Livin the beach life

Ah I forgot to write something for yesterday! I'll try to write down everything that I can remember/focus on the highlights. So yesterday, Eric, Brandon, Shelly, and I toured the city of Playa del Coco for about 3 hours. We just started walking around like we usually do and got lost for a while. Of course we ended up finding our way back... I'm glad we got lost though. We ended up at basically a Goodwill store and Eric and I both bought some old school shorts! Then we got back to our hotel, swam in the pool, went to the beach, swam in the pool some more, and basically just hung out. Later that night, we finally got some people to go out! Brandon, Shelly, Hannah, Sarah, and I all went to a bar/restaurant/lounge place right down the street. Apparently in Costa Rica they believe in "girl's night", so the girls got free drinks from 9-11 (lucky them). The bar also had hookah, so the 5 of us rented one and just hung out for a few hours talking. It was an awesome night! We also talked to some of the locals for a while there and had a great night.

As for today... woke up this morning and it was raining. Womp womp. Everyone had planned to go to a different beach right down the road today, but the rain ruined that plan at first. It didn't stop raining until around 3 ish, so we were kinda forced to just stay at the hotel and get some work done. Finally when the rain let up, we called a taxi and went to the other beach. This was our first time using a taxi in Costa Rica which was pretty exciting considering I had to speak to the guy in Spanish since he hardly knew any English. I was impressed with how much I remembered! I even held a little conversation with him and asked him questions. The beach was AWESOME. It was in an inlet and since it had rained all day, there were huge waves that we body-surfed on forever. The waves dumped us literally right on the shore, so we would be covered in sand and all got scratched up every time we caught a wave. We threw the frisbee around a little, body-surfed for a long time, and walked around the cove to an area where there were a bunch of rock formations. I'll upload the pics tomorrow, but the rock formations were so cool! We climbed up on top of them and took a bunch of pictures. It was so beautiful and was definitely the best part of the beach. I think we're going back there tomorrow! I know this one isn't too descriptive, but it hasn't been too eventful of a day and I'm so tired and don't feel like writing a lot. I covered the best parts haha

New life goals that I've figured out while studying abroad:
1. become fluent in Spanish
2. learn to break-dance and salsa
3. become an international business major (or don't?) and start my own business in Costa Rica taking people out on a catamaran to go snorkeling
4. more to come later....

I'm too tired to finish this now. I will tomorrow for sure

Oh... me and Eric bought Cuban cigars for tomorrow. Cross it off the bucket list. Score!
4.

This city is awesome!

I love Playa del Coco... hands down. Everyone was so happy when we pulled up and noticed that our hotel/resort is about 100 yards from the beach. And in the plaza, instead of there being lots of benches and stores, there is a soccer field! We used it today to play frisbee, but it is my goal to play some futbol with the locals at some time. I'm sure I would get made fun of though since I'm terrible at soccer. Right when we got here today, everyone put on their swim suits and we got some lunch at an awesome restaurant. I'll have pictures of it soon because I'm sure we will go back there. Then we all went to the beach and swam of course! The water was surprisingly pretty warm and there are tons of fishing boats in the cove that we are in, but it is so pretty here. The water isn't as blue as I was expecting, but NOTHING on this entire trip has gone as expected. I've learned to just accept that everything is going to be a huge surprise.

After the beach, we came back and swam at our hotel pool! This hotel is awesome. I'm staying in a 3 person room with Eric and Brandon which already told me that this part of the trip is going to be so much fun. The hotel makes a "u" shape around the pool and it is all outdoors with a bunch of cool lights! This city is pretty small though compared to Liberia. I can't wait to see more, since we all got overly excited today and only went to the beach or our hotel pool.

