mastatal

well im getting pretty antsy to leave one way or another again. whether its in CR or its ecuador, life hear is actually quite a bit slower than a turtle and its starting to get to me. yesterday a bunch of us took a day trip into puriscal and then to san jose. it was good to be in the city again, but half the time we were gone (6 hours) was on busses and it didn´t really feel like we did anything. and we had to get up at 5 30 so i was super tired all day. but last night we had an enormous beetle fly into the house-at least 4 inches long and 2 across, with long thick antenna and the biggest pinchers i have ever seen in real life. marcos said they eat through wood. and yeah termites eat through wood, but when i imagine that its little burrowed out tunnels through branches that leave trails of dust behind. when i imagined this thing eating through wood, it was snapping the branch in half and leaving little twigs behind. tonight we are planning on going to try to catch crayfish in the river. apparently the accepted method is to shine flashlights in the water suddenly and then stab them with a makeshift sort of spear. in my past experience with stories of spear fishing, the subjects have not been very successful, but i guess i´ll just have to see how it goes. we had a bonfire the other night in celebration of a birthday. it was a gorgeous clear night with stars and was all in all a very fun and compleeetely wholesome experience. we also had bingo a few nights ago and i won twice, earning myself christmas lights and a frying pan. and i went to my first catholic mass and all in all found it kinda creepy, what with all the wafer eating etc. but who am i to judge.
ill write again soon, gus

mastatal...still

I am currently in a situation where i have 3 things that are going to be happening at the same time and i want to do all of them. 1: last night my family informed me that i just had to stay with them and in mastatal until new years and christmas. and everyone else here is saying that december is the most fun here. so that is one enticing option. 2: over christmas some relatives are vacationing in CR, as well as one of my friends and her family, so i was wanting to get to see and hang out with them. 3: I am still wanting to go to Ecuador to travel with my friend bianca. she´ll only be there for about a month, from mid december to mid january, so this would be my only opportunity. So there is my big fat dillema. three choices, all of which would be very fun, but i can only choose 1. So crap. i mean i guess it could be worse-i could have no good options at all-but i still don´t feel so privilidged at the moment... Aside from all that, my time here is still very enjoyable. Yesterday a group of about 6 of us took a hike down to this gorgeous swimming hole at the river and hung out for a few hours there. and then i played soccer for the first time since i got here and it was muddy. And then they had chicharones at the bar at night! it may have been the highlight of the day since i so rarely get to eat hearty portions of meat her. every now and then at the bar they will just decide to make them and anyone who wants can buy a plate and then have as much as they want. Eating those fresh, hot, and in enormous quantity along with a cold beer was about all i could ask for. Today for work we moved cement blocks for about 3 hours and we all felt a little like we were in some sort of forced labor camp. its this weird mix of wanting to help out but then when you look back on it you think how absurd it sounds to be paying to do this sort of thing. but i have no regrets thus far. so bueno. i gotta run now, ill write soon.

gus

mastatal

well sorry its been so long. i wrote an entry a couple days ago but for some reason it didn´t post. anyways a bit has changed since the last successful one. For starters i graduated from spanish class with flying freakin colors. it seems kind of strange to me that i learned basically all of the spanish grammar that there is to know in a month. i asked marcos what he would teach me if i wanted to keep taking classes, and he said he didn´t know what else there was to teach me. so now its just practice practice practice. Since my clases ended, i had to make a decision whether to leave or to stay as a volunteer. I still haven´t quite finalized what my next step is, though its in the works, and i figured i might as well stay until i worked it out. so ive officially been a volunteer for three days, in which i managed to fall on a leaf of a spiny palm and get somewhat sick. the spine count in my leg from the palm borders on ninety. my entire calf just looks like i have a really bad rash. so that was unlucky, but aside from making my leg feel stiff hasn´t caused me too much pain. last night i felt like i had a fever and didn´t feel too good working today but i think its passed. as for the work, the past two days we were clearing an area in preparation for a future vegetable farm. and today we went to the river to collect rocks for the walls of a new house that they are going to build. its mostly just really humid but the work hasnt been too hard. also, there are two new people with us. one is the fiancee, whos alright but nothing special. the other is another girl from california here for the classes and she´s nice and all. its mostly just a relief to have anyone else at all to be able to hang out with. So yeah, hopefully in the next couple of days ill be leaving to go volunteer in the national parks. i requested cabo blanco but haven´t found out if i got it yet. and after that im still playing around with the idea of going to ecuador to travel around with my friend, but haven´t decided if i want to fly or bus yet. theres apparently rumor of danger in columbia, which id have to go through, but it seems like kind of a shame to fly there. not much adventure in it. as for wildlife i can´t think of much aside from a scorpion in my room and a sloth in a tree. the sloth was just this white blob hanging absolutely still, whch kind of diminished my initial excitement when we noticed it. things are going well with the family, we´re all having a lot of fun together. i guess thats all for now. ill write again soon.

