I had a marathon day of classes and English conversation groups but I’m finished! My classes today were acceptable, not fantastic, but acceptable. I had to make a bunch of changes in my information to try to manage the student in my afternoon class who thinks he knows everything and won’t stop talking. So, I had less time to practice the information. The morning class was a little rough, but surprisingly the afternoon class went better. The problematic student dominated the first part of the class taught by my co-teacher, but I think he gave up on trying to talk to me, so things went a lot better. I still have a long ways to go to be really good at Spanish. I need a significant amount of time in a Spanish speaking country, but that’s not possible right now.

I had several people, even some students, come up to me today to tell me how much they enjoyed my AI presentation. It’s a topic that everyone is interested in right now. TEC gave me a nice gift for coming and a very nice thank you letter.

This evening, I helped with two English conversation groups. People are really enthusiastic about having a native speaker to talk to. In one of my sessions, I had a 12 year old boy who was pretty good! His mom was helping him in the background. He’s really into robotics so we had a good conversation about that.

I leave for San Jose around noon tomorrow and I fly back to St. Louis on Saturday. Tomorrow is Mother’s Day here, which is a national holiday, so schools and a lot of workplaces are closed. I’ll probably be the only one on campus, so just as well that I’m leaving.

Overall, it has been a good trip, not an easy trip, but a good trip. As much as I love it here, it will be nice to be back in my house in a more comfortable living space.

I haven’t posted in the last few days because I haven’t done anything super interesting or I’ve been wiped out tired by the end of the day. I spent last weekend at Heliconias Nature Inn enjoying the beautiful area and the thermal pools. Above is the adorable towel elephant that the cleaning lady made. She also made beautiful swans and a brontosaurus.

I came back to TEC on Monday morning and gave my first presentation at 9:30am. It was a presentation about the development of health and fitness culture. I gave the talk in English to students who are learning English, but I had PowerPoint slides in Spanish. It seemed to go well, and the students had some good questions, but I know it was challenging for them. I just gave my second presentation titled AI and the Human Future this afternoon. It was also be in English. I think it went well. I got some good questions and TEC managed to fill a big auditorium with people. The university president Zoomed in a welcome message before I started.

Tomorrow, I teach 2 classes and help with two English conversation groups. I’ve made significant changes to my class in an effort to reign in the student in the back who talks all the time. It will be a long day! TEC wants to bring a group of students to UNI next year so hopefully we can make that work.

My accommodations have continued to be somewhat challenging here. The AC wasn’t working when I came back from the hotel last weekend and a couple of nights ago the smoke alarm went off for a few seconds at 4am in the morning. Maybe someone else in the building was smoking. It wasn’t on for long but I didn’t have a plan for what to do if it hadn’t shut off. Who do you call at 4am if the smoke alarm won’t shut off? But, the warm water feature on my shower has worked the last couple of nights so I haven’t gotten shocked turning the hot water on and off. The food in the cafeteria is also good and campus is very pretty. There are parrots flying over my house almost every morning and howler monkeys somewhere nearby. There is an ice cream shop down the street, so I may go get ice cream after supper tonight. It’s also lychee season here and they are delicious!

It’s been a challenging trip but I still feel lucky to have these kinds of experiences. I just have to make it through my classes tomorrow!

I had a crazy long day yesterday and a crazy day in general! I taught my first class at 9:30am and it went pretty well. The students seemed interested, they helped me with my Spanish, and the professor for the class also helped me when I needed it. It was a fun experience. There were 10 students, which was a good number to manage.

The second class was much more difficult. There were 28 students, and they were much more talkative. That could have been fine, but there is an older, returning student in that class. He talked almost the whole time, spoke very quickly and I didn’t understand anything that he said. That’s really unfortunate, because I know he was saying things that I needed to respond to. At one point, he suggested members of the US government were members of the neo-Nazi movement. That might be true, but I haven’t heard anything for sure. He also wanted to know what political party I was part of, and whether I thought Costa Ricans were white. That seemed like a trick question. It took me a long time to figure all of that out and that’s the small part that I understood. The other students were taking out phones  to do other things while I failed to manage this student. I really didn’t blame them. The professor of the class didn’t help me at all. He just let me flounder. I skipped a few slides so I could finish. At the end of the class, one student came to apologize for calling white people gringos. I wasn’t upset about that at all. He seemed like a good kid. He was just trying to be funny. Two other students came to apologize for the behavior of their classmates and to tell me they thought it was going to be a long semester. It probably will be a long semester. At least I only have to do one more class for this section.

