Facebook

I just set up a Facebook account for the first time yesterday.

Definition:

Facebook, n: A socially perpetuated manner of self-deception in which one is enabled to believe that dozens or hundreds of other people actually care about his/her well-being. See also: fifteen minutes of fame quote, originally attributed to Andy Warhol

I've had my account for only about 15 hours, and I already have 18 Friends. If this trend continues, I can make about 30 new Friends every day, so in one year I can have 10950 Friends! If I live for 70 more years, then by the time I die I will have 766500 Friends (and that's not even including the Friends I make on Feb. 29 on leap years)! If I devote myself wholeheartedly to Facebook, then I can probably at least double this number (because relationships are what really count in life, right?). I can have 1,533,000 Friends! What a happy, satisfied person I'll be at my death, to have had 1.5 million Friends. How fortunate, to know so many so intimately. My hat's off to Mark Zuckerberg; he has given humanity the glorious gift of Interconnectivity. Before the modern era, you could have maybe five really good friends. Now, you can have millions! Plus, I'll have the added perk of having the population of a small country to mourn me once I die!

How on Earth did a Millennial survive for 17 years without even a Facebook account? Did he live in a cave, wearing a wolf skin for clothing?

(To the previous question I reply: No. I was Tarzan's brother and lived in the jungle. Wolves are my family, I would never kill one and wear its skin.)

Yeah. Don't take anything in the previous two paragraphs seriously. But really, my Facebook experience so far has been, on the whole, very positive. In a sense it felt like the first time I saw James Cameron's Avatar. (You know, the movie with all of the CGI and blue aliens?) I saw it on DVD several years after it came out, and I was really impressed by it and wanted to talk about it. However, there wasn't anyone to discuss it with, simply because everyone had already seen it years before. The same goes with Facebook. (In a sense it could be kind of embarrassing, because I kind of feel like a 65-year-old who just created a Facebook account to connect with his grandkids. Feeling like a senior citizen is not normally one of my hobbies.)

It's certainly a great way to connect and stay in the loop with how people are doing. Although I said it facetiously a couple paragraphs back, I am serious: My hat is off to Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook is really cool way to communicate. (Why am I even saying this? Almost all of my readers already know this so I'm just exposing my relative ignorance.)

Anyway, I seriously recommend you all stop reading my blog and start making new Facebook Friends. If you want to have any chance of matching the 1.5 million friends I'll have, you have to start now.

Final entry, Costa Rica -- a group picture (with more people than I originally thought there'd be!), horses, and Facebook

As I write this I'm at the airport preparing to return to the U.S.; it's been really great being here.

This past week I went to my daily Spanish classes, of course; additionally, on Wednesday after classes there was an optional activity to learn how to make empanadas (I don't have any photos of this, unfortunately; suffice it to say that miraculously mine didn't taste terrible, which is what you'd expect given my violent history with everything involving food preparation).

Friday was my last day of classes, which meant that I had to write a brief speech and read it to my classmates. Earlier that week, I'd been feeling kind of sad that I was only going to be presenting my speech to two other students and that in the group photo afterwards there would be so few people. (The previous week the Michigan students hadn't participated in the farewell when two other students, Martijn and Lucas, had left; they're in a totally separate program because they're actually here as part of their university classes.)

But many of them decided to listen in and be in my group photo, which was really great. (Thanks Rachel; it was your idea first.)

That day after classes, many students, including myself, went in a group to participate in a horseback-riding activity nearby (to the best of my knowledge none of us actually ride horses; it was a very tourist-driven business in which you sit on the horse and the horses are led around through the countryside. I think it's fair to say that I now know that I do not have any natural talent with horses.)

I loved the mist here; it just seemed to add an additional
flavor of adventure here.

That's me, obviously. Clearly
the horse isn't all that interested
in looking at the camera. Whatever.

After this, I returned to my host family's house. That night they celebrated their son Daniel's birthday (now he's 19).

And today I left.

