Folks,
I didn’t get around to writing over the weekend, and yesterday was my birthday, so we ended up going out for a few drinks.
Hotel Del Rey
--------------
We headed in to San José again on Monday night. A bar called ‘El Cuartel’ in an area called California(!) is THE Monday night place. Afterwards we decided to see if we could get anywhere for a late night drink. We ended up in a hotel called Hotel Del Rey. This is an infamous hotel known mostly for prostitution. So there was myself, Jack, Fionn and José sitting at the bar, and the rest of the area was swarming with ladies of the night. They don’t approach customers, and we avoided eye contact so we had a great night. Myself and Jack didn’t leave until nearly 7. When we got home everyone was going to work.
Arts Festival
-------------
The Arts Festival here is the National Arts Festival, which Heredia is hosting for the first time. So all week there has been music, theatre, dance and art exhibitions centred around Parque Central just up the road. It’s been featured in the papers, and we’ve wandered up to sample it a couple of times.
Heredia
--------
Just to let you know a little bit about the city we’re living in. Heredia is the capital of Heredia Province. It is located at 10°N 84°W, at an elevation of 1,140 metres (that’s 3,730 ft) above sea level. In 2004 it had a population of some 42,600 people. The city was founded in the 1570s as Cubujuquí. It later changed its name to Villavieja before adopting its current name in 1763. For a brief period in the 1830s, Heredia served as the national capital. Heredia also is home to one of Costa Rica’s largest colleges, the Universidad Nacional, so it’s a university town. So now you know.
El Pueblo
----------
We finally made it actually into El Pueblo on Friday night, with Fionn and his Irish friends who have been here on holidays. It’s basically a compound of bars that are not very impressive. But Fionn brought us through a maze of little alleys to find a couple of local bars with live music. We really enjoyed this, and it will definitely be on the tour for any of you who decide to visit!
My birthday
-------------
As I said, yesterday was my birthday. Thanks to those who have sent emails. If you haven’t there’s plenty of time, as we’re not celebrating it until the weekend, because I’ll be finished working! Yesterday, one of my classes (who remembered it was my birthday from an exercise a few weeks ago on how to say dates in English) surprised me with a party to celebrate, with pizza’s and coke! I was very impressed.
Although we will go out to celebrate at the weekend, myself and Jack went to our local ‘El Cholo’ last night and had a couple of pitchers of beer to mark the occasion!
It’s now Tuesday, and I’m finished work on Thursday, and then we’ll sort out the itinerary for our travels starting next week.
Hasta luego.
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Monday, June 20, 2005
Time accelerates
For a period after we arrived, it seemed like time moved so slowly. The first couple of months felt like about six months. However, things seem to have speeded up now. I can’t believe it’s the middle of June already. I have only two more weeks’ work before holidays in July.
Tiring week
------------
While it’s great that I can get free Spanish lessons with the school, it’s also very tiring. This week I had Spanish from 8.30 to 12.30 from Monday to Friday. I was then preparing classes for the afternoon, and teaching from 4pm to 9pm. So it feels like I’m in the school from 8.30am to 9pm, and it’s exhausting! So this week I’m not going to do classes, and I’m going to use the time to revise what I’ve done in the last few weeks.
Spanish classes
----------------
The school where I work, Intercultura, teaches both English and Spanish. Spanish is in the morning, and English in the afternoon and evening. The English students are Ticos, who pay moderate fees. The Spanish students are mostly American, and they pay a fortune. They usually come down for a month or so. They spend one or two weeks in the school, then a week in the other Intercultura school by the sea, in Sámara on the Pacific coast. They will probably have a week travelling too. So each week, my fellow students are bubbling with enthusiasm and raving about the travelling or activities they’ve done or are about to do.
July plans
-----------
We’re looking forward to making plans to travel during July. The school finishes on June 30, and isn’t back again until August. We had originally planned to buy a car. We’ve been advised against this though. The roads are so poor that you really need four wheel drive. At this time of the year some roads are impassable because there is so much rain. In addition, insurance is extremely high. There is only one insurance company and it’s government run. So for July we’re going to travel by bus. They’re slow, but cheap and run to just about anywhere in the country.
