Well, when you're lying around in bed all day, you have a lot of spare time to think.
So, news... I do not have to take my World Geography test next Wednesday. BUT that's not because I'm sick. It's because I was doing well in the class, and I guess he excused everyone who was doing well. This makes me very happy, because now my Environmental Management test will be last, unless I end up taking tests (say, for Cartography or CR geography) next week on Tuesday or Wednesday (which are distinct possibilities).
I've gotten real (well, real by hospital food standards) food for two whole meals now! Wohoo! For breakfast, I got ... I think it was an egg... papaya juice, bread, and fruit. The egg was not very tasty, the papaya juice tasted like feet (I think papaya always tastes like feet), but the bread was good. Then for lunch, I got like this chicken pastry thing, which, despite having vegetables hidden inside of it, was rather tasty. I also got piña juice, which is loads better than the papaya juice.
They took blood again this morning (new needle total: 8, new right elbow total: 4), and once that's done being analyzed or whatever it is that they do to blood, they'll get back to me with the results. One of the doctors just came in, and I don't know what he said. Or well, I kind of know what he said, but I don't know what it means in terms of "when do I get outta here?" (Funny how that trait carries over between languages). I guess I'm just stuck here until they tell me something more definitive one way or another.
So in the meantime, I've been spending a lot of time on my computer (which is nothing new), watching a bit of TV here and there (which is new, since I never really watch TV anymore), and just chillin. I feel like I ought to go study for the two tests I know I have left, but I just haven't gotten around to it yet. Ah well, maybe later. The test I was most worried about (besides the Periferica thing) was World Geography, mostly because I still had a lot of reading to do. But now since I don't have to take that one, I feel a little better. Cartography still needs much studying, though, and I've got some reading wikipedia-ing to do for Environmental Management.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
What have you taken for granted today?
I'm going to be honest and say I've been compiling the thoughts in this post for a long time. However, recent events have conspired, and this now goes much deeper than it once did. So I apologize in advance, because this could very well be my longest entry yet... and this is coming from someone who doesn't write short blog entries.
PART 1:
So it's just about Thanksgiving time, and I have some reflections and thoughts to share with you.
I'll start with things I'm thankful for:
1) I'm thankful for all my amazing grupo buddies. They've been my best friends for the last 139 days, and this experience would have been so much harder and so much less fun without them.
2) I'm thankful for gallo pinto on Sunday mornings and for all my host mom's amazing desserts.
3) I'm thankful that classes are almost over (and that traveling time is almost here, and that coming home time is almost here).
4) I am thankful for everything I had at home that I don't have here -- be they tangible or intangible. (More on this later).
5) I am thankful for Coke made with sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup (especially when it comes in glass bottles!), Monster Pizza, the casado place, World Cafe, Cyro's, Buffalo's, ice cream from McDonald's (although why it would kill them to give me a McFlurry with chocolate ice cream I still haven't figured out), Pague Menos, Hipermas, and the corner store.
6) I am thankful for my family and their support, because there are a lot of people who aren't as fortunate as I am in the support department.
Now I've got some questions for you.... Namely, what have you taken for granted today? Here's a list of things that I don't think I will ever take for granted again.
1) My bed, with my mattress, my sheets, and my pillow, in my room, with my furniture, my closets, "my" bathroom (even when I have to share it with sister and brother dearest) and decorated/cleaned as I please.
2) My house, with my kitchen, my fridge, my pantry, my dishes, my pots and pans, my kitchen table, and all for me to use as I please.
3) My car/moped, so that I can go anywhere I want, when I want, at my convenience, without waiting for 20 minutes (in the rain/snow) for a bus.
4) As an extension of the car/kitchen: grocery stores -- the ability to go to a grocery store and buy whatever food I feel like cooking, then go home and cook it, whenever I want. Also, choosing what food goes on my plate, how much, and when.
5) 95% of the foreigners I come across in the U.S. speak really good English. Do you have any idea how amazing that is? Don't take it for granted that foreigners in the U.S. should speak good English, because a) living in a foreign country is NOT EASY, and b) there are people (raises hand) in foreign countries who don't speak the native language as well as a lot of the foreigners in the U.S.
6) Sleeping in past 8 (and not feeling guilty about it).
7) Silence.
8) Cheese pizza, grilled food, and my recipes.
9) Paying for something with a $20 bill (and not feeling guilty about it).
10) Time spent with my family and friends.
11) Fall, and the seasons in general.
12) Being able to express myself fully, and not just taking a backseat on everything because I don't know how to say what I want.
So perhaps you got up this morning. You slept in your own bed last night. You decided you wanted cereal for breakfast, but then you changed your mind and decide to go to McDonald's for food. You pay with a $20 bill, and you don't get asked, "Do you have anything smaller?" Instead of waiting on public transportation to arrive (and possibly being jammed on the bus like a sardine in a tin), you get in your own car and drive to wherever you're going. At lunch time, you are faced with the same wonderful series of choices: What do I want to eat? When? Where? If you decide on pizza, you have the option to get just plain ol' cheese. Even if it's bitterly cold out and you hate winter, at least you got to experience the beauty of fall, and at least you will appreciate spring that much more when it gets here. And finally, if someone cuts you off on the road, or your boss makes you mad, or anything like that, you can let loose and tell them exactly what you want. I currently have none of these things, and I will never take them for granted again.
(In case it wasn't clear enough, I've decided that the thing I miss the most in this experience is my independence.)
PART 2
So, here's a new addition to that list. Never take for granted your good health. Any day you don't feel horrible, be glad. I should already have learned this 5 times over by now, but apparently not.
Here's the story, more or less.
On Monday during my last (wohoo! -- except for the final) Evironmental Management class, my stomach was really hurting. That's not something particularly new for me, so I just ignored it. But then I went home after class, and it got worse. I couldn't sleep because of it, and that WAS new for me. But on Tudesday morning, I didn't want to miss my the Cartography lab because I figured I'd have to make it up sometime -- time which I don't really have or feel like making. So, feeling horrible and not having slept, I dragged my sorry self out of bed, into clothes, and caught a taxi to class. I sat through all two hours of class and got the last lab assignment done. I SOOO wanted to go home and sleep (sleep has cured me every other time I've felt bad down here), but I needed to meet with my group for my Periferica bus project. As always, it is possible that I misunderstood their directions, but I am almost certain that they said, "We're going to meet at 9am in the classroom" -- you know, to meet and work at the time of the class in the same place as class because class was cancelled and that was easier. I said I had class until 10, and they said I should just come when I got done. Well, we got done early in my first class. I was outside that room at 9. I was still outside that room at 10. All I wanted was for one of them to show up so that I could hand them a piece of paper with my e-mail on it and go home. But of course, I did not see any of them.
Right around 10, a girl who is in my class came to wait -- I guess she just wanted to make sure that class was actually cancelled. I told her it was, but that I was waiting for my group. She went upstairs to ask at the geography office, and came back down a few minutes later to tell me she'd talked with the professor and we indeed did not have class. I was like, "Okay, but I'm waiting for my group." Well, not five minutes later, my professor comes down to ask me what's up. I told her I was waiting for my group. Then I asked if she had their e-mails (then I could leave and e-mail them when I got home and felt better). She did, up in her office. So I slowly shuffled my way up to her office. I was waiting out in the hallway leaned up against the wall, and some of the other women in the geography department came out and were like, "Are you sick? What do you have? You don't look good." I told them that I was just really tired and my stomach hurt. They took me back to the little eating area in the geography department and gave me hot sugar water (if you think that sounds like a weird remedy, I should tell you about some of the stuff that other people's families have given them when they're sick). At that point, my geography teacher comes back, and my cartography teacher is also there. Now I've got 4 people standing over me, trying to feed me hot sugar-water and figure out what's wrong with me. My geography teacher lives in Zapote, which is right next to Curridabat, so she said she'd take me home. I get in her car (my cartography teacher comes too), but we stop by the on-campus medical facility first to see if they can make room for me. Apparently they can, so I go in there.
I get asked the usual round of doctor questions and do the usual doctor exam stuff. The doctor doesn't know what's wrong with me, but they decide to give me some pain medicine. So I go to the back, and they take a blood sample. (First needle doesn't hit, so they move on to the second elbow). Then the pain medicine is an IV, so that's two more needles -- one for each hand (apparently my veins were "hiding"). Then I kind of go to sleep back there for a while. Get this, though: my cartography teacher stayed with me this whole time. That is SO above and beyond the call of duty, and she is SOO nice. After maybe 2 or 3 hours, I feel a little better but not much, and the doctor at the clinic doesn't know what else to do. So he recommends that I go to the hospital. We call the program directors, and they come to the clinic. Then my cartography teacher leaves.
