Back at it... missing the beach.

yeeeeeah shirts!

Can't believe how fast I passed out last night when I finally allowed myself to!

Today Kevin Connors, our arch professor arrived for his first day with us. His daughters are here with him and his wife and son are coming later on.

We had Spanish this morning and Fernando got sick again so he is out for the day so it was girls' day for class and we had some good discussions that don't happen every day so it was really nice. Cristina really seems to care a lot about our emotional, intellectual, and physical needs which is really awesome. It's nice to know we have someone to go to if we need her.

Our first studio issue of the day was a round-yard discussion (yes, we had class outside in the sun because it was beautiful!) where we described our projects and the developments we've made on them so far to Kevin. We also did sort of a run-down group therapy share session about our host-family lives and that was quite enlightening...who knew that some people had internet? Or that some people in our class are the host-uncles of others?? haha. Good times.

This afternoon there wasn't too much going on...our project needs a bit more direction and our major research is done. Keith was finishing up the site map so Tuona and I finally designed and cut up our MVI shirts for this weekend (shout out to Jill and her Michael Jordan shirt from our Jr. Class Trip to DC!!!) It was definitely a fun little design and implementation charette and I think we are both pretty happy bout the outcomes...can't wait to see Anibal's reaction to the destruction of the shirts! haha. Oh boy.

Fixage for the photo op:

WWW.enserio?.org:

No soccer...odd. Oh well. It worked out well because at dinner I was telling Daisy about the shells that we collected at the beach to make jewelry with and was asking where we could buy string and she showed me what she had in her sewing room and let me see all of the different seeds that they use to make bracelets to sell at the Co-op. The various shapes, colors, and sizes were unimaginable and I'm really hoping that Marlen will show me some techniques she uses to make them into jewelry. As for Daisy and I, we jumped right in and started stringing things together. She taught me a way to double and twist string that doesn't allow it to unwind afterwards which also makes it thicker and stronger. We made two shell necklaces and a coral bracelet. Next time we go to the beach I'm going to bring some string so I can just make them there...it will fill that down time that I hate where we just sit around and do nothing...I know--terrible life, right?

So it's been a design-oriented day, albeit not having anything to do with architecture!

I have a feeling this will be a good week. I even read the first chapter of my spanish book after we finished the jewelry while Daisy worked on her quilting. Sleep now...I'm going running at 6 with Keith tomorrow.

Love <3 hehe

Samara Surfin'

Our hotel:

Monkey:

Butterfly

Woke up pretty early today and Linsey and I woke the boys up for breakfast. Everyone met up to eat before we lathered ourselves with sunscreen and headed out. A few of the girls and I stopped to grab towels at a little surf shop on the way before hitting the beach. Once there, we were immediately greeted by Choco, owner of Choco Surf, and his gang of cute surf instructors.

Eric & Me

Lessons cost each of us about $20. Not bad. They gave us the rundown on techniques and such and made us practice on the beach before we went out then split us up. Bryan and I had Eric as an instructor. He was encouraging and helpful. Unfortunately Tuona did not have quite the same luck with her instructor...bummer. All in all we did pretty well. I could definitely tell that I was getting tired when I had a hard time standing up on the board.

I=Surfer

Fernando & Me

Since we went in shifts, I attempted to play photgrapher-extraordinaire for the second group. Yay surfing!

Sam:

Bryan:

Bryan:

Amber:

Tuona:

Me & Tuona...modelling...I smiled...darnit!

So once we were all surfed out and the tide was creeping in, we took a break and played some frisbee. Blondie from last night showed up...he works at the bar! Imagine that. We found out that the girl who was in a fight is the owner's daughter...which explains why she didn't get kicked out for beating the other girl's face in last night... haha.

The day seemed to stretch on forever...in a good way. Lots of reapplying of sunscreen occurred to be safe. We had lunch at a little place next to the bar where the smoothies were only about $2. Mmmm. More frisbee amongst Sam, Lins, Amber and I was fabulous before we hit up the bar...which I STILL do not know the name of...to watch the Costa Rica vs. Trinidad and Tobago game. Finally met Frank (the blonde) and Jairo, who were really nice. The electricity went out and the score was 1-1...bummer. Sat around for a bit before we realized that the music wasn't coming back on then packed up and headed back to the hotel.

Rinsed off in the pool then went inside only to find that the boys had gone to eat, minus Tyler who was bedridden with hangover or sun-poisoning. So the rest of us got it together and walked to a restaurant called Esmeralda's as suggested by Eric. Had to get seafood...because where else would you buy it but at the beach where it's caught? And then proceeded to wait 45 minutes for our waiter to bring the bill after Josh asked for it...falling asleep the entire time! It worked out alright because it had started (and stopped) pouring rain in the meantime and since none of us thought to bring our jackets along, we avoided getting completely soaked.

Saw Frank and the other surfers on our way back and collectively decided it was naptime before we went out. We were supposed to sleep for 30 minutes...

