In which I attempt to recover from my externally-imposed blogging slump...
With pictures!
This is my school! There's little point in photographing the dull classrooms themselves, so I figured I'll just revel in the fact that coconuts grow at my school.
And these are some friends (and some people I don't know)!
More visual revelations to come tomorrow, and an account of my volcano trip! (Preview: it's not all that exciting.)
My bad...
I've been caught with neither time nor photos nor wise words. My camera batteries are dead, so I have no photos of the glorious UPeace campus, and the bus out of the curious park/coffee plantation the campus rests in leaves in a few short moments. I promise to be back with oodles of pictures in one, possibly two days!
Living in poverty...
La Casa Fiorella is a wondrously spacious and comfortable gated cluster of four or five houses on the edges of Ciudad Colon, itself at the fringes of San Jose, Costa Rica's capital. The proprietor, Fiorella di Leone, is a delightful pre-school teacher who lives there with her extended family, including her mother, several siblings, as-yet-uncounted nieces and nephews, five students (myself among them) a cheerful middle-aged Rottweiler named Greta, and two caged parrots whose habit of shrieking "HOLA!" at my approach disguises their startling bellicosity.
Set in a high-ceilinged, 3-bedroom house with spotless tile floors, my room is small but comfortable, with a little cable TV and the squeakiest bed in the Western world. The corrugated tin roof roars with the daily monsoons. I've been quite happy there so far. The complex, as is apparently common in Costa Rica, has only cold running water, and the hot showers are provided by a terrifying electrical contraption built into the showerhead, transgressing against every maxim I've ever heard about live wires and water. I've yet to test the good-sized swimming pool just outside, but it looks quite inviting.
More to follow on many topics... including my campus, my host family, and my clumsy Spanish.
No longer airborne...
Sometime in the last few years of air travel, I developed the peculiar habit of sleeping through takeoff. It happens almost every time I catch a plane: I lumber aboard, overburdened with carry-on, stow everything, buckle into my miniscule seat, and then wake up midway to my destination. I don't really remember the last time I was conscious for takeoff... it's a little weird.
LAX is a nightmare, a filthy two-dimensional parody of an airport, terminals all in a long and cruel line designed to maximize walking and frustrate all travellers. Last time I flew through there, I was 8 years old, and thoroughly entranced by the experience. Now, nearly 20 years later, I simply lumbered through badly-labelled check-in desks and security gates manned by teenage screeners, paid $9.50 US for a microscopic "Wolfgang Puck Express" pepperoni pizza, and waited out my three-hour sentence in the world's most horribly designed airport. Maybe I've just been spoiled by the cleanliness, friendliness and efficiency of wonderful YVR.
Maybe not - Costa Rica's tiny airport is also a delightfully clean and speedy place, sparkling new, and I was almost sorry to leave. I was shocked by the transition from the A/C cool of the baggage terminal to the rainforest steam of San Jose's outskirts. My cabbie was a supremely friendly local with a thirst for insane speed and a preternatural instinct for evading potholes and onrushing poultry trucks. I spend the short ride staring at the gorgeous passing mountains, squat but looming with their proximity, slightly cloud-obscured but richly green and inviting. Perhaps exploring one is a worthy way to spend my weekend.
Next up: New home!
It begins anew...
Thus ends my long hiatus from the blogosphere. Thanks to Eva for the blog
name. Not surprisingly, this site will recount my adventures (limited though they are likely to be) as a student in Costa Rica. Photos will abound, since the internet is far more functional here than in Botswana.
More to follow...
