Back to Class

June 6-Mon

Today marked the first full day of class. Luckily, I only graduated a week ago so the struggles of school remain fresh in my mind. My first formal Spanish class in 3 years put me on what the Duke kids call the struggle bus. All of my fellow engineers, and other esteemed majors, know this place well as it is their term for that time when the lab becomes workplace, dinner/breakfast table and bed and the light of knowledge is drowned by fatigue, frustration, and “why am I in this major?” Unfortunately, with about 9 years of Spanish somewhere in my brain, I’m not allowed to move down a class so I stumbled through things I never properly learned the first 4 times- when to use ser vs estar and the passive voice. Good news is I made it through.

I had fresh veggies and fruits to look forward to at lunch as my reward. We forgot a knife but as a group of engineers away from the comforts and confusion of our own tool sets, about 50% of the EWH students have leatherman’s(I have my Snap On) or pocket knives so that’s really not a problem.

In engineering lecture, JJ (our on the ground coordinator) introduced us to electrosurgery units- the machines doctors use to cut and cauterize in place of scalpels and ties. I look forward to being able to fix one so I can test an ESU on a steak and electroshock my name into it. Lab was an introduction to soldering and desoldering.

After class, Caitlin and I walked down Avenida Central to run errands. Somehow, I got myself back to Giacomin and found out that the chocolate deliciousness=carchofos. I have a feeling Giacomin and I will become very close over the next month…

June 7-Tues

Spanish went a little better today but a lot of conversation. Once again, I’m more than a little rusty with my skills especially speaking and speaking about topics of consequence and national relevance. Today our debate themes were legalization of medical marijuana and lowering the drinking age. I got to learn a lot of vocabulary in context and realized how poor my verb usage in English is so translating into Spanish sounds even worse.

James gave a lecture today about trouble shooting that reminded of some of the things I learned while playing biomedical engineer over the course of my medical careers internship. It was good information about a logical hierarchy of things to check based on our abilities and resources that will be most available. We made flashlights in lab. Arielle and I dressed ours in all black and added a handle J

June 8 Wed

Gladys covered a lot of material today in Spanish but I actually understood most of it! Talking to my host family, vendors, and taxi drivers seems to be paying off. As a group, we decided to go to Monteverde this weekend to hike and zipline through the rainforest there. Gladys made most of our reservations but the bus tickets have to be picked up in person so we sent Cliff and Gavin. Interestingly, they didn’t make it back until 2.5 hours later. (It was a longer walk than they realized)

Today was our first lecture by Rick after he finally made it. He wasn’t allowed to travel through the US and lost his luggage but made it. It was really, really hot and stuffy and thus hard to concentrate but overall a good lecture on pulse oximeters. They’re the instruments with the red light that nurses put on your finger while they take your pulse and blood pressure. Lab we began building a variable power supply that we use to test and troubleshoot in our hospitals next month.

Sunday Shopping Day

June 5

We got up this morning and got ready to go to the Feria (Farmer’s market). The bus that takes us there is a little further away so the 8 of us walked over to the bus stop taking pictures along the way and singing merrily. About 20 minutes later, we got to the fairgrounds that host the weekly farmer’s market. I have never before seen so many different fruits and for so cheap. I can’t even keep track of all the native fruits that they have and use for food and juices. Of the familiar ones, mangoes were about 3lbs for $1, tomatoes 5lbs for $3, and $0.50 for a fresh coconut to drink. You could even take it back when you finish to have it cut open so it could be eaten! I just took a lap to see everything and compare prices before we started choosing things to buy for our lunches for the week. In the end, Arielle, Liz and I settled on avocado, mango, and tomato. All of the walking and looking at food made us hungry so we stopped by the hot food vendors to get lunch. I have a tortilla queso special and empanada con pollo. I thought I ordered a regular tortilla but my bad habit of nodding and smiling when I stop listening may have gotten me more than I wanted. Here, as in a lot of food places in Costa Rica, even if you order at a register, food is brought out to you at a table. Only if you request to take the food with you will they do anything other than serve you- with a free fresh juice in most cases.

