Day 4 Festival

Ok, I am not promising that I will post something for every day I am here, and I am sure you don´t want me too...but I have some time now and am still excited by the neweness, so here is a post on day 4....today!

So, Saturday and Sunday are two of the main days of the festival, which ends tomorrow, so Marie and I were helpign run the booth. I helped set up and arrange a few things, but otherwise spent time working on my Spanish ...I am better with remembering to use full sentences now with the correct verb conjugation or tense about 80% of the time. Yay!

I did spend some time wandering aroudn the festival. I had a Churro, which are 10x better ehre than they are in Canada. I spoke to a nice older man who was very interested in what Canada was like and I saw a street clown performer who was doign an act with his dog. The crowd just kept growing for him...it was awesome...a lot of kids but also a lot of adults as well. I got some great pictures!

It reminded me a lot of the CNE today...complete with...yes you guessed it...funnell cake and fudge.

Lastly, I am in awe of the wood carvers who were making the most amazing fluid sculptures out of tree trunks. It is amazing watchign them carve out shapes with band saws and smooth edges with electric sanders...but with such a persice and light touch so that the wood int he end looks very fluid. I will post pictures....

That is it so far. I am going back to help work the both at the festival in a couple of hours.

Impressions of the day

• The pineapples here are so much more juicy, they make ours seem dried out...and I have watermelong with breakfast everyday.
• Also have beans everyday (smile)
• Yup, Costa Rican guys are still hot.

Day 3 Festival / Culture

Ok, so Day 3 was a lot less intimidating and depressing than Day 2 on the language front...I´ve been studyign at night and listening carefully and it is getting better. I even understood about 60 to 70% of what Enid was saying when I attended her lecture on health and destressing at the hospital.

The language thing is still tiring, but better.

On a more exciting level, I apparently arrived in San Ramon the week of their yearly festival...the park in the middle of town is full of people and vendors day and night. Enid and Marie have been really nice and introducing me to a lot of people. I still feel like a little bit of burdon on them, but am getting to know things better and becoming more independant.

I also used the Scotiabank today, which is located...drumroll...in the mall down the street form Enid´s house. It is so odd the first night we went by the mall but I would not have identified it at such, on the houtside it looks like a big peach building, not like a mall at all...but on the inside it is the same. And so are the teenagers who frequent it, I swear it is carbon copy for teenagers here, even the same music. I wander sometimes if Ixqui (Enid´s daughter) and her friend really knwo what some of the songs are sayign whent hey sing them. They don´t SPEAK much English from what I can gather....

The festival is awesome and everyone is sooo nice...there seems to be quite a range of cultures in San Ramon, but they all speak Spanish fluently and they all expect that I do too...before i open my mouth. MUSADE has a booth at the festival and many of the women who make the trinket´s it sells help run the booth. They are really a happy bunch on the outside.

Oh, I also registered for Spanish classes in San Jose, they are half day for 2 weeks and I start Tuesday....I actually, can´t wait!


Impressions of the Day

• So that was 6 people asking me if I was single....
• Uh...I think some of these women are goingt o try and set me up...
• Hmmm...Costa Rican guys are kinda cute...
• What, go to Nicraguwa with you sometime in September! HELL yes!
• Yes I want to take a trip to see Volcano Arenal on Monday.

Day 2 First Day at MUSADE

So...MUSADE (Mujeres Unidas en Salñud y Desarrollo) is the organization where i will be doing my placement. And althoguh Enid did show me the place the night I arrived I didn´t get to fully experience it until Day 2.

On first impression, I really like it, they seem to apply a lot of the social work principles that we talk abotu beign good in Canada. And I really do not sense a seperation between worker and service user here. The service users are all volunteers with the organizationa dn seem to have a strong sense of ownership. The staff, if you can identify them treat them like friends. I have so many questions about how that was achieved for Enid. Althoguh I syuspect some definitely has to do with the Costa Rican and more specifically San Ramon mentality.

There are psychologists, social workers, a daycare, a kitchen, a store out front where some women sell their artistic creations. That is the economic project Marie is here form Japan working with them on. And Enid´s office is a throughfare of human traffic, people coming in stopping sitting on one of the couches.

The set up is interesting, I can´t quite figure out if I would consider them well funded or not...they are fer functional uin their setup, not decorative at all...the couches are very old, but comfortable, for example...the tables very old, but the computer up to date. Very interesting...


Impressions of the Day...

• Shit they speak fast! ... and all at once!
• Working with a language that is not your own is very tiring.
• Hey cool, a theoretical descusion on Capitalism and Socialism in Spanish!

Arrival and first impressions!

Hi all!

Let me start by thanking people for posting comments, they make me very excited. And Kiana thanks for taking care of Sarah.

Ok...so....here is the traditional overview of my first few days ont his adventure.


Day 1

So...perhaps oddly and perhaps not I found the airport people in New Yorok, this time much nicer than the one in Pearson, and I once again passed through U.S. security and have the stamp in my passport to prove it. Yay!

The first plane ride was good, thanks to internet checking in I got a seat that was both a window seat and a plane seat. It was a small plane. And as an added bonus I got to listen in on an explanation as to why planes fly, and the New York landscape. I was seated behind and across the aisle form a mother and her two kids.

The second plane ride was great...I was seated in the bulkhead are, YAY extra leg space! Yay, pré check in! As an added bonus not only did I have the window, but the seat in between me and the person on the aisle was empty. She and I were extatic about this...it gave us new levels of room on a plane we hadn´t dreamed of...I think we had it better than First class. So all in all the flight was awesome. Plus the girl seated by me is a native of San Jose, the Costa Rican´capital and we exchanged emails so I already knew some one here.

So the flights were awesome. It made up for the fact that airport time when you are by yourself draaaaaaaaaaaaags like nothing. But hey I did get to reread all of The Glass Castle so alls good, and best of all my luggage arrived with me safe and sound, and I managed after a while to find Enid and her husband Louis who were picking me up in Costa Rica.

I will be staying with Enid (my supervisor) and Louis, who are very nice and the cutest couple, very socially minded as well and patient with my Spanish....or lack tehre of. (Yeah I discovered that I do not yet posess the speed of ears or tongue yet to converse hear)

Also met Marie, a girl form Japan, who is here working through a japanese organization at MUSADE as well, and is also staying with Enid. She has some English and is better able to speak Spanish slowly, so she is kind of my saving grace here, currently.


Other first Impressions...

• Wow, my room is bigger than I thought! I will adjust to the pink....somehow...
• Yay! Food is included in my rent!
• Costa Rican´s better understand¨Reduce, reuse, recycle than Canadians do...
• Costa Rican´s are really really nice and welcoming.
• Shit, they speak fast!
• Those flowers are pretty.

First Post

Hi all!

So this is my blog. Still in Canada, though.

This is where i will be in Costa Rica, a city called San Ramon in the Alajuela region.

Veale en Costa Rica! Hasta lluego!