School Days

For the last two weeks we have been taking Spanish classes with the International Spanish School of Costa Rica. Unlike many schools, the lessons here are completely conversational with grammar points covered as and when necessary. This posed somewhat of a challenge for both Zoë, who knows quite a lot of Spanish but isn’t particularly talkative, and Colin, who can be particularly talkative but didn’t know that much Spanish!

Although the classes took place in the spacious but homely and welcoming garage of Doña Ligia’s house, and not a dedicated school building, this certainly does not indicate a lack of dedication or professionalism on the part of the tutors (and directors), Rafa & Wes, who undertook a 2 hour commute by bus every morning to come to Heredia to teach us (and then another 2 hours home again). And it also enabled us to chat with Doña Ligia and meet members of her family.

Listening and talking only in Spanish for 4 hours a day (or more!), Monday to Friday , for two weeks was at times difficult, however it was an enjoyable and largely stress free experience, and we don’t think we would have learned as much in this short space of time in another school with a different methodology. The tutoring was mostly one-to-one with Colin paired with Rafa and Zoë with Wes (pairings which both seemed to work very well and felt comfortable), joining together for a coffee break mid lesson where we had delicious treats to eat (sometimes baked by Wes – yum yum).

We must have talked about EVERYTHING … from our childhoods and family history through to topics such as Costa Rican and Scottish culture, political issues and the current economic crisis, along with our own personal interests such as computers and Tai Chi. And, of course, what we would do if we were fish or had been living in England during the bubonic plague outbreak of the 1300’s …. (all hail to the subjunctive!)

After spending so long each day with Rafa & Wes it will seem a little odd not to see them every day. Now we just need to practice what we have learned in the real world.

Zoë's Spanish Phrase of the Day

Si tuviéramos más dinero, estudiaríamos más con Rafa y Wes.

Where we are.

Costa Rica, the Central American country (not to be confused with the island of Puerto Rico), is divided into 7 provinces (provincias), each of which is divided into a number of counties (cantones), and each of these into a number of districts (distritos).

Our home in Costa Rica is officially located in the district of Santa Lucia, in the county of Barva, in the province of Heredia (Santa Lucia de Barva de Heredia). However, for most practical reasons relating to our everyday life it is located in San Josecito de San Rafael de Heredia. The house was designed and built by our friends, Victoria & Peter. They have since moved to a new property close by, so this house is on the market – in the meantime, we took the option to rent it for 3 months as we were already familiar with both the house and the area having previously stayed with our friends here.

The house has a virtually unobstructed view across the central valley (meseta central or valle central) to the west, which affords us wonderful views of the sunset from both the roof terrace and big picture windows in the master bedroom. If this sounds grand … then, for us at least, it is. The house is bigger than the one we have in Aberdeen and certainly has better views!

Our home is a 25 minute walk from the centre of the city of Heredia (the capital of the province of Heredia). Or, more accurately stated, it is a 25 minute downhill walk to the centre of Heredia from the house. It takes longer to get back because it is all uphill – we usually wimp out and take the bus!

It is a 20 minute walk to the centre of the city of San Rafael (city by name, small town by UK standards). This is where we usually go to buy our groceries, either at the weekly farmers market (feria) or the Palí supermercado. We choose to shop here instead of Heredia because we can walk back without having to negotiate the killer hill*, but if we need to pick up a few bits while we are out and about in Heredia we’ll either go to the Mercado Central, Palí or Mas x Menos (another supermercado).

For items that are more difficult to come by, or “pequeños lujos” (little luxuries), we plan to go to the Automercado (which sells a lot of imported foods that you can’t buy elsewhere, at a price, of course) which is a 20 minute walk from the house. But so far, we haven’t had any little luxuries as with the current weak £ our budget is a little stretched.

And, naturally, the house is also within easy walking distance of the Taoist Tai Chi Society clubhouse … which is conveniently situated right next to yet another Palí! So, walk to Tai Chi, pick up a few necessities from Palí, get the bus back up the hill…

* The hill is actually the slope of Barva volcano. Fortunately this volcano has been dormant since 1492.

Zoë's Spanish Phrase of the Day

Mi papá montó en avestruz.

This was a phrase that came out of my mouth in my Spanish lesson today.... erm...

Manos Abiertas

Today, after Spanish school, we had a very tasty and very cheap lunch at a most unexpected location. We have previously visited the Monteverde Heladeria for ice-cream (as one would expect), but today we went in to get a quick sandwich. We only expected to get a small sandwich for the price, but ended up getting the equivalent of a foot long subway, a drink (fresco) AND an ice-cream cone for pudding. Total cost for 2 of these meals was 2400 colones (less than £3).

