Baby Brainwashing

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you quit your job and just traveled around visiting all your old friends who live all over the country? Well, if you happen to be 28 years old, I can quickly summarize what would happen so as to spare you the trouble of quitting your job and doing all that driving around:

You will meet lots of babies.

I love babies, and I love all my friends who have babies. Do I want to have one of my own? The jury is still out on that one. Being a woman of child-bearing age, I can say that the 'biological clock' thing is kind of true. When I see magazine articles about fertility I start freaking out. On the other hand, when I see pictures of people surfing I want to run away to Tamarindo. Which would be quite hard to do if I were no longer child-free.

Pictures, finally

I got the cord for my camera today, and can finally see my pictures from Costa Rica!

Here is me, enjoying a nice coffee at Mamiri. You can tell it's later in the trip, cause I'm tan. That swing was super comfy!!



And here's Sean in front of our favorite beverage! (Ok it's tied with coffee for my favorite beverage.)

Benny Lava

I know this isn't new, but in case you have not seen it yet, it is extreme hilarity and will make your life better. The best use of video editing I have ever seen.

Glad I'm done with grad school

I recently went through my UW email which I hadn't opened in a few weeks. One email has the subject:

The behavior of 'rm' will change on May 4

Really? I'm glad I am not there anymore....

10 things I miss about Tamarindo

10. Falafel Mundo. This was my favorite restaurant in Tamarindo. Not only is their falafel delicious but the Israeli couple who run it are super cool and friendly. Their chairs are not comfy, but they say they will be getting new chairs sometime soon... and really, it's worth standing up to eat their food.

9. Watching the sun set over the water. Especially while surfing.

8. The batidos (fruit drinks).

7. Seeing wildlife all the time in random places. For example when Sean and I drove through a herd of cattle that was in the road on our way to Avellanas. Those things look *big* when their heads are right outside your car window!!

6. The coffee.

5. The rodeos! Puro Guanacasteco, baby!

4. The taxi guys. It's kind of hard to explain why they cracked me up so much, but the funniest thing was when you would walk by the taxistas and they would be chatting with each other or something, and you'd be thinking to yourself "Wow, I got past the taxis without them saying anything to me", and suddenly they would realize that one almost got away so they'd snap out of what they were doing and yell, "taxi, taxi!" Like, if someone walks by and you don't say "taxi, taxi", you will lose your job.

3. The dirt roads. Somehow they give me a (false?) sense of security. What bad thing could happen on a dirt road? The whole thing is just too bucolic for there to be muggings or whatnot.

2. Casados/gallo pinto. I complained about these a lot at first. How can white rice and black beans be the go-to dish for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, for an entire country that is not dependent on food aid? But the stupid things grew on me... especially the gallo pinto. Pinto con huevo is my new favorite breakfast. Especially satisfying after a morning of surfing.

1. Surfing!! Duh.

The Seedy Side of Surf Trips

Last Tuesday, Sean and I took a boat trip out to Witch's Rock and Ollie's Point - two famous surf breaks near(ish) to Tamarindo. They're hard to get to via land, because apparently you have to drive about an hour into a national park where the roads are bad. And if a Costa Rican tells you that roads are bad, they are really bad.

We got to Witch's first, and it didn't look very big. But since a few people had warned us that this wave could be quite heavy, Sean wanted to go and surf it for 15 minutes first before determining whether it was going to be ok for me to surf it.

As everyone was jumping into the (really, really warm) water, the boat driver said that he was going to go to a nearby beach for a few minutes and come right back. "I guess I'm going with you guys," I told him. We motored over to this other beach, and the driver's two friends jumped out onto the shore. They started walking back and forth, and I joking said to the driver "Están buscando tesoro?" Are they looking for treasure? "Huevos," he answered. Eggs.

After 10 minutes of beach-combing, the two Ticos got back on the boat with a backpack full of turtle eggs. I could see the round bulges in the fabric - there must have been at least a few dozen eggs in there. One guy showed me an egg and let me hold it. It was about the same shape as a chicken egg, but the shell is so soft that your thumb can dent it in, almost like paper.