Art festival
------------
When we arrived home from San José last night we found that the Avenida Central was closed to traffic. The whole central square has been turned into a venue for the National Festival of Art. It runs for the week and there are performances of music, dance, theatre and cinema during the week. We wandered up there earlier today and it’s all very festive.
And so we head into another week. I’m taking a break from Spanish, but will have about 25 hours teaching plus prep.
Hasta luego
Tiring week
------------
While it’s great that I can get free Spanish lessons with the school, it’s also very tiring. This week I had Spanish from 8.30 to 12.30 from Monday to Friday. I was then preparing classes for the afternoon, and teaching from 4pm to 9pm. So it feels like I’m in the school from 8.30am to 9pm, and it’s exhausting! So this week I’m not going to do classes, and I’m going to use the time to revise what I’ve done in the last few weeks.
Spanish classes
----------------
The school where I work, Intercultura, teaches both English and Spanish. Spanish is in the morning, and English in the afternoon and evening. The English students are Ticos, who pay moderate fees. The Spanish students are mostly American, and they pay a fortune. They usually come down for a month or so. They spend one or two weeks in the school, then a week in the other Intercultura school by the sea, in Sámara on the Pacific coast. They will probably have a week travelling too. So each week, my fellow students are bubbling with enthusiasm and raving about the travelling or activities they’ve done or are about to do.
July plans
-----------
We’re looking forward to making plans to travel during July. The school finishes on June 30, and isn’t back again until August. We had originally planned to buy a car. We’ve been advised against this though. The roads are so poor that you really need four wheel drive. At this time of the year some roads are impassable because there is so much rain. In addition, insurance is extremely high. There is only one insurance company and it’s government run. So for July we’re going to travel by bus. They’re slow, but cheap and run to just about anywhere in the country.
Art festival
------------
When we arrived home from San José last night we found that the Avenida Central was closed to traffic. The whole central square has been turned into a venue for the National Festival of Art. It runs for the week and there are performances of music, dance, theatre and cinema during the week. We wandered up there earlier today and it’s all very festive.
And so we head into another week. I’m taking a break from Spanish, but will have about 25 hours teaching plus prep.
Hasta luego
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Hangover days
Apologies that the update is late this week. The weekend was a bit hectic and yesterday was a totally hung-over day.
Plane crashes
--------------
We’re beginning to question our judgement in having flown to Manuel Antonio in the light airplane. There were two crashes last week. One got a lot of attention because it contained a group of American and Canadian skydivers. One American guy survived by parachuting out of the plane. He was in the Pacific for 24 hours before being rescued. Several Tico students have told me that they’ll never take a light aircraft, because there have been so many crashes.
Pub crawl San José
--------------------
We got a call from Fionn who was organising a pub crawl in San José on Saturday night. He used to work in Korea, and two colleagues were separately and co-incidentally arriving in Costa Rica on the same day, so it was a really large Irish group heading out. Fionn is from Monaghan, so he also wanted to see Kevin McBride fight Mike Tyson. We were going to Barrio San Pedro, which is the university district, beside the Universidad de Costa Rica, which has tons of really hopping bars. Myself and Jack had trouble getting into some of the bars because we didn’t have ID!
A good night for Monaghan
---------------------------
Well, our night got off to good start when McBride astounded everyone and won the fight. Fionn was in his element. He works in a sports book, and was saying that the odds were so poor for Tyson that all the money was on McBride, so they’d have lost a lot of money. He seemed quite happy about that though.
El Pueblo
----------
Since we arrived we’ve been hearing people talk about El Pueblo. As I understood, it was an area of the city which has loads bars and restaurants. So after we finished all available bars in San Pedro, we headed out there. I was surprised to see that it’s all like an industrial estate. All the bars and restaurants were behind bars in a gated compound. To top that, we couldn’t even get in the gates. There was a security guard shot dead earlier in the week, so they were being careful about people arriving late! As luck would have it though, there was a bar across the road and we partied the night away there. I don’t know what time we got home, but it was completely bright.