Last photos of my host family's house:

Just in case anyone's interested, here's what I actually said in my presentation:

¡Hola a todos! Yo quería decir algo profundo y difícil para entender en mi discurso, pero me di cuenta de que esto no es posible para mí. En lugar de esto, yo escribí algo un poco melodramático.
Mi tiempo aquí en Costa Rica y específicamente en la escuela Academia Tica ha terminado como la puesta de sol. Regresaré a los Estados Unidos mañana. Aquí, he tenido la oportunidad de practicar mucho, y creo que no podré practicar allá como aquí, desafortunadamente. No obstante, espero aprender más español en los EE.UU., espero que este viaje sea sólo el principio de una peregrinación increíble, y espero poder hablar y escuchar y leer y escribir en español y asi poder comunicarme con otras personas hispanohablantes con fluidez. No sé si tendré tiempo para esto, no sé si otras actividades matarán mi deseo, pero tengo esperanza, tengo fe, que ¡esto no es el fin!
Pero ahora necesito despedirme. En serio, voy a extrañarlos. Muchas gracias a mi profesores por enseñarme español. Gracias a los otros estudiantes también; voy a recordar todo de esta experiencia. Espero encontrarlos de nuevo después en mi vida.
Y un consejo para los otros estudiantes: continúen aprendiendo español, busquen la senda del conocimiento y caminen por ella, y ¡continúen haciendo su tarea! Porque si no la hacen, Santiago [un profesor] va a asesinarlos. Muchas gracias a todos, y pura vida.

Told you it was a bit melodramatic. (Where's the English translation? Where's the English translation?) Because I'm a terrible person I'm not going to translate this; I'm just going to leave the Spanish. (Oh, darn!)

Yesterday night I set up a Facebook account for the first time, which is such a momentous event that it certainly deserves its own entry, doesn't it? (Yes, it does. I have plenty of cheerful sarcasm stored up for it, so it should be a fairly entertaining post.)

Questions? Comments? Post them below!

Costa Rica, Week 3

Hey everybody!
The 15th, a week before yesterday, my host family and I went to one of their friends' houses.

This is an oven and stove. You burn wood in it, as shown, and this in turn provides the heat for both the chamber on the left, which acts as an oven, and the top surface, which acts as a stove.

This past week, I used a new textbook, at the B1 level. A brief word about the various levels of Spanish:
There are a bunch of exams of varying difficulty given by the Instituto Cervantes, called the Diplomas de Español como Lengua Extranjera, or DELE exams for short. The various levels are A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, and C2. A1 is the lowest level, and an A1 certificate essentially demonstrates that you can use the present tense (though not necessarily very well) and that you won't die if you go to a Spanish-speaking country: you can ask "where's the bathroom?" (¿dónde está el baño?) and basic things like that. Really, I don't see what the point would be of even getting an A1 certificate. Passing the hardest level, C2, would demonstrate that your grasp of the Spanish language was greater than that of the average native Spanish speaker. I'm not taking a DELE exam, but the textbook I'm using is at the B1 level.

On Tuesday, I went with a couple of other students to San Jose (with a guide from our school) and looked around.

Las paredes exteriores de esta escuela son de metál.

plantas de café

Templo de Música en el Parque Morazán

Helado de canela en el mercado central.
Es muy, muy rica.

Un parte del muro de Berlín

On Wednesday, I participated in a dance class at the school where an instructor taught us (or rather, ineffectually tried to teach us) merengue, salsa, and bachata. Before the dance lesson, I didn't know how to dance. Now, I still don't know how to dance. But I had fun, and that's what counts, right?

On Thursday, I took the bus to downtown San Jose and had a look around. Afterwards, I didn't really know where to go to find a bus to Coronado (because when I went with the group on Tuesday I wasn't paying that much attention), so afterwards I just wandered around until I found a bus with the word "Coronado" on it (because that's where I'm staying). It's an incredibly inefficient way to find a bus, but it was still light outside, so everything was ok.

¿Por qué comí un helado de McDonald's
en Costa Rica? ¿Por qué no?

On Saturday, I went on a guided tour with a bunch of other people.
Ziplines near the Parque Nacional de Braulio Carrillo.

