Top Ten and Not Top Ten

I am stealing this next post from Sports Center. Growing up with two brothers Sports Center was always on over and over again so I have come to know the line up. So here it is, my Top Ten of Costa Rica and my Not Top Ten of Costa Rica.

Top Ten

1. Traveling on the weekends. I don’t think there will ever be another time in my life where I will be deciding if I want to zip line through the rainforest or lay on the beach.
2. My Host Family. Maricruz has been nothing but wonderful to us. She has cooked, cleaned and loved us like her own daughters.
3. The Students. I think I had some of the greatest students and I had so much fun with them. Every day I came home with stories of how they made me laugh or something funny they did. I am REALLY going to miss them.
4. The Teachers. We have gotten to know some really amazing people here and I am going to miss seeing them every day.
5. Wednesday Movies. Almost every Wednesday we went to the Multiplaza and watched a movie for the low price of 1300 colones ($2.50). Movies here are about a month behind the US, but they were all new to us and that is where we learned bad words in Spanish because of the subtitles. It actually came in handy at school, because the kids mostly speak in Spanish and they don’t think we can understand them.
6. The Easy Going Lifestyle. These past three months I have definitely learned how to take it easy. Some might call it lazy, but I prefer the term easy going. The people here live such simple lives and even when things go wrong it is no big deal. I just love that no one is uptight or worried about anything.
7. Getting Tan. Although I have probably significantly raised my chances of skin cancer since being here, I at least look a little better than the pale girl who arrived here.
8. My Favorite Stores.
1. La Bruja-Our one stop convenience store that is conveniently located right by our house. When we need a coke, ice cream or snacks we always head there and it quickly became one of our favorite places here.
2. Hiper Mas-It is literally a Costa Rican Wal-Mart. Right when you get inside you see those smiley faces with the roll back prices, it makes me feel like I am back in Stillwater.
9. The Weather. Every day I wake up to sunshine and about 80-degree weather. I hate the cold, so I was glad to have escaped all the snow and ice storms back home this winter.
10. Our New Friend, The Barber. Every day when I walk home from the gym, I see a very nice 70-year-old man that runs the local barber. Seriously, the cutest man that always says hello and have a good day. I look forward to seeing him after every workout and knowing that he is the only man that will not whistle, yell or awkwardly stare at me.

There are many more things that I could say I love about Costa Rica, but those are my Top Ten. I am sure right after I post this I will think of 10 better things that I could have put, but for now this is what I have.

Not Top Ten

1. Public Transportation. If I never get on another bus again, it will be too soon. On the long trips where we had assigned seats, we almost always got the Rosa Parks treatment where we were on the very back of the bus. Mix that with no air conditioning, bumpy roads and you have a very sick Kristen.
2. Pancakes. I once considered them a treat when I finished running a race, but now I have them every other day for breakfast. Some mornings I just choke them down to hold me over until lunch. What I wouldn’t do for a little Special K in the morning.
3. San Jose. What a dump that city is. I thought parts of Dallas were bad, but you haven’t seen bad until you have been to San Jose. Everyone looks like they want to kill you, people beg you for money and there is trash everywhere.
4. The Language Barrier. I have learned a lot of Spanish since being here, but there are still times when it is hard. I can’t wait to come home and be able to understand everyone around me.
5. Food Prices. A lot of things here are exported from the US, which just means it is really expensive. We made the mistake of going to Applebees once and spent too much on food that was not worth it. It is sad but I have spent more money on food than anything, but then again food is one of my favorite things in this world, so I am not too upset.
6. Dog and Cat Fights. Every day I hear at least one catfight or dogfight outside my window. I thought I was a dog person, but I am realizing I only like my dogs. There are so many stray animals here and it’s sad to see how skinny they are and pitiful looking. Obviously, Bob Barker’s controlling the pet population message has not gotten to Costa Rica.
7. Barbed Wire and Fences. Although I know it’s normal to have barbed wire around your house so people don’t come in is normal here, I still find it very sad. It is sad that to feel safe you have to put barbed wire around your house and huge iron gates. Every where I go I have to have the mind set that I could potentially get robbed, definitely something I have taken for granted on the mean streets of Flower Mound and Stillwater.
8. Crazy Tico Drivers-I have never in my life seen such crazy drivers. Every street sign is more of a suggestion than a law. You don’t have to stop if it’s not necessary even though the light is red. I know I could never survive driving here, but hopefully I will remember how to drive when I get home.
9. Ants. The house I live in is infested with ants, along with every other house in Costa Rica. Ants in my bed, in my closet, in my food, in my water…Ants everywhere. As I sit here and type there are ants crawling on my legs. Apparently, Raid is unheard of here.
10. Personal Space. There is no such thing as a personal bubble in Costa Rica. This is not necessarily a bad thing; I just don’t care for close talkers, I have probably become one now.

