And so it begins

We've gotten our last little bit of grupo-planned fun in, and we start classes at the "U" tomorrow. I am SO glad that someone else from the grupo is in my first class. At least I won't be the only clueless gringo who can't sit still for a 3-hour class. I also feel better that I have someone to walk home with, since it's dark at 7:50 (pm) when class lets out. This is like being in kindergarten all over again, only with a little bit of your first day of junior high, high school, and college all thrown in together. Unfortunately, you're also some kind of "special needs" kid because you can't communicate properly, but you don't get a helper. No, you're just thrown in there all by your lonesome, trying to figure stuff out in a language that you only half-speak. Someone remind me why this was a good idea again? To quote the girl I have class with tomorrow: "It's like being in kindergarten again, except your mommy isn't there to hold your hand."

Here's what I know so far about the whole "university" thing in Costa Rica. First off, the class schedule thing is way different from the classes I'm used to. I'm used to having classes two or three times a week and having each class session last no more than 1 hour and 15 minutes. Here, all of my classes are about 3 hours long and only happen once a week -- with the exception of "Basic Cartography," which meets for almost three hours on both Wednesday and Thursday (why don't I get 6 credit hours for that one?!) As a bonus, though, I don't have class on Fridays. (Sweet! 3-day weekends!) Second, they don't have the same kinds of copyright laws that we have. As such, most of our "books" are copies of books. The professor gives a file of the readings to a certain print shop, and then we just get photocopies. Of course, you have to be able to understand the professor when they tell you which shop has the file, and then you have to be able to FIND that shop to get the copies. As much as I love saving money on books and not feeling guilty about highlighting, I can't say I'm entirely thrilled about the little book-finding adventure. Third ... well, I can't say much about the professors yet. From the professors we had during orientation, I would guess that they're eerily similar to professors stateside. Some are good, some are bad, many are acceptable. Some like to listen to themselves talk, some really care about the students. Some are boring, some are funny. It will be interesting to see if this prediction holds up.

To sum up Punta Leona... let's see here.... it was fun. It was very pretty, although I'd been expecting something breathtakingly beautiful given the way everyone was talking about it, and it wasn't quite THAT nice. Perhaps it would have been nicer if it hadn't rained as much, but I bet it costs a lot more in the dry season. Well, and on Friday, it hardly rained at all, so I feel like we still got a pretty good idea of what it's like when it's dry. As far as pampered tourist locales, this was kind of a mix. It was good in that there wasn't as much English-speaking going on everywhere. All of the important signs were written in Spanish, English, and German, but the front desk people, the guy who did the bird-watching tour, and all the other people who worked there all spoke to us in Spanish. That was nice. (I think they do speak other languages too, but at least they used Spanish with us.) Considering it's a fancy resort for rich pampered tourists, I thought the layout was kind of lacking. There was one somewhat inconveniently-located place to get beach towels, and you had to take a shuttle (or walk 30 minutes) to get to one of the two beaches. On that second beach, you could supposedly rent kayaks and snorkeling equipment, but I never saw anyone who looked like they might be in charge of such things. You also had like a 5-minute walk from where we stayed to the front desk ... since when do rich pampered tourists WALK anywhere?! Finally, although it was a nice place to stay, it was very very very segregated from anything truly "Costa Rican." There was literally a guarded gate and 5 miles of road between the private resort and the main road. We all got wristbands, so they knew who was supposed to be there and who wasn't. This didn't feel as fake and planned as the Isla Tortuga trip, but it was still very segregated. Peaceful, but segregated.

We're all full of grandiose plans to go see all kinds of fun things during the weekends. I think almost all of us planned our schedules so we wouldn't have classes on Fridays, and some people don't have class on Thursday and Friday. We want to go to Panama and Nicaragua (I wanna see the Panama canal!) We want to go to Limón on the Caribbean coast, and to Tortugero later in the fall when there are actually turtles to see. We want to go horseback riding (preferably on a beach) and zip-lining in the rain forest. I want to visit some more volcanoes, and other people want to hike in the national parks. There's also white water rafting and enough beaches to last us for ages. Naturally, I'll be renting scooters (lame, yes, but better than nothing, also yes) every chance I get, although so far those chances have been few and far between. Now if I could just get the rest of the grupo on scooters too, it'd be almost like moped rides back home...*wistful sigh*