Getting to Know San Jose

When I told people I was going to San Jose most initial responses were, "Why?" It is the capital city, a working city, and mainly used as the transportation hub to whisk you away to different parts of the country. As I traveled from Granada to San Jose, I did not have expectations.

First, I shouldn't just gloss over my trip from Granada. While Stella got to take a nice leisurely flight from Managua, I had to catch a bus to Rivas. It was about an hour and a half trek and on it I met a pretty crazy Italian couple. They were old and retired and I think the wife thought I wanted to rob them. Well in the Rivas bus station the husband finally noticed me and asked if I wanted to split a cab to the border. It would only be $3 as opposed to $1 on the bus, I figured I could splurge. He was a large, vocal man that immediately draws attention. I am not sure what I was thinking, but I think he saw my compliance as me willing to go under his wing. So for the next 6 hours he called me Jessie and guided me through the border and ran around finding me buses to San Jose. It was extremely nice, but as much as he helped me, I had to keep him from either mouthing off to local police or getting sidetracked talking to other people. The border was no big deal crossing, it is just this huge unorganized mess of different lines and showing all your random papers. You walk to one building get a stamp, then go to another building and another line. The kicker is then you have to walk through the truck parking lot with no signs and make your way down a random sidewalk to the actual Costa Rican border. Once I was across the border my new traveling partners and I took a bus to Liberia, the nearest large town. I sat next to the husband and he proceeded to tell me all about producing whiskey in the Caribbean. Turns out he is some big hot shot that makes one of the most expensive whiskeys available. I tried to follow it all as he talked in Spanish with a thick Italian accent, but my interest was waning. Finally we split ways in Liberia and I luckily caught a bus straight to San Jose right as it was pulling out of the station. Only four more hours and I made it to the city after about 9 hours of travel.

My first impression of San Jose and Costa Rica in general was it is so clean. It is not like Nicaragua where buses are old US school buses and drivers are yelling at you to get on. Quite the opposite, the buses are all state run and most are comfy tour buses. I was amazed to see that people just didn't throw their garbage out the window and most of all there was water! Also, I just finished reading a good book called Let the Great World Spin and one of the principle characters is a prostitute. And what do you know, as I drove through San Jose I saw some on the street. I know I have probably seen countless from my travels in Europe, but I never noticed them, but because of my book I was like there is Jazzlyn, one of the characters from the book.

So I got into San Jose on Sunday night. My original plan was to spend the night in Liberia and go to Rincon de Vieja the following day and hike around solo. I am not really keen on the whole idea of traveling solo and I instead went for broke and made it all the way to San Jose. The one problem was that Stella had to work Monday and Tuesday. That gave me all of Monday to explore the city by myself. Now for anyone that knows me, they know that I am like my dad and I love to walk. I covered the whole city by noon and did it all again after lunch. As I showed Stella pictures of the city at lunch, I was showing her parts that she has yet to visit. Basically San Jose is a busy, working city. There were relatively few tourists and there were tides of people that never ceased. The has a backbone of pedestrian streets lined with stores. I was shocked to see that everything is US prices.

Some of the pictures you see might not be that exciting. I don't want to knock San Jose, but there wasn't that much and when you are walking around alone, you can't do anything that interesting. I did find some cool graffiti and modern art. I guess I am taking after Sa and have a new interest in graffiti.

So more about my few days in San Jose. I got to see Stella's apartment which was really nice. Her roommate Manuel of course left it a mess before he traveled off to Guatemala. It is in the nice part of town and it has a large common room, a beautiful kitchen, hot water, and a washing/drying machine. I was very impressed and best of all she had tv and internet. Ha, I was in heaven after being in site for a while. Also during our time in San Jose I got to see her office and meet her coworkers. She has a really nice office near the KFC, which is actually a landmark for their address. There are only 3 other people in her office and it is pretty sparse and quiet.

The big event of San Jose was that Stella and I went Monday night to see Alice in Wonderland in 3-D. It was amazing, 3-D has come a long way since I remember. It looked so cool and real and made the movie that much more enthralling. The best part of all was that it was in the nicest movie theater I have ever been in, in the largest and fanciest mall I have ever been in. It was four floors with the most luxury stores I have ever seen. I don't know where it came from, I mean San Jose is no slouch of a city, but still this was big money. The whole building was a development that included office buildings, apartments, and other commercial development. I was taken aback that such a thing could exist outside of the United States and be nicer. I guess it is capitalism at its finest, but damn it was so overwhelming. We got a new type of ice cream alternative which are different flavored rice puddings and it was delicious. I even broke down and got Taco Bell for dinner, how about that for being in Costa Rica.

