San Jose: Part II

One of the main impressions I've gotten from the city is that it is a lot like other cities. There are a lot of things here that are incredibly American, including stores advertising American clothing, a lot of music from the US, and advertisements. There are many things that make San Jose different, one of which is a general feeling of being more at ease and relaxed.

Today I visited the Museo de Jade, which has the largest collection of jade in the Americas. It was nice to get some information and connect a bit with the history of the country. Here are some of the things that I saw:There were a lot of these shoe-horn looking things. I think they may have been axe-heads.

This dude struck me as looking a lot like a viking.

Phalluses! Wooooo!

Yesterday I also had a chance to get to know a local tico a bit. He showed me around the city and also took a picture of my in front of the Teatro Nacional. Also got some amazing coffee and saw some awesome parts of the city. I feel like I got much more of a sense of the entire city. There are a lot of really great murals all over the city and a lot of the grafitti is very beautiful as well.






The second mural depicts a destroyed polluted world of death then turning into a happy, green recycled world with smiling squirrels and such. Very nice.

Tomorrow I have a tour scheduled to the Arenal volcano and some hot springs, so should have more jungle-y pictures. I will also have to dedicate an entire post just to flowers at this point.

San Jose: First Impressions

So, after my long night of sitting on airplanes failing at restful sleep, I arrived at San Jose Airport. The green hills are visible from the runway and on the entire walk through the airport and drive into the city proper. I had a great chat with my driver en espanol and had a great, pressure-free refresher. It didn't go as well at lunch when I tried to ask the waiter to repeat himself and mistakenly asked for more options.

The hostel is awesome. It's got a very homey, comfortable feeling, and that awesome mish-mash of buildings/rooms that bed and breakfasts usually have. There's a wonderful central outside area with a pool, hammocks, and awesome jungle-like vegetation. There are so many gorgeous flowers and I had fun just walking around getting to know my hostel. Then, I went out onto the streets in search of a store for bottled water, a bank, and some lunch.

I just started wandering a bit in the area around my hotel, making sure to be able to backtrack if I needed to. The only place I found for water was a Texaco gas station store. Then I had lunch at a little soda and ate the traditional combination for lunch meals: rice, beans, a meat dish (amazing fish this time), mashed potatoes, and fried plantains. The plantains were surprisingly delicious and one of my favorite parts of the meal. I wish I had a photo of the deliciousness, but I'll just have to discretely snap a picture of another meal. The strangest part was dessert, which was strawberry ice cream on top of jello.

the view of the hostel from my door

It began raining in perfect timing after I returned to the hostel and I enjoyed sitting outside my room smelling the rain. I love rain, and it's even better here with the warmth and the jungle plants surrounding me. This is a great start to the trip and I'm so so excited to see more of the city tomorrow.

Life, You Have Begun Again!

So, in approximately 5 hours, I will be on a plane on my way to San Jose, Costa Rica. More accurately, I will be on the way to Los Angeles, then connecting from there to another Central American city, then connect again to San Jose. I'll arrive at 9:30am local time (Central Standard) and begin my first solo international trip.

That is only one piece of news and one way in which my life has started up again. My life never really stopped, but became much more stagnant for about six months. My stagnation is over and everything is happening again. I found out late Friday night that I've been accepted at the University of San Francisco School of Education for this fall!I can't help the exclamation mark. I've been on a wonderful, natural high since I read the acceptance email and have been coasting on it since. I feel like I'll come back from my trip and be able to begin the next steps rather than scrambling to figure out what those steps are.

So, life is about to get back into the craziness of action and motion and I couldn't be more excited for it to get started.

Anxious Wedding Dreams

Man, I just seem to LOVE glomming onto someone else's stress and eating it up so that I can have effed-up dreams. During the planning phase for my brother's wedding, I had a few anxious dreams, the ones where you can't fully fall asleep because you know more has to get done. I would keep dreaming the same thing over and over and in my dream, not all of the bridesmaids had their dress altered by the day before the ceremony and I had to make sure to do that and get it done.

Maybe that's normal for an involved bridesmaid. I was pretty stressed about the wedding leading up to it because I was helping a lot and responsible for getting important things done so that it could be the wedding they wanted (and deserved). But is it at all normal to have wedding anxiety dreams about a wedding that isn't yours and that's already happened???? I had another anxious wedding dream the other night, and this one was more strange and stressful than any I had before the wedding. I swear, I was just overwhelmed by all of the family and the big to-do and the stress of being asked about MY OWN WEDDING (gag) and my brain exploded as I slept, bringing up odd concerns such as: What if my dad decides to wear purple lipstick???

Yes, my father, in preparation for the wedding, donned purple lipstick and a cowboy hat. He apparently also got cowboy hats for the rest of our family and I was so worried because WHERE WAS MINE?? Their wedding had already happened, but this was their second wedding, not unheard of in my family. Not my brother's second wedding to another person, but the second wedding of the same two people shortly after their first wedding to one another (my mom did it, long story). The bridesmaid dresses had changed into a draping, Roman-looking pretty dress, but my mother embarrassed me by making everyone look at me while describing how sexy and wonderful the dress was.

I couldn't seem to get anywhere I was supposed to be in this dream. But the most disturbing part of that was that no one else seemed to care. I remember at the end, I was helping to clean up with my mom and stepdad and explained to them that I seemed to just miss everything. I started to unroll toilet paper onto a table while speaking and then thought, what am I doing? this is ridiculous! I threw the paper down and began to cry.

Blerg. Man, I know exactly what my sister would say to me. RELAX. Breathe deeply and remember that I don't have to plan/help plan/be at all in charge of a wedding for a long time now. My siblings are married, my mom has had her two perfect weddings, and I will not be ready for marriage-or my own wedding-for a long time. (Ellen, please wait at least two years for my sanity's sake.)