Bread y Chocolate

Martes el 25 septiembre

So I have decided not to do all the reading for Sociology/Ecology this week. I am discovering that Tess is the only other one who does it, so this will be an experiment to see if I am more or less stupid for not having read it. I think this will leave me more time to do things that I actually care about, like applying for this fellowship program at UC Berkeley next summer. I am really excited about the possibility of getting free room and board and $1000 to study public policy and law and get a free LSAT or GRE course. I have no idea if I have any chance of getting into the program, but they say they’re looking for financially needy students who either come from underrepresented groups or have good experience working in diverse communities. WASP that I am, I am not underrepresented, but I’m hoping that the financially needy and experience with diversity quotients will kick in to my advantage. If nothing else, I think it would be a really good experience to help me figure out if I really want to go to law school. I feel much more productive editing my resumé (it was really exciting, by the way, to change my language skills to "Proficient in French and Spanish") and writing personal statements than I do reading; I think I will skim. Also, I have been rather enjoying this really weird book I borrowed from the ICADS paperback exchange shelf called "The Passion."

We had a substitute in Spanish today, which like in high school was at first was rather frustrating, but turned out to be helpful because we got to spend more time on the presentations we have to give tomorrow – six to eight minutes on an aspect of Costa Rican culture; I am discussing dance, and so I made a poster today of various feet doing the dance steps for tango, merengue, and salsa. I am unduly proud of the thing, it’s so pink and cheery.

Lunes el 24 setiembre

Nuestro viaje ayer fue muy largo, pero con desayuno otra vez en Bread and Chocolate, fue muy bueno. The only awkward moment was when I was talking to my Tico dad about animals I saw in Limon, he was like, "Monos? Pezes? Negros?" (Monkeys? Fish? Black people?) and then chuckled. It’s too bad that for such a nice man he says an awful lot of kind of inappropriate things.

Today was a magically good day. With no classes in the morning, I slept for some twelve hours and loved breakfast. Then I walked to ICADS to use the internet, which was great except that I got there and discovered I had left my power cord at home, so instead of the two or three hours I had planned to use it, I got one. But it was long enough to work on my blogs/Spanish diarios and clear out my e-mail, which was pretty full for it only being a day and a half since I checked it. I then spent an unreasonable amount of time stalking facebook and being annoyed that clearly it is early in the semester, because nobody is spending like five hours a day on facebook procrastinating. Finally I gave up and worked on my oral presentation on Costa Rican dance for Spanish class. That’s Wednesday, which makes me very nervous, but I’m hoping this irritating inclination I have to express myself in Spanglish will make the Spanish flow easily, since we aren’t supposed to read.

I also didn’t mention in my Spanish journal that Saturday night was very interesting for me. We decided to follow Sam in his adventures, which was actually a lot of fun. We met up with a bunch of people, including a guy from San Francisco who seemed like he was going to be a bro, the male equivalent of the California dumb blonde, but who turned out to have traveled all over the world and done a lot of cool stuff with his life. We also hung out with Vic, a really funny Finnish guy who told us about lizard dreams, the result of delaying one’s hangover for several days, and with whom we had fun with interlingual translations. Our waitress and cook were Swedish, and we met up with them later at Jhonny’s, and though I didn’t get to talk much to him, she was really a lot of fun in an infuriatingly gorgeous and worldly sort of way.

This next part is taken from my Spanish journal, so those of you who speak Spanish can see how atrocious my grammar is and those of you who don't can be impressed by my wordliness. Also, my ~s don't seem to work.

Sábado el 22 setiembre

Hay mucho tiempo que no he escrito, pero pasé unos días muy largos y interesantes. El jueves, fuimos en una playa de Punta Uva por la manana. Estaban hublado, pero la temperatura del agua estaba perfecto, no demaciado frío ni calienta como lunes. Habia dos otras personas en toda la playa, entonces teniamos mucho espacio por natar y descansarnos. Las olas estaban muy pequenas, pero estaba bueno por ver unos pezes y animales. Pude ver unos monos en los arboles!

