Field Trips, Ziplining, Crocodiles, and more!

This past week was my first week of classes. Campus was a little more exciting this week because the real students at the university were there for class registration, which looked painful. Looked like a lot of standing in line for the chance to sign up for classes- makes me glad that at Maryland we get to do everything online! I just love the views of the mountains here- sorry if i post an excess of mountain and sky shots!! 

So far all of my classes seem like they will be good. I decided to drop the Literature class because it was at 8am on Friday morning, and I wasn't getting credit for it anyway! So now I don't have class on Wednesdays or Fridays :) Dance class was really fun! We learned the chachacha and a little merengue, which I could manage- but I'm sure it's going to get harder very soon.

Here are some shots of my host family's house!  

View from the front door!

Intenseeee nativity scene... it has christmas lights on it too

Kitchen!

Gallo pinto! Black beans and rice! I eat this EVERY SINGLE DAY for breakfast.

The shower.... this was fun to figure out....

View from the front door

View of the front of the house

I played tourist one afternoon this week- Barva is a very residential area and so I definitely drew attention to myself by walking around town taking pictures. The church in town is right next to the Parque Central (Central Park), and it is called Iglesia de San Bartolomé de Barva. There was such a beautiful sunset that I couldn't resist taking some pictures. 

 One quirky thing about Barva- around town on street poles they have weird-looking heads on them, some are old men, and some are devil- and witch-looking. They're called mascaradas, and apparently every year there's a big festival to celebrate the town, and the heads/mask things are important in the festival. Also some of the mascaradas are supposed to be heads of important figures from the town, but if that's the case, I don't understand why they're made to look so weird. 

This is my personal fave... he's on the block right by my house.

Multiple days in a row I have walked around Barva, near my house, and have seen a rainbow in almost the same spot! Sometimes a double rainbow!

On Thursday morning I went on a field trip with my Spanish class to San José, the capital. We had a chance to walk around some markets, and then also went to the National Theatre, which was very beautiful. The tour we had was very interesting, and we learned a lot about Costa  Rican history- it was rich coffee plantation owners who originally funded the project of the theatre, because they wanted to have a building comparable to what they had seen in trips to Europe. I'd say they definitely got what they wanted!

One funny thing that we learned was that this ceiling mural is an extremely inaccurate representation of what is painted. The artist was Italian, and he had no experience with or knowledge of anything Costa Rican before painting this! You can kind of tell how white the women are, and also they're portrayed wearing incorrect clothing- much more European. All of the men are wearing the wrong kind of hats. The man in the foreground carrying the bananas is holding them incorrectly... holding them like that would make them all fall off! Silly uninformed Italian painter.

On Saturday, we had a group field trip. We first went ziplining down a mountain through the canopy- Vista de los Sueños Canopy near Jaco Beach. SO MUCH FUN! 

View from the top of the mountain (Pacific Ocean!)

After ziplining and lunch, we went on a crocodile tour! It was a pretty slow, not very exciting boat tour... until one of the guides got out of the boat to feed a 17ft crocodile!

The croc then proceeded to hang out right next to the boat for a little while... too close for comfort!

Days 2 and 3

Yesterday (Saturday) we had orientation at the university. Getting to the university is fairly easy- I walk a few blocks to the bus stop, and then it's about a 7-10 minute bus ride into Heredia. As I have found out, I don't actually live IN Heredia, I'm in a neighboring district just to the north called Barva. It's an easy busy ride for 165 colones- about 35 cents. Barva is nice, a little more quiet and residential than Heredia. But the whole area is beautiful and surrounded by mountains. 


The university is none like I've ever seen before. To begin with, it's very green here, especially around and in the school. Here is just a view of one part of campus. Look at those mountains in the background! I love being in a valley and being able to see mountains in every direction. 

Campus is bigger than I expected. I'm definitely going to have to continue to play tourist and take more pictures! Here is a picture of the inside of the building where we had our orientation- the whole middle part of the building is open, with lots of large plants growing! Most of the buildings on campus are very open from what I've seen so far.

I'm officially signed up for my classes! I have either one or two 3-hour classes a day (except wednesdays!), and three days a week I have class at 8am (new for me). I'm taking two Spanish classes, a Latin American literature class, Comparative Education, and Dance! At the last minute I decided to be brave and ignore my serious lack of rhythm and sign up for the dance class. It should be fun- maybe it'll help me improve my rhythmic issues! On Wednesdays we have an opportunity to play soccer as a group- I'm very excited that I'll have the opportunity to play sports. There also should be a chance to play volleyball, so I'm definitely going to take advantage of that!


Today I met up with some compañeros (friends/peers) from my program as well as a few Ticos (Costa Ricans) and we watched the Ravens beat the Texans! After the game we walked around Heredia a little bit. We saw the Central Park, which was filled with people just hanging out. In everything I read about Heredia, the image of the Fortin de Heredia always comes up, and we got to see that too! It's apparently pretty symbolic of Heredia. 

After that, I had the opportunity to go into the mountains north of Heredia to watch the sunset. It was absolutely beautiful. The drive up was beautiful as well, very lush and green. Although it was a little cloudy, from the top we could still see a lot of the valley and all the towns below. Apparently sometimes you can see the planes coming into the airport, which sounds awesome. Also, from a lookout point a little to the west of where I was, apparently you can see the beach and Pacific ocean! I definitely want to go up to the mountains again soon.

Also on our way to the mountains, we drove through San Rafael, a neighboring town. The highlight of the drive was this AMAZING church- Iglesia de San Rafael. Absolutely beautiful. A Tico informed me that this church is completely Italian-made. Apparently when it was being built, they had to take the parts of the church piece by piece from the coast to San Rafael... by carriage. And I think that the carriages now are some sort of symbol for San Rafael, representing the process of building that church- a process that took many years to complete. Although these are not my pictures, I still wanted to show the impressive nature of the church. It absolutely towers over everything around.

When I got home this evening, I had a nice surprise on my wall... Scary! 

One final picture- this shot that I took this morning made me realize I was living in the right house... 

Arrival in Heredia!

Hola lectores y bienvenidos a mi blog sobre mi viaje a Heredia, Costa Rica! Hi readers and welcome to my blog about my trip to Heredia, Costa Rica! 

And so it begins! I have been in Costa Rica for a few hours now, and I'm really too tired to form a serious opinion about anything so far! My host family is great so far, it's just the mother and the daughter, and I've been talking to the daughter for a month or so via email and Facebook, so I knew her a little bit already! They both have to speak slowly for me to understand them... And I can barely understand them when they speak to each other in conversation! I know at least that my Spanish will definitely improve by the time I return in May.

I really thought it was funny that multiple times my host mother has complained about how "frío" (cold) it is. It's 68 degrees and I'm in shorts and a t-shirt! I think I've found a very livable climate- I'm going to love it down here. 

Tomorrow my whole study abroad group has an orientation at the university- Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica. I'm excited to see the university as well as the town tomorrow, and I'll hopefully have some pictures and more information to post soon!

Ps. Great news- I've already found a friend who wants to watch the Ravens game with me on Sunday! This of course was an extremely important achievement...