4am rolled around and I woke up to Tuona coming home from the night out...What?! I totally passed out earlier and missed the wakeup call that she gave us at 11. Fell asleep momentarily and went into a dream state about getting up to go out since I thought it was only 1 am and there was still time to go dancing before places closed. Except we weren't in Samara, we were in a city...so I wasn't sleepwalking...no worries. Bummer to the wasted night but glad to rest up for tomorrow.

Bikes, Hammocks, and Surfboards: Pura Vida!

Headin to the Beach!!

Had Spanish class this am then spent most of the day recapping and talking out what we need to have ready before we charrette our design ideas out. It went pretty well and I think we'll be ready to go on Monday when our Architecture professor, Kevin, gets here. Jajean gave a lecture this afternoon on different types of planning...definitely clarified a few key differences which is really helpful.

Off to the beach-and a little more than 3 hours and approximately 10 carsick students later we arrived in Samara, Costa Rica...a beachtown on the Pacific side of the Nicoya peninsula in the district of Guanacaste. We had Burger King for dinner in the most moth-infested location I have ever existed in, and I ate on the bus to avoid eating any bugs.

Lins, Meg, & Tuona

The boys (minus Bryan): Tyler, Fernando, Josh, & Bryan:

The hotel is nice, cheap, has a pool, and is close to the beach. Score! As you can see, we made ourselves right at home within about 15 minutes:

Since Sam, Tuona, Linsey and I are sharing a room, we sent everyone else to the bar ahead of us so we had time to shower and get ready. On our way out we were sketched out by some dudes sitting around a car en route to the bar, so we crossed the street and took pictures, in the rain, of some wild horses until we noticed Fernando and Bryan walking in the rain back toward the hotel in search of us! We walked with them to the bar and chilled until around 10:30 or 11 when it started filling up with locals and foreigners alike. I didn't catch the name of where we were, but a few of the guys there surf and we got a deal for surfing tomorrow so that's our gameplan!

I swear...there are horses in this picture!!:

Tuona & Josh:

Me & Josh:

The DJ played Reggae all night, which I'm not too into, so I kinda chilled for the most part and only danced to a few songs. Lots of cute surfer dudes with long hair. Haha. I was pretty disturbed by the guys standing along the sides watching everyone dance, so I definitely turned down a few invites, and waited for one of the blonde guys to head over and eventually gave into Tuona's pleading and danced with her and Sam, and then Fernando.

Tuona, Fernando, & Sam:

Tuona & Me

A fight broke out between two girls...the one girl was tiny and went after the other girl again even after the bouncers pulled her away! Then another girl fight led to some guy punching another one and yeah...end of the night for the bar. We were walking back and Josh decided he needed to touch the ocean...so then we ALL decided to join in...but only after being responsible tourist and leaving all personal items in the hotel room at which point most of us just went in with the clothes on our backs!

Bryan & Tuona:

After quite some time in the moonlit ocean we rinsed off in the pool under the watchful eye of the guard, who only chose to yell at us when we got back to our rooms and were talking too loudly with the windows open...go figure. All in all a good night. Can't wait for surfing tomorrow!

The Girls! Sam, Tuona, Meg, Linsey, Amber (& crazy dancing pink girl):

Another day

So I was back on track today. We headed to San Luis this morning around 8:30 or so to take site measurements and survey for a few hours. It was so nice to just be outdoors and in the sun. After a few hours of work we sat around on rocks in the cow pasture and waited for Anibal to come back to pick us up, just chatting and taking in the sun...some more than others--I had sunscreen thanks to Will.

Will and I worked on putting the points into sketchup, CAD, and Rhino during the afternoon and found that we were only 20cm off in our measuring over a distance of about 45 meters...not too shabby!

On the walk home I saw Cristian and he invited me to come watch their game tonight around 8. I was planning on going to the supermarket(SuperCompro) before meeting people at Tree House in Santa Elena around then, so I thought it might be a possibility. I ended up meeting up with Sam and Tuona at the pizzeria and walking to Tree House at 8:15ish where we met up with Josh. I split a pizza with Sam and we all just sat and talked for a while. On the way home Sam taxi'd it up and the rest of us walked and ended up running into Fernando who was on his way to meet up with us. Since all of the places up the hill were closed we headed back down to Bar Amigos and watched Cruzada, which Tuona says is actually titled 'Kingdom of Heaven' in the US.

Fernando approached DJ Toni to put some Pachata (spelling?) on and we danced for a bit during commercials. Grabbed a taxi to get home around 11:30 and I'm officially exhausted.

Plain White T's, John Mayer, and Jason Mraz were on the radio today which made me happy. There isn't enough music going on here...I definitely miss that, and spicy food.

I sleep for nearly 1/2 the day and I am still always tired but I'm in Costa Rica...so pura vida--gotta just live it up.

US in Costa Rica

Had spanish class this am. Nothin too crazy. I like that Cristina is really into global awareness and social justice because we get to read a lot about it and it's a really cool topic to discuss in a formal setting.

Fernando is trying to set up a trip to the beach for this weekend. People are beginning to get homesick, and I'm definitely not an exception. My mind has been kind of all over the place and with lots of unsure footings it's hard too keep my focus for too long on any given thing.

