Um...did I mention I´m a horrible blogger?

This is my last week in Costa Rica, so I promise promise promise that every day I´ll make entries trying to get you guys up to speed. So much has been happening that it would actually do me some good to spend the next week looking back at it all through writing.

When we last heard of Mike Faulk, it was July 12, and on the 14th he took a bus to Siquirres to stay at an eco-resort called Finca Maquengue, for free, to write a hotel review for the newspaper. It was on top of a mountain facing the Caribbean, which you could see even 20 miles away. When the sun rose, it was like watching some natural phenomenon, because inbetween the earth and the sky there was just a sparkling ring of the sea stretched across the horizon. I went horseback riding for the first time in...I can´t even remember the last time I went horseback riding. We rode through open areas and jungle trails, and went out to the dirt road for some running. It was there I discovered how few things are as fun and exhilarating as kicking a horse on his back leg and just going with him at full speed through open country. There were six waterfalls on the property, and the photographer and I went swimming in one of them, where a giant boulder at the top (put there by the Turrialba Volcano) split the stream into two parallel waterfalls. Clear water surrounded by jungle and no other signs of man, it was refreshing to say the least.

The next week I went to another press conference for yet another music festival with more free, delicious food. The highlight was hearing footsteps come up from behind me and then someone say ¨Michael! My friend!¨ It was good ole Patricio from Channel 13, and I´m pretty sure the last time I´ll see him. Bottom ups.

Here are some observations I´ve made about daily life in San José/Coronado:

-Every morning and evening I take a 40 minute bus into and away from San José to get to work and home. Most are falling apart, one of them is decent, but one is my sworn enemy. This bus can be heard long before it turns the corner to get to my bus stop in Coronado. Squeaky squeaky sigh sigh squeaky errrr (that´s the break). Something like that describes it´s noises. The bus is pink. On the side, in faded pink lettering, reads the name of the bus, ¨Don Pancho.¨ I´ve seen a lot of buses with names around town, but this is the only named one in the Coronado fleet. This bus is worse than any creaky sweat machine you may have ridden in high school, even if you went to high school in the 1960s. The bus driver is constantly restarting it because it shuts down in the middle of traffic, and it doesn´t make it any easier to get it to go somewhere when the drivers literally fill the seats and aisles of the bus to the point where you can´t even move around to find the door out. The worst part about Don Pancho is that it naturally shakes, accompanied by the bumpiness all the awful roads provide, and the height limit is 6 feet. If you have forgotten, I am 6 foot 4, so my head is tilted and pressed against the ceiling during all of this bumpiness. There are also light fixtures on the ceiling, which I position my head inbetween, and then my head is subjected to a painful game of pong for the next 40 minutes while all the Ticos snicker at the tall gringo trying to keep his balance.

None of these buses were made for me. When I sit down, I always have to spread my legs out because otherwise my knees are digging deeply into someone´s back. I try to be considerate with the space I take up though. On the bus rides, sometimes there are considerate people who sit next to you, and other times they make you even more anxious to just quit and take a cab. I was already in a bad mood one day after work, sitting in the bus in downtown waiting for us to take off, when out of the corner of my eye I saw a giant, glowing, green meteor falling from heaven at a kind of rate I had never known to exist. It hit me and smashed my right leg, the shock was so much that I jumped and shouted, but I was just pushed closer against the suffocating wall of the bus. It just turned out to be an abnormally fat lady, and even though she knew she had quite literally slammed me (imagine turning to see someone lift up and then slam, just as she did with her butt, a 15 pound bag of potatoes on you, and you might know how I felt) she didn´t even look at me. Then she pulled out a bag of cookies and began munching away, while I scowled from underneath her.

Another guy I set next to on the bus always rested his hand on his knee, and then somehow every five minutes had moved on or two of his fingers over to my knee adjacent to his. I´d make casual, increasingly violent, shifts and his hand would go back to fully resting on his own knee....but sure enough there it came over again. When he moved his hands away to answer his phone, I put my hands on my knees. Sure enough, he put his hands back and this time he was reaching over onto my hand. Then I just looked at him. And looked. He folded his arms and that was that.

-Absolutely nothing happens in Coronado. The young and old all go to bed at 8 pm, and I´ve had hardly any social life outside of the people I work with because of it. Despite this, I´ve become very fond of my family here. One morning at breakfast both Margarita and Uncle Tony told me they love me like a son, and I was smiling so big I forgot how to speak for a second. The people in Coronado are very good and caring...maybe it´s because they´re well rested.

-I have been measuring my time in Costa Rica through a piggy bank that I painted with host aunt Iris in my first week here. Every day after work I would put any of my coins under 100 colones in the piggy bank, and I knew that the heavier it got the closer I´d be to coming home. Where I was bad at keeping up with my blog, every day I´d remember to stick the coins in the blue and green piggy. Yesterday I tried putting a 20 colon coin in, and it got stuck sticking halfway out. Time is just about out; that´s some accurate pig.


As for life at The Tico Times:

-There are only two reporters who have been at the paper longer than me. In three months I saw the departure and hiring of two new reporters. The turnover rate is high in the world of international journalism, I guess, with people ready to jump from one project to the other. About a month ago, the editor called this big staff meeting and announced that she was retiring. So I´ve been here for some momentous changes in just three months.

-Telling people you work for The Tico Times is an automatic cred winner here with tourists. It´s a great asset for someone trying to make friends like me who´s travelling alone and lives in sleepy Coronado.

-My Spanish has improved by leaps and bounds only because working for the paper has forced me into constantly making contact with Spanish speakers. It comes out of me much more naturally now, and often times, like when I´m waiting on the bus, I can think to myself in Spanish.

-I have a lot in common with the people I work with, so I can´t complain that I spend so much time with them. They´re all fun loving but still responsible. We took a staff beach trip to Esterillos, south of Jaco, on the Pacific this weekend and had a jolly fiesta in the surf. Even though I haven´t written much for news, I don´t think I could have asked for a more helpful and interesting internship experience.


Alright, look forward to updates on:
-Walking a 25 km pilgrimage alone to the city of Cartago.
-A four day weekend in Nicaragua.
-My last week in Costa Rica, and returning to beautiful, sunny, hot, American, humid Alabama.