Costa Rica!

After much anticipation / some anxiety, I arrived in Costa Rica on the Tuesday of Holy Week, only to find out that the guy I was supposed to be meeting from the Chinese embassy had just left town and would not be around until Thursday evening! I was pretty upset, considering that I had only arrived in San Jose 1.5 days early to take care of this errand stuff before Geoff would arrive, and now it looked like it was still going to trample our vacation plans anyway. Alas, it is Central America, so you have to be tranquilo and to just play it by ear.

Between Tuesday and Wednesday, I walked around San Jose (which is a bit of a dump during the day) and checked out their famous Museo del Oro (Museum of Gold). I also made some progress in my reading book and went on a crocodile safari tour. As it turned out, I got to see everything on the tour (monkeys, frogs, sloths, lizards, snakes...) EXCEPT for crocodiles. Ironic, but like I said, it's Central America. Apparently, some tour operators in a different part of Costa Rica would habitually throw chickens into the water to lure the crocs out of their lazy afternoon naps. Next time, mark my words, I will be bringing my own chicken. :) Anyway, the tour itself was kind of slow, but the people on the tour were really fun, so it made the time fly by!

Geoff arrived on Wednesday night. (He got to San Jose later than me, since he works for himself and therefore didn't want to take off quite so many days to go on this trip.) We met up, as originally planned, at the hostel. Our hostel is a beautiful place, by the way -- the Costa Rican Backpackers, located on the western tip of the capital city. I would highly recommend staying there if you had to pass through San Jose at some point. They have a pool and a lovely restaurant with good Jamaican food(!!) and lovely Belgian ales. After some catching up, Geoff and I and his dormmate Cody ended up heading down to Casino Del Ray (sp), which is a bit of a shady spot by reputation. It was the first brothel I had ever seen!! All around the bar are old men and young, boobilicious women. It was really interesting, except for the fact that the servers and bartenders were pretty rude to our group of 3, since it was pretty obvious that we were mostly sight-seeing. Eventually, we went across the street to a much quieter casino (no shady goings-on here, at least that we could see), and played a few rounds of blackjack. All in all, it was a fun and very educational night. :)

The next day, Cody, Geoff, and I took a bus and then a cab to La Paz Waterfall. I wish we had more time there, because there was a series of butterfly and bird conservatory places that we could check out, but by the time we had finally made our way there and had hung out a bit by the water, it was getting pretty late in the day, and we needed to start heading back to San Jose. (My priority for the day was to meet up with the embassy folks to get my Chinese tourist visa, so I needed to be back in San Jose by around 5:30pm.) Thankfully, the visa app went off without a hitch in the evening, and Geoff and I took -- wait for this -- a $200 cab ride from San Jose to La Fortuna late in the night, to arrive at our hotel in La Fortuna!!! Damn embassy people -- this is what happens when they flake out on you repeatedly and cause disruptions to your previously tight travel plans. At that hour of the night (it was about 8pm when we finally set out for La Fortuna, after taking care of the visa paperwork), we didn't really have many options left in terms of renting a car OR taking a bus.

Anyway, our next couple of days in La Fortuna made all of the hectic traveling worth it, however. We took our friends' advice and rented an SUV and drove up to Rio Celeste, which is a stunningly beautiful blue river that is created naturally as a result of chemical precipitation. We also took another friend's advice and did a day of whitewater-rafting down one of the many beautiful rivers of Costa Rica. And to top it all off, Geoff and I booked an evening of amazing getaway at the most famous of La Fortuna hotsprings -- Tabacon. For $70, you get a very delicious dinner buffet, plus you get to explore the extensive labyrinth of amazing hot springs at this extremely luxurious spa / resort. Ahhh. Neither Geoff nor I had ever seen anything like it before. The $70, which seemed like a lot of money when we first made our reservation, turned out to be worth every penny.



I loved Costa Rica. Most of all, I loved the rainforest and the plethora of wildlife. I hope that we get to go back at some point to explore more of the beautiful country!

Luxuries, PSAT

I'm not going to lie: One of the beautiful things about living in El Salvador is having a weekly maid service. We pay her $12 to come for a full 8-hour day once a week, which is actually higher than the usual rate for maids. She cleans our apartment, cooks, and -- most importantly -- does laundry and irons my clothes! (Those who have worked at my old school know how I don't iron, like, ever. I actually don't know how, really. My clothes are still wrinkly after I iron them, so I just never bother.) It's really fabulous. I don't think my life will ever be the same again, without having to worry about laundry ever.

