San Jose, pt. 1: Settling in

Thursday 3/10 we left Palo Verde and arrived in San Jose after about five hours on a bus. First we stopped at the OTS office at the University of Costa Rica. There we split up into two smaller buses based on where our host familys' houses were located, and loaded our luggage in the order in which we were going to be dropped off so that it would be easier to unload. When we left the OTS office, we said goodbye to our professors and TA, who we wouldn't see again until our next field station! We took our two smaller buses to the Costa Rican Language Academy, where we would be taking classes for the next two weeks, for orientation in the afternoon. We receieved some information about the school, a check for lunch money for the next two weeks (since the OTS program is supposed to include food, but our host families only serve us breakfast and dinner), a list of everyone's host family's phone numbers, and a map with everyone's houses marked on it. The OTS staff had also told the CRLA directors that it was Tom's birthday, so at the end of orientation they brought him a cake and we all sang happy birthday. Our last activity was oral evaluations of our Spanish skills so that the professors could place us into the appropriate level classes. Then we got back into our buses and headed out to our homestays!

Celebrating Tom's 21st (again) before splitting up for the first time since January!

At the beginning of the program I was nervous about the homestay, worrying that it would be awkward or uncomfortable. However, after three weeks of being unfomfortable in Palo Verde and half a semester of time with amazingly nice Costa RIcans, I was actually looking forward to my homestay. I was the seventh person to be dropped off in my bus, so I got to see six other people's houses from the street before I arrived at mine. My host mom greeted me with a hug and a kiss and helped me carry my things upstairs, since the main living space of the house is on the second floor. She showed me my room (which has a private bathroom!), where I left my things while we talked a bit and she showed me the rest of the house. I found out a few minutes after arriving that I also had a host sister, another student at CRLA who had been living with my host parents for two and a half months already. Her name is Mary, and she's from the suburbs of Chicago, and was studying Spanish in her year off after high school. We ate dinner together and then sat in the living room talking for a bit. I was not in the best shape that day... I was tired from lack of sleep the night before, still dehydrated from my sunburn, had started peeling all over my legs and back, and noticed earlier in the day that my right ankle was swollen for no reason. (I hadn't hurt it or gotten stung by anything; it was just retaining water, and it stayed like that for three days before the swelling started going down. No one could figure out what was causing it. Our best guess was that it had something to do with being dehydrated because of my sunburn.) I ended up going to sleep around 9 pm, and it felt like a huge luxury to have a whole room to myself with a real mattress, after sleeping on bunk beds in shared rooms since I'd arrived in Costa Rica.

The next morning I had my first day of school at CRLA, and after showering and eating breakfast with my host mom, Mary showed me the bus stop and which buses to take to get to school. We also met up with Maggie, who lived right accross the street from me; my host mom's daughter is in her thirties and has her own family in which she hosts students from CRLA. So technically I think that made me Maggie's host aunt. Haha. All three of us took the bus to school together, and on the way there we discovered that sereral other OTS students were on the same bus route as us. When we got to CRLA we split up into our classes, which had 2-4 students in each class. I was placed in an advanced class with Nate, Ashley, and Matt, and our professor was young graduate of the Universidad de Costa Rica named Rebeca. We reviewed the course syllabus, and then started studying some grammar. All four of us in my class had taken Spaish before, but not practiced it in at least two years, so we were all in need of similar refreshers, which worked out nicely. A bunch of us went to a soda (what they call small restaurants here in CR) for lunch that Rebeca recommended. In the afternoon we discussed our goals for the class and then had relatively unstructured conversation for the rest of the day. I really liked the setup of the class immediately, because it was based around strengthening speaking skills which were really rusty for me. Rebeca also told us about some activities that were going on in San Jose that weekend, and what were some cool places in the city that we should check out. Spanish classes at CRLA were definitely off to a good start.

After school, we went to the bank to cash our checks and then took the bus home for dinner. Maria, my host mom, had cooked a delicious meal of chalupas with tuna, and Mary and I each ate several. Mary had told me the day before that Maria is an excellent cook, and I was qucikly learning that this was true. After dinner we had plans to meet up with the whole OTS group at Mall San Pedro, which was a few blocks away from CRLA so we all knew how to get there by bus. We attempted to find a bar together, but also discovered how difficult it is to keep a group of 28 people together in a college town without cellphones. We unintentionally split up into several smaller groups within the first 15 minutes of finding the Universidad de Costa Rica, which is where our professors had advised us to go to look for bars. The group I was in ended up making it to Caccio's, which was the bar we were looking for in the first place, but most people had already dispersed and gone elsewhere by the time we found it. We hung out there for a while and unexpectedly saw the German jaguar researcher that we had met at Las Alturas a month earlier, which was random. Later we moved on to another bar where we thought some of our friends had gone into, but they were already gone. Everyone was still tired from traveling to San Jose and slightly agitated about managing our large group of people, so we ended up leaving the second bar pretty quickly and taking taxis back to our houses.

