A Different Smile for a Different Face

Back from errands and not a moment too soon as it looks like the clouds are starting to roll in. I just took a stroll into the chaotic downtown san jose with one of the hostel employees. I have reason to believe she reads this so i will give her a name. Tara, i went to downtown san jose with Tara. The hostel will soon be changing its name to the rugged pineapple for legal reasons, but its definitely a pretty awesome name altogether. In honor of that, I have decided to be none other than 'rugged' for halloween. We hit the few san jose thrift stores in search of a flannel shirt. The downtown area was full of comotion. horns sounding from all sides, street vendors screaming promotions for their products, and of course the constant influx of consumers perusing window after window, shop after shop. It is a cluttered mess of miss matched items sold in the same establishment. One shop that tara noted in particular was a shop that only sold backpacks and camo shirts. to which i was supposed to understand that they solely go hand in hand. after a little while, we finally found everything i was looking for and so much more. It isnt too hard to be 'rugged' here in costa rica. for my get-up tomorrow i will be complete with what appears to look like a flannel shirt, but it is not exactly flannel. Ill lose the sleeves and expose some of my chest mane. I found a pair of jeans that i plan to turn into cutoffs with the trauma sheers that i have readily available. I new i wouldnt regret bringing those guys. bare feet... pretty rugged and i will by default pick up a case of what they call here 'hostel foot'. when all that is said and done, there is still something missing. the image just isnt quite pulled together yet. all over the central market, we kept seeing these goofy horse heads on a stick. no, not real horse heads, but cheaply made imitations. After not finding a suitable price, we resigned the idea of having one and continued our trek. a few shops later, we found a vender selling just the head and no stick for a considerably less price. a few seconds later, I had a horse head ready to put on top of a hostel broom. nothing says 'rugged' like somebody who strolls up on a trusty steed. all in all, tomorrow should turn out quite well.

The last week has been pretty slow because my tuesday interview was rescheduled and my wednesday interview was pushed to thursday. That interview was with a group called 'in lingua' and it is the school that everybody here in the hostel works for. The day leading up to it was spent listening to what everybody had to say about the school and about corey, the man who was to interview me. the bulk of the info was that these kids really enjoyed their jobs and it was a great place to work for. after getting directions to the place from a friend, i was off. There was no trouble in finding it and before i knew it i was sitting in a room with the man who could potentially hold my future employment. the interview was amazingly easy in fact, I barely did any talking at all. before i knew it, he was offering me a job for january and everything was honky dory. I sent a letter of confirmation to him this morning now i have got the next few months to get out and explore before settling down for a little while. It looks like the first order of business for traveling is to head to mal pais in costa rica, buy a surf board and spend the better part of november getting my surfing legs beneath me. after that, nicaragua is the next destination where i have had my heart set on climbing two volcanoes on the isla de ometepe in the middle of the country. after that, ill be moseying my way up into guatemala to meet a friend and travel with her for a bit and they slowly head back to costa rica to begin work. Id like to be off and traveling by monday so i have a little bit of work to do this weekend.

over the past week, it seems like i have been strumming life away. hours and hours of jamming, kicking out tunes and a little bit of solo practice. I have also met a girl who is a pretty good player and we have spent countless hours going back and forth, song for song, etc etc. unfortunately, she is leaving next week to go back to the states, but plans on returning in january. i think by then we will be ready to write some pretty cool songs together.

I guess thats about it for now. job is secured, now its time for some real fun.

Dura Vida

The messages finally came in and poor brian got his notice that he needed to get out of the country. As sad as it was, nobody could let this happen without doing something so the hostel threw a deportation party. The night was festive but with somber undertones. The guero just didnt taste as sweet and each imperial tossed back brought on more and more nastalgia. The night came to end with one final singalong of Old Crow's wagon wheel which is a tried and true favorite of any american country boy. The next morning I awoke and said my goodbyes before he boarded a taxi to the airport. The hostel has been a different place since, but it is keepin on and gearing up for a halloween party that should bring back the happy thoughts.