Later, we went to Manos Abiertas with some folk from the Taoist Tai Chi Society of Costa Rica. We were invited to visit along with a choir group from Heredia. Manos Abiertas is a home for profoundly disabled people which is run by nuns. Last year the Society collected toys for the home and this year the donation was something very practical – nappies for adults. The choir group sang various Christmas songs (in Spanish of course) to entertain the residents (and nuns and nurses who worked there). It was a good experience, with many of the residents showing a lot of enthusiasm for the singing.

Zoë’s Spanish Phrase of the day

Detrás del cerco ladra un perro chico que se considera grande.

This comes from Colin’s “First Spanish Reader”. We think this nicely sums up part of Costa Rican life as we have already encountered many of these in our short time here!

Rice & Beans

We headed into Heredia after Tai Chi class this morning to buy a few bits that we needed, and to get something eat. We were planning to go Vishnu/Mango Verde, a vegetarian place we really like, but passed a soda on the way that took our fancy.

A soda is a small diner that serves traditional Costa Rican food (comida típica). They vary in size, starting from a kiosk with a few bar stools at the counter, through a small room in the front of house with a couple of tables up to something like the larger one we were in today – which probably had about 10 tables (as well as several bar stools).

We had the most typical of soda meals, a casado. From Wikipedia, whose writer phrased it more clearly than we could: “A Casado is a typical Costa Rican meal consisting of rice, beans, fried plantain bananas, salad, a tortilla, and an entree of choice that may include chicken, beef, pork, and others.”

Today ours had rice, beans, plantain, a couple of slices beetroot & tomato (salad!), chips and fish. Along with a natural each, the total cost for the two of us was 3800 colones (just under £5 at todays miserable exchange rate of 771.5 CRC to a GBP).

Zoë’s Spanish Phrase of the Day:
Acabo de ver un hombre que iba por la calle en uniciclo.

Suggested usage: When you are enjoying a quiet casado and out of the corner of your eye you see a man on a unicycle amongst all the traffic on the road. Of course, your husband doesn’t believe you. But I did see a man on unicycle going down the street. Honest.

Please note that I am not sure of the grammar for this phrase, so if I am wrong, please correct me!

Dings that make you hmmm

From next week we are going to be attending Spanish lessons for 4 hours a day, 5 days a week for 2 weeks. So today we went into Heredia to scout the location of the school so that we don’t get lost on our first day. Addresses here are not like addresses in Scotland. That would be too easy. The clue is in the Spanish word for address: dirección. Addresses here are given as a set of directions e.g. 100m east of the football field, white house with blue trim. This is great, as long as you know where the football field is. And as long as you know that 100m doesn’t actually mean 100m (it actually means one block, which could be any distance at all, really). And as long as there is only one white house with blue trim in the vicinity…

There was also disappointment today when we discovered the microwave that we bought yesterday did not work. We bought the cheapest one in the shop (seeing as we are only going to need it for three months), so it is an old school turn the knob to set the time type. Unfortunately all it did when you turned the knob was go “ding”. Cue a return trip to the shop and a swap undertaken. Now we have a microwave that heats stuff up as it’s meant to (and still goes “ding” when finished).

And so to...

Zoë’s Spanish Phrase of the Day
Compramos este ayer pero no funciona. No hace nada.

Saludos de Costa Rica

Well, we made it. And it’s raining! Still, at least the rain here is warm and not that icy cold, sideways rain we get in Aberdeen.

We arrived here late last night after a rather uneventful journey. Here are some highlights:

• It was snowing when we left Aberdeen – the plane had to be de-iced, which meant we left about an hour late. We think this was Aberdeen bidding us farewell and reminding us what we will be missing during the next three months!


• We were pleasantly surprised at Heathrow not to have to remove our laptops from our bags for the security check. At both Aberdeen & Newark we had to take them out of the bags, and Colin also had his bag searched both times because he didn’t remove Rana (our network drive). The security guy at Newark asked Colin if he had a flux capacitor in his bag. Great Scott!


• We didn’t have much time in Heathrow & Newark due to our flights arriving an hour late each time, a theme which continued to our arrival in San Jose. We did have some time at Newark though to people watch and play our airport waiting game: “Tell me why [insert description of person waiting in lounge] is going to Costa Rica.” Not exactly a catchy title, but fun and laughter-filled nevertheless…

Today we have been settling into our home – we’ll write more about where we are living at a later date. We went for a walk through town to pick up some essentials, and then our friend, Peter, kindly drove us into Heredia where we purchased a kettle (hervidor), microwave (horno microondas) and double electric rings (hornilla eléctrica doble). So we now have basic cooking facilities which is, naturally, very useful. Peter also lent us an umbrella, which we hope won’t be quite so useful.

Zoë’s Spanish Phrase of the Day:
Este es un avión, no es un tambor.

Situation for use: When the guy sitting next to you from Newark to San Jose listens to his iPod loudly and insists on tapping out the rhythms on the window and tray table (just in case you couldn’t already hear it issuing from his earphones). No, I didn’t say it … but I wanted to!