Monday, April 9, 2007
Pics are in...
Here's a bonus I can add to my blog, thankfully. Coincidently I ran into some friends in Montezuma, and the following pictures are courtesy of Cyrielle, a French lass. They should give an idea of how sweet the place was.
Friday, April 6, 2007
When marimba rhythms start to play...
Ow, my nipples. My poor, poor nipples.
No that´s not some kinky revelation I´m sharing with you all. It's just that surf wax, while very useful for staying on a surfboard, really aggravates your skin if you don´t wear a wetsuit.
The beach at Montezuma is great. Happy Easter to you all :)
That is all.
No that´s not some kinky revelation I´m sharing with you all. It's just that surf wax, while very useful for staying on a surfboard, really aggravates your skin if you don´t wear a wetsuit.
The beach at Montezuma is great. Happy Easter to you all :)
That is all.
Sunday, April 1, 2007
Service resumed. Apologies for any inconvenience
¡¿Holy shit, how many weeks have just flown by like that?!
Too many for my liking. I know, I know… I suck.
Apologies folks, I would have liked to have blogged for you all, but truthfully it’s been hard to find the time and energy in my daily routine to just sit down quietly and type something up. Also, I don’t have a lot of additional stuff to show you guys to make any blog entries seem interesting, besides my writing skillz. I know you have very short attention spans and need pretty pictures and movies to keep you focused, you see, and my digital camera is quite fucked at the moment, ever since I came here.
That means sadly that I don’t have pictures of me and sunny beaches to show right now (though I am hunting them down from people I’ve travelled with). However, I think I may be able to dig up a few cookies for you nonetheless. Here’s one for starters. This is what I’ve managed to achieve after a little more than a month following Spanish courses in San Jose. If you ever drop by Costa Rica and want to pick up some of the language, I can definitely recommend this language school.
Nice little certificate I can frame and put up on my wall. “Nivel Intermedio II” has me almost up to the level of an advanced Spanish-second-language speaker, which means I can do basic conversation now. My accent isn’t awful either, so to outward appearances I think I could pass for your average barrio kid. I fool most gringos, who think I’m one of the locals, but it doesn’t always work with Costa Ricans. They sometimes refer to me as “Chino”, which makes me sad. FORFUCKSAKES I’m not Chinese… ¡¿Entiendes?!
I think I’ll just break down and cry.
These are some of the very few pics taken with my phone during my first month taking Spanish lessons. I stayed with my host family in San Pedro just a short bus ride away from the capital city itself. I don’t live there anymore, but here’s the casa where I stayed, and my room too.
And this is where I took my Spanish class. Meet Marco, my teacher. Marco es divertido! Pero a veces, como un diablo – las clases intensivos estaban muy duro!
View of San Jose city from the Museo de los Niños, a former penitentiary turned children’s museum where I hung out one time with my amiga Johanna and her kid.
Scenes from San Jose during the late afternoon. Memorable street music by the band in the first pic: Spanish gospel hiphop with an old man lead singer. Very ‘WTF?!’ but it definitely sounded alright.
Here are pics from where I am at the moment. After finishing Spanish class I moved to another city called Heredia outside San Jose but still within Costa Rica’s Central Valley, and here I’m staying with the Corrales family (Hannia and Emelina). As of today, I’ve been here exactly one week. Hannia works as a secretary at Universidad Nacional, where I’m affiliated as an independent guest master student researcher. Emelina is Hannia’s daughter and is likewise writing up her thesis in the field of marine biology. The pictures below show my work place. I have a shared office at CINPE, an abbreviation which translates to the International Center of Political Economy for Sustainable Development.
They treat and feed me well here. Here’s a typical Tico (Costa Rican) breakfast that Hannia makes: Steaming ‘Gallo Pinto’ (rice and beans) and cheese and salsa and fresh coffee. Perfect start to a day!
