Not only are Costa Rican names as long as Jose’s, but all Costa Ricans are prone to giving nicknames to new people they meet. Mauricio’s is Mau(think cat call, or my personal favorite, like a cow moo), Jose’s is Tonio or more teasingly Takaco. I got a name very early on due to my UNC biology shirt. A bee was flying at me and I made a comment that it thought I was a flower. Pablo has christened me henseforth Floripondio.

We move to a new site that is more rustic than LA cruces. I have all my HW due tomorrow and complications are going to make it extra difficult. I will try to update this page next week.

Our first “lab” was the sampling of over 45 different tropical fruits and plant parts from old world and the neotropics. We tasted, smelled and touched the different plants, and I liked most of them, and almost all of them are more nutritious than what you will see in the United States. My least favorite to taste was sugarcane, it was too sweet!

We as “Americans” should be eating more plantains and yucca fruit, they are much more interesting in taste and more nutritious than bananas and potatoes. My favorite was called Guacuya. It was green with a smooth outer skin. and was a smooth sour taste, almost like a weak chaser if you don’t like lime. The best part was that the flesh was runny like egg yolk, so I would simply swallow the interior in one gulp. Most of what we tried were very established fruits that are eaten often in central and south america, but there was one fruit, Noni that is a favorite of bats. I should have smelled it before reading the informational placard for it, but it tasted mild, not outstanding in any way. It smelled like human vomit! It is a brownish fruit with stringy flesh and has a lot of water in it.

I have a list of everything I tried, so if you have any questions about a particular tropical fruit you may have heard of, ask me and I will let you know if I tried it.

This week we visit a coffee plantation, where our Boa Constrictor was found and hear the grower’s perspective on the global coffee economy. I will likely be tasting many different Costa Rican coffee blends here and will need help from my family and my Colorado friends in going through the bag I intend to buy here!

Profesor Mauricio gave an explanation for my strange dreams, I had one last night about someone getting lost or hurt out here. My antibiotic/antimalarial drugs I take have a side effect of vivid dreams.

During orientation we were told the Wilsons, the couple who purchased the land originally, have been seen by the night guards strolling the grounds and inhabiting the bunkhouse we are currently living in. Last night after I woke from the weird dream and found myself paralyzed, almost as if a concrete slab was lying on me. I chanted out loud, “let me go, let me go” and found I was also having impaired breathing. The feeling passed and moment later I said, Duermo por favor! Later I heard someone moving around outside but no one claimed to be up at the time. I was one the upper bunk and maybe my body was paralyzing itself for protection, but nonetheless it was quite the experience to have on my first night.

The first thing I notice driving around this city is how it could be any city I have ever been in. It had restaurants, women and men’s dress shops, personal clinics and auto garages. Many company logos are quite familiar: Penzoil, Subway, Mcdonalds. Spanish words are not that hard to understand under the context of a storefront. I believe I have seen more Spanish in Colorado and California towns than English in San Jose. This city also has a china town, by the way. My only restraint is that I can’t speak to a Tico or Tica in conversation, and I know I am not the type to start a conversation on the street, so I am uncertain why I would feel uneasy at first here.

I do want to say that when I first began the bus ride out of the airport, there was a five car accident on the 3 lane road, no intersection, no stop light. Additionally, motorcycles believe Jesus is personally leading them through the roads and sidewalks out here, and they are the most dangerous thing in the city. My first billboard I noticed out of the airport was advertising for contraception, and the second one was a coca-cola sign. Surrounding it was a classic shanty town of rusted sheet metal shacks situated on the bank of the river here. This was when I knew I had arrived in a developing country.

I’m just chillin’ and watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Harrison Ford is so always Harrison Ford. Industrial Light and Magic reused a lot of their sound effects from Star Wars and Indiana gets the lady. I have been enjoying television a lot more than normal as my departure date for central america approaches. Somehow, I still have been able to accomplish my errands such as collecting currency, extra clothing and medications. I am prepared physically for this trip, and I believe mentally as well. All of my friends are on their next school semester or off to work again and I will be on my own project, surviving Costa Rica

Let there be life! 🙂