(Oh, it gets better)
So then, they decide to use an ambulance to take me to the hospital, just because they wanted to have somewhere to hang the IV bag. I usually would have argued against that, so it's not a good sign that I didn't even have the energy to tell them no. Once I get to the hospital, I am subjected to two more needles (they have to re-do the IV in the other hand because the one I already had "wasn't big enough", and one for more blood testing), ultrasound, X-rays, and some sort of MRI scan or something. They determined that my intestines are inflamed and infected, but THANKFULLY not ruptured. So now I'm being pumped full of antibioitics, pain killers, and anti-inflammatories. I also get periodic does of oral antibioitics. The last dose the brought me was accompanied by a straw, just in case I wanted to savor its flavor I guess. (I don't.) I'm going to pretend that this is good practice for taking shots. I'm also on a liquid diet. Last night I got some nasty chicken broth an apple juice. Today I've had tea, and another helping of nasty chicken broth and apple juice. I'm going to pretend that this is good because when I go to Panama, at least I'm going to look skinnier in my bathing suit. I've also gotten needle #7, since they had to take blood again this morning. So that brings the total to: Left elbow 1, right elbow 3 right hand 1, left hand 2. Usually needles don't bother me, but 7? 7 bothers me.
I don't know when I get out of here. I would LOVE to be out in time to go the Thanksgiving dinner we're having, but I'm not hopeful. So, whatever you're thankful for this Thanksgiving, be thankful that you're not in a hospital enjoying a liquid diet of bad chicken broth and apple juice, periodically interspersed with doses of very nasty liquid antibiotics.
I know this isn't going to get me out of my cartography test (I'll just take it later) but I'm holding out hope for either an easier assignment than the Periferica one, or just getting out of it all together. Although I do kind of need something to help my grade in that class. Well, we'll see.
PART 1:
So it's just about Thanksgiving time, and I have some reflections and thoughts to share with you.
I'll start with things I'm thankful for:
1) I'm thankful for all my amazing grupo buddies. They've been my best friends for the last 139 days, and this experience would have been so much harder and so much less fun without them.
2) I'm thankful for gallo pinto on Sunday mornings and for all my host mom's amazing desserts.
3) I'm thankful that classes are almost over (and that traveling time is almost here, and that coming home time is almost here).
4) I am thankful for everything I had at home that I don't have here -- be they tangible or intangible. (More on this later).
5) I am thankful for Coke made with sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup (especially when it comes in glass bottles!), Monster Pizza, the casado place, World Cafe, Cyro's, Buffalo's, ice cream from McDonald's (although why it would kill them to give me a McFlurry with chocolate ice cream I still haven't figured out), Pague Menos, Hipermas, and the corner store.
6) I am thankful for my family and their support, because there are a lot of people who aren't as fortunate as I am in the support department.
Now I've got some questions for you.... Namely, what have you taken for granted today? Here's a list of things that I don't think I will ever take for granted again.
1) My bed, with my mattress, my sheets, and my pillow, in my room, with my furniture, my closets, "my" bathroom (even when I have to share it with sister and brother dearest) and decorated/cleaned as I please.
2) My house, with my kitchen, my fridge, my pantry, my dishes, my pots and pans, my kitchen table, and all for me to use as I please.
3) My car/moped, so that I can go anywhere I want, when I want, at my convenience, without waiting for 20 minutes (in the rain/snow) for a bus.
4) As an extension of the car/kitchen: grocery stores -- the ability to go to a grocery store and buy whatever food I feel like cooking, then go home and cook it, whenever I want. Also, choosing what food goes on my plate, how much, and when.
5) 95% of the foreigners I come across in the U.S. speak really good English. Do you have any idea how amazing that is? Don't take it for granted that foreigners in the U.S. should speak good English, because a) living in a foreign country is NOT EASY, and b) there are people (raises hand) in foreign countries who don't speak the native language as well as a lot of the foreigners in the U.S.
6) Sleeping in past 8 (and not feeling guilty about it).
7) Silence.
8) Cheese pizza, grilled food, and my recipes.
9) Paying for something with a $20 bill (and not feeling guilty about it).
10) Time spent with my family and friends.
11) Fall, and the seasons in general.
12) Being able to express myself fully, and not just taking a backseat on everything because I don't know how to say what I want.
So perhaps you got up this morning. You slept in your own bed last night. You decided you wanted cereal for breakfast, but then you changed your mind and decide to go to McDonald's for food. You pay with a $20 bill, and you don't get asked, "Do you have anything smaller?" Instead of waiting on public transportation to arrive (and possibly being jammed on the bus like a sardine in a tin), you get in your own car and drive to wherever you're going. At lunch time, you are faced with the same wonderful series of choices: What do I want to eat? When? Where? If you decide on pizza, you have the option to get just plain ol' cheese. Even if it's bitterly cold out and you hate winter, at least you got to experience the beauty of fall, and at least you will appreciate spring that much more when it gets here. And finally, if someone cuts you off on the road, or your boss makes you mad, or anything like that, you can let loose and tell them exactly what you want. I currently have none of these things, and I will never take them for granted again.
(In case it wasn't clear enough, I've decided that the thing I miss the most in this experience is my independence.)
PART 2
So, here's a new addition to that list. Never take for granted your good health. Any day you don't feel horrible, be glad. I should already have learned this 5 times over by now, but apparently not.
Here's the story, more or less.
On Monday during my last (wohoo! -- except for the final) Evironmental Management class, my stomach was really hurting. That's not something particularly new for me, so I just ignored it. But then I went home after class, and it got worse. I couldn't sleep because of it, and that WAS new for me. But on Tudesday morning, I didn't want to miss my the Cartography lab because I figured I'd have to make it up sometime -- time which I don't really have or feel like making. So, feeling horrible and not having slept, I dragged my sorry self out of bed, into clothes, and caught a taxi to class. I sat through all two hours of class and got the last lab assignment done. I SOOO wanted to go home and sleep (sleep has cured me every other time I've felt bad down here), but I needed to meet with my group for my Periferica bus project. As always, it is possible that I misunderstood their directions, but I am almost certain that they said, "We're going to meet at 9am in the classroom" -- you know, to meet and work at the time of the class in the same place as class because class was cancelled and that was easier. I said I had class until 10, and they said I should just come when I got done. Well, we got done early in my first class. I was outside that room at 9. I was still outside that room at 10. All I wanted was for one of them to show up so that I could hand them a piece of paper with my e-mail on it and go home. But of course, I did not see any of them.
Right around 10, a girl who is in my class came to wait -- I guess she just wanted to make sure that class was actually cancelled. I told her it was, but that I was waiting for my group. She went upstairs to ask at the geography office, and came back down a few minutes later to tell me she'd talked with the professor and we indeed did not have class. I was like, "Okay, but I'm waiting for my group." Well, not five minutes later, my professor comes down to ask me what's up. I told her I was waiting for my group. Then I asked if she had their e-mails (then I could leave and e-mail them when I got home and felt better). She did, up in her office. So I slowly shuffled my way up to her office. I was waiting out in the hallway leaned up against the wall, and some of the other women in the geography department came out and were like, "Are you sick? What do you have? You don't look good." I told them that I was just really tired and my stomach hurt. They took me back to the little eating area in the geography department and gave me hot sugar water (if you think that sounds like a weird remedy, I should tell you about some of the stuff that other people's families have given them when they're sick). At that point, my geography teacher comes back, and my cartography teacher is also there. Now I've got 4 people standing over me, trying to feed me hot sugar-water and figure out what's wrong with me. My geography teacher lives in Zapote, which is right next to Curridabat, so she said she'd take me home. I get in her car (my cartography teacher comes too), but we stop by the on-campus medical facility first to see if they can make room for me. Apparently they can, so I go in there.
I get asked the usual round of doctor questions and do the usual doctor exam stuff. The doctor doesn't know what's wrong with me, but they decide to give me some pain medicine. So I go to the back, and they take a blood sample. (First needle doesn't hit, so they move on to the second elbow). Then the pain medicine is an IV, so that's two more needles -- one for each hand (apparently my veins were "hiding"). Then I kind of go to sleep back there for a while. Get this, though: my cartography teacher stayed with me this whole time. That is SO above and beyond the call of duty, and she is SOO nice. After maybe 2 or 3 hours, I feel a little better but not much, and the doctor at the clinic doesn't know what else to do. So he recommends that I go to the hospital. We call the program directors, and they come to the clinic. Then my cartography teacher leaves.