The theatre in the center of San Jose. Next to it is a big open park above the gold museum. They are going for a Venitian feel and you can pay a $1 to feed the pigeons and climb all over you. I still don't understand why. I know it was made famous by some picture, but really, they are flying rats.
The Costa Rican Post Office. Since we are in San Jose it is the center of all the correos and pretty elaborate to boot. Below is a shot of some of the pedestrian walks that pass through the center of town.

Touring Through Granada

This weekend I went to Granada to visit Stella during one of her conferences. Now, I had been to Granada before and wasn't impressed, but I figured I should give it another shot. I am glad I did, it really is a beautiful city and as the pictures show, the colonial architecture really is breath taking.

Also, this was a great way to start off my Semana Santa. Every time I think Peace Corps is about sacrifice and giving up what I once had, I head off to a place like Granada or San Juan del Sur. How can I say I am really suffering when I am in such an amazing city. I got to meet up with Stella at her hotel and later we moved to a cheaper hostel I got to meet several of her coworkers and other people in the NGO world. It was a great opportunity to see what other people my age are doing and see where I might want to end up after my two years of service. The best part of it all was that when I told people I was in the Peace Corps the responses were very positive. I have a good feeling that this will help me a lot when I get out in two years.

Well Granada is just the first stop of my Semana Santa trip. From here we headed to Laguna de Apoyo for the day to get some sun and swim and then we were headed off to Costa Rica for the week. I am trying to be better and take lots of pictures to give you an idea of what I am seeing.

Some interesting things that have happened since I got here are that I stayed in a $5/night hostel called Casa Blanca. It was basically what you would expect for five bucks. I mean it was a restaurant with a few rooms in the back that I think they just threw a bed into. It was all I needed and I can't complain, but not a place to be approved of by Tom Koza. Also I met an interesting Nica at my hostel. I was exhausted and ready for bed when he pulls me aside and we get talking. I later found out that he is 18yr/old and had just broken up with his girlfriend two weeks ago. Well, it is true what they say about Latino lovers, he fell hard for her. I guess she was from the States and went back, but they were only dating for one month. He was nursing a beer while he talked to me and crying about how much he loved her. He kept wanting me to hug him and said how he was going to fight for her. I was amazed that he felt this way for someone and also pretty disgusted that he thought he loved her that much. I dunno, maybe I don't do the whole crying thing, but come on man, buck up.

Here is a picture of Stella and I on Volcan Mombacho after doing a coffee tour with her company. It was basically like Parque Cafe in Colombia but a lot smaller. We got to see the whole coffee process and then they gave us a free sample at the end. To be honest, nothing too amazing and it was so hot, but it was nice to get out for the afternoon and meet some new people.

Oh, I have horrific story I forgot to write about earlier on my last day of teaching before Semana Santa. Well I only teach 3-6th grade, but on Thursdays I go next door and often play a game or two with the first and second grade class. Well I went next door and organized a game where it is like musical chairs and there is one person in the middle. The person in the middle has to say one thing they like and if anyone else does as well, they switch seats. So, everything was going great and all the kids were smiling until one little kid got stuck in the middle and began to cry. Alright, no big deal, he is a first grader, it happens all the time. Well the teacher jumps in and starts calling him a baby and a girl. I am completely flabbergasted, what do I do? I think I was just in shock, there is this teacher calling this little boy a girl and that he is weak. Great, now all the kids are learning that woman are weaker than men, and that crying is for girls. Way to reinforce sexist stereotypes. Well she doesn't stop there, she picks the boy up and puts him on display, asking other kids "what do you see here?" Well she is waiting for each kid to call him a baby and a little girl. I was horrible because I just sat there stuck not knowing what to do, but I tried to smooth it over by when he got close to me by letting him sit down. It was horrible, the teacher thought it was hilarious and the poor kid couldn't stop crying.

Well that is my little Nica story for the day. Just something you don't see everyday in the United States.

