A rose by another name...

A picture of me, my host nieces, and Abby, the girl who lived in my host house last year.


What a coffee bean looks like before it's roasted.


The entrance to the mountain I hiked up next to my street.

My host brother helping my host mom walk across this make-shift bridge on our hike.

Oh Shakespeare, you are much more eloquent than I. Basically I have come to realize that Ticos (Costa Ricans) have a really difficult time saying Carlia. So, I let them call me Carli, which they seem to find easier because they watch the show iCarly. Fine by me, it’s not like I haven’t been called that my entire life anyway. So I think it’s been a week since my last post and a lot has happened already.

I decided that a lot of the time, my life here feels like a weird hybrid of the shows “Lost” and “Dora the Explorer.” Yes, let me explain that for you. After accomplishing some kind of task, I started to sing that song from Dora…”We did it. We did it. Hicimos…” Then I was talking to my friend Claire, whom I’ve mentioned before, and we decided that our life really does resemble Dora the Explorer. Everyday, especially in Spanish training, we get sent out into town to do crazy tasks. Along the way we learn some new things in Spanish. Sound familiar? We also have to watch out for “swipers” and keep our things close and not carry around flashy and expensive things.

As for feeling like I’m in an episode of “Lost,” well, sometimes it just looks like it. The tropical mountains, lack of amenities and the fact that I don’t know what’s coming my way at any point in the day sometimes feels like I crash-landed on some crazy island. I just always feel disoriented. What amenities could I be lacking? Oh, well you know, hot water for one thing. Yep, nothing gets you up like a cold shower at 6 am. Although, I went running today before my shower and that made it a whole lot better. I didn’t have to stand there convincing myself to jump in. Also, my host mom does my laundry for me, but I have to do my own underwear, and this weekend I realized that we wash underwear in a bucket outside. Just put a little soap in the bucket, some water, and you’re good to go. Don’t worry though, we have a washing machine for normal clothes. Everything gets hang-dried outside.

You know what else I miss? I miss really nice toilet paper. The TP here is just so, well crappy. It’s super thing and rough, and frankly the kind my family buys is worse than the TP in a lot of public restrooms back home. It sucks, but I can live with that.

So, this weekend had some crazy ups and downs. I woke up on Saturday pretty bummed out that I was missing the 40 day thing with my family. It was definitely depressing and tough getting through it alone. However, I also woke up with my host mom rattling off in Spanish about going somewhere. As I am not a morning person in general, trying to figure out what was happening was quite the task. I eventually figured out that my Andres, my host brother, wanted to take me to the Costa Rican version of a farmer’s market.

The market was pretty awesome. I wanted to take pictures but didn’t want to make myself a target for thieves and such, but maybe I’ll get a few next time. Anyway, that market kicks butt on our farmer’s markets. It was huge! There was also so many different fruits and vegetables. Andres tried to teach me the names of a lot of them, but I can’t really remember a lot of them.

Oh speaking of exotic fruits, let me tell you about this one really interesting fruit that I tried eating and also tried drinking in juice form. I forget the name of this fruit, but I can tell you that it is related to the pomegranate. Like the pomegranate, it is sweet and when you open it up and there are little fruit things with seeds inside. It is also supposed to be good for your health. That would be where the similarities end. You know how when you open up the pomegranate, it looks like little rubies of goodness? Um, that would not be the case for this fruit. You open it up and it looks like a pouch of frog’s eggs. The seed is black and a clear sac surrounds it where the pomegranate seeds would be surrounded by red. Oh, so it doesn’t just look like frog’s eggs. You put it in your mouth and it feels like you’re eating frog’s eggs. It’s slimy going down and when you chew, it’s crunchy. You would think in juice form it would be less slimy, but no it’s just as slimy and crunchy. Again, next time I will have to take a picture.

On Sunday, Andres and his family and my host mom took me on a hike into the mountains behind our house. It was pretty awesome. There were some great views and the foliage here is pretty amazing. Not to mention it was a great break before getting back to the weekly grind that is PC training.

So that’s about all for now. Hope you enjoyed! Also, please keep e-mailing me stories about your lives. I know I haven’t been responding, but I just haven’t had time as I am literally online for minutes at a time. I do read them, and they do make me smile….except that story about Bentley. Poor guy. He looks so sad in that picture too. Fun fact, California is now only an hour behind Costa Rica. Maybe I will find time to video chat next weekend. It might have to be Skype though as I cannot log in my AIM account on another computer. I tried on Saturday and it didn’t work out. All right, until next time!