patt0248
NickP Joined: August 13th 2008
Logged in: October 4th 2009
Logged in: October 4th 2009
Travel Blog Posts
No they're not sleeping.
After going through all of my blogs I was disappointed to see that I had not written much about my experience at Sistema Educativo Saint Clare and I apologize. It is, after all, the reason I came here and has been just as much an adventure as surfing in Nicaragua or eating the innards of a cow. My student teaching experience in Costa Rica has been amazing and I don’t think I could have asked for a better cooperating teacher or group of students. The staff at school was patient and welcoming. The school community feels much more like a family here than what I have experienced in the United States. It is impossible for me to tell you everything about my time in school so I will post some pictures that I have taken over ... read more
Iguana at our Hostel
Ah, now I can leave happy. I wanted to see a monkey before I came home and I would have stayed until I saw one. A few weekends ago Steve and I headed to the Pacific coast to a small town called Quepos. Quepos is well known for its ability to provide incredible sport fishing opportunities but is also becoming a more populated area due to its proximity to Manuel Antonio. This area should be on your top 10 places to visit in Costa Rica. The beaches are fantastic and the Manuel Antonio National Park is phenomenal. Once we got to Quepos we looked at our map to see where our hostel was at and then began to hike. The area is actually quite hilly and it was pretty humid that day. We ended up making ... read more
Orchids
I apologize that I haven’t written a blog in a while. I have been quite busy with getting work done that I have forgotten to write. I only have a few days left here so I am going to try to write about my last little adventures. I am sorry if these blogs are a little bit on the short side. The weekend after Steve and I went to Memo’s, we were lucky enough to be able to go to another farm. We were invited my Lilliana, the French teacher at Saint Clare, and her husband to go to their farm in San Carlos. San Carlos is a beautiful region sitting in the hills near Volcan Arenal, Costa Rica’s most popular and active volcano. Lilliana and her husband, Luis Diego, own a grass-fed cattle ranch for ... read more
Photo 1
Ah Turrialba, the land of farms, friends, and oddly enough, the Rawlings factory that produced the weapon Barry Bonds used to hit his record breaking home run. The weekend following our trip to Nicaragua, Steve and I made our way to nearby Turrialba to visit my good friend Guillermo (Memo) who I had met while harvesting the Earth’s bounty at the Bean. It is partly due to his stories of Costa Rica and the friendship we built that I find myself in this truly “Rich” country. Early on Saturday morning, we hopped on the bus in Cartago to start our hour-long ride to Turrialba where we were met by Memo, his girlfriend Adriana, and their beautiful baby boy Andres. The town of Turrialba sits in a valley surrounded by beautiful mountains and rolling hills with endless ... read more
First Day
Well it turns out that you can´t stay in one country for more than 90 days without having to pay some sort of a fine. So to get around this Steve, Ali, and I all took a long weekend to travel to neighbooring Nicaragua for a few days so we could renew our visas and then come back to Costa Rica with a fresh 90 days. We decided to go to a small fishing community called San Juan Del Sur that is becoming known for its beautiful beaches and its great surfing. We caught a taxi on Thursday from our house to San Jose at 3:00 in the morning so we could make it to the bus stop for our 5:00am departure. The buses that we were taking were run by a company called Transnica and ... read more
Garden in Cartago
Recently Steve and I made our way to the nearby town of Cartago in hopes of catching a bus to the top of Volcan Irazu, which is the tallest active volcano in Costa Rica. Everything was going great. We made it to Cartago early with a map of the town in hand and found the bus stop for Irazu or at least what the map said was the bus to Irazu. Turns out the map was wrong and we missed the bus but on the upside the top of the volcano was cloudy that day and we probably wouldn´t have seen much anyway. So we decided to head to the Basílica de Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles (Our Lady of the Angels Basilica). The Basilica was built in 1639, as the story goes, at the location ... read more
Bug Nets
Well its still winter here in Costa Rica which means one thing… RAIN! It has been raining just about every day down here. The mornings are usually beautiful and just like clockwork, everyday, as I leave school to walk home the sky lets go and it pours. However, we still find time to enjoy the country. A few weekends ago we, Travis, Steve, Ali, and I, made our way to the Caribbean beach town of Puerto Viejo. We first left Tres Rios bright and early at 4:30 am so we could get to San Jose to catch the 6:00 am bus. The bus ride was about four hours to the port town of Limon and then another bumpy hour south to Puerto Viejo. When we got into PV we had to find a play to stay ... read more
Iglesia San Jose de Orosi
It seems to be one of the great laws of the universe that nothing goes as planned. This is not always a bad thing as I have learned in the past and was reminded of a couple weekends ago. The plan was this: Travis and I were going to meet up with a group of teachers from Saint Clare on Friday night to cook dinner and to present a slideshow of pictures from Travis’ trip to the top of Chirripo, Costa Rica’s highest peak at 12,530 ft. Summiting Chirripo is an event that many Costa Ricans spend months training for and then must enter a lottery to obtain permits. So Travis and I went to the market after school to pick up the groceries we were going to use to make the food. Everything was going ... read more
Butterfly
Well, it’s been just about two weeks since I arrived here in Costa Rica and everything is going great. I have been enjoying my time at Saint Clare very much. I spent most of my classroom time last week observing my two cooperating teachers, Alexandra and Rebecca. Both were originally biologists who found that they enjoyed teaching science just as much as they like doing research. They are both excellent teachers as well as great mentors. Today was my first day of teaching and it was somewhat on the fly. Alexandra wasn’t feeling well so she had me take over the class. It was so much fun. The students here often have a lot of energy, some might say too much, but if you can harness that energy the classroom just lights up. I had all ... read more
My Room
And so the trip begins. I arrived in San Jose, Costa Rica on Tuesday, August 19th. The day started early with an alarm clock at 3:30am so that I could get everything ready for my 7:00 flight. The first flight to Charlotte, NC went really well as I slept for all but the last half hour of it. I then had to catch a flight from Charlotte to San Jose, but before we could board the plane we had to from a huge line to check passports. I thought I would be standing there forever when the lady at the podium called my name over the loud speaker. "Great, what did I do now." Apparently a woman and her children were placed in seperate seats so they asked if I would switch to another seat. Of ... read more
