Un Momento: La Puesta del Sol

Upon reaching Monteverde, Luis, the only local student in our program, told the bus driver to pull over on the side of the (very narrow) dirt road.  Once we had all unloaded, Luis opened the gate to a pasture and led us inside.  We walked uphill a bit and then suddenly glimpsed an incredible view:  The mountains of Monteverde and beyond laid out in front of us, with the Gulf of Nicoya in clear sight.  I’ve never seen the Pacific Ocean before, and it was riveting.  And of course, to top it all off, it was about half an hour before sunset so the lighting on the scene was phenomenal.  All the students stood or sat on rocks in complete awe.  All was quiet, and then Luis said, “Bienvenidos a Monteverde.”  

Un Momento: El Volcán

During our trip via bus from the hotel in San Jose to the biological center in Monteverde, we took a pit stop at the volcano Poas - one of the largest active volcanoes in the world.  When we first arrived, we hiked up to the lookout point and couldn't see anything at all - the entire mountain was enshrouded in a cloud.  We decided to try out a second lookout point, but that attempt failed too. Instead, we chose to leisurely walk through and explore the forest trails.  There's so much incredible biodiversity here! After about an hour of picture-taking and socializing with each other on the trails we made it back to the visitor center.  Walking out of the forest, to our amazement we realized that most of the clouds had cleared, so we ended up hiking back up to the original summit look-out.  The site was breathtaking - a huge crater in the earth, with a lake in the middle (one of the most acidic lakes in the world), and a giant plum of white exhaust billowing from the edge of the lake.  Apparently this cloud of exhaust is so full of deadly materials that the entire valley in which it floats is completely devoid of life.  Luckily, the look-out point is not in the direct line of fire.

Un Momento: En El Mercado

During our first full day in San Jose we broke up into small groups and walked to the center of San Jose to do a scavenger hunt.  The goal of the hunt was to learn some basic history of the area, and to get us practicing our spanish by buying things and asking people questions.  We walked to El Mercado Central - an indoor labyrinth of vendors selling all sorts of food, merchandise, and the lot.  Interestingly, most of the vendors were two stories, the second story being either the kitchen or the storage area.  En el Mercado, we took turns in our small groups going up to certain vendors and asking questions, or actually buying things.  Each group was assigned either “carbs,” “protein,” or “fruits and veggies” to find in el Mercado, and we had to buy enough for 18 people.  The buying was the most intimidating, as we had to ask for the food we wanted, the quantity of food, how much it cost, and actually give the correct currency, or colones, to the vendor.  Figuring out what to say was only half the battle.  You get really excited that you’ve figured out what to say, until you realize that you must then figure out what the vendor said back to you.  It also doesn’t help that in Spanish, the word for one thousand is “un mil”, which sounds a lot like a million.  Most purchases add up to a couple thousand colones, as $1 US is about equivalent to 500 colones. 

            Overall, it was a really exhilarating and humbling experience.  I went to buy guanabana, which is a type of milkey white (amazingly tasty) fruit, and I totally screwed up the pronunciation.  The vendor just laughed politely and smiled at me. We went up to los viejos (old men) on the streets and asked them our questions about Costa Rican history.  They were very helpful but there were many times in which I had no idea what they had said in response to my questions. 

            It’s also a really weird concept to think that it is impossible to blend in with the crowd.  It’s something I’ve never personally experienced before, seeing as how the only foreign countries I’ve visited have been eastern European, and I’m half eastern European myself.  In contrast, everyone here can immediately peg our group as outsiders.  Luckily, everyone has been very kind to us.  If you make any attempt to speak Spanish at all, however little, most ticos (Costa Ricans) seem impressed and appreciative, and will usually hold a polite conversation with you.  It felt so good the first time that I held a continuous conversation without having to think about my word choices while waiting in line at a store.  Even if the conversation only lasted 20 seconds or so, it was rather refreshing.  

Un Momento: En El Taxi

Today I arrived at the airport in San Jose.  I met up with the program director and coordinator, who promptly bought me and two other students lunch and then shipped us via taxi to our hotel to meet our other fellow students.  We hung out at the pool and got to know each other, then walked an hour to a thai restaurant for dinner.  Because of the sheer exhaustion felt by many of us due to long travel times and general sensory overload, some of us decided to take a taxi back to the hotel.  From these two taxi experiences, I've determined a few things about driving in Costa Rica:

• Most streets don't have street signs.  
• Most streets with multiple lanes don't have lines dividing those lanes... and even if there are lines, you don't actually have to follow them.
• "Alto", or stop signs, are only placed at intersections for decoration.  No one actually stops. 
• A red light is actually a stop sign.  Or rather, a pause sign.  
• If the grass on the side of the road is on fire, no one really cares

Also, I learned that cab drivers can't break huge colones bills given to us by the program director, especially when a cab for 4 people came to a whopping total of $5 US.  Instead, the doorman paid it for us with the promise that we'd pay him back tomorrow.  

Un Momento: Empacando

That moment when you realize that for the next three months you'll be living off of 4 t-shirts, 6 pairs of pants/shorts, two long sleeved tops, a fleece, and a rain jacket.

El Nombre

Imagine spending one whole day, a 24-hour period, without looking at a clock once.  Sure, maybe you've done this on a lazy weekend day because you had nothing to do.  But what if you did this for a week, or for a month?

We spend countless hours everyday thinking about the past and the future - what we're doing in an hour, in a week, in a year, and we often mull over past events with both yearning and regret.  It seems as if we rarely give direct thought to the very moment we are living in right now.  If we could unload our preoccupations with the past and our worries about the future onto a shelf and temporarily let them be, we'd be free to be present in, well, the present.

The point: In just four days, I'll be headed on the biggest journey of my life thus far - studying abroad in Costa Rica for three months.  While I cannot abandon the necessity of a watch due to the classes I will be taking, my goal for myself is to "Live in the moment" as fully as possible.  The shelf with my past and my future will always be there, but I promise myself not to dwell on them too much.  Instead, I will open my mind more fully to the experiences at hand, which I believe will allow me to more fully incorporate myself into another culture.

This blog will be an account of "Los Momentos" that I experience during this new chapter of my life in Costa Rica.