Something is starting to get a little annoying... I know that we are on a study abroad trip, but it feels like everyone is doing too much studying. Yea we have assignments and they take some time, but the last few nights, everyone has disappeared into their rooms as soon as they eat dinner. WE ARE IN COSTA RICA! Put of schoolwork a little and have fun. I'm not asking to go out to bars every night, but at least hang out with everyone and be social. I was fine with it at first, but it's starting to get old. I really hope everyone realizes this and people start to not care as much and have more fun!

 "Don't let the classroom get in the way of your education"

Almost beach time!

Internet was bad again, and we traveled earlier today so I didn't have time to post this until now, but this is what I wrote on June 21st!

Today was our last full day in Liberia. It feels like we just got here… partially because we did. As much as I have loved this last half of the study abroad trip, it has gone by WAY too fast. Spending only 3-4 days in each city hasn’t been anywhere near enough. By the time we get to our destination city it is usually almost dark so we can’t really explore, then we have the whole next day to figure out the city, and the day after that we have everything mapped/figured out so it is fun, and then we leave the day after that. It’s been fine because there isn’t too much to do in Liberia besides walk around, but the whole concept of it sucks especially when we still have school work to do. I almost wish that the entire 4 weeks of this abroad trip would have been city hopping. Experiencing different cities and having everything being new and exciting has been awesome so far, and I still have two more cities to go to!



Church in the plaza



I just walked around A LOT today again. A few of us went in search of an “elite” neighborhood that had very rich and nice houses, but after walking forever we never found it so we turned around. I don’t think that I have ever sweated as much as I did today. I feel like I’ve said that a few other times this trip, but today it was just flowing off of me like a river. For lunch I ate in one of the local sodas (I think I’ve already said it, but a soda is basically a small restaurant that is a Costa Rican cultural thing and they usually serve typical dishes for fairly cheap) and this one was super nice! They are usually cafeteria-style where you walk up and point to what you want, but this one had menus, was two stories tall, and had TVs in it! We felt like we were royalty eating there compared to other sodas we had been to. We have also found a local smoothie joint that just about everyone in our study abroad group has grown to love. It is just a little shack on one of the street corners, and 2-3 ladies are in there making these amazing smoothies with fresh fruit. Yesterday I got one with pineapple, coconut juice, lime, and maybe mango? (I don’t exactly remember). But today I got a strawberry-pineapple one… both of them were awesome. I’m sure the ladies love having us here because all of us go and buy smoothies from them.

It actually rained a lot today, and was storming pretty bad at night while we were having our debriefing meeting with Dr. Brannstrom. While he was talking, I looked up through the opening in our hotel (it forms a rectangle around an open plaza area) and I saw what looked like a camera flash. As soon as the bright light exploded it was followed by the loudest BOOM ever. If you haven’t caught on, the “camera flash” was a huge bolt of lightning that looked like it hit only a couple of hundreds away and the “boom” was thunder. It was the closest/loudest thunder that I think that I’ve ever heard, and when it was combined with the power in the hotel going out, it made me think that my life had in fact ended from the lightning bolt. Everything went black for a split instant and I had no clue what was going on. Of course everyone was completely freaked out, but it gave us a good laugh.

Cool, random artwork that I found on a bridge

I feel like I am forgetting a lot of things about today… if I remember them, I will add them soon. I’m really tired though and ready to get to bed. I can’t to leave tomorrow around 10:30 to head to the beach Playa del Coco! I’ve been waiting for this all trip long!

I can't believe that I forgot this... our pillows at Hotel Wilson were TERRIBLE. It literally felt like someone put packing peanuts or styrofoam in them. Worst pillows ever.

First full day in the "Dirty L"

This is the post that I wrote last night, Monday June 20th... my internet wasn't really working so I had to wait until now to post it. Warning, it's quite a bit long. Well, I guess the rest of my posts are too...