(Oh, it gets better)
So then, they decide to use an ambulance to take me to the hospital, just because they wanted to have somewhere to hang the IV bag. I usually would have argued against that, so it's not a good sign that I didn't even have the energy to tell them no. Once I get to the hospital, I am subjected to two more needles (they have to re-do the IV in the other hand because the one I already had "wasn't big enough", and one for more blood testing), ultrasound, X-rays, and some sort of MRI scan or something. They determined that my intestines are inflamed and infected, but THANKFULLY not ruptured. So now I'm being pumped full of antibioitics, pain killers, and anti-inflammatories. I also get periodic does of oral antibioitics. The last dose the brought me was accompanied by a straw, just in case I wanted to savor its flavor I guess. (I don't.) I'm going to pretend that this is good practice for taking shots. I'm also on a liquid diet. Last night I got some nasty chicken broth an apple juice. Today I've had tea, and another helping of nasty chicken broth and apple juice. I'm going to pretend that this is good because when I go to Panama, at least I'm going to look skinnier in my bathing suit. I've also gotten needle #7, since they had to take blood again this morning. So that brings the total to: Left elbow 1, right elbow 3 right hand 1, left hand 2. Usually needles don't bother me, but 7? 7 bothers me.
I don't know when I get out of here. I would LOVE to be out in time to go the Thanksgiving dinner we're having, but I'm not hopeful. So, whatever you're thankful for this Thanksgiving, be thankful that you're not in a hospital enjoying a liquid diet of bad chicken broth and apple juice, periodically interspersed with doses of very nasty liquid antibiotics.
I know this isn't going to get me out of my cartography test (I'll just take it later) but I'm holding out hope for either an easier assignment than the Periferica one, or just getting out of it all together. Although I do kind of need something to help my grade in that class. Well, we'll see.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Does it better
There are some things that we Gringos do better. There are some things that the Ticos do better. Here's a break-down.
Ticos do it better:
1) All fruit (Except apples and grapes)
2) Rice and beans (That's really not a fair contest)
3) Conserving energy and gasoline
4) Coke and all other products that are sweetened with high fructose corn syrup in the U.S.
5) Tortilla chips. There's this kind that comes in a purple bag, and those plus some guacamole... SO delicious. Tostitos just can't compete.
6) Not having an overpopulation of gigantic ugly motorcycles
7) Use of public transportation
8) Textbooks and copyright policy (we just get copies of readings for like, $1, instead of buying textbooks for $100)
9) Fried chicken
10) Cheap food
11) Peace
12) Corner stores and quick-shops
13) Family closeness and get-togethers
14) Dressing in nice clothing for classes
15) Earrings
Gringos do it better:
1) Apples and grapes
2) Peanut butter
3) Roads/sidewalks
4) Driving (we actually stop for stop lights and yield to pedestrians ..... these things are in short supply down here)
5) Grilled food (That's not really a fair contest either)
6) Candy (I might be biased)
7) Efficiency in shopping (and efficiency in general)
8) Abundance of restaurants and places to eat out
9) War
10) Organization and naming of streets, and keeping the roads in good condition (you think your roads are bad? Trust me, it could be much, much worse).
11) Hot water
12) Laundry (their laundry system is okay, but let's face it, dryers are sooo much faster than hang drying)
13) Dressing in clothing that fits (aka not glued to body) for classes
14) Hats
15) Being on time
There are probably some other things I'm forgetting right now, but I'm going to blame that on my need to rant. You see, there is one thing that I have discovered that Ticos -- or at least the Ticos in my world geography class, and especially the Ticos in my world geography class with whom I am working -- are bad at: Power point presentations.
Today we began our presentations in world geography. The first group went, and their powerpoint was lackluster. Some of the slides were good, but like 75% of them were graphs which took up maybe 25% of the area of the slide. They picked ugly colors (I am a horrible person for saying that after I complained about my cartography teacher being so picky) and didn't center or label them properly. They also used line graphs for things that should have been bar graphs and pie charts for things that DEFINITELY did not belong in the pie-chart family of graphical representation. Another group went, and their presentation was about water. They used the water background from the old version of power point. This is the dumbest background in the history of forever. First of all, it's overused. Second, it's eerily and unnaturally blue. Third, you can't really use white OR black font on it -- both colors blend into the background a bit in different parts of the image. I bet there are thousands of better pictures they could have used for their background on that presentation besides the ugly one that Microsoft put in the program. One group did a presentation about the Arab-Israeli conflict. The actual slides themselves were okay, but they had about 6 maps on different slides, and the guy had to keep flipping through them to show us stuff. It was like a map flip book, and that was unnecessarily confusing. I don't remember my specific critiques of the other groups, but none of the presentations I saw today was particularly well-designed or good-looking.
All the other groups took so long that my group didn't have to go today (gracias a dios!) This is very good, because the ugliness of everyone else's presentations would have had nothing on the hideousness of my group's disjointed and half-ugly presentation. I say "half ugly" because only half of it would have been ugly. The part I did is quite pretty. I tried to find a happy medium between putting too much information on a slide and not putting enough information on a slide (another thing the Ticos seem to have trouble with). I found out what the other half looked like -- the half the guy in my group did -- when I went to the lab with him after class. He wanted to pull my part off my USB drive (this device will henceforth be referred to as a "llave"), then save it to his llave and combine it. Well, he pulled his up, and it's ugly. Or well, if you were just looking at his background as a picture, it would be fine. However, it's too busy and has too much variation in color to serve well as a background. He also put nowhere near enough information on his slides, and his animations were kind of dumb. Now, perhaps I'm just biased that I think mine looks better. But then again, perhaps the part of my brain that says "this is ugly, fix it" has more than one brain cell to rub together.
THANKFULLY, I had saved my part as a .pptx file (the new power point) instead of a .ppt (old power point) because the graphs I used wouldn't have transferred. The computers in the lab were not able to open my .pptx file. So then the guy in my group did this whole "download a thing to make it work" .... I did not want him opening my power point and ugly-fying it, so I suggested that he save his to my llave and I would combine them. Ahh, yes, how logical! Except there are several dilemmas. First, from what I understood, the girl in our group has not fixed her part of the paper (which was due today), nor did she really do any slides. I asked the guy if he could get her to e-mail me her slides so I could add them to ours, but some part of that was lost in translation and/or not going to happen because she's being a slacker. Second, the guy wants to add more to his slides. Why even bother giving me the half-done stuff then? Why not just e-mail me your part when you finish, and I'll put it together? If I do it now, I'm just going to have to do it twice, which is a waste of time. It made me very sad that I was not able to express this sentiment properly in Spanish. Third, I face a moral dilemma. Whose background do I use? His is ugly, but I wouldn't want people changing my stuff around. I'm tempted to just leave the parts with different backgrounds (although make the text the same and stuff) ... you know, to better "divide the sections" or something.
So now I have to add his 4 really lousy slides to my 11 very pretty ones. Then I have to find a way to save it in the old format but while keeping my graphs. Then I have to e-mail it to him so he can add more to his parts, at which point I would hope he would e-mail it back to me so I could un-uglyfy anything he did to it. This is riduculous. I think I'm just going to e-mail him and say that I combined them and I can send it as a .pptx, but I can't save it as a .ppt file because I get an error message about my graphs (which is true.) Then I'll tell him just to finish his slides and send them to me, then I'll add his to mine and we'll be good.
I feel kind of hypocritical for typing all this since when it comes to actually presenting the information, all of the Ticos are 20x better than I am (even if the language barrier were removed). However, ugly, unreadable power points kind of detract from what they're saying, so I still feel somewhat justified.
In other news, it's now officially "cold" here. Winter (which they seem to call summer, even though we're still in the northern hemisphere) has arrived. In general, this time of year is nicer than the rest of the year, especially later on, like in Jan-March. It's a little bit colder, but there's less rain and more sun. Well, anyway, today I guess there's a cold front hanging over the area, and it was pretty windy. I'd guess the temperature was about 65, although maybe with the wind it felt like 55 or 60. If I had a nickel for every time I heard "Ay, que frio!" today, I would be very rich. Come on, really? It's like, 60 degrees outside. That's NOT COLD. You guys do not know what cold is. You would die if you came to my state, and my state isn't even that cold. A guy in my geography class was literally wearing gloves and a scarf DURING CLASS, surrounded by 4 nice wind-blocking walls. It was probably 70 in that classroom, and he's sitting there in a scarf and gloves. I repeat: come on, really?
Ticos do it better:
1) All fruit (Except apples and grapes)
2) Rice and beans (That's really not a fair contest)
3) Conserving energy and gasoline
4) Coke and all other products that are sweetened with high fructose corn syrup in the U.S.