Poison dart frogs!

After the tour, we were dropped off in downtown San Jose, at the Parque Morazán.
And that's when I realized I had a problem. I didn't know where the bus stop was. (In my original draft of this blog entry I had a big long list of the problems I had trying to find a bus, but I removed it because I don't want my parents to freak out. I'll tell them about it in person in about a week.) Suffice it to say that it took me a while but I eventually found a bus.

Anyway, today's Monday, and this is my last week here! In one sense it's too bad I'm already leaving, but in another I'm glad to be returning home.

Questions? Comments? Post them below!

Costa Rica, end of Week 2

Wow. Week 2 went a lot faster than week 1. I've found that any time I do something for an extended period of time, normally the first week seems the longest and after that events begin to become a blur (albeit a blur occasionally punctuated by bright flashes).

I'm still going to school every weekday. I'm pretty excited because on Friday, 14 college-age students from the U.S. arrived, and until now I was the only person from the U.S. who was going to the Academia Tica school here in Coronado, Costa Rica. Now, I'll be in the company of other gringos! (Incidentally, I'm using the word 'gringos' facetiously here; in reality I find it ever-so-slightly offensive when applied to me. To me, it sounds vaguely like the word 'gorilla'. I guess the moral here is never to apply pejorative/derogatory language to anyone, keeping in the spirit of "do to others as you'd have them do to you".)

A couple days back there was a volcanic eruption in the mountain Turrialba, which blew a significant amount of ash into Coronado. (By significant I mean that there was a visible amount on roofs of buildings, if you were above them and looked very closely. It wasn't inches deep or anything.) Ash can be a slight eye-irritant, I found. (Wow, what a surprise!)

On Wednesday, myself and a couple of other students made banana ceviche (ceviche banano) as part of an optional after-class activity. The fact that it wasn't terrible, given the fact that I helped make it, is a profound testament to the simplicity of the recipe. (Incidentally, to make this we used completely unripe bananas -- as in, totally green on the outside -- which we then boiled for several minutes to soften them. I wonder if you could even make this recipe in the U.S., because in the U.S. it's difficult to find completely unripe bananas. Sure, you can find some halfway green-yellow ones, but to find several that are absolutely unequivocally unripe is hard. Look in a grocery store and see if you can find a single really, really unripe banana.)

As I stated in my last entry, I'm not taking a ton of pictures here, unfortunately (as I'm sure you've gathered by my blog entry thus far).

Anyway, this is the end of my second week here, and I'm still alive. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to post them.

Costa Rica, end of Week 1

Sorry I'm not posting more. The thing is, because I have classes every weekday, this doesn't seem as much like a vacation (which is when I normally write my blog entries) and more like-- well, like school, except entirely in Spanish, and the only class is Spanish. (In other words, not an ever-changing panorama of exquisitely beautiful sights each day, which is what I'd be seeing if I were traveling around in Costa Rica.) Week 1 of classes went fairly smoothly. This weekend, my host family went to a beach resort in Puntarenas, Costa Rica, and they took me with them. (Puntarenas is a province in western Costa Rica, FYI. Don't confuse it with Punta Arenas in Chile.)

Day one of classes, I saw one professor who struck fear into my heart. Just from his face and facial hair, I decided that he certainly taught upper-level Spanish and his class was probably extremely difficult. I certainly hoped I wouldn't be put into his class. And guess what? My initial surmise was actually right, more or less. I wasn't put into his class, because he's teaching upper-upper-upper-level Spanish to a couple of students from the Netherlands to prepare them for their C1 Spanish exam. (Passing the DELE C1 Spanish exam essentially shows that you have native-like proficiency in the Spanish language.) Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover! (Actually you can't, because whenever I've talked to him he's been really friendly, and he tries to speak so as to be understood -- which means that when he's talking to me or other lower-level students, he uses a fairly limited vocabulary and speaks comparatively slowly. This is a far cry from the foreboding impression I got when I first saw him.)

As far as language-learning goes, I know a few more words than I used to know. I don't think there's been any dramatic improvement, but hopefully that will change.

