Second Anniversary Edition!

Well, Thursday was the second year anniversary. I can't believe it. It's flown by. For this weeks email I've decided to have a retrospective of some of my early mails and impressions back in April 2005.

The pic of the week shows the 'card window' in the apartment. There is an unsightly washing balcony behind it, so we started putting up cards that people sent. So every card I've received here is on the window. Birthdays, Valentines, Christmas, St. Patrick's Day, you name it!

Incidentally, I know there were problems last week with the Irish Life profanity filter. Many apologies for my appalling language when describing the bodies of the masks in Barva!

You can see the entry here (if you're not going to be too offended). If this every happens again, the entry is always available on blogger.


April 9, 2005 A few days after we arrived.

The journey
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Hi, well we’re finally here. I’m writing from our hotel room in San José. We were exhausted after our flights. We had a 6 hour 40 minute flight to New York, followed by a one hour 40 minute flight to Atlanta, and then a final 3 and a half hour flight to San José. All with breaks in between. All in all we were travelling for around 24 hours.

April 9, 2005

San José
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After all the planning, packing, stress and travelling we’re finally here in San José, and I have to say that, to be honest, it’s a bit of a disappointment. I had read beforehand that it’s a pretty uninspiring city. On first impressions that’s a bit of an understatement. As Jack put it, it’s a hole! It looks very old fashioned. Everything seems to have been built in the sixties. There is a lot of poverty. Loads of homeless living in cardboard boxes, literally. It’s quite dirty and polluted. There’s some quite obvious prostitution. All in all, it looks to qualify for ‘hole’ status. We did venture out to some of the suburbs, which are a definite improvement on downtown. Still, given that it’s where we’re likely to be living because of the language schools (and there are lots of them), it seems a shame given that the rest of the country is so beautiful.

April 17, 2005 - Our first visit to Manuel Antonio

Getting there
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As ever, the journey to Manuel Antonio was not without event! Our taxi to the airport should have taken 20 minutes, but took 45 as a truck had crashed into a bus on the motorway. We got there with minutes to spare. The domestic terminal is a tiny hot overcrowded building right next to the tarmac. When we went onto the tarmac to board, we were confronted with a tiny 6-seater Cessna! It was so small that Jack had to travel in the co-pilot’s seat, with the steering thing moving around in front of him. It was so small that the plane was buffeted about with every little gust of wind. I was so nervous. But the views were incredible. Especially when we came out of the cloud and saw the pacific coast for the first time.

April 24, 2005 - We took the first apartment we saw (and I'm still there!)

Our apartment
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We’re so tired of hotel living that we decided to look for an apartment in Heredia even though we haven’t work yet. Even if it’s just for the first few months. We spent a thoroughly disheartening day wandering around and looking in papers and on supermarket noticeboards. On the way home I bought the English language Tico Times, and found an ad for a furnished apartment in Heredia, with phone (like gold-dust here, a long story for another time), internet connection, washing machine, TV and cable. We went there today and it’s fine. It beats the hotel hands down and it will do for now. So we’re really delighted and moving in on Sunday 1 May.

May 1, 2005 - I got a job! In a school that I've built my tico life around. I love it, and I love the people I've worked with over the two years. I wish I was back on those early hours though!

Eamon, el Profesor
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Thanks for all your good wishes for my interview. I've been taken on in the Intercultura school in Heredia. Turns out it's just three minutes walk from our new apartment. Only a few hours at first. Six hours training last week, and 4.5 hours teaching this week. I could get used to this! There's a teacher leaving at the end of the month, so I'll pick up extra hours as I go along. When I get to 15 hours per week I get free Spanish lessons. I also have an email message from another school, so I may pick up some more hours there.

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That's it for this week. Happy Easter everyone. Normal service will be resumed next week.

Chao,

Éamon