The Big Bang Theory

Sunset at the beach across the street, Santa Teresa

Hola from 2011! Back in paradise and things are going well. After a somewhat messy break-up with my tico boyfriend followed by a perfectly timed mini-vacation adventure with one of my best gringa girlfriends, I am finally getting back into my groove in Santa Teresa. Just finished my first week of English classes and had about 60 students in attendance. Hoping that number may go up a little during the second week, but feeling good about the size and energy of most of my groups. Decided to cancel my class in Montezuma after considering opening a new group there, but due to lack of interest and no desire to travel so far by myself once a week, I just let it go. The good news is I am now officially a Spanish teacher as well, currently working with two Swedish boys who have recently moved to town, and looking for a few new recruits. Beginner lessons only, but I have to say I'm pretty proud of my Spanish after a year and a half here. In addition to that I've got a few private lesson English students, so that should make for a decent monthly income. I've also got a great new house with my bestie from NYC. We are loving it...a nice big kitchen, living room with an actual couch, a hot water shower, 3 bedrooms, and a nice big front porch. It's pretty sweet for Ticolandia.

KK at my new house!

So as I said the year started off with a few big bangs...

Bang! Too much fighting with the boyfriend finally led to the end of us. Sad face. But we are both better off without each other...and it feels good to be single again. Getting back in touch with my soul, and studying "Women who run with the Wolves" to awaken my wild nature;)

Bang! I moved into a new house.

Kritter at Playa San Josecito, on the Osa Peninsula

Bang! My long time girlfriend Krista AKA Kritta K came to visit and we went on a whirlwind adventure to the southern zone of Costa Rica to the Osa Peninsula. I finally made it to Corcovado National Park, one of the most biologically diverse places on the planet, where we spotted tons of wildlife and enjoyed la naturaleza. A few pics below. Kritter also got to come see my new house and check out the area where I live for a few days...it was so great to share it all with her! Then we made it down to Dominical for two days on the way to the Osa, where we just chilled and surfed and danced a little salsa;) So glad KK came down...and if anyone else reading this is thinking about making the trip, DO IT!!! So worth it...and you get to see ME!

Scarlet Macaw

Tiger Heron

Bang! I got a surfboard! Meet the lovely "Reina" 6'11" funboard! We are still getting to know eachother, but I'm feeling really good about the future of our relationship. She's just big enough that I can get up on her, but small enough that I can become a better surfer. I am still in a very beginner mode, but owning my own tabla should help me learn a lot faster. Love her.

Me & my Queen, Reina

Final Bang! Today I got a bike! Don't have a photo yet but she is a pretty in pink beach cruiser with a jumbo basket on the front...I am calling her "Rosalinda." Now I have a whole little family of friends...Rubi the red quad, Reina the royal tabla de surf, and Rosalinda the rosada bicicleta.

Love from Costa Rica XOXO

...and then the Earth trembled!

Wow...what a week! In the past week I've experienced many new, interesting, exciting, and scary things. There was a skunk in my kitchen that made me scream, a family of raccoons visiting our trash bin (mind you now that I've made friends with one I kinda like seeing these guys around), a ginormous four inch cockroach crawling by outside (these guys on the other hand are not welcome), bright green frogs having sex on a leaf in the yard, and frog eggs from said frogs hanging on said leaf in a gelatenas clear substance the next morning (cool). But nothing was quite as amazing as the tremors I felt on Thursday and Friday.

It was my first time to experience an earthquake (tremor, really, but to me it was pretty significant). The entire house shook. I just so happened to be getting dressed (it was around 9:30 in the morning) and had to run outside to a safer spot topless...good thing we don't have any close neighbors. The house we live in is built on the side of a mountain, and there is a fault line running through Cobano and a seismogenic plate that lies beneath most of the Nicoya Peninsula. This area is basically where two tectonic plates meet under the surface of the Earth: the Coco Plate and the Caribbean Plate. Apparently the shifting of these two plates is what causes the earthquakes and tremors, and sometime in the future a very large earthquake could destroy the entire peninsula. I'm not so sure what it all means, but that's what they say. It seems to me the whole area is sort of in a constant flux, especially the tip of the penninsula where I live (Montezuma, Cobano, Cabuya, Mal Pais, and Santa Teresa). The mountains drop at a steep angle down to the coastal areas, the terrain is rough, and at any time landslides and topographic changes are possible. I guess that explains why the roads are so bad, because paving them never seems to last that long. As the land changes, so do the pothole prone roads.

The tremor was Thursday morning and it reached 5.3 on the Richter scale. There were apparently more than 6 more aftershocks, only one of which I felt. Then came the flashes in the sky. Thursday night as we were going to bed we started noticing some lightening in the sky, but there was no thunder. Heat lightening I suppose. We went to bed but kept seeing these flashes of light outside the window, so we got up to watch the storm. But it wasn't raining and there was still no thunder, just continuous flashes of light with the occasional bolt of lightening going sideways across the sky. I have never seen so much atmospheric activity - the flashes continued with less than 5 seconds between them for at least a couple of hours. It was truly unbelievable, kind of beautiful, and a little bit frightening. We are living in the beginning of the end of days, after all. Who knows what could happen, or what's normal anymore.

