¡Qué Fiasco!

Folks,

Well, after all the planning and looking forward to the tournament, Costa Rica's world cup is already over. It's their worst performance ever, and everyone is bitterly disappointed.

The Ecuador match
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Although they lost against Germany, the way they played and the two goals were seen as enough to keep their dream alive. However, it all unravelled on Thursday when they crashed out 3-0 to Ecuador. Ecuador were simply too good from them, they went 1-0 up within the first few minutes, and Costa Rica never really looked to be in with a chance.

My students are bitterly disappointed. They're also embarrassed that the country was shown up so badly on the international stage. It's their worst ever performance in a world cup. ¡Qué Fiasco! was the headline in La Nación, echoing the nations feelings. Many people are not even interested in watching tomorrow's match against Poland.

Because both Ecuador and Germany have now won twice, they're both on six points and qualified. The only question is who comes first and second. The game between Costa Rica and Poland is meaningless, except to see if either team can salvage their world cup with a win.

An Irish Student
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Of all the countries I've ever travelled to, I've never been anywhere with as few Irish people as Costa Rica. So I was amazed when I got to school on Monday and was told that there was an Irish student this week. Trish is from Drumcondra and she's studying Spanish for four weeks, before doing four weeks voluntary work.

She's in her fifties and has a grown-up family. Her marriage has just broken down and the house is for sale. Rather than staying in Dublin and watching it sold, she decided to take a year-long trip around the world. She found a website for an English company that does 'gap years for grown-ups'. Costa Rica is the start of her trip, and she continues to New Zealand, Australia and India. We met up with her on Wednesday – she was dying to go out for a drink. And she came in with us to San José on Saturday night.

Avispa
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We went into La Avispa in San José on Saturday night. You may remember that we'd been to this gay club before, but haven't been in ages. It's a really nice, fairly large, club. Trish came with us, and we also arranged to meet up with our Columbian friend, Marisela when we were there. It was ages since we'd had a good night out in San José, and we really enjoyed it. The city doesn't even look too bad at night!

Scorpion
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I forgot to mention last week that we had our first scorpion experience when we were down in Manuel Antonio last week. I was talking to the others when I saw all eyes looking in alarm above my head. There was a scorpion walking calmly up the curtains. A lot of frantic attempts at catching him resulted in knocking him onto another curtain and then out the door. I've never seen one in Heredia, although a former neighbour swears she saw one in her apartment. I've been checking my shoes in the morning ever since.

Oscar talks to Benedict
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The new president, Óscar Arias, took advantage of the world cup to visit a few European countries during the week. I was interested to see that he used his trip to the Vatican to tell Ben 16 that he thinks the church has got it wrong on birth control and that they should relax the rules on artificial contraception. I wonder when we would ever see an Irish leader expressing such liberal opinions.
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Well, that's it for another week. I've only got two weeks until the end of semester, and I'm really looking forward to the break. So until next week …

Pura Vida,

Éamon