That’s all the cookies for now. After a week settling in at CINPE, Easter week is coming up and I have a nice beach vacation planned at Playa Montezuma (playa=beach), where surf’s up. Hahaaaa… I’ll be sure to throw some pics at you.
Seriously, if any of y’all can make it, visit me here! I’m amazed at what this place has to offer. After that trip I talked about in my last blog to see a live active volcano with lava and shit, I went to this beach at Jacó and there were iguanas in the shade and red parrots flying from tree to tree. Totally surreal. Totally Pura Vida.
Too many for my liking. I know, I know… I suck.
Apologies folks, I would have liked to have blogged for you all, but truthfully it’s been hard to find the time and energy in my daily routine to just sit down quietly and type something up. Also, I don’t have a lot of additional stuff to show you guys to make any blog entries seem interesting, besides my writing skillz. I know you have very short attention spans and need pretty pictures and movies to keep you focused, you see, and my digital camera is quite fucked at the moment, ever since I came here.
That means sadly that I don’t have pictures of me and sunny beaches to show right now (though I am hunting them down from people I’ve travelled with). However, I think I may be able to dig up a few cookies for you nonetheless. Here’s one for starters. This is what I’ve managed to achieve after a little more than a month following Spanish courses in San Jose. If you ever drop by Costa Rica and want to pick up some of the language, I can definitely recommend this language school.
Nice little certificate I can frame and put up on my wall. “Nivel Intermedio II” has me almost up to the level of an advanced Spanish-second-language speaker, which means I can do basic conversation now. My accent isn’t awful either, so to outward appearances I think I could pass for your average barrio kid. I fool most gringos, who think I’m one of the locals, but it doesn’t always work with Costa Ricans. They sometimes refer to me as “Chino”, which makes me sad. FORFUCKSAKES I’m not Chinese… ¡¿Entiendes?!
I think I’ll just break down and cry.
These are some of the very few pics taken with my phone during my first month taking Spanish lessons. I stayed with my host family in San Pedro just a short bus ride away from the capital city itself. I don’t live there anymore, but here’s the casa where I stayed, and my room too.
And this is where I took my Spanish class. Meet Marco, my teacher. Marco es divertido! Pero a veces, como un diablo – las clases intensivos estaban muy duro!
View of San Jose city from the Museo de los Niños, a former penitentiary turned children’s museum where I hung out one time with my amiga Johanna and her kid.
Scenes from San Jose during the late afternoon. Memorable street music by the band in the first pic: Spanish gospel hiphop with an old man lead singer. Very ‘WTF?!’ but it definitely sounded alright.
Here are pics from where I am at the moment. After finishing Spanish class I moved to another city called Heredia outside San Jose but still within Costa Rica’s Central Valley, and here I’m staying with the Corrales family (Hannia and Emelina). As of today, I’ve been here exactly one week. Hannia works as a secretary at Universidad Nacional, where I’m affiliated as an independent guest master student researcher. Emelina is Hannia’s daughter and is likewise writing up her thesis in the field of marine biology. The pictures below show my work place. I have a shared office at CINPE, an abbreviation which translates to the International Center of Political Economy for Sustainable Development.
They treat and feed me well here. Here’s a typical Tico (Costa Rican) breakfast that Hannia makes: Steaming ‘Gallo Pinto’ (rice and beans) and cheese and salsa and fresh coffee. Perfect start to a day!
That’s all the cookies for now. After a week settling in at CINPE, Easter week is coming up and I have a nice beach vacation planned at Playa Montezuma (playa=beach), where surf’s up. Hahaaaa… I’ll be sure to throw some pics at you.
Seriously, if any of y’all can make it, visit me here! I’m amazed at what this place has to offer. After that trip I talked about in my last blog to see a live active volcano with lava and shit, I went to this beach at Jacó and there were iguanas in the shade and red parrots flying from tree to tree. Totally surreal. Totally Pura Vida.