Again on Friday morning there was another big one, 5 point something, and then again this morning around 3 am, 4 point something. During both of these I was sleeping and I didn't feel anything. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but I guess I'm a good sleeper like my dad. :)

So...aside from mother nature showing me her wild side this week, life has been pretty normal. It's midterm exam time for my students, so now we will really see who's got the dedication to pass the test and finish out the semester. I think most of them are going to do just fine, and I'm making an extra effort to do a whole review class so they are well prepared for the exam. The weather has been surprisingly really beautiful lately, with several full days of sunshine this week which means I got in a little beach time. Last weekend we spent in San Jose again, this time because I had to take the car in to pass her technical inspection, which after spending hundreds of dollars in repairs and borrowing a tire from a similar car at the local mechanic's, she passed by the skin of her teeth (now there's an interesting idiom to use in my classes...any ideas where that one came from?). Now that Geovanna passed inspection and we are getting close to finishing the rainy season, I'm considering selling her and keeping the quad come November. I've been planning to sell Rubi (the ATV), but in reality she is much more fit for getting around on these roads as long as it's not raining: she's newer, has fewer problems, and she's built for off-roading (or on-roading in Costa Rica). Plus she can go a lot faster, and she's a lot more fun to ride! She's perfect for the dry season, and since I'm thinking I probably won't stick around for the entire year next year, she's probably my best option. Yes, that's right, I'm currently considering wrapping things up here in May or June of 2011. But no promises. There are still a lot of things that could happen between now and then...

And there you have it. Hasta la proxima, pura vida!

So THIS is the Rainy Season...

Really Rain? Really???

It's been raining so much lately I feel like I have barely seen the sun! There have been a few mornings of sunshine but the past week has been pretty crazy. For the past two days and nights it has rained constantly. I mean all day and all night, super hard and then a little bit lighter, with maybe a 20 minute pause here and there only to start pouring again, and it is still going...unbelievable! Apparently this is how it gets around the start of June, but hopefully it won't be so bad for too long. Normally in the rainy season, the mornings are somewhat sunny, and the rain doesn't come until the late afternoon or evening (just when I need to be in transit to my classes), but lately Mother Nature hasn't been following the rules! Now I am starting to understand why so many foreigners only live in Costa Rica during the dry season. This rain is no joke! Last year was such a light weight rainy season that I didn't realize what I was in for this time. Apparently I haven't seen anything yet, as everyone and their mothers keep warning me about the madness of October...

Ready for the rain

My friend Liz Gilbert, who has the same name as the author of one of my favorite books Eat, Pray, Love, came to visit this past weekend. She is another one of ALIARSE's volunteer English teachers who works here in Turrialba, and we met during our job orientation in January. She came on Thursday in the midst of a big rainstorm, actually the same night that an earthquake hit Costa Rica farther south down the pacific coast. Apparently my students felt the tremor while we were having class, but I didn't notice anything other than some papers falling off the desk. Hmmm. I kind of WANT to feel an earthquake just because I never have before, but I guess I should be careful what I wish for!

Liz drawing on Tiffany

Despite the rain, Liz and I had a great time here. She really loved this area and thought my whole set up with my family and the quad was great. She especially fell in love with my little sister Tiffany, as we spent some time one morning giving each other temporary tattoos with the yummy smelling markers I brought back from the States. Luckily, it wasn't raining too much during the daytime so we were able to go to the beach and visit the waterfall, which was in full force after so much rain. The hike up the river to the waterfall that is super easy in the dry season is finally getting kind of tricky again. I almost lost my flip flop twice!!! On Saturday, we did a tour of my favorite beach spots on the Santa Teresa side. Both nights that Liz was here we planned to go out for a few drinks, but every time we would get ready to go out, it would start pouring. One night we called a taxi, and the other night we used trash bag ponchos to stay somewhat dry on the quad. We felt quite accomplished as we managed to get out and have a blast regardless of the weather :)

Tiff & I with our new tattoos

This past week I also made my first attempts at crossing a river on the quad. All the rivers that were super low a few weeks ago are now way bigger, some of them flowing forcefully all the way out into the sea. But Rubi (my quad) is such a tough girl, I have to hand it to her, she really takes everything like a pro.

Rubi's new rain-proof box

I must admit the first time was pretty scary. The tiny river that I normally cross all the time with no problem had gotten so much bigger. I wasn't sure how deep it was in the center, and I stopped to ponder turning around and making a big loop up to Cobano. But after a moment I decided I could do it, so I put it in low gear and slowly crossed. We made it through! YAY Rubi! It was quite a rush, but I had an even scarier moment with Liz when we tried to cross a river at night and got stuck on a rock. The river wasn't that deep so it would have been no problem for the quad, except for the fact that I steered us onto a big rock and the tire got stuck. The scary part was that I had to reverse back into the river in order to get us unstuck! But like I said, Rubi handled it really well, and we were on our way in no time. Nevertheless, these rivers are only getting bigger, and with time the cut-through roads will be impassable. Yet another reason why a car will make much more sense: I'll be driving the long loop all the way up to Cobano and around, and even if I didn't mind getting a little wet, that's a long way to go on a quad. So the search for a car continues. I should have good news within a week or two.

Tiffany with Avocados from the tree in our yard

My favorite part of this time of the year is that the mangos are still abundant and the avocados are popping off! I've been eating avocado with almost every meal lately, and at least one mango a day. There are so many mangos still that people just give them away...que rico!

Ciao amigos!