At first, I was not too thrilled about being in Liberia. It definitely is not a tourist town so I wasn’t sure what we were going to do, and it also seemed a little scarier than La Fortuna. But once I got out into the city this morning and actually saw it (rather than trying to figure it out based on what I saw when we drove in last night), I started to love the city! It’s been our first true “culture shock” since we have been in Costa. It isn’t like anything that we’ve visited yet, mainly because it isn’t geared towards tourists at all. It has been a nice change to not have souvenir shops everywhere and to not see as many tourists as natives. I actually feel like I’m in a foreign country for this first time on this trip.



Our hotel, Hotel Wilson... with Vegas style light up palm trees



The city is awesome. We spent today just wandering around trying to figure everything out. This city is MUCH larger than La Fortuna (about 5,000 in La Fortuna compared to 50,000 here), so we split up into groups and basically divided and conquered the whole city. Then we got together/still have to get together to tell each other what all we noticed. We found everything from upper class houses to lower class establishments and everything in between. From this experience, I now realize that the only way to truly figure out a city is to have no plans and just walk around all day long. It is great. Especially in Liberia where we got to actually see the culture of the city without it being distorted by tourist attractions.

My favorite part of the day by far was just sitting in the main plaza (which is in the center of town) and watching everyone. I was there around noon, so a lot of school kids were on their lunch break. In the center of the plaza, there is a gazebo that is completely open so you can see into it from all sides. There were probably about 10 or so kids probably around my age that had brought music with them and were break-dancing in the gazebo! It was so cool to see the culture and how they did what they love to do… hang out with friends and dance… in the most popular part of the city. It has inspired me to learn how to break-dance. We’ll see how that one goes. I love the style and vibe that all of the kids here give off. Their clothing style is something that I can relate to. Most of the boys, if they weren’t in their school uniforms, were wearing tank tops and a cool pair of shoes, and quite a few were skateboarding around. It makes me really wish that I had my longboard with me. I wish that I knew Spanish and that I was going to be here longer so that I could become more involved with the style of this city.

I never thought I would say this, but I actually ate at a Chinese restaurant for lunch. We didn’t realize that it was Chinese food until we got inside and looked at the menu. I thought that ordering regular food in Spanish was hard, but ordering CHINESE food in Spanish was another story. Surprisingly, we were all fairly happy with our meals so it was a success. We also noticed that just about every single person was wearing jeans/pants. Don’t they realize that it is super hot and humid here?! I don’t see how they survive wearing jeans when I was basically dying while wearing shorts. If they weren’t wearing long pants, I noticed that a lot of younger guys were wearing board shorts/a swim suit. That, along with the numerous amounts of surf-style shops, makes it feel like we are near a beach. I still haven’t figured that one out yet. I’m really excited to go explore more tomorrow!... and yes, I’m thinking about trying to fit in tomorrow and wearing my tank top and board shorts while I wander aimlessly around town.

Hah I know I just posted a blog a few hours ago, but I want to try to keep up to date! We rolled into our next city, Liberia, today around 6! It sucked because it was already dark when we got here, but we will be here for 3 nights so we have plenty of time to explore. Our hotel definitely isn't as nice as the one in La Fortuna and this city seems like it's going to be a little more sketchy, but hey we're still in Costa Rica. I am rooming with Kelly while we are here (the guy who told me the motto "don't let the classroom get in the way of your education") so I'm super excited about getting to hang out with him more and getting to know him better! We haven't been able to do anything here besides go to dinner which was surprisingly really good. I'm glad that I can get internet in my room even though it is crazy slow.

The drive here was so much fun! I LOVE driving through Costa and just looking out the window. Everything is so beautiful, so I didn't mind that it took a little less than 4 hours to get here. I had my window down so that I could take pictures and just feel the breeze as we went through the Costa Rican landscape. We made a couple of pit stops, and one was at a little "shop" that was on the side of the road. By shop, I mean that there was a cart that was selling a few handmade things. I bought an awesome photo album that is made out of natural Costa Rican things like banana leaves! I'm really excited to put pictures from this trip in it.

