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Published: October 2nd 2010
choir
the picture from Friday of some of the group :)Well sorry for the delay...It's crazy around here. Well so to catch up on what's been happening, I had my first two choir concerts this weekend. The first was Friday, and the trick was I had to go get my uniform before hand. The choir has a lot of uniforms for different things. We have a white t-shirt, blue polo, and red polo that all were provided as well as a blue and white choir robe. However we also have long sleeved black shirts as the other uniform. Well needless to say I didnt bring any of my choir clothes down here so I had to buy black shoes, black socks, black belt, black pants, black shirt... and that's where the interesting part came in. As you can imagine the sizes in USA do not correlate to the sizes in the Costa Rican stores. The fact is it's very hard to shop for long sleeve shirts here because I'm tall with long arms and broad shoulders.
So first I went to go buy some pants and I asked for my regular waist size (32) and well let's just say I couldnt even try to get them to close once I
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the first forest tried them on (think about half a foot before that was possible) and so we had to experiment until I finally found the right size (I honestly think I wore the poor salesgirl out). Then shoes weren't terrible because they had US sizes but the trick was to find shoes that werent too narrow. The fiasco came when I went to buy the long sleeved shirts. I found some that fit for $40 but they were already dirty and one looked like it had mildew growing on it (so I didnt want to buy it) and so I went to another store to try more on. Well I saw shirts from Stafford (c) and thought "Oh I know this brand, and I know my size..." so I just bought a shirt and ran off to class. Well I got to class a little early so I tried it on....the sleeves were halfway up to my elbow even though it was a large. I tried to take it back but I couldnt get my money back they said (so that was frustrating); instead I could exchange the shirt or upgrade. Well they didnt have any that fit me in Stafford and
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us trying to get into the forest all of them had really short sleeves, and I didnt want to get another shirt after I had paid that much already. Finally I saw Oscar de la Renta shirts and tried one on...it fit! The catch to that was it was a lot more expensive....so instead of paying $40 for a shirt I paid $75.
Then I got home and I realized that my pants needed to be hemmed so I spent the entire day before the concert trying to hem my pants. I did a good job on them (thanks mom for teaching me) however the process always takes hours for me to do. Finally it came time for the first concert. It was horrible acoustics (we couldnt hear very well and it kept echoing and bouncing off and reverberating) but we limped through (not the best by far). That was the choir concert where we had 2 others coming and singing with us in San Ramon and it was a lot of fun to listen to them as well. The fun part came when the director of the choir spoke about me for 5 minutes telling about the "gringo' who discovered the choir by walking around
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listening to directions when we get to the research station campus...and I think she said something along the lines of "and that's the true spirit of choir" in response about me asking to sing with them and joining. It was so difficult even though I had my music because the songs were not in the order she told us so I had no idea what songs were coming when...and I didnt know words to songs to be able to sing without...haha I ended up lip syncing to one of the songs because there was the small group I was in and I couldnt find the right music.
Saturday my Tropical Ecology class went to "Cerro de la Muerte" aka "Mountain of Death." It was a lot of fun, but very cold and rainy. On the way up we stopped at different forests to view the ecosystems, and then we arrived at the main camp. We put our stuff away and then started hiking up this steep and muddy trail (where a lot of people kept slipping and falling) to view the different plants and trees (think about having to stop every foot and discuss new plants in the pouring rain). Needless to say it was not my favorite hike,
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the start of the dreaded rainy hike but we walked and walked until we reached the treeline and then on our way back we hiked down this streambed where we ended up having to climb over a barbed wire fence (where one person slipped while trying and about died...jk jk). It was an interesting hike but extremely wet...and with wetness came major cold. The temperature that day was like 50 max.
For the night there was no heat inside our room so basically the whole class climbed into 5 beds pushed together and snuggled for warmth underneath 3 blankets per person. It was definitely a colder night but it turned out to be kind of funny when a mouse climbed onto one of my friends and scared him so much that he broke the bed and fell completely out of it! The next day it was still downpouring but we went up to the top of the mountain to do experiments of what kinds of plants and characteristics of those plants were on different faces of the mountain after wind conditions and climatic challenges. It was really windy and the rain soaked us and a lot of people couldnt feel their fingers...sometimes the clouds would part
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about halfway up the mountain for a couple minutes and you could see the seas and a lot of towns from where we were on the mountains but that was pretty rare.
On the way back we stopped and viewed a massive hummingbird garden where we were able to interact with probably about 30 or more hummingbirds and it was simply amazing. You could get them to land on your fingers as they would come to drink nectar and I had so many sitting on branches or hovering right in front of me for the whole time we were there. It was awe inspiring and beautiful. Finally we visited a swamp where we saw a lot of different variations of the mountainous plants that had adapted to live in the boggy conditions.
I should add that the whole time I had been carrying around my choir uniform because I had a concert Sunday as well. On the bus ride back I had to completely change all of my clothes and try to clean myself up as best I could (and make sure I smell great) so I could go sing in the concert. I got dropped off in Naranjo and met up with
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the beauty of the hike as we get closer the choir wearing the black pants, white t-shirt and the choir robes. I found the group and we ventured into the great cathedral (with great acoustics too!) to get ready.
Well my friend needed to use the bathroom right before we were going to sing (and while the other choir was singing) and the cathedral's bathrooms were closed for some reason, so we had to go running to find bathrooms that were open. Let me tell you that running in full length choir robes is hard even when you hike them up to go running...but we found a bathroom and made it back just in time to sing! We had the perfect timing! The concert was great and we had a lot of fun doing everything, however after the concert was over we didnt get to eat due to there not being enough food for us and for the choir from San Jose.
So a bunch of us ended up taking a bus back to San Ramon (think 20) and on the way back the whole time we started singing different songs. At first we were singing a lot of choir songs that we knew and later we
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on the way down...see the stream? ventured into pop songs and disney songs too. What was so funny was that this one guy was really getting into our music and was dancing in the isle while we were singing and a lot of people were clapping and tapping their feet too! It was simply a blast and we had fun during the 40 minute bus ride back to San Ramon. We couldnt stop laughing and cracking each other up.
Also we have been experiencing major effects from a lot of tropical storms. It has been nonstop raining for 5 days straight and we have water everywhere. Water has crept into my room from the balcony and I'm getting a big draft from my door. Half my floor is wet and I've stuffed towels under the door to prevent more water and wind from getting in. All of my shoes are soaked due to having to walk a lot in the rain and my umbrella is starting to break from the wind too lol. I knew it was getting interesting when the rain was so bad it was coming into the wallpaper of my room too and creating bubbles between the wallpaper and the wall. I
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the main hut as it gets dark...we stayed in a different one a little ways away punctured them and water ran down. I just hope it dries out soon
This coming weekend I have more rehearsals and a choir concert so I'll talk more then 😊
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