Photos: Muchas Gracias

Muchas Gracias!

Hola!

Last week started out with a wonderful message on my laptop saying “Prepare! The hard drive is failing!!” Lovely. I backed up my computer on my massive thumb drive (Thanks Uncle Eric!!), and tried to upload as many things to Google Drive as possible.  My computer lasted long enough for me to research and find out that you do not want to buy a new computer in Costa Rica unless you are a millionaire, and that to have my parents ship me a computer from McKinleyville to San Ramon via fedex, would cost $250 and had a fifty-fifty chance of not being stolen out of the mail.

I am just going to count my lucky stars right now.

1.       My friend Kit’s mom is flying here to visit him on September 27^th, and she offered to bring anything I need from the United States with her on the plane.

2.       SO much cheaper and SO much safer. Somehow, my computer decided to die at the perfect time.

3.       Thursday, I worked out all the fine details with my mom, sent her the address of Kits mom.

4.       Thursday night, my computer went black and I was out of touch with everyone for 4 days.

5.       Computer is in the mail, the school library lab is my new home for the next two weeks, and my whole life in on a little white flash drive. Scary.

This blog is really a huge THANK YOU to everyone helping me out. Especially you mom and dad, you are the best. J They have been dealing with bank and computer crisis’s that I have been shoving onto them for the last 3 weeks.  Turns out, the bank doesn’t like it when you do stuff from a computer out of the country.

Also, in the middle of all this, I received a slew of beautiful letters from very beautiful and wonderful people in my life. Can’t tell you how much it meant to receive so much love.

Happy belated birthday to my mother! I found a friend who let me come over and use her computer to send a birthday email.

Costa Rica anecdote: My friends and I were walking on a road trying to find a river when a little granny invited us off the street and up a little path to her house. She was so happy to talk to the Gringos and show us her farm and home. She made us fresh Costa Rican coffee, and fed us cookies. We ending up staying at their house and talking to her and her husband in the best Spanish we had for an hour. We said we would come back, but next time we would bring the cookies. Pure Costa Rican kindness, what a remarkable place this is.  

Pura Vida!

Address

PO Box
Kate Wilcox
PO Box 346-4250
San Ramon, Alajuela
Costa Rica

Physical Address (for Fedex I believe)
Kate Wilcox
USAC
Department de Biologia
Sede de Occidente
Universidad de Costa Rica
San Ramon, Alajuela
Costa Rica

Bulls, horses, and churros OH MY!

In the little over two weeks that I have been here, I have learned that Costa Rica knows how to throw a fiesta! For the last week and a half, the whole city of San Ramón has been intensely celebrating our patron saint, San Ramón. The central park is filled with food vendors selling four-foot long churros, tamales wrapped in banana  leaves, arroz con pollo, freshly made tortillas, pineapples filled with fruit and ice cream, and other very exotic sounding foods.

There are also free concerts every night, and they have been ramping up each night of the week. Last night the entire sidewalk, dance floor, street, and church steps were filled with people and we all danced the salsa, bachata, and merengue.  We (the gringo exchange students) mainly dance with each other with the occasional unsuspecting local who we wrangled into our group and made them teach us their moves. They loved us, and would laugh very good-naturedly at our attempts to salsa smoothly.

Last weekend was the parade of carretas, where the ranchers brought their best steer to pull small painted carts (carretas) through the streets. Many of these cows were HUGE, but they were very docile and some were even led by what looked like eight year olds. There was much yipping, yelling, and boot stamping. A few nights later, we watching caballeros perform intricate trotting routines with their gorgeous horses. It was very much like a horse dance in the street, and when their hooves would slip a bit on the pavement, they would spray sparks out behind them. There was even more yipping and yelling during that night.  

Yesterday was the most anticipated event of all the festivities. I say this because the fireworks started going off at 6:00 am. The ENTIRE town plus more packed into the streets and park to watch as groups of people carried litters with statue of saints on them. The saints were completely surrounded by flower arrangements, and were followed by possessions of bands, dancers, singers and supporters. The people carrying the saints could not resist the music either, and all the way down the road, you could see these saint statues bobbing up and down and spinning in circles along with the beat.

All the festivities end on tonight (Monday the 1^st) with a giant concert/town dance and a raffle for a free car. Now we wait for Independence Day on September 15^th, and the whole thing starts over again!

Classes: This week, we have also had two class field trips. One was for tropical ecology, where we went to INBIO, a research/ reserve/zoo facility. It was beautiful, and we were able to see many beautiful Costa Rican animals that I hope to actually see in the wild…minus the fer de lance pit viper) Our next trip was with my plant taxonomy class, and we drove to Cerro de la Muerte. It is called the mountain of death because of how cold it gets, not cold enough to frost, but cold enough to kill travelers before the time of cars. There was no jungle up there, and we sat in the rocks keying out the stems and leaves of the plants that were drastically different from those a few hundred feet lower in elevation. 

Pura Vida!

Photos- Bulls, horses, and churros OH MY!