Another item of luxury is our beautiful sunshine year-round, which allows for things like hammocks. Geoff and I sometimes complain about one of our hammocks being less comfortable than the other, but then we both feel silly: complaining about a hammock is about as ridiculous-sounding as complaining about a massage (which, believe it or not, people do around here).

But, no complaints about our massages! All of the international teachers who live in the complejo have regularly scheduled visits from a local masseuse; that, too, is really cheap. The standard rate is $15 for an hour of massage. Well, Geoff and I hadn't been on the bandwagon, but we serendipitously found a masseuse to come to our apartment today for the first time. (The girl was already in the building servicing someone else, when she stopped us in the stairwell over the weekend and handed us her business card. Funny thing is that we had been trying in vain to contact the complejo masseuse, so we gladly made an appointment with her on the spot.) Anyway, she came today, and she was brilliant!! Geoff and I feel completely relaxed afterwards and couldn't stop raving about her.

Life is really lovely these days...

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In school news, I can't believe how quickly time is passing by! It's already near the end of the first quarter, and so I have to rush to give a round of tests this week in each class, to allow for last-minute makeup points next week. I've already warned Geoff that this weekend I will be mired in work, in order to finish grading ~90 tests...

I am also helping to prep my kids for the PSAT this year. It's the first time in many years that I've taken a look at that material, and I'm amazed by how clever some of the questions are. For instance, this one in particular tugged at my Algebra-teacher heart:

You are told that k and L are perpendicular, and that (4, n) lies on line k. Your task is to find the value of n. Such an elegant way to test that the kids know a slew of stuff dealing with linearity!

Mini updates!

This week has been somewhat distressing. Geoff and I had some noticeable water problems -- as in, our water got turned off by the water company! --Not fun. We learned the hard way that the ANDA water bills here are not cumulative; if you miss a payment (which we did in the beginning, since we didn't know whether we were supposed to be paying the bills ourselves, or how), the next bill that comes doesn't contain or refer to the overdue amount. Each bill stands alone, which doesn't make much sense to us, but that's just the way it works here. So, we had paid off the most recent bill online, thinking that would suffice, but that was apparently the wrong assumption. And, after a couple months of an unpaid old bill... tada! off goes the water. FOR THREE DAYS!!! Geoff and I couldn't get down to the office in person to take care of the issue during the work week, so we had our super-ish person look into it for us. She spoke to the company and they said it was coming back on, blah blah. Predictably, nothing happened following that promise. Eventually, because of a fluke, a maintenance guy from a different company turned the water back on for us today. So, in short, we don't know whether the water is here to stay, or if the water company is going to come back and turn it back off, or what. We can only hope for the best.

And, you know, it's amazing how difficult this was. The amazing thing is that we sort of did have water; we still had drinking water in tubs, and we took our empty tubs to the pool out in the back and filled them to flush the toilets. But still, we were frustrated as hell. We can only hope that this is a permanent fix, and that the water company just flakes out altogether and doesn't send anyone else down to toggle with our water supply. But, as the running joke goes, it's El Salvador, and anything is possible.

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I learned while talking to a friend that once you employ a maid here, you are responsible for paying the maid weekly even if you aren't going to be around that week (ie. the maid gets the week off). This is because the $10 to $15 you pay your maid each week is, in fact, their main source of income, so if you go on vacation and decide not to pay them, then they are unemployed for that duration. Good to know, since Christmas break is coming up. I would NOT want to cause our maid to be unemployed and to be in financial difficulty when we are away.

It's one of those small things that showcase the income disparity in this country.

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On a brilliantly good note, Geoff and I went to scope out a salsa dancing class yesterday, and it was fantastic! The dance teacher, Raul, had been dancing for 16 years. It was basically like a private session, because he thinks we're not good enough to be with the rest of the class. So, for the whole hour, Geoff and I practiced on the side, and he showed us several moves. I have taken a number of social dance classes and am usually pretty good with following the rapid-fire instructions, but this instructor was moving fast. I love it! He says that in two months, he thinks we'll be good enough to join the rest of the crew in learning fancier moves. It sounds lovely...

We want to go back there at least once a week. The only problem is that getting a cab ride to and from that place isn't totally easy, so we have to resume looking for a car to buy...

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Geoff won't be around this weekend, because he is heading to Jersey for a wedding! I'm totally envious, because I want to be in NY and I wish I could be at this beautiful wedding of two really good people. But, it's good that the local crowd is organizing a weekend getaway, so I wouldn't just be hanging out at home feeling bored. Congrats, M&M!! Enjoy your big day!!