I'm starting to miss people back home more now. I love hanging out with the people here, but we are together for all day everyday so we need breaks from each other... which is becoming evident. I'm bummed that I had to miss a Camp Edwards roadtrip this weekend and that I couldn't be home with my dad for Father's Day. I'm still loving everything about this trip though. Especially this country in general. Everything about it has been so cool and relaxing. I wouldn't mind having a house here at all!

And I can't believe I forgot to write about this in my blog earlier today... the sun rises here about 5:15 in the morning, which is really inconvenient when the shades in the hotel room at La Fortuna SUCKED. Basically, the sun woke me up a little after 5 and I could not fall back asleep for the life of me because it was so bright. That's when I used my college education, as well as having a room to myself, to my advantage. I realized that I had a huge bathroom, so I took my matress off my bed and dragged it into the bathroom, closed the door, and slept there for a few more hours! Probably not my finest moment, but I slept so much better in there because of how dark it was. I have a picture to prove it. Love it.

Bike rides, sunburns, and discoteques!

This is the recap from Saturday, June 18th! I'm just writing it now, so hopefully I can remember everything.

We all woke up pretty early so that we could go and explore La Fortuna! Most of the day was devoted to our assignments, in one way or the other. The good part about these assignments is that they are more about learning on your own. So some of our assignments are to walk around the city and write about little restaurants or things like that. Eric, Sarah, Jessica, and I all decided to rent bikes today so that we could explore more! We rented them for 3 hours and rode all around. We rode out to one of the sites for our assignments to look at different farms/agriculture, but then we rode past it. WAY past it. It was so much fun because we obviously had no idea where we were, but we didn't have anywhere to be! I loved being able to just go whichever direction we wanted to. It was a great way to explore the whole city! It was so relaxing and fun... even though it was HOT. I was rockin a tank-top, and I have the WORST sunburn ever. It looks like I'm wearing a white tank-top, but it's just my skin. I'm in a little bit of pain, but o h well. No pain no gain! One of the places we ended up was a little bitty grocery store. It is called a "mini-super", but mini is an understatement. These stores are a cultural aspect of Costa Rica, but are sadly starting to disappear because of larger businesses. They are basically little stores (usually attached to the owner's house) and are just a bit bigger than a pantry. The one we went to only had 2 isles in it, and it was probably about 15 feet long. I of course had to buy a drink and snack there, and attempted to talk to the owner, even though he only spoke Spanish. It was an awesome experience!



The rest of the day was pretty much devoted to working on assignments. They suck... but I like them better than the ones that we had to do in the rainforest! Brandon and I hung out at the hotel bar for a while and talked to another guy and girl (who were about our age and from Florida) for a few hours. It was Gabby's 21st birthday, so around dinner time, everyone got dressed up and we all went to dinner together. Surprisingly, Costa Rican pizza is really good! Everywhere here is really tourist based. One of the "friends" we made was the part-owner of a restaurant that served Tex-Mex and pizza haha. We saw him all over the city and he was very friendly so we always stopped to talk to him.

But back to Gabby's birthday... after dinner, most of us went to a discoteque! A discoteque is a club/bar, and it wasn't too far from our hotel. We rode a bus to get there, and that was an adventure in itself. The whole language barrier thing has been difficult, but made things that much more exciting. We were told the bus would pick us up in the square at 10, so we went there to wait. There were a few other people waiting so we knew we were in the right place but we got worried when it was 10:25 and the bus still wasn't there. It ended up eventually showing up but it wasn't what we were expecting. It was pretty much one of the vans that we have been taking everywhere for just the 20 of us study abroad kids... but there were a bunch of natives going also. We ended up having to sit on each other's laps for the ride, and some people had 2 people sitting on their lap. We all died laughing the whole time and I'm sure all the Ticans on the bus were making fun of us.