There it is, the Top Ten and the Not Top Ten. And for those of you keeping count, I will be home THIS SATURDAY!! I can't wait to see everyone!!

Wait, Did you Say Air Conditioning?

Spontaneous: that is one word that could sum up this weekend perfectly. We didn’t really have a plan the whole weekend except on Friday when we knew where we would be staying. We hopped on a bus Friday night and headed for Liberia. We didn’t really know what to expect when we got there but right by the bus stop I spotted McDonalds golden arches so I was ecstatic and dreaming of a McPollo and some papas fritas. It’s amazing at home I don’t really like McDonalds, but I crave it here. We found our hotel, which is by far the sickest place we have stayed since we have been here. Our room consisted of two bunk beds and nothing else, the only thing we could do was laugh at how horrible of a place it was. There were bugs, spiders and my favorite was the writing on the wall that said, “Citizen K was here.” We were all troopers and managed to survive.

The next day we woke up and decided we wanted to get far away from this place, so we went to the bus stop found a bus going to the beach and jumped on.
We got to Flamingo Beach in Guanacaste and then had to figure out where to stay. We spotted an awesome resort and knew we wouldn’t be able to afford it but tried to sweet talk the guy anyway. I tried to get him down to a low price and failed, so we were off to find another place to stay. We then walked and found another resort, proceeded to sweet talk the lady and stayed at an amazing resort with air conditioning, cable and pools! The place was amazing and it felt like Heaven compared to the place we stayed the night before. We swam in the pools Saturday and Sunday where I got the worst sun burn that I have got since being here. I swear I put on 60 SPF, but I guess it washed off in the water. It was pretty bad and the kids at school called me Miss Tomato all day. Oh how I love being made fun of by 7th graders. Then Sunday after hanging out by the pool we got on the bus for six hours and made our way back home. We got back pretty late and were exhausted, so much for a nice relaxing weekend. But it was well worth it!
Monday our professor from OSU came to observe us teach and everything went well. I am now done with observations, and only have two weeks left of teaching. Hopefully my last week here will be really easy since I won’t be teaching anymore and I can just hang out and help the kids with their projects.

The past few days...

These pictures are one night playing Uno with Oscar. He is four years old and probably one of my favorite people in all of Costa Rica. The other is from the beginning of our canyoning tour.

Wow, it’s been a while. I have been really busy with teaching and things to turn in for OSU. I am happy to say that I am turning in my last thing for OSU on Monday, and being a good student I am already done! I can’t explain how relieved I am to get my 65 page teacher work sample done!

