My semester in NICARAGUA.: Pura Vida

Pura Vida, which is the slogan of Costa Rica means pure life. We headed to this beautiful country just to the South of Nicaragua this past week. We got to be students, tourists, and to relax and enjoy this place on our week long stay.

We got picked up around 9 am on Saturday morning to head to Managua to the guest house we were going to stay in that night. When Maynor and Alicia arrived, we headed to pizza hut for lunch! That was a great start to our day, as after this we headed to Mambacho volcano for a canopy tour, aka ziplining! It was a great time, something we had been looking forward to all week. It was about halfway up the volcano located on a coffee plantation so it was a very neat view. We went with our group and about 6 other people and there were 11 different checkpoints we landed on. The last one we did a freefall type thing to get down which was a great thrill. Alicia was waiting for us at the end and we got some coffee at the cute little shop before heading back to the guest house. We had to stop at the “gringo” grocery store so we could have snacks for our long bus ride to Costa Rica that next day too. We got back around 5 so we just hung out that night. Malorie, Lisa, and I played Spanish scrabble while watching wheel of fortune the Spanish version, so we had a pretty nerdy Saturday night as well.

Sunday morning we woke up and quickly got on the road so we could arrive at the TransNica bus terminal on time and get all checked in. We were on the road heading to Costa Rica around 7 am! It was a long drive with one 15 minute stop for food, and then the border crossing which took around an hour (which was a pretty short wait according to Alicia). We got to Whitworth University campus, in San Rafael, Costa Rica around 6 pm, and had supper pretty short after. The food was delicious as this campus is very organic and “green” so their food showed that for sure. This University is based in Washington but they have this smaller campus in Costa Rica for their students that study abroad. It is a very neat place up in the mountains, so it got pretty cold at night and in the mornings. It was a nice cozy place to come back to though and they had hot showers so that was a plus. That night we just hung out and went to bed on time as we were pretty tired from traveling 8ish hours in a bus.

Monday we had our worldview and societal transformation class with Jim. This was our debate where we had partners and discussed Marxism, Post Modernism, Keynesism, and Neo-Liberalism. It went well and we had a good time fending our points looking at how these economic theories could help a developing country such as Nicaragua. I don’t think anyone won, but I think we got a good idea of how each of these theories have good ideas about how to help economics but that they might not actually work that well in practice. That afternoon we watched a video about Costa Rica and how the immigration problem has affected the people living here as well as how Nicaraguans feel being in a foreign country. It was a very interesting introduction to the topic that we would delve into later in the week. Maynor, Curtis, Lisa and I went fishing in the pond right on campus that afternoon which was super interesting because we had sticks for poles and pork for bait. We caught about 7 fish in total so that was a good time! That night we played a game called curse, which is super hard to explain but it definitely made us laugh a LOT!

Tuesday we got to visit an organization that was working in a community called La Carpio, which is made up mostly of Nicaraguan immigrants. We got to learn a bit about how they serve the community and got to play volleyball and basketball with the kids that were there for awhile. After lunch we headed out into the poorer area of that community and interviewed the people living there. It was a very interesting experience as many of them immigrated for better jobs and essentially a better life but they weren’t doing much better than they had been in Nicaragua. It was sad to see them not really trying though, as many of the women and men had jobs, but didn’t seem to want to try harder for a better life for their kids. It is kind of like the fatalist view that we have talked about many times that Latin Americans sometimes experience. It is the view that their situation isn’t going to get better so its no use trying to do something about it. I think many of the Nicaraguans that migrated to Costa Rica even have this view and it is a really hard mindset to break. Interviewing these community members was very crucial in learning that as most of the people that immigrate to Costa Rica find better jobs and such, many people who aren’t motivated to will fall back into their old ways of living. This organization, Christ for the City, has many outreach efforts that attempt to motivate these people to strive for a better life. There is also much crime that happens here because the youth don’t see a better life for them. The man we talked to, Cesar, a pastor and well respected man in the community is very passionate about this community and said that he has seen improvement in the past few years but that it takes a lot of work for people to see they can make a better life for themselves when it is just easy to keep the life they have always known. That night we had a presentation given by a representative of the housing ministry in Costa Rica. He talked a lot about how Costa Ricans act towards Nicaraguans and the stats of this phenomenon are. It was a very informative time and good to hear it from a higher authority and what hopes they have for the future of the immigration issue.

