We are now a few weeks into our Costa Rican adventure. I can’t believe that we have been away for almost a month. The good news in that things have defiantly improved in regards to our apartment situation. The bad news is that I am sick.. again.. It has defiantly impacted on my enjoyment factor. On the plus side you don’t need a prescription from the pharmacy so for ANY medication, so I am sure I can go and get some flu medication if I it gets worse.
Our course has been really intense so far, so we have not had a lot of time to enjoy everything that Costa Rica has to offer. We are now 2 and a half weeks into our TESOL course, we have learnt a lot and have each taught 3 lessons!! I enjoy the teaching aspect, the students we get are from all walks of life and they are all so happy to be receiving English lessons. So far I feel like it could be a really rewarding job.
We have had one weekend away where we went to Puerto Viejo on the Caribbean coast. It was really nice to go to the beach with our classmates. We had a good time and got to know everyone a bit better. We are lucky everyone is so nice, it definitely makes a difference to our stay. As beer is super cheap here (NZD$3 each) it is pretty easy to over do it, the dehydration probably didn’t help. Puerto Viejo was so hot! It was almost impossible to drink enough water to remain hydrated. It didn’t help that we had to buy water there. We also met a cool local artist who invited us to look at his paintings, he was a really interesting guy. I believe we are also invited to his exhibition in San Jose at the end of the month, sadly we won’t be around but hopefully I can buy one of his paintings in the future as they were beautiful.
Last weekend we went to a big farmers market in Heredia. We have found food to be more expensive at the supermarkets than NZ. Try NZD$6 for a bag of chips… Luckily a friend from class introduced us to this farmers market. We spend about NZD$20 and came away with lots of fresh fruits and vegetables. We got 4 mangos for about NZD$3 and a pineapple for NZD$1.50. However, Ali is disappointed that apples (his favourite food) are super expensive, luckily I can distract him with pineapple!
We have been to San Jose twice now, so far it has been nothing to write home about. It is pretty dirty, there are not too many tourist attractions and some parts are quite dangerous. In the weekend a policeman instructed us to leave a specific area for our safety. We will have to go back a few more times over the next few weeks as San Jose has the main terminals for domestic and international bus journeys.
We are slowly settling in and we are hoping that the next few weeks of the course go well. We have the schools christmas party this Saturday, where we are heading into the mountains! It will be fun to have a party with our classmates and to celebrate the (almost) end of the course.
Katie
ESCAPINGDUO 