Blogs from San Ramon, Alajuela, Costa Rica, Central America Caribbean

VIDEO - On February 21, 2011, Francisco attempted to burn a small strip of weeds along the perimeter of someone's property. Here is a VIDEO of the outcome of that attempt.... read more

I absolutely hate workers in my house here in CR. And I hate it even more when I don't know them. I have to stay here day after day, watching them and checking the work every fifteen minutes to make sure they don't do something ridiculous with the bathroom tile. They made a major screw up in the first hour - one that had me change my design rather than tear down 45 tiles. He said he measured wrong. At least he took responsibility for it, which is rare. And who knows what's going on in their savage minds as they wander in my house looking at the butterfly that is hanging from the ceiling and the big wooden iguana that is mounted on the wall. I hid my keyboard the second day. I watch as ... read more

Wow, this is just crazy...here we are with less than 2 weeks of class left and the final week of exams and we are done. This past week I had my final exam in tropical ecology and it was a doozy. It was an open book exam and we could use any of our notes. Out of 10 or 12 questions we had to answer 7 of them, and we had three hours to complete them in short essay format. The questions were really specific and not all the answers were in the books and lectures which was frustrating...however its done! All of us walked out of the exam feeling like our brains had been turned into mush and pulverized. That exam was on Thursday, and the following day we had a huge fiesta with all ... read more

Well, it's almost time to head for the sunny paradise of Costa Rica. According to news and resident reports, the rains down there this rainy season have been monumental and catastrophic to the roads. The Inter American highway that goes past my house at Butterfly has been closed often, and even now has a temporary 'Bailey' bridge that allows one lane at a time. And this is the main road that connects North America and South America. The rainy season ends this month, so I'm heading down next week to see if I can handle the traffic backups. So far, the ladrones have not returned to Butterfly, or, if they have, the presence of Gary and Loren have kept their activities in check. But, so as not to disappoint you, I attached an email I got ... read more

Quince de Septiembre is independence day in Costa Rica I believe it is the same in Mexico and some other central American countries are around the same time of the year even though they gained independence in different years. Apparently September was a bad month for the Spanish empire September 14th is the eve of independence day aswell as the birthday of many special people in my life. • On the 14th I went to an independence day festival on campus where all the gringo’s got paired with a tico buddy who is an English student, and we ate food talked and watched a group of señior citizen women dance with the typical swinging dresses. After boxing the tico and gringo buddies met up at the central church and then walked around the town which is ... read more

Happy Independence Day! Wow so today I went to a parade that was all the schools within a 40 minute commute. We had about 15 middle schools and elementary schools and then about 10 high schools that all participated in the parade that lasted approximately 3.5 hours. Every school prepared either a float that they were on or a dance/ music/ flag and marching routine that they would perform for the crowd. It was really hot and I felt so bad for the kids because they were sweating so much (even with the parade water people distributing water and drinks to them). It was a really cool sight the night before too! Tradition has it that the night before Independence Day, a woman found out the news from a torch relay that was coming from Guatemala ... read more

It has been About a week and a half since I waved good bye to my parents and Pia, and turned the corner to go through security at SFO. I had a 7pm flight to Denver and Midnight flight with other students to San Jose arriving at 5 am where we would wait until noon foor the rest of the students, and a ride to San Ramón. Emotionally; deciding to spend 4-9 months in a foreign country away from all the people I love, and away of life that I am accustomed to was a very difficult decision. Rationally I knew that even if I did not have a good time in Costa Rica, looking back on this experience I would only feel that I had gained an incredible amount of perspective and skill from the ... read more