Since it has been a little while, I will catch you up on the last few days. Last weekend we went to Turrialba, which was a beautiful town that not too many tourists know about. We don’t consider ourselves tourists since we have been here for 10 weeks now, but as soon as we open our mouths and speak our broken Spanish, it is pretty obvious. We stayed there for one night and on Saturday morning we went on a canyoning tour. We got to rappel down waterfalls and take the zipline to go from waterfall to waterfall. I had definitely never done anything like it before and we all thoroughly enjoyed it! I had only been rappelling once in my life, which was in middle school and I cried the whole time down the mountain. At first I was not too thrilled about facing my fears, but after the first waterfall slipping, sliding, and falling I enjoyed it. My legs were beat up and my hands were bleeding from the ropes when we were done, but it was one of my favorite things we have done here. Then we finished with a little lunch, rice and beans of course and headed back to our hotel. We just hung out and played spades while it rained and then went and walked around the town. We struck gold at a store called El Rey, it was basically like a dollar store. I bought some candy bars to try, some were gross and some were amazing. It was a nice and relaxing weekend where we all had a good time and got to hang out.
This week at school the kids have been doing presentations over projects they have done. After sitting through 120 of those, I was pretty wiped out and I have realized I never want to put myself through that again. Some were good and some I could barely keep my eyes open. Next week will be my last week actually teaching and then I have one week to help out and I am home! It’s weird that this adventure is coming to an end, but I am definitely ready to come home. I have enjoyed my time here, but like Dorothy said, “there is no place like home.” Until then I am going to enjoy my last few days here and make the most of my time left. Tonight we are heading to Liberia and going on some more adventures! We are staying in a hotel that costs 8 dollars a night, so Lord knows what that will be like, however it can’t be any worse than some places we have been. Oh the joys of being a poor college student, but soon I will be a wealthy teacher…sike.

Enjoy your weekend!

Panama...Here We Come!

Finally after counting down the days Spring Break finally got here, but as soon as I was relieved for a break it is coming to an end. For the week the group decided to travel to Panama, the real Panama, not Panama Florida (some people who I will not mention their names were a little confused as to why we would go there).

Here is a brief run down of our days in Panama

Friday-We ran out of school as quick as the kids and made it home for dinner and packed our bags for Panama. That night we got on our bus at 11:00 and were anything but excited for 16 hours on a bus. Luckily, I thought ahead and bought some sleeping pills. They recommend you take 2 so I took 4 pills and was awake a total of one hour on that bus! There were some consequences though because when we got to the border and had to wait four hours to cross I felt like I was going to pass out from exhaustion the entire time.

Saturday-Not a very exciting day but we survived the bus ride, everyone successfully crossed the border and we made it to Panama City late that afternoon. Panama uses U.S. dollars, is pretty modern, and their public buses are old school buses that look like they went on Pimp My Ride. That night we went to a Panamanian baseball game. I rooted for the Los Santos, they wore orange, OSU is orange, it only made sense to root for them.

Sunday-We ventured out into the city and saw the “tourist spots” of the new and old part of Panama City. It was hot, really hot so after we cultured ourselves and got a little lunch we went back to our hostel to hang out. Then that night we went to some horse races in the area. It definitely was not a tourist place because at one point we could not find our group that came in the other taxi and we went around asking if they had seen any gringos (white people) and they would point us in the right direction. It was basically a place where people just hang out eat and drink, basically tailgating.

Monday-You can’t go to Panama and not see the Panama Canal, so we went. I don’t know what I expected but it just looked like Lewisville Lake water in a river. No actually I did learn a lot. Here are a few facts for those of you who care…
1. 14,000 boats go through the Canal every year.
2. The big ships cost up to $250,000 to go through. Wow, that’s a lot of dough.
3. It takes a ship 8 hours to go through the canal.
4. The US gave Panama full control of the canal December 31, 2000. Because of this Panama City has become the fastest growing city in the Americas and the USA has gotten poor (and many other reasons, but that is not necessary to talk about). You are welcome Panama.
5. Jimmy Carter signed the treaty to give over the Canal to Panama in 1977. He seemed to be a hero in Panama. Our taxi driver asked if we knew him once he found out were from the US.
Anyways, after going to the Canal we did not have anything else planned for the day so we decided to walk and see where the sidewalk took us. Thankfully, it led us to a casino where I gambled for the first time in my life and fell in love. I put in $5 to a slot machine and won $23. I was so excited and pictured myself winning millions so I continued to play. Things didn’t really turn out like I wished and I lost it all. Oh well 5 bucks well spent.

