and it is currently winter), ditches are built between every road and sidewalk (where there is a sidewalk). Cars also have the right of way here as opposed to pedestrians, which is definitely something that will take some getting used to with some helps from the tugs on my shoulder from my friends.

At the center of the city, we found a park adjacent to a church, complete with street vendors and an incredible amount of greenery. There was also a plaza filled with statues. The statues are all by a single artist who was a drug addict and used art as a way of recovering. We also found a pool and a sports stadium which we are looking into to attend an event.

Towards the end of our day, we were driven down to San Jose to visit the San Jose campus of our university to have general orientation along with the ISA students. Along the way, we quickly discovered that Costa Rican ads are just not the same as those in America...

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Posted by Cougs

The Call of the Wild

8:34 PM | Labels:

As I walk across the patio to my room, a ruckus starts up from somewhere deeper in the garden. Endless barking and growling begins as I enter my room and continues nonstop until I leave. Even my host family occasionally comes out to try and quiet the chihuahua down. Don't blame it all on the 15-year-old dog though, its the lizard's fault too. He should probably quiet down from his post on the outside wall of my room. He just sounds like a giant cricket gone wrong. And the actual cricket chirping in the background? Well, I can deal with that.

After lunch, our host parents took Julia and me for a ride around the city to sort of get a feel for the place and how it worked and where things were. We stopped at a few markets and at the local mall, across the road from my university. The mall was pretty amusing. It's just like our mall back home, but with different names for the shops. Jamba Juice turns into “Tangerines”, and Claire's turns into “Oops!” (more fitting I think).

We spent some time before dinner just sitting on the porch with our host dad getting to know each other. At dinner Julia and I presented the gifts we brought in thanks for hosting us. Julia started to feel really under the weather at this point. It had been a long day of little sleep and lots of stress, since she'd never been out of the country before and was experiencing major culture shock. She went to sleep early to snap out of her condition for the upcoming day.

This is much more of a car city than it is a walking city, and yet driving here is almost impossible. According to our host parents, we live 15 minutes by foot from the university, and when I look back on how we drove there, it seems about right. Our host parents have also been really helpful with Spanish, teaching us new words and helping us figure out how to speak correctly if we mess up the grammar and such. Tomorrow will be the first day the whole group meets up, so it'll be interesting to see what people's home stay experiences have been like thus far.

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Posted by Cougs

Images of Home

7:48 PM | Labels:

They have the same exact crock pot as us. It has all the vegetables drawn around the pure white that makes up its walls and the exact same knob to turn to choose how much you want the crock pot to heat the food. And the desk. I'm sitting here, writing at this desk, this same desk I've used throughout my childhood, though now its moved to the basement in my house. It has the same little shelves to the right for my books which I've already filled up and it has that same white desktop that gets dirty so easily. And some of the people I've met. A good portion of them know my friends. A couple of them know one of my friends from tennis camp a few years ago. Another whole portion of the group know a few of the people I went to Guanajuato with last year. I thought I left home, but I guess home follows you.

I haven't met the whole group that's here yet, as we all got to the airport at different times, but as a mini group, we all seemed to get along pretty well. We have a pair of twins and a set of quadruplets, who somehow managed to accidentally coordinate their outfits with dark blue shirts and tan shorts that morning. We all got bussed from the airport to the University where we will be studying to get picked up by our host families.

Julia, my roommate, had a flight that came in at about the same time as me, so we met our families together. Our dad was the one who greeted us first. He was extremely enthusiastic, insisting on carrying our luggage and just overall being excited to have us. Melissa, the oldest daughter of the family, also met us. She was genuinely interested in us, and was welcoming and willing to spend extra time explaining how the keys to the house worked once we got to home.

The mother and the other two siblings, both my age, are also extremely kind and all excited to have us. Once we got home, they toured us around the house and showed us our room. The house is small, yet big at the same time. Our room is separate from the house, and requires a walk outside to get to. We have our own bathroom (which is pretty big), which is probably 60% the size of our bedroom. Our beds are bunk beds and we have a desk in the room and a little end table with an extra chair. Needless to say, our room is pretty close quarters. I don't how though, but everything fits. My roommate, who over packed even more than I did, had no trouble finding a place for all her things, and I had no trouble finding a place for mine. Once we finished unpacking, the room felt oddly big. So the consensus I guess would be that it is big enough to fit us comfortably and yet is still very cozy.

Once we got to our beds, we found that we each have our own set of keys – a luxury I remember a lot of my peers in Guanajuato struggled without. The roommates had to constantly hang out together or if they didn't once they got home, one of them wouldn't be able to get in the house since the other had the keys. The amount of keys we have to work through is pretty impressive as well – six keys to get from the outside of the house to our rooms.

What caught my eye is that inside the house, there is a random hole in the middle. Its essentially a square area that is just cut out of the house and is open to the air. In this spot they've decorated and planted and placed a turtle inside, so now its a turtle's home. However the turtle has no name, and it is now up to Julia and me to come up with one. This would be easier if the default list of names that we come up with weren't American names...

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Posted by Cougs

First Impressions

12:12 AM | Labels:


This is definitely going to be different from last year. Just looking at the google maps street view of where I'm going to live tells me that this experience is going to be completely new. Last year on my trip to Guanajuato, Mexico, houses were built on top of each other. If two people held hands and stood in the middle of the street, their hands could touch the walls of the houses on either side, no problem. There were four stop signs in the whole mountain city and no street lights. Cars weren't really common because there simply weren't many streets onto which they fit. The contrast to the photo provided by google maps is definitely evident.

Instead of a cozy town, I will be going into one with lots of breathing room. Breathing room that provides space to think. I'm glad to see that the houses still are a variety of colors, just as in Mexico. I will be living in a household with a chihuahua and two "host" siblings - one a year older than me, and one younger. My roommate's name is Julia, and we will be attending classes at the local university in, from my understanding, Spanish language and Costa Rican history. We go to school at some point after noon from Monday through Thursday and do excursions and trips over the three day weekend. We explore museums and do mini trips Monday through Thursday.

We also have a really big group this year. Last year, the list of people coming fit onto one sheet of paper, while this year it takes up two. In result, a lot of host families will be hosting three or four students instead of the regular two. A couple of the excursions that I know we will be taking involve white water rafting and zip lining. This year will be a very nature-based trip, as opposed to last years which had a lot of focus on cities.

The Costa Rica program used to take place in San Jose, but they moved it this year to Heredia. Learning Programs International (LPI) tries to keep its programs in small cities so that students will be safe and can find their way around. To my knowledge, Costa Rica as a whole has been growing, so its possible that San Jose has gotten too big or the program decided that Heredia would simply better serve their interests.

Regardless, here's to a great trip!

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Posted by Cougs
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