I had to run from class to join an English Zoom conversation group at 4pm. I did it outside because I didn’t have time to go back to my apartment. I have mosquito bites and a bird pooped all over my computer. Most of it hit the track pad so that was at least easy to clean up. Marlon told me the conversation group was at 6pm but it turned out that there was one at 4pm and another at 6pm. I had to reschedule with my taxi to pick me up at 7pm. Everyone there really seemed to appreciate having a native English speaker to talk to so it made my day long but not bad. 

My taxi picked me up at 7pm. The driver is young with a tiny baby at home. His sister is expecting triplets! We had a good conversation and he let me stop at a grocery store to get a snack for supper and some yogurt for the next couple of days for lunch. The food at the hotel is really good, but I don’t need three huge meals a day. I made it to the hotel at 8pm. I’m so happy to be here, although currently there’s no electricity. Hopefully that gets fixed soon.

There was a bat in my room early this morning. It woke me up at 2am trying to get out. A thought it was a moth at first because I was barely awake so the bat and I were both confused. I opened the door and let it out so everything was fine. It’s nice that there are bats here! They eat mosquitoes. There is a colorful Costa Rican squirrel in the tree beside my room.

I don’t have any big plans for today. I’m reading this morning and I’m planning to practice my presentation, swim, maybe go hiking, and do hot springs this afternoon depending on the electricity situation.

I’m back at TEC! It’s been another interesting day. I left the hotel at noon. As you can see above, my accommodations are quite a bit different. The taxi driver who has been driving me is super nice and very safety conscious. He gets really upset about bad driving and people doing stupid stuff in general but especially on the road. He speaks very fast Spanish that I have a lot of trouble understanding him. Generally, I do pretty well here, but I have trouble with this guy.

My hotel is only about 45 minutes from the university. Google told me it was 1.5 hours. It’s really a short trip over, which is nice since I’m leaving for the hotel again tomorrow afternoon. My accommodations here at TEC are fine now. When I got here this afternoon, the AC wasn’t working. TEC evidently ended its contract with the AC repair company and didn’t hire anyone new. The AC in the building my contact works in is also broken. The university was able to give me a different room, but there is no hot water in my new room. I’m currently using the bathroom in one room and sleeping in another.

I just took a shower and that was also an experience. The shower has a switch to turn on the hot water but there is no way to regulate the temperature. It’s either scalding hot or cold. If I touch the side of the shower head when I turn the switch, I get a mild electrical shock. If I flip the switch back and forth, I get a few seconds of reasonable temperature water so it’s still better than nothing.

I met both of my co-professors today. They seem very nice. They asked me to get supper with them tonight but by the time they came by at 7:20 pm, I was sweaty and wiped out and didn’t feel like I could do an evening of Spanish. It’s much harder to speak Spanish like that. I FaceTimed Bill instead. He speaks English so it didn’t take up nearly as much energy.

Yesterday was Marlon’s (my contact here) birthday, so his colleagues had a small party for him with cake. I got to join. I understand pretty well when people talk to me, but I miss a lot when conversation is going on around me.

Since I bailed on dinner with colleagues, I ate at the student cafeteria. I had beans and rice with stewed pork and salsa, crunchy tortillas, and fruit juice. I’m always impressed by how healthy the food is. The fruit juice is real juice. It’s not flavored water with fake sugar.

I teach tomorrow morning at 8:50am and again at 1:30pm. The first class has 9 students and the second has 28. I hope it goes okay and I’m prepared enough. I’m leaving TEC tomorrow afternoon as soon as my class is over to go back to the nice hotel where I’ve been staying. I’ll be fine in my cabin here at TEC next week, but for the weekend, I’m taking the better option and going back to the hot springs!

I had a pretty fun day, but I’m wiped out tired tonight! My favorite author has a new book out, so I read for a while this morning after breakfast. This restaurant has really good gallo pinto and pancakes!

At 11am, I got a massage on the yoga deck near the thermal pools. The massage therapist did a great job! She used hot stones on my back, which I had not had done before, but I really like it. I’m pretty sore from walking up all the hills around here and my gym experience, so the massage helped.

The hotel raises its own tilapia. There are tilapia ponds in several places. Costa Rica actually raises a lot of tilapia. This was the best tilapia I’ve ever had. The restaurant breaded it really nicely.