Tuesday-We decided it was finally time to check out the Panama beaches! We researched and found this awesome beach where we were going to learn to surf and hang out for the day. Apparently the Internet lies because we got there only to see the ugliest beach I have ever see, but don’t worry you have to cross a river that is only waist deep to get to it. Awesome. So we went with plan B and went to another beach 15 minutes down the road. As the taxi driver drops us off he then tells us good luck that taxis don’t run down here so we will have to walk to the highway, but it’s only about a 30-minute walk. So this beach was just as ugly, but no river to cross. We walk and walk to find a decent spot to put our stuff and that is where we spotted this huge condo with a pool. So basically we snuck in there and used their pool for the day. Even though the day started out pretty horrible we found this great condo and ate McDonalds so it ended up being a good day!

Wednesday-Our last day. We had already ventured everywhere in Panama City so we just decided to sleep in, go to the mall and see a movie. We saw Sueno Posible or The Blind Side. It was a nice relaxing day before we got on the bus that night for another 16-hour adventure home.

Panama was a lot of fun and I am glad I got to see another country while I am down here. We met a lot of people from other parts of the US and Europe at our hostel, so it was really fun talking with them. I liked Panama, but I am glad to be back “home” in Costa Rica. Now time to catch up on some sleep and nurse my sun burn from the pool today. It’s been a rough day and tomorrow even worse, a day to the beach. Life is rough.

Happy Good Friday!

Puerto Viejo

This week I am starting week #8 in Costa Rica, pretty crazy. Teaching has been going really well, I am really enjoying getting to know the kids more and more everyday. However, I am really ready for a break. Next week is our Spring Break and I could not be more excited!

Enough about school, here is an update of our weekend. Friday we went to a restaurant to watch our beloved OSU Cowboys play in the NCAA tournament. I am sure as all of you saw that they lost which was heartbreaking but it was still fun to watch. After shedding a few tears we headed home to get some much needed sleep because we had to wake up at 4:30 the next morning to catch our 6:00 bus to the beach. Saturday morning a man picked us up to go to San Jose and the drive should have taken around 20 minutes, but somehow took close to an hour. The man had no idea where to go even though we gave very precise instructions. There were numerous times he would just hit his brakes and stop in the middle of the road or highway. Transportation here is always an adventure.
We finally traveled to the Atlantic coast this weekend to Puerto Viejo. It is a small Caribbean town with a long stretch of beaches. We rented bikes for the day and rode all along the coast to three different beaches. It was really fun and some of the best waves I have ever seen. The water was crystal clear and each beach had different types of sand, from black to tan to almost white. One thing that is really great about the beaches here is that they are never crowded and in most places condos and hotels cannot be built on the beach so it is just palm trees, sand and water. That night we went out to eat to a great restaurant that served Caribbean food so it was a little sweeter than the typical Costa Rican food.
Sunday morning we woke up and went back to the beach to enjoy it for a few hours before we had to leave. We then packed everything up; made ourselves ham sandwiches for the bus and headed to the bus stop. And this is where we got our lesson in patience. Our bus showed up, and only a certain number of people were allowed to get on. Our group of five didn’t make the cut, but we were told that the next bus would be coming in 10 minutes. No big deal right? Well, an hour and a half later our bus finally showed up. Needless to say we were all very frustrated and ready to get home.
Even though we were all frustrated with the bus system, it was still a great weekend. Puerto Viejo was our favorite beach we have been so far. Only one week until Spring Break and then we will be packing our bags for Panama! I can’t wait and I hope this week flies by…