5) Tortilla chips. There's this kind that comes in a purple bag, and those plus some guacamole... SO delicious. Tostitos just can't compete.
6) Not having an overpopulation of gigantic ugly motorcycles
7) Use of public transportation
8) Textbooks and copyright policy (we just get copies of readings for like, $1, instead of buying textbooks for $100)
9) Fried chicken
10) Cheap food
11) Peace
12) Corner stores and quick-shops
13) Family closeness and get-togethers
14) Dressing in nice clothing for classes
15) Earrings
Gringos do it better:
1) Apples and grapes
2) Peanut butter
3) Roads/sidewalks
4) Driving (we actually stop for stop lights and yield to pedestrians ..... these things are in short supply down here)
5) Grilled food (That's not really a fair contest either)
6) Candy (I might be biased)
7) Efficiency in shopping (and efficiency in general)
8) Abundance of restaurants and places to eat out
9) War
10) Organization and naming of streets, and keeping the roads in good condition (you think your roads are bad? Trust me, it could be much, much worse).
11) Hot water
12) Laundry (their laundry system is okay, but let's face it, dryers are sooo much faster than hang drying)
13) Dressing in clothing that fits (aka not glued to body) for classes
14) Hats
15) Being on time
There are probably some other things I'm forgetting right now, but I'm going to blame that on my need to rant. You see, there is one thing that I have discovered that Ticos -- or at least the Ticos in my world geography class, and especially the Ticos in my world geography class with whom I am working -- are bad at: Power point presentations.
Today we began our presentations in world geography. The first group went, and their powerpoint was lackluster. Some of the slides were good, but like 75% of them were graphs which took up maybe 25% of the area of the slide. They picked ugly colors (I am a horrible person for saying that after I complained about my cartography teacher being so picky) and didn't center or label them properly. They also used line graphs for things that should have been bar graphs and pie charts for things that DEFINITELY did not belong in the pie-chart family of graphical representation. Another group went, and their presentation was about water. They used the water background from the old version of power point. This is the dumbest background in the history of forever. First of all, it's overused. Second, it's eerily and unnaturally blue. Third, you can't really use white OR black font on it -- both colors blend into the background a bit in different parts of the image. I bet there are thousands of better pictures they could have used for their background on that presentation besides the ugly one that Microsoft put in the program. One group did a presentation about the Arab-Israeli conflict. The actual slides themselves were okay, but they had about 6 maps on different slides, and the guy had to keep flipping through them to show us stuff. It was like a map flip book, and that was unnecessarily confusing. I don't remember my specific critiques of the other groups, but none of the presentations I saw today was particularly well-designed or good-looking.
All the other groups took so long that my group didn't have to go today (gracias a dios!) This is very good, because the ugliness of everyone else's presentations would have had nothing on the hideousness of my group's disjointed and half-ugly presentation. I say "half ugly" because only half of it would have been ugly. The part I did is quite pretty. I tried to find a happy medium between putting too much information on a slide and not putting enough information on a slide (another thing the Ticos seem to have trouble with). I found out what the other half looked like -- the half the guy in my group did -- when I went to the lab with him after class. He wanted to pull my part off my USB drive (this device will henceforth be referred to as a "llave"), then save it to his llave and combine it. Well, he pulled his up, and it's ugly. Or well, if you were just looking at his background as a picture, it would be fine. However, it's too busy and has too much variation in color to serve well as a background. He also put nowhere near enough information on his slides, and his animations were kind of dumb. Now, perhaps I'm just biased that I think mine looks better. But then again, perhaps the part of my brain that says "this is ugly, fix it" has more than one brain cell to rub together.
THANKFULLY, I had saved my part as a .pptx file (the new power point) instead of a .ppt (old power point) because the graphs I used wouldn't have transferred. The computers in the lab were not able to open my .pptx file. So then the guy in my group did this whole "download a thing to make it work" .... I did not want him opening my power point and ugly-fying it, so I suggested that he save his to my llave and I would combine them. Ahh, yes, how logical! Except there are several dilemmas. First, from what I understood, the girl in our group has not fixed her part of the paper (which was due today), nor did she really do any slides. I asked the guy if he could get her to e-mail me her slides so I could add them to ours, but some part of that was lost in translation and/or not going to happen because she's being a slacker. Second, the guy wants to add more to his slides. Why even bother giving me the half-done stuff then? Why not just e-mail me your part when you finish, and I'll put it together? If I do it now, I'm just going to have to do it twice, which is a waste of time. It made me very sad that I was not able to express this sentiment properly in Spanish. Third, I face a moral dilemma. Whose background do I use? His is ugly, but I wouldn't want people changing my stuff around. I'm tempted to just leave the parts with different backgrounds (although make the text the same and stuff) ... you know, to better "divide the sections" or something.
So now I have to add his 4 really lousy slides to my 11 very pretty ones. Then I have to find a way to save it in the old format but while keeping my graphs. Then I have to e-mail it to him so he can add more to his parts, at which point I would hope he would e-mail it back to me so I could un-uglyfy anything he did to it. This is riduculous. I think I'm just going to e-mail him and say that I combined them and I can send it as a .pptx, but I can't save it as a .ppt file because I get an error message about my graphs (which is true.) Then I'll tell him just to finish his slides and send them to me, then I'll add his to mine and we'll be good.
I feel kind of hypocritical for typing all this since when it comes to actually presenting the information, all of the Ticos are 20x better than I am (even if the language barrier were removed). However, ugly, unreadable power points kind of detract from what they're saying, so I still feel somewhat justified.
In other news, it's now officially "cold" here. Winter (which they seem to call summer, even though we're still in the northern hemisphere) has arrived. In general, this time of year is nicer than the rest of the year, especially later on, like in Jan-March. It's a little bit colder, but there's less rain and more sun. Well, anyway, today I guess there's a cold front hanging over the area, and it was pretty windy. I'd guess the temperature was about 65, although maybe with the wind it felt like 55 or 60. If I had a nickel for every time I heard "Ay, que frio!" today, I would be very rich. Come on, really? It's like, 60 degrees outside. That's NOT COLD. You guys do not know what cold is. You would die if you came to my state, and my state isn't even that cold. A guy in my geography class was literally wearing gloves and a scarf DURING CLASS, surrounded by 4 nice wind-blocking walls. It was probably 70 in that classroom, and he's sitting there in a scarf and gloves. I repeat: come on, really?
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Karma strikes again!
Am I good or what? Just as I predicted, Karma paid me a visit for round two of "this is why you shouldn't gloat." I got my test from Geography of Costa Rica back today, and I got a whopping 73 on it. Oh yes, another juicy delicious C. I also had to give my presentation today. Thankfully I went first, because I would have not wanted to follow anyone who went after me. I just fail at presentations. It doesn't matter what language I use, I am just bad at giving presentations. Period. You know what, though? I don't really care. It's over. It's done. My paper is turned in. Hopefully I'll get at least a C on the paper, and then I can be well on my way to not failing the class. Yay not failing!! It's strange how I used to care so much about my grades... okay, well, I still care a lot. Just not right this instant, not in this class. It's really hard to care right now for several reasons.
(1) That paper/presentation are done. That feels soooooo good. This good feeling goes a long way towards blocking the bad feelings.
(2) This class does not count for any requirements, either Gen-Ed or major/minor. Basically the only reason to try is so it doesn't mess up my GPA.
(3) There is no point in learning about the Geography of Costa Rica. I leave this country in less than a month. I'm sure I'll be back someday, but I don't need to know this stuff for my career or for any future visits. It's pointless knowledge.
Even though I got a C on this test and I don't think my paper is going to bring my grade up at all, I'm still in a good mood. Why, you ask? Well, I can no officially count all remaining assignments and tests on one hand. (You have no idea how good it feels to type that.) This is due to a combination of an assignment and test into one project, and the fact that my Environmental Management teacher decided that we don't actually have to give presentations. (I'm almost sad about that... I was kind of looking forward to explaining two stroke engines to my class...)
I have remaining:
Tomorrow: 1 presentation about Petroleum. The guy from my group did finally e-mail me last night, but I got the impression that he had forgotten all about the presentation. I bet he's going to have an unhappy moment when he opens my e-mail and is reminded about this. I haven't worked on this presentation (my part) at all yet, but I have the rest of today. This is much better than the presentation I made last night after I got home from class at 8:00
Tomorrow/Friday/whenever: 1 homework assignment. This is the assignment from Geography of Costa Rica about taking the Periferica bus. My teacher decided that this assignment would be our final. This means I have one less test, and this is the one test I was looking forward to the least anyhow. Better yet, when I went up to ask the teacher about it at the end of class, I mentioned that I didn't have a partner. There was a group of 3 girls who were going to do it together, and they offered to let me work with them (we're going to turn in 2 versions between the 4 of us, I guess). I was soooooo relieved when I had people to work with. This goes back to what I've said about being nice to foreign people -- those girls made my day.