As we returned to Witch's, the driver asked me not to tell anyone about the eggs. "Just your boyfriend," he said, which I thought was kind of funny. But I agreed to this (and obviously I'm breaking my promise now. If you do something illegal just please don't tell me, especially if it's harming a species of very cute animals.)

I don't know what the status of these particular turtles is, but I'm pretty positive that harvesting eggs from a national park is illegal. So, if you are ever in Tamarindo and you go on a surf trip to Witch's or Ollie's, keep this in mind. If your boat driver brings other friends with him and they disappear for a while, you should be suspicious of this.

More Rodeo

Last week I went to another rodeo in Portegolpe, and a couple days ago Sean and I went to one in Santa Rosa. I thought when I was in Villarreal that would be my only chance to see a rodeo here, but not so! The people of Guanacaste LOVE their rodeos! One seems to occur approximately once a week.

In Portegolpe I got peer-pressured into sitting on the fence, which was a really huge adrenaline rush. The bull will sometimes walk right under your feet. Yes, if it felt like it, it could jump up and gore you. For some reason though, it never seems to do this. Sean sat on the fence in Santa Rosa, and he even kicked the bull. (Yeah it's rude but I guess if you're a man and you see other men kicking a bull the urge to join in the kick-fest is extremely strong. Anyway he really just tapped it with his foot, to show how brave he was.)

As they say a picture is worth 1000 words, and an MPEG is just a series of JPEGs, so here's a quick video I found on youtube, taken at a rodeo in Santa Cruz (near here). Probably worth a few million words.

Amy Teaches English

Two days ago, I was sitting at the San Jose airport, waiting for my fiance to arrive. I started chatting with a local guy who works as a tour guide and found out that he was waiting for the same flight as me.

His English was quite good, but he told me that he was always trying to practice and he had lots of questions for me. He pulled out a piece of paper and started going through this big list.

First, he wanted to know what it means to say you're 'into' something. It means that you like it, I told him. So, he said, can you say 'I'm into taxis?' I cracked up laughing. I think he thought of taxis because one was driving by in front of us, but it just sounded so funny. I told him that you could say you're into taxis, but I've never heard of anyone being into them.

The words on his list were too funny. 'What's the difference between livestock and cattle?' I found out he's reading a book about the history of Costa Rica in English, to practice, so that's probably where he is getting these words from.

He wanted to know what the word glisten means. Then he pointed to some hub caps and asked me what they're called. 'So, could you say that the hub caps glisten?' I told him that you could, but you'd probably just say they were shiny. To me, glisten is too nice of a word for hub caps.

The funniest one was the word wag. He asked me about how you use this word. I said "well it's pretty much just for animals. A dog wags his tail." He said that in Spanish the word is 'menear' and it has a few meanings. He did a stirring motion with his hand and said that in Spanish it means that also. So he asked me, "can you wag your coffee?"

That was the perfect way to blow a few hours at the airport, and I learned a Costa Rican phrase too. "Me extraña araña" means "of course". (I just looked on wordreference.com and someone compared it to saying 'of course, my horse' in English.)

Amy's First Kayak Ride

This morning I went out to the beach to look at the waves. The surf was really flat, so I decided to go for a swim. I was having a lot of fun floating, body surfing, and of course pretending I was a mermaid.

A lifeguard was out there paddling around in a kayak, and when he came near me I said "Hola, como estas?" (Cause you know, my Spanish is pretty bad-ass like that, and I like to show it off).

He asked me in Spanish something about kayaks, and I said that I'd never ridden one. So he was like "get on", and I did. I found out that he had lived in New York for a couple of years, but he said since I was here to learn Spanish he would only talk to me in Spanish.

We paddled around and caught some waves with the kayak. It was pretty fun! (Not as fun as surfing though - sorry, kayakers.) Then he had to go back to work but he said that at 5pm he would take the kayak out to this little nearby island and we could check out the beautiful shells there.