Continuing our Sunday shopping, we walked to the Multiplaza mall next. Unfortunately, I had no luck finding the high speed SD card that I discovered yesterday was absolutely necessary to work my Nikon. I did however enjoy the search and my lunch dessert of a sprinkle donut from the local favorite Doña Dona (roughly Lady Donut). Liz’s computer was in need to resuscitation but the technician wasn’t due to come in for about an hour so Arielle and Caitlin decided to take the bus home while the rest of us waited with Liz and got some snacks(not me this time promise) and drinks at Longhorn. Good times.

We had Wal-Mart still on our to do list but decided to return home to drop off our current haul. Upon our arrival, we found that Caitlin and Arielle still hadn’t made it despite leaving about 2 hours prior. This caused a little tension but with a strong Spanish speaker, the address, and little we could even do, we just hung around. The two arrived about ten minutes later in a taxi after apparently taking the wrong bus and walking about 10km back to Wal-Mart before taxing home. Needless to say they were tired and they crashed while we trudged on. Wal-Mart was uneventful. I did struggle to find sliced bread- they usually just buy bread from the bakery here but the kinds I wanted weren’t fresh. Zeidy premade dinner so we heated it up and ate when we got back. Dinner was followed by an epic game of Taboo. Maybe it’s because she’s pre-vet but Emily was good at yelling things like “elbow!” with to clues of “so this is” and “hepatitis!” to “when you have”. In general, the delirious state of all those involved helped make for a memorable game.

Pura vida!

June 4

My alarm went off before sunrise, 4:30am for white water rafting. (Shout out and lots of McNair love to all UD McNair's for making me an experienced rafter :) We left the house at 4:54 to walk down and make the 5am bus. FYI, in San Jose, newspaper delivery is done by men on motorcycles- who drive on the sidewalks. So while this may be very alarming, as it was to a group of American girls in the very early morning, it is actually quite normal and should not make you freak out and want to run away. But we made it to the bus laughing at ourselves. Our second mistake for the day was evident very soon after- the bus only take 15minutes when theres no traffic and the bus driver is flying through the streets of San Pedro and San Jose. So add the extra slow 5min walk to the school and that gave us 40min to kill until we actually needed to be at school. This gave us time to encounter our second newspaper delivery man and confirm that a) we're still paranoid and b) this is in fact a normal occurence in San Jose.

Bus Ride=Party Bus

Once we all assembled, there were 2 options for transportation: the big bus or the short bus. Naturally I picked the short bus. Good thing because it soon became the “Party Bus” With about 9 of us in there, we (EWH students) exchanged stories with some other ALE students along the ride. Then there was karaoke including Gavin belting out Marvin Gaye classics, Cliff working on his Michael Jackson falsetto and everyone dancing and singing along to the songs that made middle and high school. And we had a pretty cool tour guide/driver who wasn’t above pointing out how gullible people can be when traveling. We stopped for breakfast at one of the most gorgeous places I have ever seen. The building was nice but the view of the countryside and mountains- with just the right amount of clouds- was probably the best thing I’ll ever have to look at during a meal. No offense to my family, roommates, or any other dining partners.

Paddling Toward Disaster

Once we split up into groups of 6 it was time to hit the water. My boat included Caitlin, Tommy, Tim, Cliff, Anjuli and our guide Fabio! The initial oars-in shout of “Pura Vida!!!” before we began set the tone for the whole trip- we were going to be loud, crazy, and the best. Let the Fiesta begin! All the way down the river we paddled hard, with impeccable technique and synchronization. As we improved, Fabio started to have a little fun with us- we went over every big rock possible and loved every second. We also went through rapids while spinning (on purpose), backwards, and backwards with our eyes closed and still paddling. Lunch was delicious and had more fresh fruit and vegetables than any college dining hall. The second half of the trip had more class 4 rapids that turned us into the rescue boat as we saved 6 people. Viva la fiesta! Pura vida!

White water rafting en el Rio Pacuare= Fiesta!!!!!!!!!!!!