It was really nice to have the US @ Costa Rica soccer game tonight, though. We all met up at Bar Amigos around 7 to watch the game. Linsey was all decked out in her host-family's CR stuff which was entertaining. We got whomped, 3-1 and played absolutely horrendously but it was really exciting to see how pumped everyone was for the goals. I'm pretty sure I hear that it's the first time we've scored here in a long time, and we rarely, if ever, win here...so it was to be expected. I'm sure Anibal will give us a hard time about it tomorrow. It's been a long week and a half.

Finally Getting Started

Got up, ate breakfast with Daisy and headed to class. Didn't see anyone when I got to the gas station so I just walked up alone. Spent most of the morning attempting to look for information on San Luis and previous projects at the institute but there were only two projects and neither had much, if anything, to do with our project as far as we could tell. I did get a bit of background from a town history written in Spanish. So I guess that was good to know.

Ate lunch outside then finally gave in to a date at the cheese factory/icecream shop with Josh-haha. Got a mint chocolate-chip shake...good deal.

After that we came back and attempted to do a bit more research before jumping into Anibal's truck to take on the Camino del Trancho...a super-steep road down to San Luis...where we met up with Francisco and Ramon for a project overview and meeeting. Got some good info then came back to studio and had a debriefing meeting before we all packed up to go home.

I walked with everyone until we got to Keith's driveway where we headed uphill to his house and I had one of the family dogs bark at me until he came out prepared for some soccer. We walked back to play some futbol with the guys across the street from my house, played for a bit, then decided to meet up tomorrow before the US-Costa Rica game.

Had dinner with Marlen, Daisy, and Raul then watched Who Wants to be a Millionaire, Costa Rica-style! Off to bed again and it's only 9 or so...how am I going to stay away long enough for the game tomorrow?! Blah!

back to Monteverde

Got up this morning and hit up the reception to find out about the Jeep-Boat-Jeep ticket...they still weren't open so I went to the buffet breakfast with the girls and then went back. The place was open but they won't run the trip unless they have 4 people and they didn't have any others so we called Eagle Tours and they agreed to pick me up.

Milton picked me up in the bus at 8:15 and I said goodbye to everyone who was heading out on the horseback and ATV tours for the day. Wish I could have stayed...

We picked up some other people for our trip who were also coming to Monteverde including a guy from Syracuse who teaches in Arizona, a couple from Vancouver, another girl from Canada, and some others who I didn't talk with. The car ride to the lake was quick and the boat ride was awesome. The sun and breeze were a great way to start a day and with a view of the volcano, it was pretty great. Milton said sometimes when they don't have customers they can take the boats out just to swim and said I should let him know if we want to do that one weekend.

Got back to the house and ate the lunch that Daisy had left for me before heading up to the institute. It took a little less than 15 minutes and I was sweaty and gross. Boo. I got assigned to a studio group with Keith, Will, Josh, an Amber to work on an office building for the municipal government of San Luis and the water authority.

Everyone went up to the Friends School in the afternoon where one of the parents grilled us for being students and wanted to know all of our qualifications etc (because she was an architecture student when she lived in Germany...whatever that was supposed to imply). The project there seems really neat and has a lot of options especially because it is a pretty experimental Montessori school...bilingual to boot! We got to learn a bit about greywater treatment...but it's al fairly basic and aside from being able to actually see it in person I don't know that we gained to much new info yet. Amber is going to start researching that tonight before our own meeting in San Luis tomorrow.

It's been slow at school because we can't really get much started until we go to our meeting and they spell project for us so tomorrow morning we're just going to do some research on the community and on past projects done by the Sustainable Futures groups there.

Left studio around 5:30 with the intention of meeting up with people around 8 at bar amigos. When I got home Daisy still wasn't back so I went outside to play some soccer with some guys across the street. Christian, who was playing at the gym, was there. I don't think he remembered me, but whatever? We played for a bit before it was too dark to continue, even with the lights, and I headed inside where the fam was waiting. The guys invited me to play tomorrow and to bring whoever. I'm not sure that many more people will fit in the yard they were in, but we'll see.

Had pasta and rice for dinner and lots of water to rehydrate after my weekend of soccer then aYipi (chocolate-covered vanilla wafer) for dessert. Marlen and the kids stayed over and we all watched a special on TV about the poverty that the fishermen and their families are experiencing on the coasts of Costa Rica due to the low prices that people are willing to pay. Marlen and Daisy seem very conscious of the issue of poverty and were really into it which I thought was really interesting. Marlen was upset because of how little the fishermen get payed compared to how much the restaurants sell it for to tourists, etc. She's totally right.

After Marlen took the kids to bed I called Keith to come get me so we could walk to Bar Amigos but it was 8:15 and he was already gone. I tried Fernando and he was already sleeping. I stayed up for a little bit longer watching the news with Daisy before we both just decided to go to bed. I have nothing better to do, I suppose. I really don't know what to do with down time here. So it's not even 9 and I'm going to sleep.