After lunch, I went hiking on the trail around the hotel. It’s not long but it is steep! It’s very pretty. There is a small river behind the hotel so the trail goes along that, then up a steep hill. They have added some concrete barriers in the stream to make small pools that you can swim in. They advertise it as crystal clear water, and it probably is at certain times of the year. Right now, all the rain is washing mud into it, so it was a little murky. I swam in the pool after my hike/river swim, then went to the hot springs.

Last night, I woke up to something flashing in my room. I was only partially awake, so at first, I thought it was a flashing smoke alarm or sprinkler system that malfunctioned. Then I noticed it moving. It was a lightening bug that had gotten in. I don’t know where it went. There is a gecko in the bathroom. There were a few ants in there when I got here, but now I have a gecko but no ants.

Tonight there was a gecko on the TV in the restaurant. The light from the TV draws in bugs so the gecko sits on the screen and catches them. There are lots of them here.

Overall, good day, but I’m not going to last long tonight. I leave tomorrow at noon for TEC. I teach a class on Thursday, but I’m coming back to Heliconias on Thursday evening and staying until Sunday. Next week, I’ll mostly be at TEC. It’s been a weird trip, good but much different than the trip I planned for.

The clouds finally cleared yesterday and I got a good shot of the Arenal Volcano. The clouds had been so heavy that I didn’t realize how close I was. I sent this picture to my brother and told him this was my work trip. He’s in Ohio. He gets to do quite a few fun work trips though, so he can’t complain too much.

I have had an eventful couple of days! I messaged my contact at TEC to tell him that I left to go to La Fortuna. He apologized for the smoke detector, told me he was glad I found somewhere else to stay and told me he would see me on Thursday. Since TEC has not been prepared for me at all and doesn’t seem to care if I’m there, I decided to go back on Wednesday afternoon.

Yesterday afternoon, once it stopped raining, I walked down to La Fortuna. It’s a 30 minute walk but there was what passes for a sidewalk almost the whole way. That’s rare here. I found this awesome little shop that sells clothing made from bamboo, banana and hemp. The bamboo and banana fibers are super soft! I bought a t-shirt made of bamboo in San Jose so I was already interested. I bought a pair of bamboo pants that are the most comfortable pants I’ve ever had. They fit perfectly! Even the right length. The clothes are made in Costa Rica and they seem to be really good quality. Costa Rican women are not very tall, which is probably why the pants fit. I bought another pair this morning when I went to lift weights. The owner of the store is an immigrant from Ukraine who moved here in 2014 because of political instability. He came with $300, no Spanish and no English. Now he speaks both. He said it was hard. It’s nice to contribute to the local economy. 

There is an Indian restaurants right down the road from the hotel where I was staying, so I ate there last night. It was really good! The Indians who own restaurants in Costa Rica make their food spicy. I ordered medium paneer butter masala, and I felt it!

I went to the gym this morning in La Fortuna. It’s very small, has really old, rusted equipment and no AC! But there were a lot of people there, both men and women and most of them were super fit! There were some people moving heavy weights. The Costa Rican women were young, beautiful and barely sweating. Within 5 minutes, I looked like I was melting into a puddle on the floor. Almost everyone there seemed super nice and helpful. It had a really good vibe overall. But, there was one older guy, probably 60s but in extremely good shape, who came over to talk to me. He was training someone else, so I assumed he was going to give me tips. Not so! He asked where I was headed next, then asked for my phone number so he could come visit me in San Carlos, which is 1.5 hours away from La Fortuna. He never asked for my name and didn’t give me his, but wanted to hook up in San Carlos at the university where I’ll be staying. What kind of women say yes to something like that? That sort of thing is a very rare occurrence here in Costa Rica. Costa Rica historically has had a strong women’s rights movement, and they are much more progressive in terms of gender than many other parts of Latin America. But, there are creepy people everywhere. Anyway, I said no and he left me alone so I could finish working out. Everyone else seemed very pleasant.

The walk back to my hotel was rough! I was already tired, it was hot, and it’s a steady slope up to the base of the Arenal Volcano where I was staying.

I’m currently at one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever stayed! The hotel in La Fortuna was fine, but I found one with excellent reviews for $95 a night in the middle of the rain forest. It’s spectacular! My room is beautiful! It’s like someone dropped this place in the middle of the rain forest without damaging much of the surroundings. There is a nice pool, but the hot springs are amazing! There are a series of small pools, surrounded by plants where thermal water is pumped in. It’s raining and cool, so really good weather for hot springs. A little less rain would be nice. There is also a river with pools where you can swim. I’ll walk down to that tomorrow if there is a break in the weather. It’s a 90 degree slop down to the river and it will be a rough walk back up too.

