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!