Blogs from Heredia, Costa Rica, Central America Caribbean
Costa Rica - Take Three
Published: May 2nd 2012Central America Caribbean » Costa Rica » Heredia » Heredia
May 1st 2012
Autumn’s plan had been achieved; albeit frustratingly. It had been two years since I had done any engineering work and I thought it wise not to stay out of the game for too long. Teaching English is fun but it has never felt like a career choice - rather an excuse to live and work abroad. Constantly delayed start dates and an earlier than expected completion date, but too close to Christmas to get another job, meant I only worked for eight weeks out of the thirteen or so in between the Armenia, Georgia and Turkey trip and Christmas. I seemed to spend lots of time waiting around for decisions of others so I was determined to have less of that in 2012. There is never a lot of construction work through the winter in the ... read more
Costa Rica, Waterfall Gardens
Published: April 18th 2012Central America Caribbean » Costa Rica » Heredia
April 16th 2012
We arrived in Costa Rica early in the morning and had arranged with our driver to stop at the Plaza de la Cultura in San Jose before transfering to our hotel. We were disspaointed to find the National Theatre closed on Mondays but we were able to visit the Pre Columbian Gold Museum. The museum has thousands of different examples of Pre-Colombian gold artifacts. The pieces in the collection date from 500 BE to 1600 AD, when the new world was discovered by Christopher Columbus and the artifacts range from simple round earrings to intricately worked representations of local animals. We both agreed the museum was well worth visiting with many amazing artifacts. Before heading off to our hotel in the rainforest we had lunch at the Gran Hotel Costa Rica where we were interested to ... read more
Los geht's-Die ersten Tage
Published: April 11th 2012Central America Caribbean » Costa Rica » Heredia » Heredia
April 11th 2012
Holá!!! oder Buenos dias!!! Das sind zumindest zwei der wenigen Worte, die ich mittlerweile sogar aussprechen kann:-) Wir, das heißt Björn, Manuel (zwei Komilitonen von mir) und ich befinden uns gerade im "Hotel América" und warten auf unseren Mietwagen, der in ca. einer halben Stunde hier eintreffen sollte. Mit dem Mietwagen versuchen wir uns dann auf den Weg nach Puntarenas zu machen, um dort den restlichen Tag am Strand zu verbringen. Aber erstmal von vorne. Am 10.4. ging es um halb 11Uhr in Frankfurt am Flughafen los. Mit einem Zwischenstopp in Dallas, tausend Kontrollen auf den Flughäfen, sonst aber keine weiteren Schwierigkeiten, kamen wir mit 8 Stunden Zeitverschiebung um 19.10h am Aeropuerto "Juan Santamaria" an. Nun kam unsere erste Hürde. Wir wollten um Geld zu sparen mit dem Local-Bus nach Heredia fahren. Die Bushaltestation befand sich ... read more
March 30th 2012
Costa Rica – Jeff After a very comfortable (in comparison to the chicken buses in Nicaragua) eight hour bus ride from Rivas, Nicaragua to San Jose, Costa Rica we had crossed our first border. We immediately went to a familiar hostel in Heredia and reserved a room and headed to Barva to see my host family. We surprised my host parents as they were expecting us the following week-but the welcome the family offered made us feel like we were home. The weekend was full of family birthday parties. My host brother’s wife had a small get together at a local bar with some local live music. The rest of the Tico siblings joined in on the festivities that night as well as some aunts and uncles. Inevitability, Erin and I were asked to dance several ... read more
11/14/11- 11/20/11: Dancing, tamales and more dancing
Published: January 7th 2012Central America Caribbean » Costa Rica » Heredia
November 20th 2011
This week, Becky came over once again for a dance lesson from Jenny and Kendall, which once again was a blast. They are really teaching us a lot. I also got my student visa. Boy, that didn’t take long at all now, did it? I’m so mad I was told I needed one. What a waste of my time and money! After going to Panama, I got another 90 days in the country so I didn’t even need one! They should have made that clear. On Saturday, Becky came over again to make tamales with my tico family. Costa Rican tamales are absolutely delicious and I was really excited to be a part of another one of their Christmas traditions. (Tita Nena taught me how to make the Christmas arrangements/decorations she makes every year and I ... read more
November 11th 2011
Monday Monday started out as a regular school day but ended up being one of the best days I’ve had here. I went to Cuentos and Theatre class like I do every Monday, but then on my way I had a call and a text from Becky. She wanted to come over and go over the homework we had for our grammar class, since I had already done it. I told her I had to check with my mom, but that I thought it would be fine. I was just going to go home and do other homework, but having a friend over sounded like it would be a nice change of pace. My madre of course was more than happy to have Becky over. Becky and I worked on homework for a while. Madre was ... read more
School and Monteverde trip
Published: November 16th 2011Central America Caribbean » Costa Rica » HerediaNovember 6th 2011
Tuesday, I went to my grammar class even though it took everything in me to go. I am SO over school. However, that class has actually gotten a lot better since we had that talk with her—and since a lot of people dropped. Some classes just need to be kept small. After class, I went to volunteer again. Same old stuff. Although this time, he did have an art project prepared for day of the dead—so much GLITTER!!! After volunteering, I went home and napped again. I think my host family is worried about me, so I explained that I’ve been pretty stressed about school lately and that’s been affecting my sleep. Plus, I have been trying to get everything done during the week so I can travel on the weekends and that has not been ... read more
Halloween in Costa Rica--I made it happen
Published: November 16th 2011Central America Caribbean » Costa Rica » HerediaOctober 31st 2011
Monday/Halloween Waking up was HORRIBLE! I was EXHAUSTED from my weekend in Tamarindo and having to be at the University at 8AM to take a test sounded like a death sentence, but I went early so I could study a little bit more beforehand. I’m not sure how the test went. It was more complicated than I expected, but I put something for every question and don’t think I was WAY off on any of them. We’ll have to see. We got out early, and with that extra time, I decided NOT to go to my theatre class. I really needed a nap…badly… and I knew I wasn’t missing anything. I had a friend turn in my paper for me and that was that. I stopped at the supermarket to buy candy. I told my host-siblings, ... read more
October 23rd 2011
Monday We had Monday off for Día de las culturas. I did homework all day, since I really wasn’t able to the whole weekend like I planned and I got a good two pages knocked out of my four page paper. Afterward, I helped my host-brother Kendall study for his English test the next day. When I helped Fabian, his test score went from a 52% to a 71%. I would have liked to see him do even better, but he had the test the week I went to Panama, so even though we prepared a lot the week before, I feel like he forgot quite a bit by the time he had the test on Friday and he’s not motivated enough to study on his own. Kendall was a much more difficult student than Fabian. ... read more
Homework, La Birreria and.....CHURCH?!?!
Published: October 23rd 2011Central America Caribbean » Costa Rica » HerediaOctober 16th 2011
Saturday, the rain continued. I stayed in most of the day to do homework, but was having a really hard time focusing because the family was being really loud. Fed up, I decided to call it quits with my homework and play hide and seek. They had some cousins visiting that afternoon, younger kids, age 4 and 6 or something like that. They were cute, but they stayed a lot longer than everyone expected. By the time they left with their parents, it was well past the time we normally eat dinner. Nobody wanted to wait for madre to cook so we went to the fried chicken place on the corner and got some chicken. While we waited at the chicken place for the food to be ready, I played my host-brother, Fabian, in foosball. ... read more
