SURPRISE!!!!! I'M A LIZARD!

• Got to talk to my family early on Monday morning. That includes Pippin, Bartok, Diesel, M, D, and K. K flies to France tomorrow for her semester abroad, you can check out her blog ici (means here in French). In class today my team won a pack of cookies for highlighting "red flags" on the Human Development Index, if that gives you any idea about the difficulty level of studies in which I am enrolled. 
  
• Tuesdays are my favorite class day because I have 2 classes with the same teacher, Professor Q., who is really nice and genuinely wants us to have a great time and learn a lot. He advises us where to go on weekends to see what, and is just adorable--Stash and I both admitted that we have MAJOR platonic crushes on him, heehee:) I say that because he let us have our lecture outside and took us to get coffee when it rained on us. Also, I got mistaken for a local, which was fairly--no, EXTREMELY--exciting. Today (9/2) he mentioned an opportunity to teach English at ULatina because it has a bilingual policy. Every year the local's classes get progressively more English, from the 1st year up to 1/2 of the readings in one class can be in English until the 4th year when one entire class is taught in English. To fulfill this policy they'll need native English speakers to teach--I never thought of myself as a teacher, nor have I thought that I would enjoy it much, but what an opportunity, to live in Costa Rica--or to simply return to Costa Rica! Thanks for the deets, Prof Q. :)
  
• Nicknames are really big here, and are usually given in a loving and endearing manner as opposed to derogatory (like calling someone fatty or a gringo isn't seen as mean here!) Regardless of how long your ancestors have lived "away from the home country", and regardless if the home country is Japan, if you have slightly slanted eyes, you will get called "china" or "chino". Chicitico and Medio (my host... nephews, I suppose) have both started calling me "Muchacha" (literally: girl) P.N. and M.N. lovingly tease me about being small by calling me señorita or chica--little lady. I feel like I fit in:)
  
• Wednesday (9/3) I limped home on one shoe because the damn rain made the damn sidewalk tiles outside the damn University so damn slippery that my damn shoe just ripped in half. I was seriously afraid of catching a disease, and some guy hollered "Hola preciosa" (hey precious) as I walked by. Could he not have offered to carry me home on his moped or brilliant white steed??
  
• Thursday (9/4) held a great conversation with my host dad, but one in which I noticed some of the machisimo (chauvinism) we'd been told to look out for. The Costa Rican culture is funny in that women are professionally equal and can hold equal positions and receive equal pay as men without judgement. But socially they are considered....not exactly men's property or inferior to men, but something along those lines. But maybe many Costa Rican men's perceptions of themselves are just fairly inflated and the women are self-conscious (which leads to a lot of comments like "wow, what is she doing with HIM?") After our conversation, P.N. said in his adorably accented English "I like the way you are, Mica. Never change." 
  
• On Friday (9/5) I woke up early to catch the bus to Playa Nosara with some friends, but we waited on another friend (who never showed) and ended up missing the bus--luckily busses leave every few minutes to go somewhere, so we hit Playa Hermosa on the Pacific Coast. The mountainous drive was really beautiful out the windows, and the cutest baby was sitting in front of me. We arrived in Jacó, caught another bus at the "bus stop" (also known as Pizza Hut), and got dropped off in front of someone's house as Stash's seatmate told her we were at Playa Hermosa. After traipsing around we finally heard (or smelled or saw, or maybe all at once) the expansive black sand beach and knew we were in the right place. We stayed at Cabinas las Arenas, which I would definitely recommend to anyone, although Playa Hermosa is a world-renowned surf beach (for that reason I would recommend it to any single female.) The waves were huge, we played, drank and met Markel from Cuba, hit the weirdest bar I've ever been to (foozball-turned-DJ table, strobe light and no one dancing, just 7 guys sitting at the bar). We got back to the hotel and walked in on some girl just realizing that her car had gotten stolen from in front of the hotel. Eeeep.
  
• Saturday 9/6 found us swimming in the extremely strong current while Philippe surfed (in the waters in which 2 guys apparently died on Monday. Eeeep). After some beach time we hiked through the mountains on an old zipline trail and saw some great big spiders (don't worry LeGrand, I didn't take pictures!) and some adorable black and green poison-dart frogs, of which there are pictures. The main road gave us a show of monkeys, then a beautiful view of the beach from above. When we returned to the cabinas to frolic, we found out that aforementioned-girl's car had been found in the mountains burned to a crisp. Eeep. Nell thinks Markel was trying to buy me from Philippe by giving him beer and cigs every time he saw him; he  told me I was "una señorita muy bonita, más bonita que una floresita, una estrellita, una mariposita." (A beautiful young lady, prettier than a tiny flower, a tiny star, a tiny butterfly). I didn't fall for the Latin lover phrases, but geez Spanish is such a beautiful language. We watched the fútbol game at the owner's apartment, watched the sunset, then Philippe and I snuck into the hotel next door's pool to skinny dip. Shhhhh ;)
  
• All weekend since we were on a budget, Stash and I ate several meals just picking leaves off a huge head of cabbage that continually froze in our tiny refrigerator. The only other things in there were our beer and my blackberry jelly, which allowed Philippe and I eat cereal-and-jelly sandwiches----surprisingly delicious!
• Sunday we left Playa Hermosa in the afternoon, though I think Philippe seriously will live here someday like he said he wants to. While we waited for the taxi, a lizard popped out of the drainage grate in the restaurant and scared us all to death. When I arrived home, I ate an early afternoon dinner, then said I was going to shower and rest; my "rest" ended up lasting from 5:15 in the afternoon until 7 the next morning when my alarm went off!
  