Next Tuesday, the Monday and Wednesday after that: Finals. I need to do well on my cartography test since I did not-so-hot on the last one. This is going to require some serious studying since a lot of it is going to be over the presentations that some guest speakers gave -- presentations which I did NOT pay attention to. I do need to study a little bit for my Evrn Management test. There's apparently a paper he wrote that he wants us to read (always a good idea to be familiar with things the professor wrote), and some other stuff that I need to go over. We still haven't gotten back any of our assignments, so I can't say for sure that I'm doing well in that class. Finally, I have my world geography test. This is open book, which is good -- if I manage to finish my backlog of reading between now and then. I'm feeling REALLY smart for having meticulously utilized the highlighter and looked up unknown words while I was reading the readings.
So there you go. 1 presentation. 1 homework assignment (that counts as a test). 3 finals. Panama. Nicaragua. Home. Popsicle. (Because I'm going to be a giant popsicle when I get home). I am beginning to feel the warm rays of the light at the end of the tunnel, and it feels good. VERY GOOD.
And finally, my observation of the day: Ticos are not very good at recognizing things that should be obvious. Example 1: I walk to the corner store to buy a coke. Two women in an SUV pull up. ¿Muchacha, sabe donde está el Hipermás? (Do you know where Hipermas is?) Um...do I LOOK like I know where Hipermas is? 95% of the people in this country who look like gringos are, in fact, gringos. Probability therefore says that I am gringa. Why would you ask a foreigner where something is? That's just a bad plan. As it turns out, I do actually know where Hipermas is, although my explanation of its location was pretty weak. I think they figured it out, though. Exmaple 2: The girls who let me in on their group for the Geog. of CR class project asked if I spoke English and what country I'm from. I suppose I can't expect them to be able to differentiate accents, even between French, German, and English, but really? All the French and German students I've run in to have spoken almost perfect Spanish. These girls just sat through a class and listened to me butcher their language. I think that should say perfectly well what language I speak, and for that matter, what country I'm from. (Sad but true statement. Note to all future parents: find a way to teach your children other languages when they're young, because the U.S. education system isn't going to.)
(1) That paper/presentation are done. That feels soooooo good. This good feeling goes a long way towards blocking the bad feelings.
(2) This class does not count for any requirements, either Gen-Ed or major/minor. Basically the only reason to try is so it doesn't mess up my GPA.
(3) There is no point in learning about the Geography of Costa Rica. I leave this country in less than a month. I'm sure I'll be back someday, but I don't need to know this stuff for my career or for any future visits. It's pointless knowledge.
Even though I got a C on this test and I don't think my paper is going to bring my grade up at all, I'm still in a good mood. Why, you ask? Well, I can no officially count all remaining assignments and tests on one hand. (You have no idea how good it feels to type that.) This is due to a combination of an assignment and test into one project, and the fact that my Environmental Management teacher decided that we don't actually have to give presentations. (I'm almost sad about that... I was kind of looking forward to explaining two stroke engines to my class...)
I have remaining:
Tomorrow: 1 presentation about Petroleum. The guy from my group did finally e-mail me last night, but I got the impression that he had forgotten all about the presentation. I bet he's going to have an unhappy moment when he opens my e-mail and is reminded about this. I haven't worked on this presentation (my part) at all yet, but I have the rest of today. This is much better than the presentation I made last night after I got home from class at 8:00
Tomorrow/Friday/whenever: 1 homework assignment. This is the assignment from Geography of Costa Rica about taking the Periferica bus. My teacher decided that this assignment would be our final. This means I have one less test, and this is the one test I was looking forward to the least anyhow. Better yet, when I went up to ask the teacher about it at the end of class, I mentioned that I didn't have a partner. There was a group of 3 girls who were going to do it together, and they offered to let me work with them (we're going to turn in 2 versions between the 4 of us, I guess). I was soooooo relieved when I had people to work with. This goes back to what I've said about being nice to foreign people -- those girls made my day.
Next Tuesday, the Monday and Wednesday after that: Finals. I need to do well on my cartography test since I did not-so-hot on the last one. This is going to require some serious studying since a lot of it is going to be over the presentations that some guest speakers gave -- presentations which I did NOT pay attention to. I do need to study a little bit for my Evrn Management test. There's apparently a paper he wrote that he wants us to read (always a good idea to be familiar with things the professor wrote), and some other stuff that I need to go over. We still haven't gotten back any of our assignments, so I can't say for sure that I'm doing well in that class. Finally, I have my world geography test. This is open book, which is good -- if I manage to finish my backlog of reading between now and then. I'm feeling REALLY smart for having meticulously utilized the highlighter and looked up unknown words while I was reading the readings.
So there you go. 1 presentation. 1 homework assignment (that counts as a test). 3 finals. Panama. Nicaragua. Home. Popsicle. (Because I'm going to be a giant popsicle when I get home). I am beginning to feel the warm rays of the light at the end of the tunnel, and it feels good. VERY GOOD.
And finally, my observation of the day: Ticos are not very good at recognizing things that should be obvious. Example 1: I walk to the corner store to buy a coke. Two women in an SUV pull up. ¿Muchacha, sabe donde está el Hipermás? (Do you know where Hipermas is?) Um...do I LOOK like I know where Hipermas is? 95% of the people in this country who look like gringos are, in fact, gringos. Probability therefore says that I am gringa. Why would you ask a foreigner where something is? That's just a bad plan. As it turns out, I do actually know where Hipermas is, although my explanation of its location was pretty weak. I think they figured it out, though. Exmaple 2: The girls who let me in on their group for the Geog. of CR class project asked if I spoke English and what country I'm from. I suppose I can't expect them to be able to differentiate accents, even between French, German, and English, but really? All the French and German students I've run in to have spoken almost perfect Spanish. These girls just sat through a class and listened to me butcher their language. I think that should say perfectly well what language I speak, and for that matter, what country I'm from. (Sad but true statement. Note to all future parents: find a way to teach your children other languages when they're young, because the U.S. education system isn't going to.)
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Footnotes and such
Today my cartography class went on a field trip, and I have some footnotes and/or insights to share, even though I desperately need to be working on my paper that's due Tuesday. (I have a fairly well-fleshed out outline, but that isn't consoling me much right now since I only have the rest of tonight and tomorrow to finish it.)
Our field trip was mainly to Parque Nacional Volcan Poas, (Poas Volcano, for anyone who needed that hint), although we also stopped at the La Paz waterfall and a few random places on the side of the road. This field trip was kind of surreal for me for a few reasons.
First, I've already been to La Paz and Poas. La Paz especially was trippy because that was one of our first trips way back when. As of today, I have exactly one month left in Costa Rica. As much as I think symbolism is a bunch of nonsense, returning still kind of felt symbolic of how far I've come and how long it's been.
Second, although all the Ticos know the country and cities much better than I do, it would appear from the small sample size that my class represents that I am better-traveled that most Ticos. Of the 6 of us on the field trip (the class only has like, 8 people), I think only one other person had been to Poas, and I was the only one who had been to La Paz. I'm sure the Ticos have been plenty of places I haven't, but it surprised me that they hadn't been to see all these cool things a million times before on field trips or with their families.
Third -- perhaps this is redundant, but -- we went on a field trip. To a volcano. A VOLCANO. When was the last time you went on a field trip to a volcano? That field trip would be the height of cool back in the states. And although we didn't go on field trips to the Caribbean or Pacific, those were options for other classes. How cool is that? There's no way I'd be going on a field trip to any ocean back in the states, much less having a choice of two. This is one of the really cool things about Costa Rica. It's such a tiny tiny country (about the size of West Virginia), so all of the wonderful things they have to see are condensed and easily accessible from almost anywhere in the country. ("Easily" is relative). You can see cities, mountains, beaches, rain forest, and coffee and banana plantations all in the same day. I repeat: How cool is that?
Fourth, I have an inkling that I'm not the only one who did not-so-hot on the test. My professor was telling us something about the next test, and all the other students were making comments that, assuming I understood correctly, were complaining about how hard/long the last test was. Better yet, I am nearly positive that they all missed points on the same blowing-up-the-map question, because it was specifically pointed out and requested that for the next test, she NOT enlarge the map. This makes me feel better about myself.