Costa Rica: The Beginning

June 3

Usually on Fridays we will have hospital visits but since this is our first one we had Engineering lecture and lab instead. It wasn’t bad; we just went over general safety labeled all of our tools in Spanish and made an extension chord for later use. It was all done by 12 so again the mass began walking in search of food. I’m sure we must be an interesting sight to everyone here since we are a large group of Asian, Caucasian, Black and Europeans. But indecision caused me Caitlin, Gavin and Cliff to veer off and do some independent exploring on our own. We had a really good lunch at this restaurant on the other side of town and then just walked around for a few hours. Basically we decided to walk around regardless of the predetermined visitor-safe zone until we reached a point when it actually looked and felt like we should turn around. We ran out of time and real estate before that actually happened. In the process, we saw one of the major hospitals, went through their gorgeous city park, visited the national museum and took pictures with random graffiti.

The national museum is located where the national military used to be housed prior to its disbandment. It’s kinda cool thinking that countries can exist without military. My favorite quote written on the wall is “Las armas puedan dar la victoria pero solo las leyes puedan dar la libertad” or “Weapons can give us the victory but only law can give us freedom”. The museum had some beautiful indigenous artwork, furniture and jewelry in it. There was also a large butterfly garden with beautifully colored mariposas.

After the museum, we took pictures with random murals before stopping for dessert at Giacomin. I had this amazing chocolate shell, mousse and cookie dessert. I don’t know what it’s called but I will be going back for more J After that we split to take buses home at around 4:30.

There was the usual conversation and dinner with the family before we called it a night early.

Tomorrow we go rafting! It'll certainly be different from McNair but it should be fun :) y tan bonita. Which reminds me, I went for a run with some housemates. Its nice being able to run through the city/town and look at the mountains. One day I'll walk the route and take a few pictures.

June 2

In the morning, I met the rest of my housemates who are all EWH students. We’re from all over- Nebraska, Montana, North Carolina, China, Canada, Texas.

Figuring out the bus to school and riding in rush hour ended with us being late for the first day. Introductory stuff talking about culture and safety managed to make everyone, including me hyper paranoid. Half of us had lunch at El Balcon- Salchichas en salsa con arroz y pintos for me and juice is free! We went back to school for more introductory stuff and then off to the mall en mass- mass being the whole 26 person EWH group- for exploring. It was a short trip since my roommates and I were tired but good to know where it is and how to get to and from. The mall was like a lot of things here- Americanized. Things cost the same or more. I got a belt because I forgot mine and it was about $13 although it's technically reversible and you can cut it to the right size- all their belts are like that here. It's a little weird because now I have a random bit of leather with no real purpose.

Oh and I forgot the most important member of the house- Lucas. He is an 8 month Dockson and very cute. Always keeping us on our toes

June 1- Travelling

I'm a little late starting this so I'll catch up as I go. But this is the official account of my travels- work, adventures, and all the good stuff :)

My flight was uneventful- only thing that happened was I began my Spanish practice there since TACA is an international company. Another EWH participant, our TA James, was actually on the flight. He's from Newark, Delaware went to UMD and is now working in Silver Spring- I say that only because its the opposite of me and we found it amusing. I had an interesting time filling out customs documents, it’s funny how they classify things and just expect you to understand them even with the differences between countries. And then they only take one of the 2 documents they have you fill out. When I got through customs and converted my mon, I then met Gladys, my Spanish teacher, JJ- the EWH coordinator -and others from the group: Mace, Brian, Chris and David. After dropping off our equipment at the school, I was welcomed by rush hour in San Jose before I met host family Zeidy and Julie, and other students Anjuli, Robert and Emily. San Jose is just like DC- Northern VA traffic or traffic in whichever is your favorite major city. A delicious dinner of chicken and rice con huevos, salad and mango juice(fresca y tan rico!) came shortly after my arrival. We talked and did hair and other going out preparations to kill the time before we went to the movies to see Pirates 4 in 3D. It cost $8 for the movie AND a large drink! Yo quiero estos precios en los Estados Unidos! Movie was good if you haven’t seen it already and the cheap price probably made it a little more so. It had Spanish subtitles so when I didn’t feel like being lazy, I was able to brush up on some vocabulary.

Unfortunately, it’s really hard to catch a cab at the movies at 1 in the morning so we had a little bit of a wait- and I mean like an hour- before we finally were able to catch one and make it home at 2. Quite the beginning to my trip but I definitely enjoyed it!