Monday, February 26, 2007
This is Pura Vida
Yo me llamo David. Yo tengo veintidos años y soy de dinamarca (mis pasres son de dinamarca y las filipinas). Yo soy afortunado – hoy, yo vivo en Costa Rica.
Yo soy un estudiante de ingenería ambiental de la Universidad Aalborg de dinamarca, y yosoyestoy en Costa Rica paraescriboescribir me tesis de maestra. Es muy interesante – la tema de la tesis mia es la conducta de las compañias multinacionales (como Intel y Glaxo Smith Kline) en cuantoa elal desarollo sostenible. Es acerca de los factoreseconomicaseconómicos, sociales y ambientales.
Dinamarca es un país muydesarollodesarollado dónde estos problemassonestánbalanzasbalanzados. Espor quepor eso yosoyestoy fuera.
Dinamarca es un país bueno. Los servicios de educación y salud son gratuitos – pero los impuestas son muyaltoaltos ! A veces sesenta por ciento !
Freetranslate this!
Overall not too bad, I think, for my very first mini-essay in Spanish. I’ve come down here with absolutely nada knowledge about the language, so I’m spending the first five weeks following a language course in the heart of San Jose, Costa Rica’s capital. It’s kind of a funny feeling going back to school again like this, but it’s great – we have fun in class and I consider this a sound investment in my future which will look great on my CV, hopefully even expand my job options just that much more. Still, it’s a steep learning curve, and no one said this was going to be easy. I do make mistakes.
For instance, Ella pregunta la hora does NOT mean She impregnates the whore.
En generál, I’m doing juuust fine, thanks for asking. I just spent my weekend bathing in hot springs in luxurious sunny surroundings, listening to latin music with a Corona in hand while colíbri hummingbirds flitted in and out of bushes and trees nearby. How was your weekend?
The bathing springs in question were near the town of La Fortuna, some five hours by bus from San Jose. There’s an active volcano here that erupts 24/7 and is impressive to watch at night, as well as a national park where I saw a wild snake for the very first time (about damn time too, if you ask me, after about nine years living in the tropics). Also, there were spider monkeys, a wild squirrel, a type of racoon and lots and lots of fancy birds of all colors. Cool stuff. Really.
I went with Sabrina (Swiss), a housemate of mine, Tiffany (American), Cyrial (sp? – French), Julie (French) and Avdyl (Kosovo-Albanian German dude) which meant that, well, we had the most fucking funny, insane and confusing conversations sometimes, but the trip was absolutely pura vida. I think I’ll do this every weekend from now on, you know, just find some new destination and see as much of this beautiful country as possible. Meeting new people isn’t too hard at all – the place is crawling with all sorts of travellers and I swear I’ve spoken with more Europeans and Americans than the local Ticos (and the Ticas – ay caramba).
It helps, too, that I’m not the only foreigner boarding with my host family who are accommodating me for the duration of my Spanish course (homestay w/ breakfast and dinner included in the package). Besides Sabrina, Sussie (German) and Jürgen (German) and I are staying with the Soto family, who are extremely nice people. They’ve all been very helpful and my ‘mamá’, Mary Anne, cooks up the BEST dinners… sorry Ma, but I think when I get back, I’ll need to teach a thing or two ;)
My week in brief: started Spanish, started going back to the gym again after a long break, stopped smoking, tried some of the nightlife (ugh, don’t care much for the reggaetron music but the classy salsa dance place has convinced me to try dance lessons this week), introduced myself to my local supervisor at Universidad Nacional (more about that later) and, well, couldn’t wipe the grin off my face the whole time. This is all so surreal and it kicks ass.
Adios, muchachos. I’ll have some pics up soon. Tonight I’m going out with Øygunn (Norwegian – that’s a girl’s name btw) and Johanne (Costa Rican/German) who I share Spanish lessons with, plus almost all the other people I mentioned previously. Should be fun!
