Violin kids from La Carpio

Incredibly sweet and cute and also very, very, very poor. :/

Nuestros animales

We have a lot of animals around here. Some we love, others not so much. Here are some of them:

Una mariposa del Museo Nacional

Otra mariposa. Está comiendo el néctar de la flor

Una de las mariposas azules. Arriba tienen el color azul hermíssima y abajo este color.

Me encanta este foto. Que bonita!

La mariposa está saliendo su crisálida

Un loro en el camino del finc de café en Heredia

All of the butterfly pictures were taken at Museo Nacional in San José, but I've seen them fly around here, too. Not the beautiful blue ones though. I took the picture of the parrot, when I went to see a coffee farm in Heredia with some other spanish students from Intensa (my school). There, we spent most of the day walking and eating the different fruits we found.

Now to the animals who we actually live with every day:

Hormigas. El foto es del calle de Eureka pero también están aquí. Son GRANDES!

These pictures are pretty blurry, but you get the idea.

Ants are pretty much everywhere here and it's impossible to live without them. Not because we don't want to, they're simply just impossible to get rid of. Fortunately, this type of ant doesn't live very near the houses, because as Jorge said: "They will cut up a tree in a weak" These critters are HUGE.In my casita, I have counted three types of ants so far. Red ones, black ones (both bigger than at home!) and tiny black ones. The tiny ones won't bite but they WILL eat your candy/fruit/anything sweet.

Una mariposa nocturnal en la casa

It seems the (huge) moth randomly decided to die on the wall.

Un de los dos perros. Se llama Becky. Me encanta!!

They (we!) have dogs here! They live outside the house, which is great. I walk by them every morning (and several times a day) and they are soo sweet! These are pictures of the female Becky.

Say hello to my little friend!

This bug woke me from my sleep and freaked me out by sounding like a helicopter (more or less) and bumping into everything. I ended up hiding under my blanket while it hid in my closet.

The next day Maris showed one of the same kind, just smaller (seems like mine was a biiig guy) and told me they are harmless.

As you can see, everything is just a "little bit" bigger here. Except for the dogs. They're pretty normal-sized. ;)

Fencing!

I spent most of my second day in Costa Rica (Sunday) watching Tomás in a fencing competition. It was very interesting as I have never seen fencing for real before. It's SUCH a hard sport to understand! To me, it seemed pretty random who got points for touching the other.

Rooting for Cornick

Tomás with friends - trying to remove the smell of queso

Tomás -" hermano" :)

Getting ready!

Fighting - Tomás to the right

Fighting - Tomás to the right

Unfortunately, Tomás didn't win the competition, but I had a good day anyway. 


In the evening, I went with Maris, her mother, Jorge´s mother and the kids to church. An interesting experience, peaceful, even though the church was  s t u f f e d  with people! I don't think I'll join them every Sunday though.
 It's a little funny because Maris is VERY religious and Jorge doesn't believe at all. I guess it makes for some kind of balance. Also, it gives me the freedom to do either, which suits me well.

The First Day

After a loooong journey, I finally arrived in Costa Rica.

I got to Costa Rica very late because the flight Miami-San Jose kept on getting delayed and when we finally boarded, they had to exchange the flight crew because they had been on duty for too long. So I waited. And waited. Aaaaand waited. But finally we went into the air (around 19 or so, Miami time). When I arrived in San José, my suitcase had gone missing. This was the closest I got to having a meltdown, but fortunately it arrived the next day, so no harm done.

The first day I went with Maris to a very poor barrio, which name I have forgotten. She´s teaching the local kids to play guitar, her mother draws with them, Gretchen (Maris' niece) teaches them to play the violin and another kid teaches them drumming. Of course I was matched up with Gretchen, because we both play violin and are around the same age. I couldn't play however, because my fingernails are too long, and also, it was a bit hard to communicate as I hardly know any Spanish and the people there knows absolutely no English. 

Fortunately I didn't miss my chance, because they do this every Saturday! The project has been running for around 7 months.

When we got home, I took a (much needed) one-hour nap. It's really hard coping with the eight-hour difference between Costa Rica and Denmark!

Afterwards I went with Maris to "Tips and Fun," which is held at her mother's house right beside her and Jorge's. "Tips and Fun" consists of kids from around this neighbourhood and Tomás and Manuelas friends from school and is run by Maris, her mother and her sister. They make all different kinds of activities. Today Gretchen was ‘visiting’ to teach the kids how to make collages (I did the top of a box - very neat!)

Afterwards we had a little snack break and one of the kids, Victor, showed off his guitar playing skills. Quite impressive!

Later, we tried to play Cranium, but it didn't work out so well as the kids didn't know the game and I didn't know much Spanish. It didn't last long before one of the kids suggested a game of hide and seek instead. I was getting really tired at that point so I didn't join in. Instead I talked with some of the others at the table.

I have no pictures from my first day as I didn't take any.