With the exception of the deportation blues, the last week has been pretty bland and basic. I have been waking up late to spend my days once again snooping around the internet to no avail. I had a few interviews scheduled this week but my tuesday interview was pushed back due to poor email correspondence. that being said, i tended to mope around the hostel not doing much of anything for the next few days. I have since kicked my sickness and am back to full speed. there is though, another hinderence to my mental state. It has been raining constantly with boisterous thunderstorms and the gutters have been overflowing on a regular basis which leaves you with a good five foot horizontal leap if you want to leave without going for a swim. Okay, five feet is doable, but the next challenge is a little more dicey. The five foot leap lands you directly in the middle of the street which is usally flooded with not just water but heavy traffic as well. if you can brave the floods and the cars, i guess you can leave. me however, resigned to staying inside and doing nothing but strummin the old geetar. I have actually become kind of a minstrel down here. pulling tunes out of the depths of my memory that I had thought i had forgotten long ago.

The other day within the hostel walls, i awoke to find that everything was pretty quiet. There were very few guests, and most of the employees were out. I took this change to grab my guitar and harmonica and set up shop in the extremely reverberant stairwell. I have wanted to do this for a long time but it always seemed like it would bother a lot of people. This morning however, if you happened to be int he hostel, you were subject to my noise. I made it through about one tune in the confidence filled stairwell before a guest who i thought had already left come walking through. He didnt have much to do and he is actually a musician in a band in puerto viejo so i coerced him into grabbing the hostel guitar and hangin out in the stairwel with me. we proceeded to kick out the tunes jamming and harmonizing for the next few hours. unfortunatley, our fun ran out when the guy busted a string on the hostel guitar. by this point, we had moved to the main room due to popular demand. the room had filled up a little bit and it was a bummer when he popped the string. conversation filled the room again I began to tell him the story of my guitar at the airport. I began this because he had popped the G string on his guitar. So i told him of trying to carry it on the plane and the guy who i was giving a lesson to that set all of those events in motion. When i was telling him about the guy tuning my guitar, i got to the part where he broke my string. I had had a few drinks at this point and was getting a little angry when telling the story so my voice had risen and when i got the part of the broken string, conversation from the rest of the room in some sort of social phenomenon, died out perfectly for me to bellow to this guy, "and the dude busted my G string!" The crowd, not paying attention before this comment quickly turned my way waiting for some sort of explanation. I fell silent and blushed like a little school girl. it took me a few seconds to regain my composure and clarify that it was ON MY GUITAR! BUSTED THE G STRING ON MY GUITAR! anyways, I have to go run some errands right now before the rain comes back, but there is much more to say so expect another post in the near future.

La Vida

a good way to spend a few nights before getting sick



not a bad crowd at all here in hostel galileo.

The Deportation Blues

It was inevitable, bound to happen. I was merely on borrowed time until it struck. My first costa rican head cold has staunchly made its presence known in my throat and sinuses. Do I deserve this you ask? quite plainly yes. yes i do. there has been an interesting group of people at the hostel over the last couple of days and i have found myself stayin gup until the wee hours of daylight drinking, singing, and strumming my cracked and sweaty guitar which on another note, still needs a name. back on point though, a few musicians from utah, yes eutaww were backpacking through and we got a pretty good jam going with them all night long. We got talking about long lost loves and influences and before we knew it, I was playing an operation ivy song that i dont think i have played since i was standing around with nothing to do while roddy produced the great western. for those of you who dont understand the reference, that is just how long it has been.

This little hostel at this time has really become quite the home to me. Ive gotten to know the owners and the staff pretty well. the other day, bria, the 27 year old co owner of the hostel found out that he was going to be deported for overstaying his visa. This was also sent to him in a very concise and unapologetic email from his costa rican lawyer who has dont absolutely no good. before the deportation news, the hostel would get served monthly from ex employees and this same lawyer i have come to learn has never won a case for them. Oh yes, and the lawsuits are from well before they owned the place. there is some stipulation that because they are gringo owners, they pretty much get trampled on by the legal system. Anyways, Brian is now working with a new lawyer but the front door is closed and he is anticipating immigration to come for him at any time. this wait and worry has now stretched out for two days and he recieved a 72 hour notice.

Yesterday, with nothing better to do, he set out drinking rather early and carried it strong into the night. A few teaching friends of the hostel owners came over for a bit and of course we got down to playing some tunes again. brian, drunk, depressed, and harmonica in hand decided to deliver a somber freestyle which later became known as the deportation blues.