Luckily, the weekend got much better from there! Maggie and I took the bus together in the morning to meet Tessa, Rukhshaha, and Francesca at the mall. From there we took a bus into downtown San Jose to check out an art festival that Rebeca had told my Spanish class about the day before. With a little help from my map, we found our way to the series of parks north of city center where the festival was taking place. We started in Parque Morazan, which had live music performances all day long. When we were there, we saw the Banda de San Jose which played traditional Latin dance music. A lot of the older people in the audience danced together to the music, which was adorable to watch. After we hung out there for a while, we walked through Parque Espana, which was filled with booths selling used books. I bought a copy of Love in a time of Cholera in Spanish, which was an ambitious purchase but an exciting one. We then walked through the Ministry of Culture, which was having some theatrical performances for children at the time. Finally we arrived at Parque Nacional, which was filled with art pieces made of recycled materials, craft booths, and food stalls. We saw a crazy parade or people in giant masks, live storytelling, music, and even a dunk tank. The festival was amazing and we were really glad that we had the opportunity to be in San Jose during it.

The bandshell in Parque Morazan, where we saw several musical performances

For lunch we headed down to the Avenida Central. Rukhshana was really craving hamburgers after eating rice and beans for so long, so we found a place called Hamburger Factory and decided to eat there. I thought the burgers were just OK, but everyone else seemed pretty happy to be eating typical US food for a day. 

My enthusiasm may not have rivaled Rukhshana's, but the fries were good!

 While looking for a place to eat we passed by an artisan market, and decided to return there after lunch. I was in desperate need of a purse, since I had only brought my backpack to Costa Rica with me and had nothing smaller to carry my wallet in. I found a bag for 4,000 colones ($8), and for the first time didn't have to rely on someone else to carry my things for me! Leaving the market we ran into Stephanie and Liz, who had just visited the National Museum and were headed to the Jade Museum. We wanted to go back to the Minsitry of Culture to go to an African dance workshop, but we told them were we were going and decided to meet up after we had finished our respective activites. The dance workshop actually turned out to be a performance, so we didn't get to learn any African dance. However, the performance was AMAZING and we had a really fun time watching it anyway. Liz and Stephanie found us just as the show was ending, and we decided to look for the National Theater, which my teacher had told me was the most beautiful building in all of San Jose. We got some mango ice cream on the way, and then found it relatively easily. Although it's one of the fanciest buildings in the city, tickets to shows were only 5,000 colones ($10) each, so we all bought tickets to see a Flamenco performance that night at 8 pm. We headed home to eat dinner and get changed, and then met back at the theater at 7:30. The theater was beautifully lit up and all of the people were dressed nicely. After looking around for a bit we went to the entrance and handed our tickets, but were told that we had to go around the back. Rebeca had told me in class that when the theater was first built in the 1800s, they made a seperate entrance for unmarried women and divorcees, since they had essentially the same social status as prostitutes and were too frowned upon to go through the main entrance. Today, the only way to get to the upper level of seats is through that entrance, which we affectionally started calling the prostitute entrance. We went through the back and found our seats with little difficulty, and enjoyed a show of decent dancing and excellent flamenco music. 

Foolishly trying to enter through the main lobby, which is beautiful!

In our rightful place at the back entrance

Inside the theater! I got in trouble for taking pictures.

We were expecting a more traditional flamenco, but it was actually like a fusion with modern dance, and the story was a little difficult to follow in Spanish, but for $10 it was a cool experience to have. After the show, we considered trying to find some of our friends who had gone out to a bar, but decided instead to go home and go to bed early.

The next morning we went met for lunch in the Avenida Central, and then went back to the festival. Rather than trying to see and do a lot, like we had the day before, we hung out in Parque Morazan, listening to music and chatting. We did make a point to check out the graffiti exhibition, though, which had been a work in progress throughout the weekend with several artists contributing to different parts of a blank white wall. It was amazing how much they had done in just two days!

Some of my favorite graffiti pieces at the festival

We lingered in town until the late afternoon, and then headed back to our houses to have dinner with our host families. I spent the night writing my first essay for Spanish class, which was due Monday morning. I also got to see pictures from a rafting trip Mary had taken that weekend, which looked awesome! Overall my first weekend in San Jose was excellent, and when I went to bed (at 9 pm again... I am beginning to notice a trend, haha) I was excited to start my first full week of Spanish classes and get to know the city better.