We left Turrialba at 7am this morning. Our destination: Guapiles. Quick geography lesson:
Costa Rica has seven provinces--like our states. San Jose is the nation's capitol--where we flew into the country. We have primarily been based out of Turrialba. Paraiso is about an hour outside of Turrialba near Cartago. Guapiles is north of San Jose. Turrialba, Paraiso, and Guapiles together represent the Atlantic branch of the University of Costa Rica.
The bus ride was pretty uneventful other than I powered through about 200 pages of A Clash of Kings--gotta stay ahead of the Game of Thrones TV series!
We arrived at Guapiles around 9 and were greeted by a host of students and administrators. I met Franklin, my AWESOME host for the evening. He's a professor at Guapiles, probably 2-3 years older than I am. He teaches Information Technology and has an adorable wife of 1 1/2 years named Iveth. I could tell we were going to get along when we both agreed that Final Fantasy VII was the greatest video game of all time.
Franklin and Iveth--they're the best!
Guapiles has more surface area than Paraiso, but it only hosts 450 students. In contrast to mountainous Paraiso and hilly Turrialba, Guapiles is flat, flat, flat. We took a brief tour of campus and then spent an hour or so playing volleyball, jump rope, and a few teambuilding activities.
After that, we went to a swany hotel--Hotel Suerre--for a nice lunch and a few hours of fun and sun at the pool. This pool was ENORMOUS--easily Olympic size (is it possible to be bigger than Olympic size?) and it had a pretty baller waterslide. I think more than anything it was just nice to have a break for a few hours.
After we left the pool, we all broke off to spend some time with our respective host families. Compared to everyone else, I really lucked out in this draw. Franklin was really intent in showing me Tico/Guapiles culture, so he took me on a little drive out to el Rio Sucio, near the foot of the mountains on the main street that connects Guapiles and San Jose. The name translates into "Dirty River", and it is named as such because the river flows from a volcano--which contains sulfur--which turns the water yellow. We stopped off at a bridge to take some pictures, and it was really cool because there was another river flowing in the same direction, and the rivers intersected right under the bridge--blue water mixing with yellow water. It was really pretty.
See the rivers mixing together? How cool is that?
The sun was also setting right as we started our drive home, so I got to enjoy views of the purply-orangy sky on our way back into town. Franklin is a total pop culture buff--he listens to all sorts of rock music, watches the Big Bang Theory (which is huge over here, by the way), and speaks near perfect English, so we had a great time comparing favorite rock bands.
Before heading home, we stopped off at a large roadside open-air restaurant because Franklin wanted to show me authentic Tico food. He ordered me a chorreada, which is like a corn pancake that is served with queso y natillo (like sour cream). He had some sort of tortilla stuffed with cheese, but it wasn't the same consistency or texture as a quesadilla. We also drank agua dulce con leche--which is basically sugar cane juice with milk, heated up. People drink it over here as a pre-dinner drink
One of the administrators, Juan Carlos, had organized a barbeque for all of the FSU and UCR students as well as the administration at his house. Franklin, Iveth, and I showed up together about an hour after the party had started. The students were showing each other Latin and American dances (I taught about 20 students how to Wobble---yep, true story), and everything was going swimmingly.
And then I got violently ill.
There is NOTHING worse than getting sick in a foreign country. It is even worse when you are sick as a guest at someone's house, because there is no dignified way to "be sick". I didn't want to draw attention to the fact that I was sick, and I didn't want to make any of the Guapiles hosts feel bad because there was nothing that they could have done, so I just sucked it up and dealt with it. But it wasn't pretty.
The next morning, Iveth cooked an incredible breakfast of gallo pinto, platanos maduros (actually I got to cook those after she showed me how), huevos y jamon, queso frito, mango y papaya, y cafe. It was a huuuuge delicious breakfast, and I still felt like the walking dead, but I ate everything anyways and figured I'd just face the consequences later. And I totally did face consequences later. But, as far as I'm concerned, it was worth it. The food was fantastic.
Other than being horribly sick, I absolutely loved the brief time I spent with Franklin and Iveth--two of the nicest, sweetest, most hospitable people I've ever met in my life. Before dropping me off at UCR the next morning, they took me to la Feria del Agricultor --Guapiles' annual festival celebrating produce and farmers. They bought me all sorts of fun fruits to try, including manzanas de agua (translated into water apples--kind of tastes like a mix between an apple and a pear) and pejibayes--a relative of the coconut. I really love all of the local fairs in Costa Rica--makes me wish the US did more of that sort of thing.
We started the morning off with volunteering with a class that focused on teaching English to young children---ages 4 to about 14. Kids are not really my bag, as many of you know, but it was fun to teach them Simon Says, Red Light Green Light, and a few other teambuilding games that I had up my sleeve. At the end of the morning, I made about 20 kids paper airplanes, so I felt pretty good about contributing to their future academic delinquency. The kids were super sweet though--two of them colored pictures for me! I can assure you that will be the first and last time a kid ever gives ME a present.
Had lunch (which I did not eat on account of being in the walking dead) and then went to an English teaching class, where students in their 4th year are studying to teach English as a secondary language. Today's presentation was on non-verbal communication. It was fun and very interactive. We had to act out "flirting" using nonverbal cues. I learned about the "macho man stance". The students also provided us with [surprise surprise] more food! Coconut water straight out of the coconut and a fruit salad. I'd probably be more likely to jump on the CrossFit coconut water bandwagon if I could drink it straight out of the coconut every time! Lastly, we toured the town center of Guapiles before returning home to Turrialba.
This evening, we were invited over to Joanna's house (Turrialba coordinator) to get our nails done by Joanna's cousin. To get our nails and toes done, with a variety of different styles and designs, was a combined 4,000 colones, which is about $8. I've looked so gross and disgusting this entire trip that it actually felt great to get my nails done--and for a price like that, how could I say no? The girls and I ordered a few pizzas and just vegged out while everyone was getting their nails painted. It reminded me of any typical college night in the US--hanging with friends, eating pizza, getting nails done--it was really refreshing and relaxing. I really appreciated Joanna's willingness to open her home to us when she's already done so much on our behalf.
I'm gonna wrap this up since I don't feel like I've said anything of substance in like 4 or 5 paragraphs, but I am definitely looking forward to tomorrow because it's a FREE DAY! After being sick and spending so much time on the bus this weekend, I feel like my body needs it!
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