A Costa Rican New Year's

I was a "little" sad when my family left the 29th and still didn't have exact plans for what to do for New Year's. Luckily, my good friends here stroke once again and gave me more than one option for new year's (which made it really hard to choose!) Everyone I know here are extremely open and welcoming and it's always a joy to visit the tico families!

I ended up going to Juan Viñas to celebrate with Stefan and his family. We were nine around the table and I had a great time with the whole family!

La mesilla como se vió para Año Nuevo. Después la juntamos con la mesa grande para que pudimos comer todos juntos. The little table as it looked for New Year's. Afterwards we put it together with the big one so we could all eat together.

Stefan, being the chef of the family, made almost all the food (with a little help from the rest of us). Everything was super delicious, and he even made fish for me as a special dish as I (still) don't eat red meat!

La comida del nuevo año (el plato de Stefan). Todo muy rico y con la pierna de cerdo tradicional. Las papas morenos (brunede kartofler) fueron el toque danés ;)

Just a picture of us:

Stefan y yo muy felices!

It was really late when we finished eating, so we left the kitchen as it was and went to the "living room" waiting for the new year to come. Every country has it's own traditions, so this year I didn't drink champagne, we didn't jump into the new year and I didn't kiss anyone at midnight.

Instead, we all stood in a circle waiting for the new year to come and so at twelve, we entered the new year together. Afterwards, there was a lot of grape eating (one for each moth of the year for good luck) and throwing lentils for there always to be enough to eat in the new year.

La última foto de 2011
Toda la familia!
Stefan, Carlitos, Ashley, Rosario, Roy, Angie y la novia de Roy, Alejandra

Afterwards, we went out on the street to say happy new year's to all the rest of the city (at least the rest of the family - who all live in the same city - and whoever else we met on our way). Later we went on a short visit to the neighbouring barrio to see the carnival. Mucha fiesta!

I had a really good night and it was very interesting and enriching to experience a Costa Rican new year's!

Stefan and I ended the night by throwing lentils at each other until around 3 in the morning. Great start of 2012!

Roomie love!

Just wanting to show you my (awesome!) roomies!

Jugando!
Playing!

Jugando más - yo perdí :(
More playing - I lost :(

Lydia, la artista!

Just chilling..

(Finally!) An update!

Lots of things have happened since I last wrote on the blog – I sincerely apologize to everyone who tried to follow me through this site. BUT! Now I’m back! So let’s start where we left off:

The biggest thing that happened here was that I had to leave the Cornicks because they had to use my casita for Jorge’s brother and his wife who were to come to Costa Rica November 1^st. Unfortunately the planning wasn’t quite there, so I had to find a place in less than 10 days. And so the hunt began...!
 

 

It was tough, but I did my best and fortunately I had sooo many good friends to help me in my search. With their help, especially Stefan’s, I called and viewed 1-4 apartments every day.

Fortunately, I wasn’t alone in my hunt; Lydia joined me so we could search for something nice together. We ended up with a third roommate too, called Freiser and now we all live together in a nice but ugly-coloured apartment in what is known as La Calle de Amargura or in English “Bitter-street.” Should I name an equal to it in Denmark, it would probably be Jomfru Ane gade. This should give you a good idea of how it is to live here – oh yeah, and the train, which is extremely noisy, passes right by us in the morning, so it’s now gotten the nickname “MALPARIDO TREN!! (con cariño)” But we do have a lot of fun and the noise from La Calle is easy to ignore most of the time.

Here’s a couple of pictures from when we moved in:

La cocina - the kitchen

La lavadora - the washing machine.

La alacena! Foooood!

La sala, muy vacio! Jaja. - The livingroom, very empty!

El baño

Me and Lydia's room - messy!

So, this is my new home here. I ended up living by myself abroad before I moved out of my parent’s house in Denmark – oh well.

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.