Browsing tag:
alajuela
So, at about…. 8:42 or so, there was an earthquake here in Costa Rica. We’re currently located just outside of Alajuela, a city located just outside of Costa Rica's capital, San Jose. The earthquake's magnitude was originally a 7.9, but now the Internet is saying it’s a 7.6. It was somewhere around there. So far we’ve heard some helicopters flying overhead and some ambulances going by, but it’s hard to tell ...
Last night we went to our second private Latin dance class and our first group Latin dance class in Alajuela. Randall, our private instructor does a great job, in my opinion. He speaks English quite well, which makes the classes less painful for us and he’s very patient. Though he teaches at the Merecumbre studio, he also teaches privately at people’s homes and is willing to travel.Below is the contact ...
I am uncomfortable. The chairs are hard and the rice is…well, bland. I miss soy milk, the Prius, and wind. I am in at least 50% denial about these things most of the time. My emotions are like a heavy fog that lifts only momentarily before descending again to cloud everything up and give every item in my world a cold, wet, slippery feeling. Yes, I put myself in this situation. It’s like I sent myself to ...
Last night was our first dance class in Costa Rica together as a family. It was a private dance class consisting of basic Merengue and Salsa dance steps, and surprisingly, I enjoyed it, though I didn’t think that I would. I was exhausted and sweating afterwards, much like my parents, and did suppose that when we went home now that I would finally be able to enjoy the “comfort” of my chair. Instead, we went ...
Last night we took our very first Latin dance classes ever at Merecumbre in Alajuela. It was a private lesson and we have another one tonight followed by an hour-long group lesson. I was nervous last night, but I expected to be less nervous for our classes tonight having done a class already. But I’m not less nervous. Because tonight, we’ll be dancing with a whole group of other people who understand Salsa ...
We are not strict vegans. In fact, you couldn’t even say that we’re strict vegetarians. Our diet is based on what works for our health and basically it’s vegan + chicken. For many years, we were vegetarians who snarfed down large portions of cheese, yogurt, and other dairy products at every meal. Then, we learned the truth about milk and dairy products (that they’ll kill you—see the documentary Forks over ...
On our second big overseas trip to China, on a trip from the airport to our hotel, John and the driver of our car named “Renny” had a conversation about the purpose of our trip. Renny spoke excellent English, but there were certain things he clearly didn’t understand and John was trying to simplify things down for Renny so that he could understand. On that trip, we were still clarifying our travel goals. ...
In Costa Rica, information about safety is rather scanty and seems to consist primarily of lighthearted warnings in travel guidebooks. It would be impossible to write a guidebook for a location like Costa Rica that consisted entirely of warnings because no one would buy it or be interested in going to the place unless they were a humanitarian worker or a journalist. So the warnings are lighthearted and ...
I missed a few days of writing because we’ve been either busy or really exhausted from being busy. Finding our way in and out of Alajuela for our classes takes quite a bit of energy right now. We’re still working with how to make our way home from the classes safely. If we take the bus from downtown Alajuela (which cost the three of us about $1.60 USD), we have to walk about 30 minutes up the street with ...
So I was curious about our Costa Rican ants and I decided to do some research. Talk of them occupies a fairly significant portion of our day because these little creatures are constantly forging new paths into our home. They are very dedicated to their cause (to gain access to our food) and there are many different kinds of them. After John killed several trails of them making their way across our floors, ...
In Costa Rica, yoga is a big deal. Apparently, because Costa Rica is a mecca for surfing, yoga has taken hold. The connection between these two sports only makes sense after seeing a few photos of people doing yoga on surf boards on the sand. Apparently, surfers do yoga to get better at surfing, which is what has brought the practice to Costa Rica, even in the Central Valley, which is where we’ll be ...
Today we decided to pursue calling the Mind Body Zone again. We called two times, and left messages both times. Finally, close to the end of the day, the place called us back. They were going to be open tonight and nine o’clock Saturday morning, when their next class was going to be. When we decided that if Francisco (Our driver person that picked us up from the airport when we first got here) could drive ...
Today was an overall normal day. I did my homework, and my parents worked. At the end of the day, my mom found a place in Alajuela that apparently had belly dance classes, breakdance classes, Latin dance classes, Spanish classes, and a bunch of other stuff too. I was pretty excited to see this place, I mean, it was the first place we had found that had classes of any kind.So off we went to find this ...
So I looked online and found a place that offers classes in all kinds of things. It’s called the “Mind-Body Zone” and it’s located in the center of Alajuela. We decided around 4:00 PM to go into the city and try to find it.Lydian was in a bad mood. John had a headache. And it was raining. We started walking down the hill. About 100 yards into our walk, a man backed out of his driveway with an ancient ...
John made a “smoothie” tonight out of the oranges that we have growing in our backyard. These oranges are actually green and we had to look them up online to make sure they were indeed “oranges”. He squeezed the juice carefully and then he was going to use some bananas that I bought yesterday to add some substance to the much coveted “smoothie” tonight. Unfortunately, however, the “bananas” were plantains, ...
Today was a day filled with walking, if I do say so myself. We did achieve our goals, in the end, but I’ll get to that.
As we exited the house and checked our bags to make sure that we had everything we needed, and suddenly noticed a “leaf” on the wall. No, it’s a bug! It wasn’t moving, but it seemed to like the lighter shade of yellow on the wall in opposition to the darker shade further to the ...
In my mind, when we came here, I thought it would be a lot like Mexico…only better. But, Costa Rica is not Mexico. It is like Mexico in some ways: people speak Spanish here and they hang out around the house sleeping in hammocks during the hot part of the day. But this place is very different from the Yucatan where we spent 6 weeks last year. I’m still trying to put my finger on it.Today we made our way ...
I woke up about thirty minutes ago to loud music. I had just so happened to be having a rather nightmarish dream at the time, so when the eerie music seeped into my dream as I woke up, I automatically started to have thoughts about haunted houses, as eerie things seem to do to me. In the beginning, I thought maybe there was an awesome young female singer living right next door (maybe she played an ...