As for me, I have finally curtailed my eccentric lifestyle and have spent all of today relaxing, drinking soup, and reading in the park. This is also kind of a bum week for me since my interviews arent until next week, so i have actually been spending a large part of each day nestled up with a book. Ive also been on a soup kick which started before i left the states. The soups here however have been very rich. todays was a tortilla soup with a tomato base. ill spare you guys the soup ramble and hope that in a day or two i will be nursed back to full health and have a wealth of worthwhile stories.

crack!

I forgot to mention one of the highlights of my trip a little earlier. at the place i stayed, both cillica the owner and tanya the woman who lives at and runs the place told us not to go hiking through the jungle to the beach at night. in america, the reason would be because there are crackheads out there. the spansih/dutch/german/english speaking refer to them as "the people with the problems with the crack." Beware!

Who's that band again? the one that sings jungle love?

Last friday, a dutch doctor, a traveling scot and a wayfaring american walked into a bar. we proceeded to fill ourselves up with the local beer "imperial" and believe me, i already miss the fresh hoppy taste of my alma mater sierra nevada. allen, the scot besides being a histerical scotsman, began telling me stories of how he learned the valuable skill of cutting cards to help get him through the tough times. he used to take it to vegas before they had the automatic counters and clean up before getting blacklisted from the casinos. he told me that never once has it gotten him in real trouble... oh wait, except that one time he was cutting cards in MOSCOW! he ended up getting tailed by the russian mob for a bit but eventually made it home safely. the bar we were drinking at had a VIP room in the back which was locked when we first got there. around 10:00 or so, it opened up and what do you know, there was a poker game going on. naturally, he decided to pick up a few bucks before his flight out the next morning. He had actually been pickpocketed a few days back so he took the opportunity that presented itself. I still have no idea how card cutting works, but it was pretty incredible to watch him just clean up with the disgruntled costa ricans around him.

before the vip room had opened, the three of us were challened to a game of pool by a few of the locals. we were doing pretty well until the house rules came into effect and suddenly we found ourselves getting creamed. they ticos were laughing histerically at us. after the three on three game, allen went off to the vip room and marye the dutch girl (pronounced similar to mariah( and i were challenged again. Once more, we were had due to the wacky tico rules but we still gave them a run for their money. after we were finished losing, marye started to tell me about her plans to go to puerto viejo the next morning. after a little bit of persuasion and a lot of alcohol consumption, i conceded to dropping my job hunt for a bit and experiencing some of the real costa rica.

the next morning, I rescheduled my interviews for the following week and went with marye to the bus station to depart for puerto viejo. her plan was to go to a long lost nannys residence to stay and enjoy for a while. yes, a long lost nanny who lived in the netherlands but now is in CR.

the bus ride was beautiful, full of dense jungle, many banana plantations, and thick cloud forests. upon arrival, we were initially going to camp at what we thought was a campground but turned out to be a very lame sandbox with bad reggae and goofy scenery. disillusioned, we headed down the street a few miles to marye's nanys place.

her place was breathtaking as well. surrounded by jungle and wildlife, she had an open air house with wooden furniture and a locked off area upstairs. she also has cabins which she rents out to tourists. about three hundred meters down a dirt path, you part the brush to find a secluded and pristine carribean beach front. it was a little awkward for me because it is on the east coast of the island so there was no ocean sunset. dont worry, i got over it.

that night, Cillica, the nanny came into town and we went to dinner with her and tanya, a german woman who lives on the property and handles most of the homes. we went a little ways down the street to a place called jungle love. yes, any of you who know my problems with remembering steve millers name should know that it took me a few days to place the song. jungle love was a little resturant owned by some american expats and young ones at that. in puerto viejo, aside from the carribean rice and beans, the popular dish was pizza and that is precisely what jungle loves specialty was.

the next few days were filled with hiking through the jungle, checking out the neighboring towns, and biking everywhere imaginable. I was suprised to find that there are squirrels in the jungle. squirrels just like you would see in california, but these squirrels are skilled at jungle things such as gripping on to frail plants and getting their hands on all the wild fruit. also, i happened to see the fabled giant butterflies of costa rica. shamefully, i still dont know what they are called, but they are huge and they have a majestic blue backside and a black underbelly.