I think I'll end there, since I REALLY need to get to work on the destroyer-of-my-soul also known as my paper that's due Tuesday. I have a month left here, and just about half a month left of classes. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but I can't get there because of the cave-in (made of homework, presentations, papers, and tests) that's in front of me. I know being home will heal my soul, but I'm not sure I'll have any left to heal by the time I finish all this work. (Sorry, I guess I'm in a symbolic and philosophical mood today. I blame school.)
Our field trip was mainly to Parque Nacional Volcan Poas, (Poas Volcano, for anyone who needed that hint), although we also stopped at the La Paz waterfall and a few random places on the side of the road. This field trip was kind of surreal for me for a few reasons.
First, I've already been to La Paz and Poas. La Paz especially was trippy because that was one of our first trips way back when. As of today, I have exactly one month left in Costa Rica. As much as I think symbolism is a bunch of nonsense, returning still kind of felt symbolic of how far I've come and how long it's been.
Second, although all the Ticos know the country and cities much better than I do, it would appear from the small sample size that my class represents that I am better-traveled that most Ticos. Of the 6 of us on the field trip (the class only has like, 8 people), I think only one other person had been to Poas, and I was the only one who had been to La Paz. I'm sure the Ticos have been plenty of places I haven't, but it surprised me that they hadn't been to see all these cool things a million times before on field trips or with their families.
Third -- perhaps this is redundant, but -- we went on a field trip. To a volcano. A VOLCANO. When was the last time you went on a field trip to a volcano? That field trip would be the height of cool back in the states. And although we didn't go on field trips to the Caribbean or Pacific, those were options for other classes. How cool is that? There's no way I'd be going on a field trip to any ocean back in the states, much less having a choice of two. This is one of the really cool things about Costa Rica. It's such a tiny tiny country (about the size of West Virginia), so all of the wonderful things they have to see are condensed and easily accessible from almost anywhere in the country. ("Easily" is relative). You can see cities, mountains, beaches, rain forest, and coffee and banana plantations all in the same day. I repeat: How cool is that?
Fourth, I have an inkling that I'm not the only one who did not-so-hot on the test. My professor was telling us something about the next test, and all the other students were making comments that, assuming I understood correctly, were complaining about how hard/long the last test was. Better yet, I am nearly positive that they all missed points on the same blowing-up-the-map question, because it was specifically pointed out and requested that for the next test, she NOT enlarge the map. This makes me feel better about myself.
I think I'll end there, since I REALLY need to get to work on the destroyer-of-my-soul also known as my paper that's due Tuesday. I have a month left here, and just about half a month left of classes. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but I can't get there because of the cave-in (made of homework, presentations, papers, and tests) that's in front of me. I know being home will heal my soul, but I'm not sure I'll have any left to heal by the time I finish all this work. (Sorry, I guess I'm in a symbolic and philosophical mood today. I blame school.)
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Oh, hello there, Karma
As I so astutely predicted, Karma has paid me a delightful little visit. We got our Cartography tests back on Tuesday, and I got a 77 on it. I'm surprisingly apathetic about my grades in that class, although I think that's because I've figured out that my teacher is impossible to please, and that I will be getting a B in that class no matter what I do. We also got back the grade on our second lab assignment, and I got an 84 or something on that -- and at least part of the reason was because I didn't use colors that were "pretty enough." (Did I mention she's impossible to please?)
So, on this test.... Part 1 had three questions. I missed a point each on two of them because I "lacked a little more detail." The third one I missed completely because I assumed "datum" meant "data" and made a mini "data base" (apparently "datum" is the points where the line of the earth's "geoide" and "eliposide" are tangent. Go figure.) Part 2 was defining words. There were 11 words to define, worth 2 points each. I got the full two points on four of them, with my general fault being that I didn't write enough. (Me, not write enough... I know, right?) Part 3 was drawing scale bars. Despite the fact that she picked the most ridiculously small scales and insisted that we make all of them in kilometers (like, seriously, why would anyone write ".075 km" when you could just write "75 m"?), I got full credit on all of these. Part 4 was essay-ish questions. I got full credit on one of them, and lost a total of 4 points on the other 3, again because I lacked detail or certain points that she was apparently looking for.
Part 5 is the most ridiculous though. We went over in class today how to do this part, and I was not pleased. Basically, she had copied a section of a topographical map, including the map line coordinates (based in meters/km). There were two points, and we were supposed to find the coordinates of these two points. In class, we learned that you do this by figuring out the scale (how many meters are represented by a mm on the map), then by measuring the distance from nearest line to point, multiplying that by the scale, then adding the distance to the product to get a coordinate. I performed what we did in class perfectly, yet I only got 5.5 of the 10 points. Why is this, you ask? It's because she BLEW UP THE MAP TO PUT IT ON THE TEST. This completely destroyed the scale that I was using. She told us that she messed up the scale, and she told us to just use what it was supposed to be (1:50,000). Well, that's what I thought I did. I used that number to figure out how many mm are equal to how many meters, but that apparently wasn't what she was trying to get us to do. Apparently, we were supposed to supposed to not measure or something, and do some sort of crazy "Well, if the distance between these two lines is x, then halfway would be .5x, and halfway between that would be .25x, and if I know x = y, then .25x must be..." and figure it out that way. Come on, really now? Don't teach us how to do something if you're not going to do it that way on the test. I'm kind of mad, but I also kind of don't care.
Because Karma loves me so much, it also decided to make me feel horrible and sick Tuesday morning. I left Cartography early to go home, which means that I missed lab time, which means I have to go to the lab outside of class hours to get my stuff done, which is something I really don't have time to do right now. I also completely skipped my geography of Costa Rica class, which means I didn't get my test back to see how bad it was (Karma round two will be next week, just wait for it), and which means I didn't get to verify my presentation topic with my professor. I've finally narrowed it down to problems with transportation in the metropolitan area; I have sources and I'm working on fleshing out an outline. I e-mailed her today to verify it that way, however, I'm completely terrified that she's going to e-mail me back and say that either I can't do that or that someone else already did the same thing, so I have to find a new topic. I also still have no idea how or what to do about the last homework assignment in that class, but I figure I can ask her about that after class next Tuesday when I'm not totally freaking out about this paper/presentation.
To add fuel to the fire, I have a presentation for World Geography next Wednesday. This is supposed to be a group presentation, but I was the only one from my group who showed up for class today. I don't have their e-mails, so I have no way to contact them so we can come up with a plan for our presentation. The guy in the group has my e-mail, but he's never used it, so for all I know, he lost it and has no way to contact me either. I did talk to the professor after class, and he was sympathetic. He said something kind of jokingly about irresponsibility being a cultural policy in Costa Rica (cultural policy and policies of culture was something we talked about today in class, although beyond that I don't remember much because it was really boring), and that I should just do what I can. He also said that they might try to contact me at the last minute or something, because (apparently) that's what Ticos do sometimes. He told me just to be ready to present my part, and the way he said it makes me just about certain that he would not penalize my grade just because my group doesn't have their act together. This class is so boring and I hate all the readings, but for some reason, I still like it... That could have something to do with the professor being fair and understanding, and for generally giving me good grades when I write a bunch of nonsense though. The good news: I finished my last reflexion in that class, so all I have left is a presentation and a final. Wohoo!!
So, life in general... it's pretty horrible right now. Perhaps the last sentence of the previous paragraph made you think that life is good, but overall, it's currently very bleak and depressing. I have a whole paper to write and a presentation to make by Tuesday. This presentation is, from the get-go, going to be a fracaso estrepitoso (spectacular failure). I am going to present to the Ticos about problems with transportation in the area where they've all grown up. They are all 500 times more familiar with this area than I will ever be, and yet I am going to get up there and talk about it. This is just a bad bad idea. Life would be looking up after that presentation, but the next day I've got my "group" presentation, which I will almost certainly be making the night before it's due. After that, assuming my professor remembers to tell us that we actually have to do it, I will have a third presentation due not this Monday but the one after. I also get a take-home test the day after that, and have my final cartography test the day after that. Then the Monday after all that fun, I have my Evrn. Management final, followed on Tuesday by my World Geography final. Then occurs the moment I've been waiting over four months for -- being done with classes and more ecstatic that I will have ever have been previously in my entire life. Thinking of this moment gives me much joy, until I realize the mountain of work I have to dig myself out of before I get there. And then I'm just depressed again. I know that the time will pass and the work will get done, but it's the "how" part that's perplexing me right now. I'm sure that when all this is said and done, I'll be glad for this experience, but until then, I have a few things I wish I could say to this experience, and none of them are very nice.
