Peace, Love & Blog

So I have a lot to post about.

Last Thursday, I moved into a new house. I went on Wednesday with a friend to look at the place. It’s a big house located about 5 minutes walking from my job. The fact that I can now walk to work excites me, considering that before it took me an hour minimm by bus to arrive at work. I’m renting from a woman named Jenny, who has to be cool just because of her name. She’s 30 years old, Costa Rican, and I envision her becoming like a big sister to me. She’s married, but her husband is in Los Angeles remodeling a house while she is remodeling the one we are currently living in. It’s a great house with lots of potential, but there’s still lots to be done. My bedroom and the kitchen are great, but some of the rooms are missing proper rooves, one of the bathrooms is missing a sink, and the living room and dining rooms are currently big empty spaces. Otherwise, the house is beautiful. There’s a balcony, the kitchen is big and bright, and Jenny owns a sweet dog and 5 talking parrots. Right now we are sharing the house with a man from Panama, always referred to as Señor Lincoln. He’s not around much, but he did give me a ride to the mall today so I can’t complain. I’ve currently lost the cord to my camera, so I’ll post some pictures of my new digs as soon as possible.

I also went last weekend to the World Surfing championship here in Costa Rica. Costa Rica has always been known for its great surfing, but apparently the beach that the competition was held at, about two hours from my house, is said to have the best waves in the world this time of year. I went with a friend from New Learning and some of her other teacher friends.

Needless to say, the beach was packed. We stayed at the neighboring beach, Jacó, and headed out at night to find the entire boulevard packed with people, drinking in the street and blasting music from their stereo. We got up early on Saturday to check out the final day of competition. The competition was located about 5km from our hotel, a cheap cab ride. Except that everyone and their mother was also on their way, taking the same one lane curvy uphill road. After sitting in traffic for about 20 minutes, all six of us squished into one car, we gave up and walked the rest of the way. The beach, which is huge, was completely packed with people, to the point where you didn’t even have room to really sit down, especially in the area where the competition was going on. Strangely enough, the competition was taking place at the far end of the beach, but the entire length of shore was covered with people hanging out and drinking. We were so confused that we didn’t even find thec competition site until about an hour after we arrived. We, however, did get to see the men’s longboard and open final and the women’s open final. It was really cool to see such professional surfers, the best in the world. It was also a really great vibe. Whenever a surfer would leave the water, people would surround him, waving the flag of his country, and lift him up onto their shoulders and carry him off the beach as the people watched. Since I can’t upload any pictures yet, I found this video made by the people at Billabong that basically shows what we saw.

I have a lot more to talk about – stories from my job and my travels, but that will have to wait for another day.