So, this post is well overdue. How can I summarize this enough to fit inside one lunch break's worth of typing, pausing occasionally to stuff my face with peanut butter and crackers--the staple of poor study abroad students such as my self?
San José is a city. A big city. There is smog, trash, and people everywhere, like most cities, and yet, it is vastly different from anything I have ever known. I live in house in a row of low, single-story cages on a narrow, unnamed street. To get home after dark, it is necessary to use well-known landmarks like banks and bars to guide the cabbie to your destination. My host mother is a widow who lives alone. Her son and her granddaughters live in the house behind us.
Class is every day from 8am to 5pm. We have 4 hours of Spanish in the morning and 4 hours of a Latin American development class in the afternoon. My neighbor, who is also a student in the ICADS program, and I walk to school every day. It takes about 15-20 minutes. The sidewalk--if there is one at some parts--is uneven and full of "gringa traps" ie. deep holes in the pavement that will send a misstepper waist-deep or deeper into the gutter. I've already nearly been a victim several times. Buses are another mode of transportation--although they are often equally dangerous if one does not watch one's stuff.
Already it feels like we've traveled a lot--the flight and drive here was crazy long and then we went to Manuel Antonio--arguably the most beautiful beach in Costa Rica--for all of last weekend. Yesterday, we visited an organic coffee plantation all day and this weekend we head to Nicaragua for a week. Lots of travel! And lots of homework :(
An interesting aside, on a whim, I asked my host mom what she thought of yoga. She responded, surprisingly, by saying that her church taught that yoga was bad because when your mind is empty, bad spirits can enter it--much the same way if your house is empty, robbers can enter it. How strange! I have never thought of yoga as something anti-religious, or, indeed, religious at all. She kept saying that she didn't know much about it but I couldn't tell if she was trying to say that she was open to hearing more about it or if she was saying she had washed her hands clean of the topic. I'm really itching to start practicing again, but I don't want to do something she finds offensive in her own house. !Ah mae!
