First Full Week: What I've Been Up To

September 04, 2019

Monday: This was technically the first full day of classes, but since I didn't have any, I didn't really do anything today but explore the town and hang out with other students. It was someone's birthday so we went out to the bars to celebrate at night. This is where we officially met our first local Tico, Marco, who showed us where to go.

First bar night!

Tuesday: I had class for the first time since being here. It was Environmental Policy and since it was only the first day, we just went over the syllabus and introduced ourselves. It is a small class with only 4 students and 1 professor. Since class got out early and many other students don't have class on Tuesdays, some of us took a bus to the beach in Puntarenas. The bus ride was about an hour longer than it said it was going to be, but it was cheap so that's ok. The beach itself was alright. It wasn't too clean and I've since heard that it isn't a favorite amongst the locals but the water was warm. We all had a fun time playing in the waves and hanging out together. Puntarenas is also another location in Costa Rica where USAC students live.

We made it to the beach!

Wednesday: I had my Tropical Ecology Class. I am actually really excited for this class because it includes one of my field studies. This means the class gets to go to two different biological stations and secluded forests to observe and study the wildlife. Today was also the indoor soccer day. I played for all of about 10 minutes before it got too hot and I realized I am really bad at soccer. So I just hung out with some other people who also didn't want to play soccer and we eventually went outside to play frisbee. On the way back we spotted some really cool street art.

Some street art I found on the way back from soccer

Thursday: I had my Natural History of Mesoamerica class today. This is my other class with a field study and I am also very excited for these trips. We talked about taking a field trip to Irazu Volcano and Santa Rosa National Park. The teacher for this class also teaches my environmental policy class, and similar to that class, there are only 3 students. Thursday nights, I also have a Latin America dance class. For the first day we learned basic steps of Bachata.

A really big moth

Friday: Today was San Ramon day, so we didn't have classes. At 9:00 in the morning, the festivities kicked off with free food, music and small parade of the saints towards the center of the square. On every street, the neighbors had dedicated that street to their own patron saint. All these different saints made their way through town towards the center of the church. All day long there was music, vendors, food, and in the center of the park was a massive cake that was like 5 tables long. For lunch, my classmates and I went to Santo Pescade, a restaurant with really good food and apparently good happy hour deals. The day ended with some dancing in front of the church with my new friends.

The statue of San Ramon that was paraded through the streets in celebration of the town's patron saint.

Saturday: Most members of our group signed up to do some tree planting with the local Tico, Marco. So, at 7:30 ish in the morning, we boarded an old school bus and headed just out of town to a coffee plantation. Our group of 24 made up about one third of the overall group and we got to work planting lemon trees. One cool thing about this plantation is that it didn't just grow coffee. The plantation took a holistic approach to agriculture and grew things like lemon trees, orange trees, lime trees, banana trees, and pineapple trees amongst the coffee plants. Part of this was because the coffee plants needed the shade from those trees to grow, but it is also a more environmentally friendly way to grow food. At the end of the planting session, we were invited to have some fresh fruit and tea and listen to some music played on a didgeridoo. It was also this point where I was chilling in the grass and had a fun, big spider crawl on my leg. After the tree planting session, our group of students with a couple of local ticos walked/hiked to a waterfall. The hike down to the waterfall was super muddy and steep so I basically just ended up sliding my way down. The waterfall itself was really cool. There was swimming in the pool right below it and people could even swim behind the falls. While the air was warm, the water was not. At this point though, we were all too hot, sweaty, and muddy to care. We didn't spend too much at the waterfall since it started raining shortly after we got there, making the muddy path back up even more muddy and dangerous. After waiting it out in the rain, some of us took an uber back and that was the end of that adventure. Later that night I also got pizza with some friends (mmm, American food!) where they put Kraft cheese slices on our pizza.

Group photo during tree planting

Sunday: On one of the last days of the Festival, there was the ox cart festival and parade. This was, so far, my favorite event in Costa Rica. Starting in the town of San Juan, local farmers dress up their oxen and have them pull beautifully designed, old fashioned ox carts to the center of San Ramon. There were so many ox carts and each one was so beautiful.