Wednesday we headed to downtown San Jose and looked around and did some shopping. It was a very interesting feel for a city in Latin America to feel so much like an American city. Many people had told us that this city was very Americanized and so that was very interesting to see. We stopped at McDonalds for some fries and Mcflurry’s just because we could. Costa Rica in general is a lot more developed and urbanized than cities in Nicaragua, mainly comparing it to Managua. It was cool to walk around the city though, and visit the markets because in a lot of ways you could just tell it was a Latin American country. We went to the museum of gold in the afternoon and then visited the Artesania market in the afternoon. It was good to go out into the city and get a feel of what it was like. We also got to drive through the large University of Costa Rica, which was very beautiful. It was interesting to find out that it cost about $4,000 a year but that made it a lot more competitive to get into. When we got back to the campus we played ultimate Frisbee, which turned out to be quite tough with the high altitude. The elevation in San Jose is higher than Denver, Colorado to put it into perspective. We still had a good time playing ultimate, and the dog on campus named fejou even joined us at the end. That night we had a fire inside and roasted marshmallows, which was a fun random thing that we hadn’t done in awhile.

Thursday turned out to be pretty rainy and foggy so that ruined our plans to visit Volcano Poas in San Jose but we went on to visit a zoo and waterfall not too far from there. It was called the Peace Waterfalls Ecological Center and it was about a 3 hour tour seeing all the animals and then the couple waterfalls at the end. It was a very nice, clean zoo and the coolest animals we saw I think were the frogs. We were in an open area with poisonous red frogs and the cool colored frog that is typical of the rainforests. That was awesome to see, and of course the other animals such as the hummingbirds, jaguars, monkeys and oxen were neat as well. It was a rainy afternoon but a great time to go to the zoo which was mostly sheltered. We ate at a nice restaurant after the waterfalls right at the center which had delicious fresh strawberry juice as their specialty. It was absolutely delicious, their food was too. We returned to the campus and that afternoon Sara, Lisa and I explored the mountain and went on a hike. We thought we knew where we were going but kind of ended up at a random road. So we got to see a nice view and then we headed back to the campus. We didn't come back without some interesting experiences though. One of which was about 5 guys hanging out around the fire probably smoking something and yelling unintelligible words, we didn't encounter them luckily that would have been a different story. We also walked through a person's yard, and kindly apologized after walking through their area with baby cows and me having to pick up fejou, the campus dog that decided to take our hike with us. A branch fell on Lisa's head also, and we had to walk through a bunch of really high weeds. It was an interesting time for sure, but we were glad we did it.

That night and we joined in on an English class that a few Costa Ricans were taking at the University campus. It was a fun time because they were talking about songs in English so we had a fun time introducing typical North American songs and talking about them. That night we didn’t sleep because we were going to leave for the bus terminal to head back to Nicaragua at 3 am. Most of us stayed up, watched Hot Rod the movie, played Uno, and listened to music videos until that time came where we had to pack up and head to the terminal. It was so early but it almost didn’t feel like Friday because we hadn’t slept. We spent a lot of time waiting at the terminal and then waiting at customs, but we eventually returned to Leon at our host homes at 4 pm. I was so tired at that time so I gave my host family a rundown of the trip and then took a nice nap until supper.

Our trip was a great break from classes and everything and next week we start our 3 weeks of service learning which for me will be continuing to intern at Food for the Hungry. The last week of November is the art camp for the kids that I am going to help decorate and plan and also I will be the official photographer for the week. So up until then I will be planning for that and doing whatever needs to get done so that that week will run smoothly! We have about 4 weeks left here and so it is down to the lasts. We have our exams the last week we are here, which is the first week of December which is also the same week we have our goodbye party with our host families. It is going to be weird leaving here because we have made so many relationships and ties to this place, but it will definitely be great to see family and friends back in the U.S. and to be back to the cold weather? Well not sure about that part, but I will be ready to be back home in about a month :)

Some photos:
SO READY for some zip-lining!...