So, on this test.... Part 1 had three questions. I missed a point each on two of them because I "lacked a little more detail." The third one I missed completely because I assumed "datum" meant "data" and made a mini "data base" (apparently "datum" is the points where the line of the earth's "geoide" and "eliposide" are tangent. Go figure.) Part 2 was defining words. There were 11 words to define, worth 2 points each. I got the full two points on four of them, with my general fault being that I didn't write enough. (Me, not write enough... I know, right?) Part 3 was drawing scale bars. Despite the fact that she picked the most ridiculously small scales and insisted that we make all of them in kilometers (like, seriously, why would anyone write ".075 km" when you could just write "75 m"?), I got full credit on all of these. Part 4 was essay-ish questions. I got full credit on one of them, and lost a total of 4 points on the other 3, again because I lacked detail or certain points that she was apparently looking for.
Part 5 is the most ridiculous though. We went over in class today how to do this part, and I was not pleased. Basically, she had copied a section of a topographical map, including the map line coordinates (based in meters/km). There were two points, and we were supposed to find the coordinates of these two points. In class, we learned that you do this by figuring out the scale (how many meters are represented by a mm on the map), then by measuring the distance from nearest line to point, multiplying that by the scale, then adding the distance to the product to get a coordinate. I performed what we did in class perfectly, yet I only got 5.5 of the 10 points. Why is this, you ask? It's because she BLEW UP THE MAP TO PUT IT ON THE TEST. This completely destroyed the scale that I was using. She told us that she messed up the scale, and she told us to just use what it was supposed to be (1:50,000). Well, that's what I thought I did. I used that number to figure out how many mm are equal to how many meters, but that apparently wasn't what she was trying to get us to do. Apparently, we were supposed to supposed to not measure or something, and do some sort of crazy "Well, if the distance between these two lines is x, then halfway would be .5x, and halfway between that would be .25x, and if I know x = y, then .25x must be..." and figure it out that way. Come on, really now? Don't teach us how to do something if you're not going to do it that way on the test. I'm kind of mad, but I also kind of don't care.
Because Karma loves me so much, it also decided to make me feel horrible and sick Tuesday morning. I left Cartography early to go home, which means that I missed lab time, which means I have to go to the lab outside of class hours to get my stuff done, which is something I really don't have time to do right now. I also completely skipped my geography of Costa Rica class, which means I didn't get my test back to see how bad it was (Karma round two will be next week, just wait for it), and which means I didn't get to verify my presentation topic with my professor. I've finally narrowed it down to problems with transportation in the metropolitan area; I have sources and I'm working on fleshing out an outline. I e-mailed her today to verify it that way, however, I'm completely terrified that she's going to e-mail me back and say that either I can't do that or that someone else already did the same thing, so I have to find a new topic. I also still have no idea how or what to do about the last homework assignment in that class, but I figure I can ask her about that after class next Tuesday when I'm not totally freaking out about this paper/presentation.
To add fuel to the fire, I have a presentation for World Geography next Wednesday. This is supposed to be a group presentation, but I was the only one from my group who showed up for class today. I don't have their e-mails, so I have no way to contact them so we can come up with a plan for our presentation. The guy in the group has my e-mail, but he's never used it, so for all I know, he lost it and has no way to contact me either. I did talk to the professor after class, and he was sympathetic. He said something kind of jokingly about irresponsibility being a cultural policy in Costa Rica (cultural policy and policies of culture was something we talked about today in class, although beyond that I don't remember much because it was really boring), and that I should just do what I can. He also said that they might try to contact me at the last minute or something, because (apparently) that's what Ticos do sometimes. He told me just to be ready to present my part, and the way he said it makes me just about certain that he would not penalize my grade just because my group doesn't have their act together. This class is so boring and I hate all the readings, but for some reason, I still like it... That could have something to do with the professor being fair and understanding, and for generally giving me good grades when I write a bunch of nonsense though. The good news: I finished my last reflexion in that class, so all I have left is a presentation and a final. Wohoo!!
So, life in general... it's pretty horrible right now. Perhaps the last sentence of the previous paragraph made you think that life is good, but overall, it's currently very bleak and depressing. I have a whole paper to write and a presentation to make by Tuesday. This presentation is, from the get-go, going to be a fracaso estrepitoso (spectacular failure). I am going to present to the Ticos about problems with transportation in the area where they've all grown up. They are all 500 times more familiar with this area than I will ever be, and yet I am going to get up there and talk about it. This is just a bad bad idea. Life would be looking up after that presentation, but the next day I've got my "group" presentation, which I will almost certainly be making the night before it's due. After that, assuming my professor remembers to tell us that we actually have to do it, I will have a third presentation due not this Monday but the one after. I also get a take-home test the day after that, and have my final cartography test the day after that. Then the Monday after all that fun, I have my Evrn. Management final, followed on Tuesday by my World Geography final. Then occurs the moment I've been waiting over four months for -- being done with classes and more ecstatic that I will have ever have been previously in my entire life. Thinking of this moment gives me much joy, until I realize the mountain of work I have to dig myself out of before I get there. And then I'm just depressed again. I know that the time will pass and the work will get done, but it's the "how" part that's perplexing me right now. I'm sure that when all this is said and done, I'll be glad for this experience, but until then, I have a few things I wish I could say to this experience, and none of them are very nice.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Gloats ... round two
I have a second reason to gloat my brains out.
On Monday, we got our tests in Environmental Management back. He drew out the whole process -- such and such percentage got this score, and overall they were okay, but some people didn't do well, here, let me draw a graph, etc -- but he did finally hand them back. He told us that 3 people in the class (class has probably about 25 people) got 10's. I was one of them, and -- get this -- one of my friends from the grupo got the one of the other ones. Yes, you heard right: the gringas accounted for 2/3 of the perfect scores on this test. You have no idea how hard it was for me to contain my gloating until class was over.
To backtrack slightly, last weekend we went to Parque Nacional Cahuita, one of the national parks on the carribean side. I feel like it's mostly known for the coral reefs -- reefs which we sadly did not get to visit -- but the land-based side of the park was pretty neat too.
On the first day we were there (Halloween) we went down to Playa Negra, a black sand beach. That was cool in itself, but this sand was the weirdest, funnest sand I've ever played with. It was super fine, and it just had this really weird consistency. You could scoop up a handful and actually form a ball with it. And with these balls, I discovered, you could juggle fairly successfully. Sand you can juggle -- weird, right? If you got some of the sand closer to the water, it would run through your fingers kind of like mud, and if you made a ball and threw it at someone, it looked like they'd just been splattered with a mud ball. It was great fun. Our big Halloween celebration consisted of making our now signature grupo pasta (spaghetti, tomato paste, and fresh garlic, onions, and tomatoes all cooked together) and grupo guacamole (wondeful ripe Costa Rican avocados, tomato, onion, garlic, salt, NO cilantro, and the chips that come in the purple bag). And then we went to bed early. I was a little sad for a while that I missed out on all the "normal" Halloween fun, but I figure that I've already celebrated Halloween like that for 19 years, and I've got the rest of my life to go to big Halloween parties... how many times am I going to get to celebrate Halloween eating delicious guacamole, pasta, and hanging out with my grupo buddies on a black sand beach?
On Saturday, I started off the day with a gallo pinto feast with one of my friends. We got these massive plates of gallo pinto and huevos (eggs) and some really good juice for like, $4 each or something. I suppose that's expensive for beans, rice, and eggs, but it was totally worth it. After that, we all went to the parque nacional. The enterance was literally 100 meters away from where we were staying. There was a trail through jungle-ish/mangrove-ish forest that skirted the beach. I wasn't up for much walking that day, so I got maybe 1/3 or 1/2 the way along the trail and plunked myself down on the beach. Even so, I still saw some really cool plants and a sloth. The beach kind of turned out to be a bust though. Every time me and the other girl who stayed on the beach thought we'd found a dry spot, there would be one wave that would come out of nowhere and almost swamp us. We'd pick up all our stuff just in time, until one particularly big wave caught us completely uprepared. After that, we moved down the beach to a little sand platform, figuring that the ocean couldn't get us there. That theory worked for maybe 45 minutes, when a huge wave came and completely soaked anything we had left that had been dry. Well, if I couldn't beat the system, I decided to join it by going for a swim. Except that the waves were not exactly these little gentle waves. Some of these were probably 5 or even 6 feet tall, although you had to hit it at the exact right point before it crested to experience the full height and power of the wave.