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Wassup from Chicago!
A new look for a new occasion – welcome y’all to a brand new 2.0 edition of my blog. I expect this next instalment of my online chronicles to be just as long-lived as my previous one, so be sure to stop by every now and then and check out what I’m up to. As always, I’ll be happy to receive comments and respond because, you know, I’m an attention whore like that.
So there’s a fresh new look to this thing, entirely in keeping with the overall theme. ‘Pura Vida’? It literally translates to ‘Pure Life’ and is both a common phrase used by the Ticos, as the local inhabitants of Costa Rica call themselves, and a sort of philosophy toward life they share. Another rough translation is ‘distilled life’, meaning all the positive facets which make life good: friendship, relaxation, flirting, happiness, fun... now conjure yourself an image of this tropical country, with ocean breezes and lapping waves on white shores and people who share this outlook, and you have some idea of where I’m travelling to next. And why I’m absolutely psyched to the bone ;)
That deserves a little explaining. So here’s the deal – Costa Rica is my next stop in my studies, a place I’ll be spending six months writing up my masters thesis, my final piece of work that will allow me to complete the five year study program in Aalborg University I’m enrolled in. After that, I’ll be getting away with my M.Sc. in Environmental Management if it all goes according to plan… what happens after that is completely up in the air, and I’m not really in any hurry to decide upon it at the moment. Right now I’m happy enough looking forward to my stay in Central America.
First up, though, is a week’s stay visiting family and friends in the Chicago area in the US. I’ve been quite busy doing a bunch of stuff while here in the States, so I haven’t had time to do a proper blog – rest assured, I’ll give you guys a lot more detail once I touch down in Costa Rica’s capital, San Jose, and get myself settled. As I write this, I’m about to head off to sample the Chicago nightlife. My cousin here has a friend who’s DJing at a club, so that should be chill.
Before I go, here’s my first blog cookie: We did some tourist sightseeing shit in Chicago earlier this week, even though the weather here is freezing and it was in the middle of a winter storm. Here’s me and family in front of the Sears Tower… we didn’t go to the top because visibility was absolutely zero. This is the next best thing. David out.
So there’s a fresh new look to this thing, entirely in keeping with the overall theme. ‘Pura Vida’? It literally translates to ‘Pure Life’ and is both a common phrase used by the Ticos, as the local inhabitants of Costa Rica call themselves, and a sort of philosophy toward life they share. Another rough translation is ‘distilled life’, meaning all the positive facets which make life good: friendship, relaxation, flirting, happiness, fun... now conjure yourself an image of this tropical country, with ocean breezes and lapping waves on white shores and people who share this outlook, and you have some idea of where I’m travelling to next. And why I’m absolutely psyched to the bone ;)
That deserves a little explaining. So here’s the deal – Costa Rica is my next stop in my studies, a place I’ll be spending six months writing up my masters thesis, my final piece of work that will allow me to complete the five year study program in Aalborg University I’m enrolled in. After that, I’ll be getting away with my M.Sc. in Environmental Management if it all goes according to plan… what happens after that is completely up in the air, and I’m not really in any hurry to decide upon it at the moment. Right now I’m happy enough looking forward to my stay in Central America.
First up, though, is a week’s stay visiting family and friends in the Chicago area in the US. I’ve been quite busy doing a bunch of stuff while here in the States, so I haven’t had time to do a proper blog – rest assured, I’ll give you guys a lot more detail once I touch down in Costa Rica’s capital, San Jose, and get myself settled. As I write this, I’m about to head off to sample the Chicago nightlife. My cousin here has a friend who’s DJing at a club, so that should be chill.
Before I go, here’s my first blog cookie: We did some tourist sightseeing shit in Chicago earlier this week, even though the weather here is freezing and it was in the middle of a winter storm. Here’s me and family in front of the Sears Tower… we didn’t go to the top because visibility was absolutely zero. This is the next best thing. David out.
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