Hot running water
-------------------
We discovered this week that not only are we unusual in having a phone (that can receive international calls), Internet broadband and cable TV. But we also have hot water! We weren’t aware that this was a luxury. Turns out that 90% of apartments don’t have hot water, just a heater for the shower alone. We’ve really landed on our feet.
OK, that’s it for this week. Sorry about the delay again.
Hasta la proxima semana.
Plane crashes
--------------
We’re beginning to question our judgement in having flown to Manuel Antonio in the light airplane. There were two crashes last week. One got a lot of attention because it contained a group of American and Canadian skydivers. One American guy survived by parachuting out of the plane. He was in the Pacific for 24 hours before being rescued. Several Tico students have told me that they’ll never take a light aircraft, because there have been so many crashes.
Pub crawl San José
--------------------
We got a call from Fionn who was organising a pub crawl in San José on Saturday night. He used to work in Korea, and two colleagues were separately and co-incidentally arriving in Costa Rica on the same day, so it was a really large Irish group heading out. Fionn is from Monaghan, so he also wanted to see Kevin McBride fight Mike Tyson. We were going to Barrio San Pedro, which is the university district, beside the Universidad de Costa Rica, which has tons of really hopping bars. Myself and Jack had trouble getting into some of the bars because we didn’t have ID!
A good night for Monaghan
---------------------------
Well, our night got off to good start when McBride astounded everyone and won the fight. Fionn was in his element. He works in a sports book, and was saying that the odds were so poor for Tyson that all the money was on McBride, so they’d have lost a lot of money. He seemed quite happy about that though.
El Pueblo
----------
Since we arrived we’ve been hearing people talk about El Pueblo. As I understood, it was an area of the city which has loads bars and restaurants. So after we finished all available bars in San Pedro, we headed out there. I was surprised to see that it’s all like an industrial estate. All the bars and restaurants were behind bars in a gated compound. To top that, we couldn’t even get in the gates. There was a security guard shot dead earlier in the week, so they were being careful about people arriving late! As luck would have it though, there was a bar across the road and we partied the night away there. I don’t know what time we got home, but it was completely bright.
Hot running water
-------------------
We discovered this week that not only are we unusual in having a phone (that can receive international calls), Internet broadband and cable TV. But we also have hot water! We weren’t aware that this was a luxury. Turns out that 90% of apartments don’t have hot water, just a heater for the shower alone. We’ve really landed on our feet.
OK, that’s it for this week. Sorry about the delay again.
Hasta la proxima semana.
Sunday, June 05, 2005
Turning work down
Another week over. The teaching is going fine, and I’ve had to turn down extra work. The rainy season continues with gusto, and we visited a local gay bar and a club in San José.
Rain, rain, rain
--------------------
Lest some of you think that we’re in beautiful tropical weather, I have to tell you that today it’s done nothing but rain. I’m sitting on the balcony, it’s just after 7pm, and I can just see sheets of rain in front of the streetlight opposite. The sky is just grey cloud. It’s been raining since I got up, and it shows no sign of stopping. It’s still warm though. I popped out earlier with just an umbrella and a t-shirt and I was fine.
Our local bar
-------------
Shane popped over the other night. He's our first visitor to the apartment. He told us about a nice bar down the road, el Cholo. It’s just about 100m from the apartment. It’s Heredia’s only gay bar. We popped down for a drink the other night. It’s small, but quite nice. It’s a Spanish themed bar, and does Tapas. While we were there a couple of teachers from the school, Porter and Tom Todd, and Tom’s wife Elena, arrived in. So we ended up joining them for a drink, and had a good laugh. They closed the bar at midnight, but continued to serve everyone inside. We left at 2am, because I was teaching at nine. Everyone was dancing at that stage. Tom, Elena and Porter were there until three. I think it’s somewhere we may visit often.