Unanimously Voted the Best-Day-Ever on the Caribbean Coast

The following retro-post is from Week 2, August 25-31. I will try to make it semi-short but very sweet (who does this sound like? Yuk Yuk Yuk)

• My classes began on Monday the 25th, and my schedule is as follows (in case you are interested in knowing when I will NOT be online...any other time is up for grabs!) Monday 9-12 Poverty & Human Development in Latin America, 1:15-3:30 Spanish. Tuesday 9-12 Rural & Urban Dimensions of Sustainable Human Development, 1-4 Ecotourism, Conservation & Local Development. Wednesday occasional Experience Sharing Meeting from 9-12, then 2-5 Current Environmental Issues in Latin America. Thursday 1:15-3:30 Spanish again. 
• FYI, Costa Rica is in Central Standard Time, as it is so close to the Equator that sunrise and sunset vary very little (usually 6am and 6pm or earlier) and it thus does not "celebrate" Daylight Savings Time.
• During Spanish class we had a placement exam, where--despite having only taken 2 semesters in my life--I placed into the Intermediate II class, the highest level they teach in CIDH. My goal is (and all my teachers and my host dad assure me it will come to pass) to be fluent by the time I leave in December. I have a lot of work  to do, but am so grateful for the challenge of being in this class with people who have studied Spanish for 6 years!
•  Showering before breakfast EVERY DAY is a cultural norm here, so I will have to get used to that (laugh it up, Bryan and Hollis.) Today my mom enlightened me with "Um, I think it's a cultural norm in the States, too." Oh come on, you can hit the hippie harder than that!! HaHa:) 
• I hung out with my 4-year-old host nephew, we'll call him Chicitico. He and I played some hiding games, he introduced me to Alejandrito, his little turtle, whom he fed and allowed to walk on the couch. Then we took pictures of things, and he gave me a kiss on the cheek before we napped together on the couch. He is sort of spoiled, but gosh what I wouldn't give to have some sort of young person in the house.
• I found nearby internet access at McDonald's, where they serve a burger entitled the "McNifica" (English equivalent: The Magnificent). Oh how clever. On my way home I saw my first mice/rats, which got me pretty grossed out. They are the only thing that disgusts me...should I be posting this where the whole world can see? Anyway, you would know if you saw my reaction to some parts of Ratatouille....[shudder]
• I'm getting a ton of much-needed practice from speaking Spanish with my family. I'm progressing really quickly--soon I will be able to talk to people my age and maybe make some Costa Rican friends, hooray!!
• Weekend 2 was spent in Puerto Viejo, on the Caribbean Coast. We stayed at an awesome hostel (Rocking Js if you ever find yourself in the area), slept in hammocks on the beach, listened to live music (and our guy friends singing My Heart Will Go On), jumped on a trampoline in the rain while intoxicated (such a good idea, why hadn't we thought of that before?) then chilled on the beach with some speakers and stargazed--there are literally twice the amount of stars here than can be seen at my house in the country in the US. Wow. We were worried that the daily afternoon rain would bring cloud cover and hide the stars anywhere we went, but we were (thankfully!) wrong, at least for a little while. And we told ghost stories, to top it off. Ask Amanda about her ex-boyfriend's sister's ex-boyfriend who was Haitian. It'll freak you out.
• 8/30 was Unanimously voted the best day ever (you can see the photo album aquí). We bussed to Cahuita National Park. There we saw monkeys, snakes, leaf cutter ants, Creepy Springs (which just begged to have a horror film made about it), a sloth (the worst sloth ever because it was moving so "fast". Check him out yourself), dodged half-eaten fruit thrown at us by the monkeys, skinny dipped in the Caribbean at midday (how many people can claim that?), found out later that there were caimans in the water-haha! trekked through creepy looking lakes, then 2 km back to  the "town" of Cahuita where we ate a Caribbean dinner (no plantains, what?!) then (terrible) live music, an invitation to Bocas del Toro (the gringo band goes every 3 months, for obvious reasons), then some more tunes on the beach, some beer, and lots of bonding. 
• Slept fairly well the next few nights because I was not in a hammock---nor was that un-hammock full of sand when I woke up in the morning! Tried to go to San Ramón to meet up with Tom the Brit for the Cow Festival (my favorite animal!) but had no information whatsoever and no way to possess such info, so I had to forego the great fun times at San Ramón. But it meant less money spent and more time on the Caribbean, so I ain't complaining:)