Over these two weeks, we have had fun hanging out with the other students and enjoying Tamarindo. It is a very small surf town, so we pretty much saw it all in the first two days. We haven't surfed much this past week because we had our classes from 1-5 in the afternoon, which cramped our lounging on the beach lifestyle. We hope to return to the surfboards this week since our classes will return to the 8-12 hours.
The biggest events during the last two weeks have been Halloween and the election, as you all know. Nobody celebrates Halloween in Costa Rica, and the teachers and other students find it very amusing that we have children dress up in costumes and knock on strangers' doors for candy. Since we are in a touristy town, the local bars tried to celebrate Halloween but it appears they didn't quite understand the holiday and instead got it confused with Mardi Gras. We walked into the first bar and were handed Mardi Gras masks and beads. Oh well, I guess the effort was there!
Here we are on Halloween night:
Later in the week, we had the wonderful election. I know there is a mixed crowd following this blog, so we won't gloat but we had a good night. We went to the only bar in town that had American channels and watched the results with one other American student and several Europeans, who were just as interested. We sat down at a table and the TV was on mute, but was at least showing the results. We asked the waiter if he could turn up the TV, but he said no because the band needed to play. We were a little nervous we were going to miss the whole thing but as soon as the band began to play, I think they realized everybody's backs were to them and focused on the TV behind the bar. Needless to say, the band quit early and the volume on the TV was turned up. Anyway, here are some pictures from election night:
Jamey (an American) and two Europeans watching the results:
Our english tv:
Nina and Jamey watching the election:
Our host family continues to be interesting. Luckily we can now speak a little bit better with them but some things continue to be lost in translation. One morning, Roni (the shirtless father who struts around in "tighty-whities") asked us if we would like "agua de pipa". We explained we didn't know what that was but we were up for the experience. Roni seemed excited and walked on back behind the house, grabbed a large green fruit from a tree, and chopped it right in half. He held two large glasses underneath and they quickly filled with what looked like water. Our house mom, Lucia, is very used to hosting foreign students and always reassures us we don't need to eat or drink anything we don't like. We took our first sips of the "agua de pipa" as they stared at us. Paul enjoyed it but I found it disgusting so I told Paul he could drink mine, too. Next, they let us eat some of the insides of the fruit which looked very similar to coconut . Again, Paul enjoyed it while I tried to disguise my grossed out facial expression. Afterwards while we were still at the table enjoying our breakfast, Lucia told us in Spanish that when people eat or drink too much pipa, they get ______. We understood everything but that last word. We looked at each other and repeated it and realized we both didn't understand that word. We told Lucia we didn't understand and she and Roni were shocked we didn't know that word. So, Lucia begins to act it out. She was telling us as she began to squat, "you know in the bathroom" and she began to make unpleasant sounds from her mouth and motioned stuff coming from her rear. We both immediately laughed and said "diarrhea!" which we felt stupid for not understanding the exact same word, just pronounced differently in Spanish. We were quite disgusted with the charades episode while we were sipping our coffee and finishing our breakfast. Needless to say, Paul was worried the rest of the day since he ate and drank two servings!
Roni serving us Pipa:
Paul after trying the Pipa...he looks like he could already be feeling it:
Here are some shots of our house. I feel like I am roughing it with cold showers and ants all over our bed, but Paul's idea of roughing it has greatly changed since hiking the trail. I'm apparently just high maintenance. It really isn't bad and we are enjoying our time there greatly.
From the front door to the back door (These doors are always open to help circulate the air):
The living room:
Our bedroom:
Cooking soup over an open fire:
Paul in our bedroom:
Nina playing with the dog, Toti:
This last shot of the dog reminds me of last night. Paul and I were walking in town after dinner with leftover pizza in our hands. Out of nowhere, two large dogs came charging at us growling and barking. Paul just started taking off running and dropped the pizza. I immediately had a flash back to being in the travel clinic getting necessary shots for when we thought we were going to Bolivia and kindly turning down the rabies shot, saying we wouldn't be around any dogs. Anyway, after growing up with big dogs who love chasing a running object, I yelled to Paul to stop running and sure enough, the dogs left us alone. Paul said running is the logical, instinctive thing to do in that situation, so I think we'll continue to be chased. There seems to be lots of wandering dogs around here.
Anyway, that is a long enough post. Thanks again for following our adventures. We plan on cooking my mom's famous chili for the family this week, so we'll let you know how that and the rest of our last week here goes.
Adios,
Nina and Paul
