Ok, so highlights from last week. Well, on Wednesday we had a salsa class on campus from a dance teacher from San Jose. He was really good! Salsa is a lot of fun, and the guys here are actually pretty good at dancing so it was very fun. We learned the basic steps and also a turn, which I would mess up the footwork on because my feet are used to doing swing dancing. Oh well, I have a couple more months to practice J

Last week we also had another soccer game with the community, and I am seeing a bit of an increase in my soccer skills. Lol someone actually asked me if I played in high school and was surprised that I didn’t, so I was very flattered. I played goalie most of the time I was up, and I think I just got lucky mostly and had really good defense to back me up. We have another game tomorrow and I am excited! Hopefully the same people from the community will be there to play, so I will get to know them more.

Its hard to get good picture of a soccer game, but here is one (our team has blue jerseys but sometimes community members join in. we need all the help we can get :) )

Hmm…oh! We went to the Tárcoles River and Carara National Park, which is a bit south of us and on the Pacific Side. Basically all the trash that doesn’t make it into a dump comes to this River because of the way the watershed works. So it is super polluted, and the history of it is sad because an organization was almost able to save it but then through a change in government and this new government absorbing the organization, it fell through. It makes me want to do something; this is definitely an area I am very interested in (water clean-up and pollution management that is). I talked to my professor about it after and he told me a bit of the waste management problems that go on in the country. There just needs to be a lot of work on infrastructure. I wish there was directed research for this topic, but I don’t think there is, the professors have already picked the options. Oh well. Maybe I can figure out a way to help someday, because it is seriously sad how polluted this area is.

Beach on the Tarcoles River. Its really sad to see this

Another highlight was Poas Volcano, which is this giant smoldering crater with an acidic lake in the middle. It is still active, and just this year or last spewed a bunch of rock and steam hundreds of meters into the air. It was foggy when we first got there, but the fog lifted and we were able to see it thankfully! We had to give out surveys while we were there, which put a bit of a damper on things, but I think I did better than last time. Maybe my people skills are improving lol.

Poas Volcano. My jaw dropped when I saw it, its so cool!

So then, that night, we went to the most epic soccer game of my life!! It was Liga (the team in our area) vs. Saprissa (the team of San Jose). It was a mess getting into the stadium, there were so many people packed around that I had a panic attack. Especially when we had to squeeze through a line of guys who were cat calling us girls in Spanish. That was uncomfortable. However, we got in and I took some breaths and got a hug from a friend and I was alright. We had some great seats next to the goalie box of the opposing team. Above that goalie box were some really crazy Liga fans; they jumped for literally the entire game and would throw paper rolls and set off sparklers and smoke bombs in their section. Kiddy-corner to us was Saprissa’s section of jumping cheering fans. This was a home game, so there were more of us Liga fans, so there was red and black colors everywhere. Some of us bought jerseys, and so fit right in with the others in the crowd. Well, besides the fact that we kinda stand out as Americans at times J

As for the game…Liga won!!! It was 3-0, so they really beat Saprissa. It was so exciting, Liga fans would go wild after every goal, waving shirts or jumping and such. The energy was awesome, I really got into the game. I must have looked it too, because a camera crew approached me for an interview…in Spanish! I was so flustered and nervous, but I was able to answer their questions, abeit in not my most profound Spanish. They just asked me my impressions of the stadium, where I was from, etc. Lol so hopefully I didn’t sound like an idiot on Costa Rican TV. I was so glad I went to the game though, it is definitely on my list of favorite things here so far. Sadly we couldn’t bring in cameras, so I don’t have any pictures to show you.