Children's Museum and Surfing

So this week has been a fairly busy one, so this may end up being a little long ish. In the last week I have been on a field trip to the Children's Museum here in San Jose, and I have been to the Pacific Ocean and gone surfing and I have made it through 3 of the 4 weeks of my first class.

First class. I am in my final week of Advanced 1 Spanish. Which of course means that this week is going to be really busy. I have a group presentation on Thursday that needs to be close to 45 minutes and a quiz over comprehension of a story that same day. Then the following day I have my final for Advanced 1. It;s going to be a busy week of studying. But I really feel like I am gaining more confidence in my Spanish skills and I am able to speak more fluently and for longer at one time. Last night I even had a conversation with my Tica Mamá over the differences between Oregon and here, especially at the beaches. It was nice to be able to hold an everyday conversation in Spanish (something I have been missing since I've been here). My teacher also says that she has seen a lot of improvements in my Spanish. It feels good to both see and hear from others the growth of my skills that I am here to develop (although with a growth in Spanish comes a shrinking of English skills, my English Grammar is taking more and more thought the longer I am here).

Friday my class went to the Children's Museum here, which was an amazing field trip. It was fun to be able to act like a kid but be old enough to truly enjoy it. First we had to run through the museum in our groups trying to find specific answers to questions and get signatures from the employees. Which was crazy and fun (my group placed second by the way, no big deal really ;) ). Then We split up and thoroughly examined one exhibit per group. This is going to be what my 45 minute presentation will be on Thursday, my group is studying Costa Rica and their culture. We finished with about an hour to spare and then explored the museum more. There was lots of exhibits about many different things (Space, the body, Costa Rica to name a few). I have posted some photos below highlighting the best of the activities there. If you wanna see more you can go here Museo de Niños


(Keep reading below the pictures for my description of Tamarindo)

Yeah, I'm in Star Trek. Be jealous

And here I'm being eaten

Zen master

  OK, I told you this was going to be a longer one. Next comes Tamarindo.

After my trip the the museum, I went on my second excursion in Costa Rica, this time to the West Coast at Tamarindo. The beach actually looked pretty similar to Oregon, just imagine slightly more sun and palm trees and 20 degrees warmer, and you have Tamarindo. However, this also mean that there wasn't much of a wow factor in Tamarindo. It was basically just a warm Cannon Beach to me, but I still enjoyed my time there.

On Saturday My friend David and I went surfing. It was my first time surfing ever, and I was really excited to try it. We rented the board and got lessons for only $20 total. The instructor was very helpful (and the lessons were in Spanish, I was proud that I understood them). After about 10 minutes on the beach practicing laying on the board and standing up, we hit the water. During the lesson, which lasted about an hour and a half, I never attempted to catch a wave without the instructors help, but that's OK because it was helpful. On my first wave that I tried to ride, I was able to stand up and ride the wave for a little while, and on the third wave I tried I rode all the way to the shore, which is a fairly big deal for first time surfers (granted I was being pushed into the wave by my instructor, but I still had to be the one staying balanced and standing up). After the morning of lessons, we broke for lunch and souvenir shopping, then we were back in the water to finish the day on a surf board, this time with a few friends to take pictures. In the afternoon I was all by myself, and I still rode many waves. It was seriously so much fun. Now I want a surf board back in America really bad (*wink wink* mom, dad, family, Kelsey *cough* Christmas Present *cough*) I already am feeling the surfing itch and it's only been 3 days since I was there.

After we had to return the boards I was feeling a little sick, probably from dehydration, sore muscles and all the salt I swallowed, so I went to bed early and then hung around the hotel until we left on Sunday. We had Monday off due to a National Holiday (I think something to do with Columbus) so I was able to fully recover and relax after my excursion, which I didn't get to do last week. 

here are some more pictures from Tamarindo, also you can go here My Costa Rican Adventure to view all my photos from Costa Rica.

(If you can't see either of the albums I linked here, email me at nculbertson07@georgefox.edu and I will find a way so that you can see them)

Thanks guys
Vayan con Dios
Nick Culbertson

The day is officially done for me

Tamarindo at dusk

Puerto Viejo

Hey hey all!

Sorry it took so long in between posts, but I kinda forgot about this with all the work I had last week. But now I'm back to tell you all about last week, and especially Puerto Viejo

Last week was the hard part of my 4 week class. We focused a lot on grammar, so there was lots of lectures and tedious homework that was over the lectures in class. We learned the subjunctive form, which is how to express your hopes, wants, and desires. Like "I hope that you have a good time tomorrow = Espero que tengas un buen tiempo mañana." We also had a group presentation on Thursday. I had to present on the Death Penalty... in Spanish. That was really hard to do, and pretty boring as well, but I got it done and got a really good grade on it. Finally, on Friday was our midterm test. I know, 2 weeks in and I already have a midterm! Well, the class is only 4 weeks long. We got our tests back today, and I got an 85 on it, so a solid B.