I have no idea how they run this place for $95 a night. There are similar places here that cost $400+ a night. It is in the middle of nowhere. There is a restaurant on site, but without a car, that’s your only option. The food is good though and not that expensive. I had pasta for $12 tonight. I highly recommend this hotel and I’m hoping to come back next weekend. If any of you want more information, the website has some good videos.  https://heliconiasnatureinn.com/

They keep goats and chickens here. Apparently, the restaurant uses the eggs. 

This post is getting really long and I’m running out of energy. I booked a massage for 11am tomorrow. I think I’ll need it after the weights and hiking that I did!

Hello All: I’m back in Costa Rica for a couple of weeks to visit the Universidad Technologico de Costa Rica. So far, my trip has been a bit challenging. The university made a lot of last minute changes to the work they want me to do, so things have been very unorganized for months, and that has continued to be the trend now that I’m here.

I got to Costa Rica on Friday evening after a long day of travel and spent the night in San Jose. My driver from TEC picked me up on Saturday morning to take me to the University. We had a nice conversation for the 2.5 hour drive and it was a good opportunity to practice Spanish.

TEC has put me in the same house where I stayed last time. Since I am here for 2 weeks, I was hoping that they would put me in a house with a kitchen, but not a big deal, I can manage. The house I’m currently staying in is not really set up for a longer stay. It smells really musty, like a cabin that hasn’t been aired out in years. It has a fridge, but that’s it. No coffee pot, water boiler, silverware, plates or paper towels. My contact at TEC let me borrow his wife’s bike so I was able to find a grocery store with a water boiler for tea, I got some groceries and I found a bakery and some restaurants down the road. TEC doesn’t start its semester until Monday, so there is no one on campus, and the cafeteria isn’t open so there is no food close by. That’s not a super big problem except that this is the rainy season and it’s at least a quarter mile to any food. The sky regularly opens up and it pours at various times through the day.

All of these things are problems that I can manage. I have a lot of experience here and I can make things work. However, the smoke alarm in my house needs a new battery and it beeps every 2 minutes. I’m sure you’ve all had this happen and you know how much the beeping drives you crazy while you are trying to determine which smoke alarm needs a new battery. This smoke alarm is on a high ceiling that will require a ladder to reach. I heard the beeping as soon as I walked in. I told Marlon, my contact, about it, and he said he would try to get it fixed on Monday and drove away. I would need to spend 2 nights in a house with a beeping smoke alarm.

I can manage a lot, but there is a limit to what I can take before I go crazy, and the smoke alarm was it. I decided to get a hotel for the weekend. As it turns out, San Carlos is really in the middle of nowhere and the closest hotels are at 1.5 hours away in La Fortuna. Yesterday was also a big national religious holiday. Taxi drivers were all booked, and so were most of the hotels. After an hour or so of searching, I found a driver who helped me find a hotel. The hotel is not fancy, but it’s clean and the restaurant has good food. There also nothing beeping in my room, it has hot water and it’s only $97 a night, which includes breakfast. They have a long list of activities that I can choose from so it’s fine.

The drive here last night was an adventure. My taxi driver showed up at TEC in a beat up van that had definitely seen better days. Driving at night in Costa Rica, especially this part which has mountains and all the roads are like narrow snakes, is iffy and it was raining. The wipers on the van needed some serious work. The driver almost hit an elderly guy out walking in the rain. In the driver’s defense, the elderly guy was in dark clothes with a black umbrella and was almost invisible in the rain. The driver kept sending messages on his phone while driving, and we hit a pretty serious pothole on the way here. There are a lot of one lane bridges to get here which slows things down. By the time we got to the hotel, the van was really smelling like gasoline. The driver was super nice though!

I don’t have anything scheduled at TEC until later in the week, so I’m hoping to stay in La Fortuna tomorrow too. That will give maintenance time to fix the smoke alarm. It would have made more sense if TEC had asked me to come for 1 week instead of 2. Because they made changes, I don’t have enough work for 2 weeks. I told them I would shorten my trip since they canceled one of the classes I was going to teach but they told me to come for both weeks anyway.