Despues, Mateo y Sam (se llama hoy Samurai por los Bribris) y you fuimos en un restaurante buenisimo sin nadie pero con muy buen comida. Maqteo tuvo un argumento conla propriadora, y ahora no podemos vovler.

Por la tarde, hablamos con una director de una projecto por conservar los bosques. Su opinion fue muy interesante, pero despues de la playa el el sol, tuvi mucha dificultad a permanecer despierta.

Ayer por la manana, fuimos en la finca de Jose Rodriguez. Despues, Mateo estaba muy cascarrabia, un poco como un pequeno nino cansado.

Hoy a sido un día muy bueno. Dormé hasta las ocho y media, y Katie Roja y yo fuimos en un soda se llama Bread and Chocolate. Los huevos con salsa caribena, las papas, y la fruta fueron buenisimo, y el chocolate fue perfecto.

Despues de nuestras conferencias con Mateo y David sobre nuestros proyectos independientos, alquilamos bicicletas para volver en la playa de Punta Uva otra vez. Fue largo y caliente el viaje, pero you estoy muy feliz, si consada y covierta de arena.

Miércoles el 20 setiembre

Lo siento por mi escrito muy pequeno, pero cuando estaba escribiendo en la playa, conoci un hombre se llama Emanual, que me halaba por mucho minutos, y no pude terminar antes de tener que salir. Tambien, ayer fue un día muy largo. Fui mordita para una hormiga zompopa porque no llevaba mis botas porque son muy incomodas. Pero el almuerzo fue delicioso, y nadie mató David.

Hoy, fuimos en el reservo de los Bribris (un grupo de indigenos de las montaZas Talamancas). Damos un paseo largo en la bosque, donde los Bribris manejan los recursos sosteniblemente. Almorzamos sandwiches muy soborosos, y despues hablamos con dos hobres sobre el desarollo y el TLC.

Nada grande me mordió, y no conoci nadie en la playa, pero vise David cuando el llevó una culebra por demonstrarnos sus dientes.

Martes el 18 setiembre

Estoy en la bellisima playa en frente de nuestra casa de Limón, el Hotel Maritza de Puerto Viejo. A mis pies está un perro café y blanca, que me oló y decidó que soy asi bien para ser una campanera. Esta playa es muy protegido por una dota de tierra con muchos palmas y no mucho más, y pues el agua es muy tranquila. Ayer, tan temprano que estuvimous en Puerto Viejo, fuimos en la playa para natar.

Sábado el 15 setiembre

This week was an interesting week because it was very full, which means we had a lot of interesting experiences, and also that it was the week when a couple of people in our group reached their exhaustion, nervous breakdown, yelling at the professors, breaking point. Friday afternoon, everybody was so ready to go out and blow off some steam, and then Friday night when it came time for us to meet up to go out, the two who had been most gung-ho decided to stay in because they were sick with exhaustion. I hope they use this weekend to relax since we leave for the Atlantic coast Monday morning, and a week in close contact with people just on the edge of psychotic explosion will not be much fun.

The cool thing that’s this weekend is the Quinze, the celebration of Costa Rica’s independence. Yesterday, a dozen local fourth graders dressed in traditional clothes came and did traditional dances for us. They were not very good, but they were very cute and very proud. Then we ate really delicious typical food. When we walked home, the three of us stopped by the park in Curridabat where pretty much the whole town showed up to sing the national anthem and see the kid’s fulares, sort of like luminaria on sticks, many of which were very elaborately homemade. After dinner and watching the highschoolers go by our street drumming, Tess, Sarah, and I went to a bar in Curri that was very chill and very fun, and I enjoyed watching a couple of locals dancing on the tiny dance floor.

At the moment Haydee (my Tico mom) is asleep, and I have no idea where Mano (my Tico dad) is, but I’m very content.