Incidentally, I did see Captain America: Civil War a couple of days ago, and it's pretty good. (No movie spoilers here, sorry!)

Anyway, here are a couple of pictures from Puntarenas:

Regardless, I got a little bit sunburned today, especially behind my ears, on my shoulders, and (I think) the back of my neck. But mostly, I'm fine.

sunburn!

Thanks for reading!

Questions? Comments? Post them!

Costa Rica, Days 1-2

Yesterday (May 1st) I arrived in Costa Rica at about 7 a.m. As expected, there was a driver waiting for me at the airport who drove me to the house of my host family. The members of my host family are a mom, a dad, and a son, Daniel. We drove around the city a little bit, stopped at a market (mercado in Spanish), and returned to the house.

my host family

Daniel offered to help me with my homework today; he’s pretty friendly. He plays football, is in high school, and has a girlfriend, Kimberly, who I also met.

Today, German (the dad) walked to the school with me, showing me where it is. (It’s about a 40-minutes’ walk.) The instructors only speak Spanish unless it’s absolutely necessary to use English. I’m the only person from the U.S. who’s there. Most of the people are from Germany. To the best of my knowledge, there are only two native english speakers there (including professors): me and another (somewhat older) female student from Canada. It’s really weird being in a room with several people, and they sometimes (outside of class) spoke to each other in German, and I was by far in the minority because I don’t speak any languages except English and a little Spanish. They speak perfect English, though, which is great because trying to converse in Spanish would be a royal pain.

I’m at level A1, which is pretty basic Spanish. In the classroom I'm in, there's only one other student, a 19-year-old German girl, who speaks fluent English, so we can communicate effectively (outside of class; in class we're expected to speak in Spanish). The nice thing is that my knowledge of Spanish is a little bit ahead of the current level of the instructor’s teaching, because that means that I don’t have to be stressed out about keeping up.

I had a good deal of homework, but I've completed it. Daniel kindly checked over my homework (tarea) for errors (and found a few).

In other news, Captain America: Civil War is playing in Costa Rican theaters right now, and apparently on Wednesday there’s a two-for-one discount (which means Daniel and I will probably go see it together). If I see it Wednesday, I’ll see it two days before it’s even released in the U.S.! Yay! (And apparently in Costa Rica they play Hollywood movies in English with Spanish subtitles, so I’ll even understand what’s being said! Not that that's totally necessary in all superhero movies anyway; plot oftentimes seems to play second fiddle to explosions and CGI, doesn't it?)

Tomorrow there’s more class, and I’ll probably write some more then.

frosted flakes from a supermarket

chocolate frosted flakes,
in case the normal ones don't
have enough sugar

chocolate frosted flakes with
candy chunks (?), just in case
chocolate frosted flakes aren't
exciting enough for you

Questions? Comments? Post them.

Costa Rica -- Day 0

Today I'm traveling by myself to Costa Rica for a month to learn Spanish. I'm going to be staying with a Costa Rican family, and I'll be taking Spanish classes while I'm there. I'll try to have daily or semi-daily entries while I'm there, and I'll write about any major things that happen. As I write these lines, I am sitting in a Sizzler in Seattle with my family; they're going to see me off at the airport.

What are my expectations? Firstly, I'm sure I'll come back knowing much more Spanish than I know now. Secondly, the movie Captain America: Civil War has already been released in Costa Rica even though it hasn't come out in the U.S. yet, and I definitely want to see that. Besides that, I really don't know too much about what I'm going to do there. I guess I'll see when I get there!

(Writing this in SeaTac airport) Parting from my family was more difficult than I'd expected. I've been away from home and my family before -- I worked at Cannon Beach Christian Conference Center for part of last summer -- but this just seemed different, perhaps because of the air travel and the fact that I'll be in another country. They prayed over me, I hugged them (not Matthew, my brother; he didn't want a hug) and walked through airport security.

My next entry will probably be Monday.

Thanks for reading!

If you have questions or comments, post them here.

(The photo for this entry is not in Costa Rica. It is near where our family lives in Port Angeles, WA.)