Interamericana
----------------
Shane works at the Universidad Interamericana. To avoid all their staff having to do visa runs to Panamá they decided to apply for work permits for them all. Unfortunately, it backfired. Not only did they not get the permits, but they were informed that there were plenty of Ticos (Costa Ricans) who could teach English. So they’ve had to let everyone go. Shane is one of only four teachers staying. Some of new teachers are quite poor. One told Shane that she hadn’t ‘teached’ yet that day.
La Avispa
----------
Last night, Saturday, we ventured into San José for the first time since moving to Heredia. It’s about 20 minutes by bus, which costs about 42c. We went to the main gay club, called La Avispa (the wasp). It’s a good sized club on two levels. We enjoyed ourselves and had to say we preferred it to the George. We got a taxi back, which cost less than €5.
Useful technology – Part IV
-----------------------------
The DVD drive on my laptop. We’ve joined our local video store, Videomanía. We’ve caught up on a whole load of films that we hadn’t been able to catch in the cinema over the past year.
Turning down work
--------------------
I was in class on Thursday, when Barbara, my boss, popped in to see if I’d take another private student on Fridays. Friday and Sunday are my days off, and the rest of the week is fairly full at this stage, so I had to turn it down. So it’s just taken a little over a month to go from a couple of hours a week to turning work down.
Signing off now as our favourite programme of the week, Desperate Housewives, starts in five minutes. It’s still bucketing out of the heavens.
Hasta la proxima semana
Rain, rain, rain
--------------------
Lest some of you think that we’re in beautiful tropical weather, I have to tell you that today it’s done nothing but rain. I’m sitting on the balcony, it’s just after 7pm, and I can just see sheets of rain in front of the streetlight opposite. The sky is just grey cloud. It’s been raining since I got up, and it shows no sign of stopping. It’s still warm though. I popped out earlier with just an umbrella and a t-shirt and I was fine.
Our local bar
-------------
Shane popped over the other night. He's our first visitor to the apartment. He told us about a nice bar down the road, el Cholo. It’s just about 100m from the apartment. It’s Heredia’s only gay bar. We popped down for a drink the other night. It’s small, but quite nice. It’s a Spanish themed bar, and does Tapas. While we were there a couple of teachers from the school, Porter and Tom Todd, and Tom’s wife Elena, arrived in. So we ended up joining them for a drink, and had a good laugh. They closed the bar at midnight, but continued to serve everyone inside. We left at 2am, because I was teaching at nine. Everyone was dancing at that stage. Tom, Elena and Porter were there until three. I think it’s somewhere we may visit often.
Interamericana
----------------
Shane works at the Universidad Interamericana. To avoid all their staff having to do visa runs to Panamá they decided to apply for work permits for them all. Unfortunately, it backfired. Not only did they not get the permits, but they were informed that there were plenty of Ticos (Costa Ricans) who could teach English. So they’ve had to let everyone go. Shane is one of only four teachers staying. Some of new teachers are quite poor. One told Shane that she hadn’t ‘teached’ yet that day.
La Avispa
----------
Last night, Saturday, we ventured into San José for the first time since moving to Heredia. It’s about 20 minutes by bus, which costs about 42c. We went to the main gay club, called La Avispa (the wasp). It’s a good sized club on two levels. We enjoyed ourselves and had to say we preferred it to the George. We got a taxi back, which cost less than €5.
Useful technology – Part IV
-----------------------------
The DVD drive on my laptop. We’ve joined our local video store, Videomanía. We’ve caught up on a whole load of films that we hadn’t been able to catch in the cinema over the past year.
Turning down work
--------------------
I was in class on Thursday, when Barbara, my boss, popped in to see if I’d take another private student on Fridays. Friday and Sunday are my days off, and the rest of the week is fairly full at this stage, so I had to turn it down. So it’s just taken a little over a month to go from a couple of hours a week to turning work down.
Signing off now as our favourite programme of the week, Desperate Housewives, starts in five minutes. It’s still bucketing out of the heavens.
Hasta la proxima semana
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