I’m glad I decided to do this trip before I sent one of my colleagues here. I have a lot of experience and I can fix most problems with money. For anyone with not much travel experience, this would be a disaster. Fortunately, I love Costa Rica so I will find a way to make this a good trip. It’s beautiful here in La Fortuna and San Carlos. I think I’m going into town this morning to find a gym and a rain coat. It will give me a chance to see when most of the rain takes place, probably early morning and evening. Tomorrow, if I don’t need to go back to the university, I may do some hiking around the Arenal Volcano. I’d like to do that at a time when it’s not going to pour!

It may be a long 2 weeks but it should be an interesting trip!

Well it’s time to wrap up this vacation! Probably just the right amount of time for being here. Emily got to do a lot of snorkeling and I did a lot of diving. I did 5 dives for my class, 8 regular and a night dive. I don’t know if I will do that many in a single vacation or not, it feels like it was a lot. But I’m up to 43 dives. I will have to look at some specialty classes, maybe rescue diver in the future.

Today we did a half day snorkel with Kevin, he actually went out with us. If you’re looking to do something that takes time, it’s not too bad. It does involve a lot of time on the boat. Today I think they ran out of time when it was tome to snorkel with the star fish because when we were trying to tie off for the wreck the boat ran out of gas in one of the tanks and the guy tried switching fast but the wind was strong and blew us in the rocks, Kevin and the boat captain hat to get in and move the boat to deeper water. Kevin wasn’t to impressed with his guy, he captained for a bit after that, until we were back on the regular traffic lane.

Not too bad of a day. We went to Spooky Channel which is Kevin’s favorite. It was pretty cool.

Hopefully everyone has enjoyed the blog, I may try and blog some this summer if we can get some good days on the boat.

Be good everyone and stay safe!

The internet here dies every evening, so I’m getting my post done earlier today. We just finished a half day snorkeling trip, that was so so. We really wanted to swim in a location with starfish where we have been before, but our boat captain didn’t let us get out there. Not sure why. I have two new brightly colored rash guards so I don’t get burned or hit by a boat.

Last night, Bill did a night dive and I went along as a snorkeler. It was fantastic! They dropped me off in the water and told me to be back by the time the divers got back. It was a little creepy being completely alone in the water in the dark. The boat didn’t have a light so it was hard to find, but I could have swam back to shore if things had really gone badly.

Anyway, it was a spectacular experience. Sometimes a guide is nice because they can find sea creatures that are hard to see, but alone, I can do whatever I want without worrying about following someone else. Initially, I wasn’t seeing much, so I turned my light off and floated in the dark. There are little bioluminescent creatures called sea pearls here that glow in the dark all around you once you turn off your light. It’s magical! When I turned my light back on, a Pacific Reef Octopus was right under me. I startled it with my light and it flared out luminescent sea foam blue-green, then shifted between brown and white and bright blue. I reached my hand down and it sucked onto my finger with one of its arms. Picture below:

I also saw a snake sea cucumber and a serpent star.

It was one of the best snorkeling experiences I’ve had!

I bought a couple of super cute necklace charms from a street vender. The history department secretary and her partner make jewelry, so they are going to make necklaces for me. We also bought a bag of really good, roasted cashews. There is a guy who sells bags of them that he must roast himself. They are the sweetest cashews I’ve ever eaten! I finally found some good mangos too. The fruit selection here hasn’t been great and the first mangos I bought tasted really weird. The pineapples have been good.

A couple of days ago, I found a beautiful sand dollar and with my new freediving skills, I was able to dive down to get it. It’s illegal to take things off the beach, so I won’t be able to bring it home.

We come home tomorrow, but it’s been a really good trip!

Today was my last dive day, I had a morning dive that wasn’t too bad. We did some time around 80 feet but there wasn’t much going on. The DM keeps the dives 50+ minutes, the afternoon dive should have probably been just under 50. I think we may have turned a little late. We did a swimming safety stop, most of them are here, so that helped stretch the time.

At the end of the first dive Emily came down and took the camera so there’s some shots of me doing my safety stop.

I did another swim though today, I skipped the long one with a curve, Fred said we could go around so that was my choice. I did do the second one he offered since I could see the other side where it opened out.

They got enough people signed up so they did a night dive, I ran into some of my nemesis out and about. This time I was not attacked and stabbed. They do seem to move quickly for just being little spike covered balls.

Closer to the end of the dive we all turned our lights off and watched the bioluminescent lights. They have a thing they call the string of pearls that are lights in a straight line, they’re kind of cool to see. The water sparkles when you wave your hands around.

Tomorrow we are doing a half day snorkeling trip with Kevin, he said that he would take us personally as it is his favorite tour. We did it last year and we enjoyed it.

Be safe!