The Stages of a sinking:

The day started off easy enough. Stella and I found a taxi to take us to Laguna de Apoyo just outside of Granada. I have been there before with some of my Peace Corps friends and figured it would be a good little get away with Stella. After getting to ride in the back of a pickup truck for about twenty minutes we hit the beginning of a dirt road and a deep descent. It was exciting because such things would be so illegal and unsafe in the States, but are common practice here. Finally, down at the water we got to just swim around and soak up the sun. As the picture shows we got to some kayaking and so far everything looks good.

Ok, things are starting to get a little shaky. In my defense these were not calm seas. The waves were white capping and I chose the most unstable kayak possible. I had to keep my legs outside of the boat to stay balanced and as this picture shows I am starting to look uneasy.

Things have really hit the fan. As we were trying to take pictures I realized the front of my boat was starting to point more and more upwards. I didn't think much of it until the waves starting hitting my back. Finally it clicked, I was sinking. Oh no, we were about 200yds off the coast and my kayak was going down. I wasn't worried about drowning or anything but I was more worried about the boat; I was not buying them a new kayak. Well it just so happens that there was a huge hole on top of the kayak and when I turned into the waves the water began pouring in. I had to grab hold of the boat and have Stella drag me, who was holding the boat to shore.

Here it is, Laguna de Apoyo.

Family Reunion

Family Reunion, Aguardiente Style

First Draft of the shirts

As most of you know by the fury of emails I have been sending off in the last week or two, I have come up with the idea of hosting a family reunion during the summer of 2012. I know that it seems rather far away and ridiculous to begin planning now, but hear me out. One reason is that Alex and Melina’s wedding is this Fall and I want it far enough away as to not interfere with their event or take away from it. Second and most importantly, I am in Nicaragua and will be until the Fall of 2011. Finally, it needs to be in the Summer to capitalize on the weather and vacation time so the most amount of people will be able to attend.

I already sent out a couple emails regarding this subject and I am sorry if I am repeating myself. Originally I was planning on having the party during one of the three day weekends, but the problem is that they are either too early or late in the summer, thus interfering with school. Pam proposed the idea of 4th of July weekend since her and Fernando will be flying back anyways from Germany. I think that is a great idea and that offers us either the weekend before or after. Right now I propose Friday, July 6th to Sunday July 8th. While this is a normal two day weekend we could still successfully stretch it to two nights. Friday will be a day to set-up with everyone arriving, going to the airport and preparing camp. Saturday will be the big day with the pig roast, field games, and my raging bonfire that can be seen from space. Sunday will sadly be clean-up and we will prep for future events.

I have also been busy coming up with different shirt ideas. I already sent out my first draft and let me know what you think. I also challenge any of you to make up your own shirt and submit it to me and we can have an election. While I clearly think mine is the best, I realize the limitations of my creativity and know many of you could come up with a much fancier design.

Finally, I need your help in choosing a venue. Some restraints to consider are: we are going to have alcohol, I want a huge bonfire, 70+ people, and pig roast. These qualities will already bar us from State Parks and most family campgrounds. We are going to need 10+ camp sites, I ideally want them together and the bonfire could require some special permits. Some ideas I had are: I know you can get special permits to camp on State land, if anyone knows friends who own a campground, or you know of an existing place to accommodate us. Let me know and consider this your homework for the next two years.

I am really excited about the potential of pulling this off. We have plenty of time and I hope that everyone can make it. I am already imagining a family picture incorporating all the generations from across the country. I want even the most remote family members to make an appearance. Even though it might seem far fetched, maybe we can even get a couple of the family members from Colombia to make it and really turn it into an authentic Restrepo party.

Get excited and give me any inputs you have on how we can make it even better.