Have you ever seen a guitar sweat? I have. the air is so moist over there that condensation was collecting on the body of the instrument. i would have to wipe it down a few times a day. also, with moisture like that, the mosquitos were out in full force and my feet once again cease to be feet and are some conglomeration of flesh and puffy swelling. the nets we slept in only did so much good. I would find new things to itch on the hourly.

yesterday, after swimming in the ocean during the pouring rain and remaining very warm, i found myself later in the night in my room strumming out bob dylans dont think twice. its a song i have not played in years and with a new sense of the tune, decided it was time to pack up and head back to san jose to get some work done. the next morning marye and i parted ways and i braved the nearly five hour bus back to the city. I also happened to get extremely carsick which i was shocked about. i never get car sick, but the massive amount of brake fumes got the better of me. as for now, i am back here at the hostel gallileo and settling in for a night of zombie movies with the other travelers. tomorrow i have to continue my job hunt and begin refreshing myself with the english grammar that i have long since forgot.

This time... it really may have been poor directions

Yesterday was my first interview. I was able to get there with the directions i was given without any problem. the interview went well but they want a year commitment which is something i am actually considering heavily at this point. with the full time teacher status, they offer very intensive spanish language courses that i might be hard pressed to find anywhere else... well, hardpressed to find for free. the semester, like most other schools around here doesnt start until january so i may just pick up and go for a few months if i can ensure a job for next year. my way back from the interview, directionally was kind of a disaster. the bus drivers were giving me faulty information and i ended up taking two buses and a cab home. on the bright side i think it all cost me about four dollars. I also met a beautiful tican woman on one of the buses and she gave me a little bit of positive insight into the country. My cabby was awesome too. I actually held a pretty good conversation with him in spanish for the entire ride home. the streets were going crazy last night because it was the CR vs US soccer game and if CR won, they would ensure a spot in the cup. every time they would score, i would hear horns blowing, screams from the streets and madness from inside the local pubs. Although it was inconvienent, the ride home was well worth it.

This morning i had a second interview with a different school supposedly a fifteen minute walk away from my hostel. I set out at 915 to solidify at least a 1000 arrival. I dont know if i had mentioned it before, but there are no street signs or addresses here and if you know me, then you know how directionally challenged i am with the advent of street signs and addresses. here were my directions:

From the Universal Book store / Mcdonalds in sabana sur, 200 meters south,
100 west, 50 south. Second building on the right, white gate. I have some
time tomorrow Thursday at 10:00am. I'll await your confirmation.

This is also considered the address. I spent a good hour hiking around various side streets and avenues but all to no avail. This place was amazingly impossible for me to find. So here I am back at the hostel trying to send out an email to reschedule. I am also hoping to hear from a number of other schools today.

Life in san jose, well, la sabana is pretty dull right now. there just isnt that much to do in this city and it is incredibly smoggy. with the weekend approaching, i think i might head to the coast and see what kind of trouble i can drum up over there, but it all depends on what i hear from the other schools today.

These aren't the droids you are looking for

the good news is that i have made it into costa rica and to my hostel safe and sound. the bad news... well i got a few nicks and bruises along the way. it all started off swimmingly on monday night when my parents dropped me off at the airport. we went up to the luggage check where i got to use my jedi mind powers. the way it works when you go to costa rica is that you need to provide proof upon exiting the country that you have a planned exit from the destination. of course i had no such thing nor did i want to have anything similar so i did some research on a local bus line that treks into panama and put it all to memory. when asked about my exit ticket, i simply regurgitated the information with brilliant conviction and thus swayed her to believe i truly was going to panama on november 14th at seven thirty in the morning.

after that battle was won, there was still one more looming over me. i told the woman that i wanted to carry my guitar on the plane and i didnt want to check it with the other luggage. without having to put up a fight, she says its no problem and instantly put a big smile on my face. i then checked my backpack, said an emotional goodbye to my parents and headed up the escalator to go through customs.