When stuff like this happens I am always torn between wanting to have an adventure versus not wanting to go off somewhere with a strange dude. (Even a lifeguard who was helping me practice my Spanish. Or perhaps, especially not a lifeguard...)

But, adventure won out this time. And of course, since I am writing this, he did not turn out to be an axe murderer. By Costa Rican standards he didn't even try to hit on me. Well, he did ask me if I was going out tonight, but I told him that I don't like to go out without my boyfriend (which is true anyway).

It was a nice journey out to the island, and I got some sweet shells which I will photograph at some stage. I even paddled for a bit! And, at least I can say that I went somewhere today besides the supermarket and Pizzaola. (BTW if you come to Tamarindo, I highly recommend Pizzaola, it is delicious.)

Reading too Fast

Some days on this trip, due to either rain or just laziness, I spend most of the day reading. By last week I had blasted through 4 books:

1. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

2. Anywhere but Here

3. The Starter Wife

4. My Sister's Keeper

My Sister's Keeper was my favorite of these but it is a tearjerker so keep that in mind if you're going to read it in public. I had to put my sunglasses on a couple times!

So while R. and I were shopping in San Jose last Tuesday, I went into a bookstore and decided to get a Spanish book. I figured it would force me to learn some vocab and I wouldn't be able to burn through the book in a day. Despite R's suggestion that I get a kid's book, I went crazy and bought El Alquimista, the Spanish translation of Paulo Coelho's 'The Alchemist'.

The plan is working so far. After 3 days, I'm only on page 42. But I am actually understanding the book well and learning lots of new vocab. I know how to say sheep, herd, shearing, etc. Sometimes if I see the same word in 2 or 3 different contexts I can figure out what it is without looking it up. This exercise is way more fun than I thought it would be. I should really keep cranking on this book because in 4 days Sean will arrive and my reading time will probably go away.

I would like to conclude this post with my favorite quote from The Tipping Point. I actually wrote this down before I went and exchanged the book because it was too funny.

"Arrange to go to a relaxed gathering of actors, rock musicians, or hairdressers on the one hand, or civil engineers, electricians, or computer programmers on the other, and observe how much smoking is going on. If your experience is anything like mine, the differences should be drastic."

Where are the Ticos?

You know how the holy grail for travelers is to "go where the locals are"? Yes, it is kind of a paradox. But of course sometimes it is indeed possible, if you know where to look.

Well, last Saturday there was a big soccer game - Costa Rica versus Mexico. These two local kids at the bus stop told us to go to Lirio's (a bar in Manuel Antonio) to watch the game. We showed up, expecting to see a bar packed full of people who were drinking and shouting at the screen. Instead we saw several couples or small groups of people quietly watching the game, and several tables were empty. What happened? People told us that CR v. Mexico is like a national holiday. This game is a big deal. Well, earlier in the day I had asked the guy at the hostel where he was going to watch it. 'At a friend's house', he said.

See, locals actually don't have lots of money to go out to bars or restaurants. This is sometime we take for granted so much in the US. How many people in the U.S. could not afford to go to a sports bar and have one or two beers while watching a game?

Now on Sunday, we found the Ticos. R. convinced me to go to mass with her. The church is in Quepos, not Manuel Antonio. (I don't think there are actually any Ticos who live in Manuel Antonio. But Quepos is a 'real' town.) I'm pretty sure we were the only foreigners in the whole church. Afterwards, everyone streamed out of the church and went straight to the soccer field. A bunch of local kids who do karate were dressed up in their uniforms doing demonstrations on the field. Music was playing and everyone was hanging out.

I generally don't go to church anymore, but it was fun to see a Costa Rican mass. It was pretty similar to an American mass. The main difference that I noticed was that after the homily all of the kids went up to the front and hugged the priest. How cute is that? Not sure it would fly in the States these days.

Costa Rica Theme Song

This has got to be the theme song of my trip. I have heard this song almost every time I've been out. Two night ago we went out to Byblos in Manuel Antonio and heard it twice in one night.