More of my Life

Working on compost with my class in San Cayetano

Working on compost with my class in Jicaro 2

Looking for water

Yes, this was once a river bed and we have to dig down 15ft to reach water

My Youth Group after winning in Matagalpa

How you know you have been Nica-fied

1. You never, ever smile

2. You smile, but after the picture is taken and scream "muestrame!"

3. You use way too much gel

4. You take the picture yourself for facebook or some other public share

Believe it or not, I don’t have too much to report on for the last couple weeks. Since San Juan del Sur my life has pretty much settled back into it’s normal grind. Given, my daily grind is a little different than my life back at home, but you would be surprised how quickly it feels normal. I am usually up around 5am beating the sun and busy making breakfast or packing my bag. By 6am I am on the road and heading to my class. I don’t have the luxury of hoping into my car and turning on my favorite radio station; nope, I pound the pavement or in this case dirt and mostly rock. My walks vary from 30minutes to an hour and a half and it is quite the a way to wake up in the morning. Usually you would be the only one up at this hour, but here in Nicaragua the whole town is already bustling with kids going to classes, people heading out to the farms, and women bringing corn to the grinders to make tortillas. It is a busy time of the day and that means for the first 20minutes of my walk I am busy saying hi to every single person I come across. It is actually pretty exhausting, but I like this little part of the culture. Rather than walking with your head down looking at the cracks in the pavement people here say hi to one another even if it is just a quick adios. It makes you feel like you are more of a part of the community and I think we could learn something from that.

Alright, other than my walk to classes one change is that I am now teaching. But, wait, you might be thinking, “Jason, haven’t you been in classes for a month now, what have you been doing?” Well, that is true, but I was nothing more than a TA and was supposed to be observing. Now I have taken over the science classes and teach usually 90 minutes blocks in each class. It is a lot of fun and there is little pressure because any lesson I do is already more interactive than what the previous teacher was doing. I try to incorporate games, get the students talking, and if I need to do definitions give it to them in a puzzle to solve. The time flies by and another goal of my has been making school composts. I now have them in 3 of my four schools and I will try and include some pictures. The teachers are proud to see the work and the students are happy just to get out of the class. I kind of feel like a slave driver because the ground is so hard and I just stand there watching the kids pick away at the soil while I pretend to be doing something. Oh well, we now just have to wait 2 months for the compost to do it’s job and then we can plant our crops once the rainy season begins.

Finally, I have been going full steam with my youth group. I have a soccer team of about 16-18 kids ranging in ages from 11-14. It has been a lot of fun and a much larger commitment than I was anticipating. We practice about 3x a week and have games on the weekend. This last weekend I solicited the flatbed truck from the mayor’s office to take us to Matagalpa. It is about an hour and a half trip and something I could never pull off back in the States. I mean I had two soccer teams or 30 kids in the back of a flat bed truck traveling 40km on a bumpy dirt road, can you say lawsuit. Good thing laws here are more of general guidelines and that no one seems to mind. We got the to field and it was more of a dust bowl. It was in some poor neighborhood of Matagalpa that made San Dionisio look like a thriving city and most of the houses were either made of zinc siding or plastic tarps. I was not too enthused to be there, but the kids didn’t seem to mind. Luckily, we won 4-2 and both teams were very respectful to one another. I got to play the part as referee and no one had any serious complaints of my job. As for this weekend, the team is coming here to San Dionisio to play as well as two other teams. I managed to organize a little tournament between four teams and it should be a lot of fun. The only problem is that I won’t be here to see it. I organized the whole event but I am leaving it in the hands of my counterpart. I have to go to Managua to pick up Stella at the airport.

I am excited that Stella is coming to visit me here at my site. She will be the second person to see my town, meet my friends, and see my host family. My whole town already knows about it and I think they are counting down the days more than I am. It should be interesting to see what she thinks about my life here. Already my host family is busy thinking about what they can cook for dinner and when they told me the menu it was no different than what they eat every night. I don’t know why they were getting all worked up about it if they are just going to do the same thing. It is really cute and funny at the same time, they have such a limited resource or knowledge of different foods so all the menus revolved around rice, beans, or tortillas. Not too many different combinations there. Also, they were amazed by the idea that Stella is a vegetarian. What do you mean she doesn’t eat meat? Does she eat chicken or pork? Wait, no animals at all, then what does she eat? It was this type of circled conversation for a while when I finally told them that she just doesn’t like how the animals are treated and just eats salads every night. I was careful to say that it is not because she can’t eat meat, but that she won’t eat meat. That is my little jab to all vegetarians out there. As a homeosapien you are capable of eating meat yet you chose to become a vegetarian thus limiting your diet. I can’t stand it when vegetarians say that they can’t eat meat; yes you can! Just a little pet peeve of mine.

