Vida en San José

These last few days have been pretty action packed, so I'll try and remember most of what I've done. After getting a short night's sleep in my hotel the first night, I spend pretty much all of Thursday walking aimlessly around the city. Despite being laid out on an grid of numbered calles (streets running N-S) and avenidas (running E-W), San José still confuses the hell out of me. I think the combination of hundreds of thousands of people, buildings that look almost exactly alike and the craziest drivers I have ever seen (Italians included) makes San José a place thats hard get a handle on. I think if crosswalks were ever introduced in here, they would be painted red with the blood of pedestrians in about an hour. It's absolutely nuts. On my trek around the city I nearly broke both of my ankles on the treacherous afueras (sidewalks), had about half a dozen people yell at me for being American*, and chatted in broken Spanish to some crackhead bums. It was undoubtedly one of the more eventful days of my life.
*white people = Americans
(sorry Canadians, Europeans and Aussies)

Boulevard del Museo Nacional

That night I went to my host family's house for dinner. I am living with Frank, a retired US Marine who was born in Costa Rica, and Lucy, who has lived in Costa Rica all of her life. Frank speaks English very well, because he spent 22 years in the United States on duty. Lucy, however, speaks very little English. I think the arrangement will work out well because I speak Spanish with Lucy, but don't feel overwhelmed because I can always speak English with Frank. They've been married for a few years and have no children together. Because they have two extra bedrooms, they like to host exchange students from all over the place. In March, another student named Orlando is moving in the room next door to me. From what I've gathered to this point, Orlando is Puerto Rican and is muy gordo (fat). He sounds like a quality neighbor. They live in Sabanilla, an area just outside of San José a few kilometers away from the university (I have to use the metric system now. Everything in this blog will be in kilometers, kilograms and liters). Lucy is an amazing cook, and after a delicious fresh shrimp dinner Frank and I hit up the neighborhood watering hole and met some of the locals, none of whom seemed terribly excited to meet me.

View of the mountains from inside the city

I wasn't feeling very well on Friday so I decided to take it easy and explore Sabanilla a little bit and work on my Spanish vocabulary. Sabanilla is a little more laid back than San José, which is nice because I don't know if I could stand six months of incessant honking and ¡jódete's! I piddled around town for a few hours, taking pictures here and there and doing my best to look as foreign as possible.

My host family's house

Down the street from the house

Today Lucy woke me up fairly early and told me she was going to her sister's house and that she wanted me to come to meet her family. Thankfully I was feeling much better and gladly obliged, since at that time I knew a total of about 6 people in this country. Some details were lost in translation, however, and I gathered that she wanted to walk there. When I looked at my map I realized that I must have misunderstood, since Heredia is about 40 kilometers away from Sabanilla. After some explaining and a few dozen hand gestures, I found out that another of her sisters would pick us up and take us there.



We ate lunch with two of Lucy's sisters and their three children. Lucy's sister Rocío has two kids, Esteban who is 11 and Gabriela who is 18. Her other sister, Sara, has a daughter named Andrea who is 25. Lunch mostly consisted of everybody talking really fast in Spanish while Gabriela and I worked on our vocabulary. Gabriela is mentally handicapped, and spends most of her time studying her Spanish vocabulary picture cards. She's really cool, and we make very good study partners! Afterwards, we met a few more of her relatives that came over and Esteban and I played a game of Uno that lasted for at least two hours. He refused to let me surrender after about an hour so we had to keep playing until he could cheat enough to finally win. We left and Rocío drove us all around Heredia and San José, telling me all about things I couldn't understand. Luckily, in these last few days, I've gotten really good at pretending I understand what people are saying, when I actually have no clue. I think it's a pretty useful skill, and I'm sure I'll have plenty of time to perfect it.
We came back to Lucy's house and I gave Rocío and the kids an English lesson while Lucy made dinner. Rocío wanted me to translate a joke she had heard earlier that was something to the extent of:
"No podemos ser terroristas, porque siempre llegamos tarde"
"We (Costa Ricans) can't be terrorists because we always arrive late"
I thought it was pretty crude and mildly humorous so I'll keep it in mind in case I stumble across an open mic night at the comedy club. It is, after all, the only joke I know in Spanish.

Esteban, Gabriela, Rocío, Andrea, Sara and Lucy

I really had a blast all day, and my Spanish is showing noticeable improvement. Hopefully by this time next month, I'll be speaking Spanish on a middle school level!
Also, I'm planning a trip out to Manzanillo (Caribbean coast) for next week after orientation (Tues-Thurs) so hopefully by Friday I'll be on the beach.
I'm posting most of my pictures here on my Flickr account, but lately I've been having problems with my internet connection so bear with me. I'm taking lots of them and I promise I'm trying to get them up for you to see. ¡Hasta pronto!