We finally got to the club and there were hardly any people there to start out. We kinda hung out for a while and just talked with each other, but then we started to migrate towards the dance floor. Surprisingly, there was NOBODY dancing. In our group, there were probably about 10 girls and 4 of us guys. A lot of the girls went out and just danced by themselves on the floor, but then a few of us guys went out there and joined them. We basically got the party started! We were the only people on the dance floor (keep in mind that we were dancing to Mexican/salsa music most of the time) for quite some time! Then the natives slowly started to join us and before we knew it, the dance floor was packed. I never though I could have so much fun at a Costa Rican club! I loved dancing to the salsa music... mostly because none of us really knew how so we were just having a great time being goofy. I was pretty much the only guy from our group that danced the whole time, so I got to dance a lot with all the girls in our group OOOHHHHH YEAAAAA! I don't think I've ever danced so much in my life. It was so much fun that we didn't want to stop.

One of my favorite parts was when the Costa Rican guys would come up to the girls and start dancing with them. The girls had it coming... a large group of American girls, dancing in groups with hardly any guys. I would sit back and watch the Costa Rican guys start to make their move on the girls, and I start to crack up laughing because some of the girls felt awkward dancing with them. Watching their facial expressions and watching the girls trying to escape after not too long was priceless. All in all, it was an AWESOME night. Way more fun that I expected.

Today (Sunday, June 19th) we haven't really done much. We are leaving La Fortuna to head to Liberia in about an hour, so everyone has been walking around and getting everything packed. Hopefully the internet is better in Liberia so that I can update this more often!

On top of the sign at the Soltis Center on our last day

Out of "the bubble"... from 6/17

Ok this is going to get a little confusing... but I wrote this on Friday, June 17th. At the hotel in La Fortuna, I haven't had too many opportunities until now to have internet. But this is the post that was from that Friday:

Today we finally left the Soltis Center, and hit the town of La Fortuna! It feels so good to be out of the “bubble” that we were stuck in at the Center. We got to La Fortuna this morning and will be here until Sunday afternoon ish. It’s cool because we have been to La Fortuna a couple of other times on our trip already so we had a little idea of what the city was like. All day was pretty much spent wandering around and figuring out the city. Eric, Brandon, and I were together most of the day and just walked around the entire city and went into just about any and every place that we thought was interesting.

We also talked a lot to the locals! Everyone is very friendly and they are always willing to have a conversation. We found out a bunch of random things just from talking to the locals… at Down to Earth Coffee, we talked to the owner who roasts every single bean in his store by himself on his farm. He has apparently been doing it for about 11 years, but the farm has been with his family since about 1893!!! We also talked to artists on the side of the road who sculpted all of the knives/pipes/pens out of clay themselves. And finally we talked to a man, who is actually from Houston, who is part owner of a new restaurant in town. It is where we ate dinner tonight because they had Tex-Mex food as well as pizza… enough said.

While the 3 of us were aimlessly wandering around, we were taking notes of all of the different cultural aspects of the town as well as drawing in our little sketchbooks that we have. We got a few weird looks, but it’s going to be really neat to look back on our notes/sketches when the trip is over. We ate at an amazing soda (a soda is basically a small restaurant that serves the typical meal of rice, beans, a meat, plantains, and juice) for lunch and it only cost $3! There were a few school kids eating in this small restaurant when we were, and they were definitely laughing at us the entire time. We have just resulted to making fun of ourselves since we look like such tourists.

Today was also Brandon’s birthday! The old man turned 26, so just about all of us went to dinner together and got drinks afterwards at Don Ruffinos, one of the more popular tourist places here. This entire city is full of tourists… especially at night. It seems like once it hits 6 o’clock and starts to get dark, all of the locals go home and it is only tourists out and about. It’s really weird because it feels just like America.

I have my own room to myself! I have a full size bed, air conditioning, AND a fan :) Everyone else has a roommate and twin size beds in a room that is about the same size as mine. I was the last person to get a room, so I was lucky enough to get my own! It pays to be patient. These next few weeks experiencing all that Costa Rica has to offer are going to be so cool.