this process was simple, but my deodorant set of a red flag so they searched my belongings. fortunatley i didnt have any contraband in my guitar case which is usually what the hold up is. once i was through customs i had a few hours to kill so i made some victorious last phone calls telling everybody how great things were going. with still about 45 minutes to go before boarding, a man called out to me, "hey guitar guy!" and he motioned me over to his restaurant table. he told me he was going to pay me to give him a guitar lesson to which i replied, its your lucky day, im an instructor. i pulled out the guitar and handed it to him as i fished for my tuner in my bag. once i found it, he insisted on tuning it. letting him was my first mistake. i had detuned the guitar so it wouldnt be affected by the pressure differences during the flight and this guy had a tough time figuring out which strings were supposed to be tuned to which frequencies. after guiding him through the first three strings, he got a little anxious and cranked up the G string... yes its always the G string... wayyyyy too tight and it snapped. boom. just like that, im now down a very precious string of which i was really hoping to last me quite some time.

he apologizes and then for the next little while i try to help him learn a fleetwood mac song he had written down on paper. a ways into the lesson i noticed that the plane had begun boarding and my chances for storing the guitar were dwindling. i told the guy i needed to pack up, he gave me five bucks for my troubles and i ran onto the plane. three people before i made it into vessel, i heard the flight attendant start shouting "theres no more room! everything has to be checked from here on out!"

my heart sunk a little bit and i pleaded with alberto the man taking my guitar to find some room on the plane. he gave me his word he personally would take care of it and everything would be just fine... but he had to check it. i slowly meandered heartbroken and torn into the plane without my little travel buddy. i also had a very bad feeling about the situation.

i arrived in florida this morning, waited out the layover and then hopped on the plane to costa rica. a few hours later i was off the plane and eager to see how well alberto lived up to his word. i got my luggage quickly and then found my guitar on a seporate conveyor belt. i pulled everything aside and gave it a quick inspection. all looked well.

from there i walked outside where a girl in a backpack flagged me down and convinced me to split a ride from a driver... specifically not a taxi... to the san jose bus station. it was a good deal so i gave in and went over to meet pablo our driver. pablo was an energetic character who was blasting the CR vs brazil soccer game. apparently the CR team is doing very. so well in fact, government offices shut down to watch the game. the same thing will happen again tomorrow and there will be a big party if the team wins the cup. anyways, pablo drops off the girl at the san jose station and told me he would take me to my hostel at no extra charge. a few minutes later, i said my goodbye, thanked him and walked into the hostel galileo. i was greeted warmly by the hostel owner who actually gave me a 'welcome to CR' shot and told me to wait a few minutes while she prepared the room.

at that point i took out my guitar to repair the broken string and decided to give it a full bodied inspection once again. thats when i saw it. there is a big crack in the wood on the bottom of the body where the strap is connected. alberto betrayed me. i knew something like this was inevitable, but i wanted to prolong the incident at least beyond the first day! so tomorrow along with collecting information and hunting down jobs, i will be filing some very angry complaints with spirit air. what a bummer.

on the bright side, it looks like i should have some good leads on jobs because of the people who live at the hostel. all in all, costa rica seems beautiful but my part of san jose is a pretty congested and smoggy city. i did however enjoy my first cup of costa rican coffee from this very nice woman in a very tiny hole in the wall cafe. it was fantastic... and she understood my spanish.

all this on the first day, i can only imagine what is to come next.


scott

"The Highway Sets the Traveler's Stage"

Well, for the past year i'm sure the greater lot of you have all heard me speaking boldly about getting the hell out of here trying my hand at living in a Spanish speaking country. Setback after setback turned this bold talk into nothing more than a distant dream that one day... far in the future, might come true. After finally getting employed and working the happy-go-lucky ambulance service for the past few months, that distant dream has grown and developed into a reality.

Tomorrow I head to Los Angeles to spend my final days in the United States and depart for Costa Rica on Monday night. Come Tuesday morning, I wil be in a far off land where I will then begin a race that I am very familiar with. The race to find employment. Before that race begins, there will be the seemingly simple task of finding my hostel for the next few nights. I have been alerted that in Costa Rica, street signs and addresses exist, but are not used for directions. Directions are given by landmarks in the general area. To get to my hostel, I have a few names of local landmarks that I am to ask anybody on the street about and supposedly get a finger pointing me in the right direction. We shall see.

If anybody wants to give me a call, wish me well, what have you, I will have my cellphone handy until monday night around 7pm. As for after I am gone, I will try to keep up with email as much as possible as well as leave a detailed description of my travels on this blog. I hope to hear from you guys along the way.

-Scott