We're Half Way There - Livin' on a Prayer

It is official; I am halfway done with my time in Costa Rica! There still are days that I can’t believe I am living in a different country. I have learned so much and I know I still have a lot to learn and to experience. Tonight I was actually able to have a conversation with my house mom tonight! It was very minimal, but very exciting for me. She is the sweetest lady and treats me like I am her own daughter and even though there is a language barrier I love her so much. I guess actions do speak louder than words. Basically, I love it here most days because each day is a new day!
Mostly I love coming to school to see all the kids and teach them. I was surprised by how friendly the kids are. It is almost like I am back at Camp War Eagle where I am the kid’s counselor and just their friend. They tease me about numerous things; my personal favorite is their attempt to hook me up with one of the teachers here so I will not go back to the states. They have my wedding all planned out down to who will sing, be the preacher and the flower girl. Honestly, it is quite embarrassing but a funny story to tell. They also try to teach me Spanish and laugh at me when I mess up.

Every day is a different day and I never know how the kids are going to act or what they will do next. I can truthfully say that I love teaching, which is good since I am about to graduate and probably do it for a good portion of my life. I remember back in the day when I would teach my stuffed animals and my dream was to become a teacher and now it is finally here. (That sounds cheesy, I know) It is weird this whole growing up thing and has really been on my mind lately. (Without a TV and a car to go anywhere I have a lot of time to think now) It’s crazy and exciting to think that in just a few months I will be on my own and starting the rest of my life. I am not scared, because I am definitely looking forward to it, I just can’t wrap my mind around the fact that I am not going to be a student any longer. It is the only profession I have known besides the glory days at Sonic and other minimum wage jobs I have had.

Here is also a verse I found that has really been on my mind lately…
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. John 14:27 (NIV)

I know this post is not about an exciting adventure I have been on but I have been a little bored at school so I thought I would just type out my thoughts and share them. Miss and love you all!

A Weekend with the Parents

This weekend my parents came and visited me and one word can describe the weekend, HOT. But it was still great and my teacher was nice enough to let me skip school on Friday so I could spend more time with them! My parents arrived on Thursday and my teacher took me to surprise them at the airport. After about an hour of standing outside, I spotted my parents in the glass window. Unfortunately they did not spot me so I was the crazy American waving my arms outside. Finally though they saw me and looked pretty surprised. That night they got to meet some of the other student teachers from OSU and my house mom. Although my parents do not speak Spanish and my house mom does not speak English, they were all happy to meet each other.

On Friday we went to the Poás Volcano, which is the 2nd largest active crater in the world. It was good to see, but once we hiked and reached the top we stood there for about 2 minutes and said “Cool, ready to go?” I guess we are the type of people who appreciate nature quickly. Then we decided to hike some more and saw the lagoon that the volcano created. After appreciating some nature we drove to Jaco beach where we stayed for weekend. This weekend I definitely did not have to “rough it” like our group does to save our pennies. I got my own bedroom, air conditioning and a hot shower! Having the parents around can be a perk. Saturday my Dad and I did a canopy tour and were able to ride in a “tropical limousine”. That is what the guys that worked there called it, but it was an old truck and we rode in the bed of it. The canopy tour was very fun and we zip lined on a mountain right next to the beach. There were some pretty amazing views of the beach up there. Afterwards, we met up with my mom who was too scared to go and spent the day on the beach. Sunday morning we woke up and drove to Manuel Antonio, which is a national park with beaches inside. It was really beautiful with white sand beaches, really blue water and a rainforest. After being beach bums we decided to walk through the forest where on a trail came face to face with 4 monkeys. Thank goodness because my dad gave me a very hard time because he had not seen a monkey the whole trip. Of course we took too many pictures and then feeling accomplished left the park. We found a nice little café where I was able to eat my first turkey sandwich since being here. For those who don’t know, turkey sandwiches are one of my favorite things in the world and there is virtually no turkey here, so I sure was excited.

It was a great weekend to spend with my parents and like every weekend it went by way too fast. Now the countdown is on to Semana Santa a.k.a Spring Break, two weeks! I sure am jealous that everyone is on Spring Break now, so I hope y’all have a great time!