gus (or gustavito, another nickname to add to the list)

mastatal

costa rican slang of the day: if you´re out drinking and someone knocks over a bottle or trips or does anything else related to being drunk, everyone who sees it yells "taxi!" insinuating that its time to go home. i finally got around to going swimming at the waterfall and it was terrific. i also learned how to make these rolls that Arabela always makes that are perfect for snacking. maybe ill make a collection of recipes to bring home. i haven´t discovered what exactly it is but theres some bug here out to get me thats a billion times worse than a mosquito. the bites itch like no other and last forever. Marcos´finacee gets in tonight and i asked around trying to get an idea of what she´s like. what i determined was that carol ábsolutely doesn´t like her, gabi thinks shes alright, and arabela said she had no words about it, i think meaning she had nothing good to say about her. isidro continues to talk too fast, low, and indistinctly for me to understand what the hell hes ever saying so i just avoided asking his opinion on the subject. i met a couple of canadian guys staying at a different volunteering place nearby who were funny. one of them comes for three months then goes back to make money and returns for 3 more months. i think hes been like 3 times on that cycle. i guess thats one way to do things...the other one is his friend just along for the ride. the other night the moon was finally out and i coulda walked home without a light but when i said that to marcos he said no cuz you have to worry about the snakes. i got to thinking and that really sucks. its like always having to worry about being jumped. apparently after a terciopelo gets you you have about 30 minutes in which you are still capable of walking. so maybe its worse than getting jumped. except they don´t take your valuables so i guess if you survive thats a bonus. anyways end result is im scared to walk anywhere at night with or without a light now. SO THANKS SNAKES. k later people

gus

Mastatal

until about 5 minutes ago the weather had substantially cleared up and the once-definite 2:00 rain storms had petered out. however now it seems im going to get very wet on my walk home. bloopers in communication: i was walking into town one recent afternoon and passed an elderly woman coming the other way carrying a box. we smiled at each other but rather than an hola or a buenos dias, she said caminando! which translates to "walking." i was very confused by this greeting and thus responded with my emergency-i-don´t-know-what-to-say answer of "si!" i can usually figure out what was being said in retrospect but this one is still iffy. maybe she was just commenting that we were both walking. in other news my teacher told me today that i learn fast but should talk more. its a little hard cuz i can´t follow a normal conversation since they talk so fast so i can´t contribute anything to whats being said. and because of this i feel like i haven´t actually learned so much, but he probably knows better. i cooked my first fried plantains! turns out there is no secret ingredient, its simply lots of oil and the plantains. i didn´t put enough oil on mine and they were a little dry, but im planning on redeeming myself. picture-wise i got a moth with enormous eyes that looked like some weird clown or something, and a nice big spider. bird-wise i got a few close-ups with toucans and wood peckers. in talking to my homestay mom i found out she doesn´t like cooking and loves to clean which pretty much blew my mind. i understand the need for cleaning, but i didn´t know it could really be an enjoyable thing. i have another ten or so days here and am working on where im going to go next. so far my sources here haven´t been much help. i have the next four days off from class so im thinking about taking another crack at the national park. not really sure what else i could do. much to my disappointment they only really play soccer here in the dry season. not sure how much im really gonna get to use my cleats...well thats the update for now, hope everyones doin well.

till next time,
gus

mastatal

well it was a slow weekend. most days here follow the following schedule: wake up around 9 for breakfast (ie pancakes, juevos a caballos, beans and rice, ham, plain eggs cooked omelette-shell style, etc, and juice and coffee), shower, have class from 10 - 12, lunch a little after 12 (beans and rice always + usually something from the breakfast list), then have the afternoon free until dinner at 6 (ie soups of local veggies with rice, chicken, rice and beans, tortillas, homemade hummus, fried plantains), and then free for the night. a lot of the time im just relaxing around the house or reading outside. the way it is here, its not so much choosing what to do, its choosing where to sit around for a few hours until you have a meal or something. ive been reading for a lot of that, but have spent a couple afternoons with my homestay family from my last trip here. at night i haven´t been doing anything at all. the other night i actually made card houses while the family watched the dancing show i previously described. the house is far enough away from the central area here that you can´t hear or see if anything is going on. it gets dark before six but nothing happens there at night until around 8, at which point we´ve already been sitting around for a few hours and i haven´t found myself in a mood to go out exploring yet. so that is my tranquilo life in mastatal in a nutshell. not exactly a wild adventure, but i have plenty of time for that to come. news on the carved gecko front: possibly complete. it is fairly crude. it is obvious i am not an expert carver. but you can tell its a gecko. and i only cut myself once. so all in all id say it was a victorious venture. next time i write i hope to have something more captivating to share. until then, pura vida.

gus