¡Hola!

Greetings from San José! Let’s backtrack about three weeks… I arrived in San José from snow and ice engulfed Philadelphia. The first week was spent getting situated in the city I’ll be living in til mid-May and introduced to the academic program through the International Center for Development Studies (ICDS) and Universidad Latina (ULatina) with the other 18 or so students, all from around the country, but together in Costa Rica to study development and the associated environmental, social, economic, and political issues and innovations, with Latin America as a focus.

 Much of this week was spent being familiar/lost in San José and esp. my neighborhood, Vargas Araya. The food here is pretty great! A lot of beans, chicken, fish, and always the freshest fruit. In general everything is relatively fresher and comes from much closer than in the US. Every Saturday morning there’s a farmer’s market down the street that all kinds of fruits, vegetables, meats, cheeses, etc. and even most of the produce in the local supermarket is organically and locally grown. Luckily my host mother, Mary, is a wonderful cook and it seems like everyday I eat something different for dinner, except gallo pinto(rice and beans) which is served with essentially every meal in the house.

During the first week, ICDS took the entire group to Tres Rios, a town in the mountains overlooking San José. There we spent a day getting more acquainted with everyone and learning about Costa Rica and the academics for the semester. Upon leaving Tres Rios, We stopped in Escazú, a town just west of San José. First we visted a local man who has been trying preserve the traditions of his ancestors in the region. He has been molding, shaping, and constructing full body masks in the same process his grandfather used and passed down. He refuses to sell any of the masks, but he loves to display them for anyone interested in the local culture. The masks are brought out for any public celebration – holidays, weddings, school openings, etc. His grandson, son, and him demonstrated the traditional dances and then let us attempt to the customary dances.

After leaving the mask man, we visited a small sugar cane farmer. At one time there were over 50 small farmers in the area, now only 2 exist. He displayed the whole process – harvesting, pressing using ox to power the press, and the final sugar cane production and packaging. In addition we were able to taste the cane through the process from raw cane to pressed product for consumption. The whole time, our tour guide, a cousin of the farmer, was taking drinks from a water bottle of homemade chicha – liquor made from corn or yuca.

The last stop of the day was to an artisan woodworking shop. The artist harvests all the wood himself from his garden and does so in a way to ensure he will have enough for many years to come. He crafts beautiful boxes, bowls, humidors, and anything from a variety of woods. Before leaving he gave me a block of some sort of finished wood (I think Guayacán) just laying around and simply said – enjoy. So now I have a nice piece of Guayacán!