But, getting to the good stuff; this weekend I went to Puerto Viejo!!! It was a paradise, right on the Caribbean Sea. It was seriously a dream come true to be there for me.

Banana Trees

We left Friday afternoon, and drove the 5 hour road to Puerto Viejo. Along the way, we started in the Costa Rican mountains and traveled through thick forest and cliffs. It was the thickest jungle I had ever seen in my life. After we got through the mountains, we drove past miles and miles and miles of banana orchards. As far as I could see on either side, there were banana tress. All the major fruit distributors were down there, Dole, Chiquita, etc. All of them there simply to harvest bananas. It was not something one sees every day.

Pretty soon, we arrived in the Port of Límon. Once there, we turned and traveled parallel to the ocean for about an hour. Just off the cost was a small island, and the bus driver told me that the island is where Christopher Columbus landed when he came to America... I'm not so sure I believe him. But anyway, as we drove, the sun began to set and we got some cool views of the sun setting.

Once we arrived in Puerto Viejo, we went out to eat at a local bar/restaurant and had rice and beans and played pool and hung out. That night, we went out and explored Puerto Viejo, but there wasn't much to do since it was night time.

It was a late night for me and an early morning. I was up till about 12:30 hanging out, and then had to wake up at 6:30 am for breakfast. We had rice and beans and eggs for breakfast at a panería (bread shop) and then headed out to Snorkel!!! Except when we got there, we discovered that we were unable to snorkel cuz the water was too dirty and the waves were choppy, which could have made it dangerous. I was really upset about this, but it definitely didn't ruin the trip for me as a whole. Instead of snorkeling, we went on like a 1 mile hike next to the Caribbean. On this hike we had the Ocean on our left and the Jungle on our right. We were able to see iguanas up at the top of trees and some really crazy looking bugs. But the two highlight animals were definitely the sloth and the monkeys. The sloth was kinda boring, but still really cool to see. The monkeys however, were really cool. My friend David and I were able to watch the monkeys crawl across the branches and jump from one tree to a palm tree right in front of us and climb the palm leaves, if they had missed on their jump they would have landed 2 feet from us. It was very cool.

At the end of this hike we were able to get in the sea, but it wasn't much fun to swim in because of all the coral that was on the ground. The coral felt like rocks, but looked much cooler. I was able to snag some of them and took them home as souvenirs. We soon moved farther down the beach to play in a more sandy area of the beach. I wish i had brought some boogie-boards.

When we returned to Puerto Viejo, my friends Jeff and Sho and I went out to lunch at a restaurant that was located right on the beach. We sat at a counter facing the ocean, which was only about 10-20 yards away from us, with palm trees along the side of the water. It was seriously like living a commercial. After lunch, the three of us walked along the beach and forest just to see what was there. We found some really cool secluded beach spots and some cool trees and plants. I found a coconut and plenty of coconut trees with coconuts still on them. We also found a very very large tree that had vines growing all over it and swung around on the vines. After that, I was ready for a nap.

A couple of us then went to dinner at a little stand just outside the main town. It looked a lot like the Taco Stands in Mexico, but served us Rice and Beans. After that, we went to a bar/restaurant that was situated right in the beach. The atmosphere was really chill there. They had some music playing in the background and the lights down to a level where it seemed like candle light. We all ordered just something to drink and went and sat on the beach (which was only like 10 yards away) and watched the waves role in at night. There was candles in paper bags all over the beach (set out by the restaurant) and one palm tree. It was the nicest, most relaxing thing I have ever seen or experienced.

The next day, we spent the morning in Puerto Viejo playing in the ocean. We got to sit in the waves and use some goggles to look in the rocks at some small fish and plant life. Also, I got to lay on the beach, right where the waves would sometimes make it to me. It was amazing, I can't stress that enough!!

Anyways, that was my first Caribbean Sea excursion. It made me want to go back already. I was very tired and exhausted, and I think I'm still trying to recover from it. I'm going to include some photos from Puerto Viejo, but I only have a few because I have to steal them off of friends' Facebook page since I don't have a camera here. So in a few days I will post some more pics here, so check back in the next day or so. Also, you can go to this link (¡Pura Vida Mae!). It's my Facebook album about Costa Rica, so i'll be putting pics from Puerto Viejo, San Jose and other activities I do while I'm here on that page.

Thank you all for reading, now I have homework to do
Vayan con Dios
Nick