Installment number 3 in Carol's language school adventure. More delicious food and one cool volcano.

Hey everyone,

Well this week was off to a rough start. I don’t know if it is the food (room temperature mayo, spoiled eggs…need I give more examples?) or I caught some sort of virus, but I got really sick at the end of last week. I was throwing up and had a fever. When I got back from class, where I came down with my illness, I asked my mom to cook me something plain for the next few meals…her idea of plain and “good for someone who is throwing up” is apparently, fried bologna slices with an egg cheese sauce, fried bananas, beef stir fry, and of coarse, beans and rice. I’m pretty sure her food prolonged my illness.

The weekend looked up though when I got to go to Rincon de la Viejo, the oldest active volcano in the Guanacaste region of Costa Rica. I think it was the most amazing experience I have had here thus far. We hiked through the tropical rainforest. We crossed suspension bridges, and forded two rivers. I got to see a waterfall and there were about 10 different boiling mud pots, where the heat of the volcano has seeped up through the ground surrounding the volcano and creates boiling water, mud, or just a steam vent. We even got to swing on vines like Tarzan. The wildlife was the most impressive thing though, tons of beautiful mushrooms, all sorts of birds, a pisote (I don’t know what the English translation of a pisote is, but I don’t think it matters because we don’t have them at home). Personally though I thought the leaf-cutter ants were the best. The follow each other in long lines for ever and ever, each carrying a little piece of cut leaf back to the nest. I wanted to take some home to put them into my ant farm. :) Oh and I saw a termites nest (picture below, the big black ball in the tree).

This week I am going to have classes in the morning with all the other students after pleading my case to the director, and arranging with the teachers that they could teach me in the morning. Today Isabel was my teacher. She is my host mom’s sister. At this point in my lessons we don’t use books anymore because I am considered “fluent” which isn’t true, but we just have conversations in class, instead of actual lessons, I like it better this way.

Anyways, today Isabel told me all about how the Devil is coming to Nicoya. The devil lives in a bar on the south side of town called Mambo. Nury, my mom, has forbidden me to go there. Isabel swears that the devil came to the Mambo in the form or a hansom man dressed in all black. He came in the bar and bought everyone a drink and paid the bartender, and then disappeared. When the bartender looked in the till next time all of the man’s money had turned into leaves from a tree….that is how they knew he was the devil. Isabel says the devil came to the bar because of all the sinners there, in her words “the drug addicts, prostitutes and gays that hang out there”. The she tells us of another bar a few years back that the devil came to, in the form of a dog that time, and set fire to the building. She is thinking about moving because the devil is all around them now in Nicoya. I asked Nury about the devil in Nicoya, and she told me the same 2 stories, and so did our bus driver, Santos.

At one point today in class with Isabel another student, Sean, joined my class and Isabel asked us both if we were catholic. I said no, and Sean said yes, then she only talked to Sean for the rest of class. I also found out that I will be the only student at the whole school next week, that might be a little lonely….the American group is leaving and no other students are coming in…so if anyone is interested there are openings!

The director of our school told us to be really careful this week because Costa Rica is about to sign the Central American Free Trade Agreement with the US and many of the Costa Ricans are not happy about this agreement, so we need to be especially careful since we stand out as Americans. He said there could be riots in the capital city.

Oh also yesterday I went to the cemetery here in Nicoya. It was a lot different than US cemeteries, all the tombs above ground and covered in bath tiles, really dirty with trash and overgrown grass and weeds. A bunch of the tombs were left unfilled, and I asked Isabel about this, she said people buy their tomb before they die and then they know where they will be put to rest. This may seem normal, since in the US we buy a plot of land, but I would compare it to already having the hold dug for you before you die…a bit creepy to me. She also said that if there is someone in a tomb and all of their relatives have died as well, so no one goes and visits that tomb anymore they will break open the tomb, cremate the body, and resell the tomb, because they are running out of space in the cemetery. So I guess it makes it more important to leave a lasting legacy here! Well that’s it for now! Keep the emails coming, I love to hear whets going on back in Washington…even if Bush is still president, the Mariners are still losing, and Tom won survivor! :(

Mucho amor,
Carol