How do I know this, you ask? Because I hit a wave at the exact right point before it crested, and I experienced the full height and power of the wave. I saw it coming, but it hadn't crested yet, so I thought I could just float over the top and be fine. Well, I must have been about 3 inches away from being safe on the other side of thee wave when it crested ... with me in it. It was what I like to call a "don't panic" wave because you just have to let it do it's thing and spit you out. Panicing is not only pointless because there's nothing you can do, it's also likely to make you get even more salt water and sand stuffed down your facial orifices. So, the wave caught me. And it tossed me around like a rag doll. The ocean does not play nicely. When I finally surfaced (a good 20+ feet from where I'd started) my friend bust out laughing, "Linda, you have SO much sand in your hair!" Yes, even from 20 feet away, the amount of sand I had in my hair as a result of the wave jamming my head into the bottom of the ocean was apparent. I was done with the ocean for the day after that experience. I'm still finding sand in my ears a week after this happened.
So, returning to a more chronological timeline, back to classes. Tuesday was pretty normal. I finished the work in Cartography so I didn't have to come back to the lab some other time to finish, and that was good.
I asked my Geography of Costa Rica teacher when I should do my paper/presentation, and we decided on the 18th. This is very good, because it gives me more time to finish. However, I'm still totally freaking out about this because I have no idea what I'm going to write about. It has to be something about urbanization in Costa Rica. In the U.S., a project like this wouldn't be a problem. I know the newspapers to check, the magazines to look at, the books to read, the government sites to search, or if all that fails, I have a whole bank of keywords I can use to search. Here, though, I have limited knowledge of all of those things. I already tried searching their libraries, and I came up with very little. Some of that was that I kept getting server errors in my searches, and some of it was that there weren't that many useful books, and some of it was that a lot of the stuff was old theis papers from students that they'd bound and put in the library. And by old, I mean like, 60's. 70's. 80's... not stuff that's super useful for discussing the current situation. It was really frustrating. KU's databases don't have much for Costa Rica either. So now I have a lot of internet searching to do, although one of my friends from the grupo lent me a book that I'm pretty sure is going to be my best source.
On top of that paper and presentation, I have two more presentations (one group, one indiviudal), a reflexion, and a last project. The last project kind of scares me because I have no idea what we're doing. It's something about mapping and discussing the neighborhoods that the Periferica bus route goes through (it goes around the edge of the city). Only thing is, I'm not sure if we're actually supposed to take the bus. And then if we are, how are we going to know anything about the neighborhoods without getting off? But if we get off, how is that going to take 1.5 hours (I think she said that)? And if we aren't supposed to take the bus, where should we get our info? She also wants us to do it with a partner, and I'm considering just doing it on my own since I don't think it's fair to make a Tico do it with me. Bah, too much work. I just want this semester to be over so I can get my 13 days of travelling in (Panama and Nicaragua, baby!) and return to the wonderful land of home.
On Monday, we got our tests in Environmental Management back. He drew out the whole process -- such and such percentage got this score, and overall they were okay, but some people didn't do well, here, let me draw a graph, etc -- but he did finally hand them back. He told us that 3 people in the class (class has probably about 25 people) got 10's. I was one of them, and -- get this -- one of my friends from the grupo got the one of the other ones. Yes, you heard right: the gringas accounted for 2/3 of the perfect scores on this test. You have no idea how hard it was for me to contain my gloating until class was over.
To backtrack slightly, last weekend we went to Parque Nacional Cahuita, one of the national parks on the carribean side. I feel like it's mostly known for the coral reefs -- reefs which we sadly did not get to visit -- but the land-based side of the park was pretty neat too.
On the first day we were there (Halloween) we went down to Playa Negra, a black sand beach. That was cool in itself, but this sand was the weirdest, funnest sand I've ever played with. It was super fine, and it just had this really weird consistency. You could scoop up a handful and actually form a ball with it. And with these balls, I discovered, you could juggle fairly successfully. Sand you can juggle -- weird, right? If you got some of the sand closer to the water, it would run through your fingers kind of like mud, and if you made a ball and threw it at someone, it looked like they'd just been splattered with a mud ball. It was great fun. Our big Halloween celebration consisted of making our now signature grupo pasta (spaghetti, tomato paste, and fresh garlic, onions, and tomatoes all cooked together) and grupo guacamole (wondeful ripe Costa Rican avocados, tomato, onion, garlic, salt, NO cilantro, and the chips that come in the purple bag). And then we went to bed early. I was a little sad for a while that I missed out on all the "normal" Halloween fun, but I figure that I've already celebrated Halloween like that for 19 years, and I've got the rest of my life to go to big Halloween parties... how many times am I going to get to celebrate Halloween eating delicious guacamole, pasta, and hanging out with my grupo buddies on a black sand beach?
On Saturday, I started off the day with a gallo pinto feast with one of my friends. We got these massive plates of gallo pinto and huevos (eggs) and some really good juice for like, $4 each or something. I suppose that's expensive for beans, rice, and eggs, but it was totally worth it. After that, we all went to the parque nacional. The enterance was literally 100 meters away from where we were staying. There was a trail through jungle-ish/mangrove-ish forest that skirted the beach. I wasn't up for much walking that day, so I got maybe 1/3 or 1/2 the way along the trail and plunked myself down on the beach. Even so, I still saw some really cool plants and a sloth. The beach kind of turned out to be a bust though. Every time me and the other girl who stayed on the beach thought we'd found a dry spot, there would be one wave that would come out of nowhere and almost swamp us. We'd pick up all our stuff just in time, until one particularly big wave caught us completely uprepared. After that, we moved down the beach to a little sand platform, figuring that the ocean couldn't get us there. That theory worked for maybe 45 minutes, when a huge wave came and completely soaked anything we had left that had been dry. Well, if I couldn't beat the system, I decided to join it by going for a swim. Except that the waves were not exactly these little gentle waves. Some of these were probably 5 or even 6 feet tall, although you had to hit it at the exact right point before it crested to experience the full height and power of the wave.
How do I know this, you ask? Because I hit a wave at the exact right point before it crested, and I experienced the full height and power of the wave. I saw it coming, but it hadn't crested yet, so I thought I could just float over the top and be fine. Well, I must have been about 3 inches away from being safe on the other side of thee wave when it crested ... with me in it. It was what I like to call a "don't panic" wave because you just have to let it do it's thing and spit you out. Panicing is not only pointless because there's nothing you can do, it's also likely to make you get even more salt water and sand stuffed down your facial orifices. So, the wave caught me. And it tossed me around like a rag doll. The ocean does not play nicely. When I finally surfaced (a good 20+ feet from where I'd started) my friend bust out laughing, "Linda, you have SO much sand in your hair!" Yes, even from 20 feet away, the amount of sand I had in my hair as a result of the wave jamming my head into the bottom of the ocean was apparent. I was done with the ocean for the day after that experience. I'm still finding sand in my ears a week after this happened.
So, returning to a more chronological timeline, back to classes. Tuesday was pretty normal. I finished the work in Cartography so I didn't have to come back to the lab some other time to finish, and that was good.
I asked my Geography of Costa Rica teacher when I should do my paper/presentation, and we decided on the 18th. This is very good, because it gives me more time to finish. However, I'm still totally freaking out about this because I have no idea what I'm going to write about. It has to be something about urbanization in Costa Rica. In the U.S., a project like this wouldn't be a problem. I know the newspapers to check, the magazines to look at, the books to read, the government sites to search, or if all that fails, I have a whole bank of keywords I can use to search. Here, though, I have limited knowledge of all of those things. I already tried searching their libraries, and I came up with very little. Some of that was that I kept getting server errors in my searches, and some of it was that there weren't that many useful books, and some of it was that a lot of the stuff was old theis papers from students that they'd bound and put in the library. And by old, I mean like, 60's. 70's. 80's... not stuff that's super useful for discussing the current situation. It was really frustrating. KU's databases don't have much for Costa Rica either. So now I have a lot of internet searching to do, although one of my friends from the grupo lent me a book that I'm pretty sure is going to be my best source.
On top of that paper and presentation, I have two more presentations (one group, one indiviudal), a reflexion, and a last project. The last project kind of scares me because I have no idea what we're doing. It's something about mapping and discussing the neighborhoods that the Periferica bus route goes through (it goes around the edge of the city). Only thing is, I'm not sure if we're actually supposed to take the bus. And then if we are, how are we going to know anything about the neighborhoods without getting off? But if we get off, how is that going to take 1.5 hours (I think she said that)? And if we aren't supposed to take the bus, where should we get our info? She also wants us to do it with a partner, and I'm considering just doing it on my own since I don't think it's fair to make a Tico do it with me. Bah, too much work. I just want this semester to be over so I can get my 13 days of travelling in (Panama and Nicaragua, baby!) and return to the wonderful land of home.
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