Braving the Tsunami

View from Jesus

Yes, we snuck into a really fancy resort

How serious should you take a tsunami warning? I in no way want to down play the tragedies of the tsunamis from the recent past or poke fun of the devastation that I know that they are capable of causing, but still are we getting a little trigger happy? Ok, I do see their point, there was a magnitude 8.8 earthquake in Chile, one of the strongest in the last 100 years and we all know that the displacement of tectonic plates causes a huge dispersal of energy, but still it was my beach weekend. At times mother nature just needs to learn to heel to my desires and schedule. I don’t have time to work around every natural disaster and I am not going to miss a perfectly good beach weekend for the rare threat of some big wave. In fact, the wave never even made it to my beach. The warning was for 2:50pm and at 2pm they cancelled the warning. It was pretty ironic because the tsunami was supposed to hit at the exact time that a Harley Davidson parade was supposed to pass through town. You heard right, Harley Davidson’s in Nicaragua. Random I know and I believe it was this that saved the town. We all know how loud those bikes are and I believe it was the residual shockwaves of their roar that cancelled out the energy from the wave. Anyways, at 2:01pm I was back on the strip finding a bar to wait for the suspected tsunami wave. By 2:50 I had front row seats at our local bar with a few other friends and still no wave. No biggie, basing on the forecasting abilities of meteorologists I figured it could be give or take 2 hours and we were only on our fifth litro so I just hunkered down and waited. Finally around 4pm I figured it was over and there was nothing. I won’t go so far to say I was wishing for a natural disaster, but I was a little disappointed that I didn’t get to see the ocean recede or at least a few splashes along the coastal wall.dont be fooled, there was no wave

Well the real reason I traveled down to San Juan del Sur was to see Stella. It had been six months since I had last seen her and I was anxious to see her again. It is a pretty scary concept, we had only been dating for less than a year before I left for Nicaragua and have spent the last third of our relationship apart. A lot has changed, I know that I am no longer the same person since I left and my life is full of random events. Stella just relocated down to San Jose, Costa Rica with Root Capital and she too is going through a bunch of life changes. What if we take one look at each other and wonder what we have done? Luckily that did not happen and it was actually pretty natural to go and pick her up from the bus. San Juan del Sur was the perfect meeting spot for the two of us, it is about 7hrs from each of our respective sites and it is a gorgeous beach town. Rather than dealing with an odd reunion Stella and I seemed to pick right back up where we left off. It wasn’t like we were reuniting after 6 long months, but more like I was coming home from a long business trip. The big excitement of the week was the supposedly tsunami that fizzled out and the rest of the time we just got to hang out on the beach and relax. I got to give up my Peace Corps lifestyle for a few days by eating way out of my $200/month salary and Stella got to save a bunch of money by traveling to a third world country. It was a win/win for the both of us.

Ok, I admit this entry is more of my benign entires and is not too exciting. I don’t know why, but I just don’t have too much to say. It was absolutely amazing being able to see Stella, but that basically sums it all up and the rest was just stumbling down to the beach and passing out. We did do a day hike up to the top of the mountain to see jesus. It wasn’t too exciting, just a giant concrete jesus on the top of the hill, but I got us in at national prices because of my Peace Corps id and the view was pretty nice. I thought it would have been a good spot to see the tsunami hit; I am still a little bitter about that.

As for upcoming events. I am in Matagalpa today to help out with an HIV charla. I am working with a few other Peace Corps Volunteers to put on a billards tournament coupled with an HIV talk. The concept is pretty cool. We start off sharing a bunch of information about HIV then we break off into the tournament. The players play normal pool, but when the sink a ball they then have to answer a question regarding the charla. If they get the answer correct, the ball stays, if they answer wrong the ball comes out. Also, my youth soccer team is miraculously still togeither and going strong. The kids love to play and even though I was gone last weekend and this weekend, they are just as eager to play. I feel like I am really accomplishing something and it is a good feeling to be a coach. The kids really do look up to me and I like doing the scheduling of practices and games.

So next week I was invited to a conference with the government and several NGOs to talk about the water crisis. I am hoping to push my water project and may even find some new outlets for projects. I am excited that they see me as an assett to the community and hope that it isn’t a joke like most meetings here. Finally, the end of the month will be here before I know it and that means traveling back to Managua to see Stella again for a weekend and then the following weekend going to see her in Granada before I head off to Costa Rica fro Semana Santa. Again, not too shabby for life as a Peace Corps volunteer.