Gringo Giants

Updated news: I just edited this blog, my younger homestay sister just got a job. Yay!

I know, I know, it's been a while, so hopefully this long post will catch you all up to speed. Sorry, spell check doesn´t work again, so I did my best. Here's a pic of some folks from the Spanish school on a trip to an indigenous community called Zunil. From left (Me, Ana, Doris, Lisa, Reena, and Tom). Nothing on Picassa right now, but perhaps in the next couple of days. Keep an eye out!

Weather in Xela

I've been in Xela now for more than two weeks (prounced Shay-la, by the way.) As I said before in the last post, Xela is about 8,000 feet above sea level, and with high altitude comes drastic temeperature contrasts. It's super cold in the morning and evenings, so I was able to get a cheap used down coat for only 60 Quetzales ($7.5 Q to the $), not a bad deal. Nevertheless things can get pretty hot during the day, and the morning clouds usually burn off before 9, and the air being much thiner up here, you can really feel the sun's intensity. This is the Boulder, Colorado of Central America, well kind of. Of course, around 4 oclock the October rains come in. Foutunately "summer," is approaching, and the rains haven´t come in a few days, but supposedly frosts and high winds in November and December are highly common. The last couple of nights have been bitter cold, ugh I thought it was called summer?

My Spanish teacher recounted a very historic moment in Xela about 15 years ago when the city was covered in a couple of inches of snow only a couple of weeks before Christmas. "How cool," I said, "No, it was scary," he said. It's all relative I suppose. Recently, I experienced the first earthquake in my life, (sorry guys I slept through the baby northeast earthquake back in 2002). Xela is said to get earthquakes every few months, typically they aren´t too damaging, but this was one of the bigger earthquakes Xela had experienced in a while. The epicenter was in Chiappas, Mexico, so when it reached Xela, it was 4 point something on the ricter scale.

City Life

While many alternative backpacking travellers come to Xela to avoid the gringafied ambiance of Antigua, Xela certainly has its own scene, with a list of Spanish schools and hundreds of NGO's concentrating on everything under the sun, from fair trade coffee farming, to teaching English to indigenous families, to rescuing street animals, Xela really is for the alternative traveller. Like Antigua, Xela has a host of the same arty liberal locales, like live trova music (Latin revolutionary folk), veggie burritos, and an array of cafes. At the same time the scene is much more diverse, and when you move beyond Zona 1 of the city, the real Guatemalan flavor co-exists with the Gringo giants. (Seriously, I´m a giant here).

Spanish immersion

The idea of Spanish immersion has really been the sole character of alternative travelling in Xela for quite a while. Xela is divided into different zones, and most of the Spanish schools, bars, and hostels are concentrated near the central park of Zona 1. La Paz, where I was taking classes is tucked away into the highlands of the city, still in Zona 1. As part of the informal yet effective immersion, students and teachers are encouraged to walk about the city, go into cafes and museums and simply practice conversations in Spanish. Walking around town, the entire Zona 1 is an alternate universe of wise Guatemalan teachers guiding their giant gringo buddies around town teaching them the ways of Spanish. It´s a pretty funny site if you look at it that way.

My Spanish may be at an advanced level, but I´ve realized how much there is to learn still, and Luis, my teacher helped me fine tune my grammar, and we also read a Gabriel Garcia Marquez book (don´t know the title in English), a true story about a Colombian sailor whose ship goes down, and he´s stranded on a life boat with no food and water for 10 days. I´m not sure if it´s the style of his work, but after trying many Spanish books, and giving up in frustration I finally feel like I can read with fluency, and although I don´t understand everything, I´m reading without thinking in English.

Volunteer

Since I got here I started volunteering with a human rights based magazine in Xela called Entre Mundos (Between Worlds). They not only have a magazine, but they also organize events. Last night we had an Idian themed benefit party, and did it all by candlelight after the electricity went out. Primarily they serve as the main network for NGO´s in Xela, a place where travellers can come, and look through lists of volunteer opportunities during their stay in Xela. As the magazine is bilingual, I´ve been helping them with translations and copy editing, which has been a challenge, but has helped me immensely with my formal written Spanish. Next issue, I´ll contribute an article, and in this issue a blurb about my blog will appear. Sweet, I´m famous, and so are all the peeps in the pics.

Lake Atitlan

Last weekend Reena and I went to Lake Atitlan, a few hours from Xela, a crater lake, the deepest in Central America, which is now a candidate to be one of the next natural wonders of the world. We chicken bused it all the way there (yes now chicken bus is a verb), and arrived nice and shooken up and nautious, and stayed one night in the lake´s main hub, Panajachel. We stayed away from the center, and closer to the lake for some better views, in a nice hotel, which we wouldn´t have found if it were not for the help of an 11 year old girl that gets paid by some of the hotels on informal commission to help tourists find hotels. This is pretty typical in Central America, as soon as you exit the bus, someone is there waiting to escort you to the hotel of your choice, although it´s still not quite clear to me whether the traveller is charged more so that the escort can get the commission, nor is it clear whether all of the escorts get commision from all the hotels. In this case, the little girl, Rosa Maria, almost got shorted. She told us the hotel wasn´t going to give her the regular commission, so Reena and I explained in the office that it was Rosa who helped us find the hotel. According to Rosa, they only gave her about half of what she ordinarily recieved. Whether I believed her or not, she became our best friend for the next couple of hours, and we bought her some ice cream while she held our hands down the street. Around 5 she sort of dissapeared, while we were using the internet.

The next day we took a little boat to the other side of the lake to a well known hippy community called San Pedro. The previous generation of hippies came to Lake Atitlan in the 60´s and 70´s, and while they´re still present, a lot of them have moved to other parts of the lake like San Marcos, and a new generation has transformed San Pedro into a small lakeside port complete with cafes, middle eastern food, and a pub owned by a guy from Northern England. Entre Mundos had a great article last issue about some of the social and cultural implications that tourism, especially drug and alcohol flavored toursim has had on the locals, both good and bad.
The views around the lake are spectacular, (more volcanoes), and during the day the sun bakes you. Kayaks were easy to rent, so we took a nice dip in the lake near some cliffs where some San Pedro hippies were hanging out and smoking pot.

Back to Xela

The next day we chicken bused it back to chilly Xela, and Reena stayed in a hostel for a couple of days before she her trip to Mexico, while I´m continuing with the family for at least another week. It´s not a bad deal, a good price for a bed, three meals a day, and all the Spanish you could want.

An American guy is staying with us now, Brad, he´s an older guy from Colorodo, and came a couple of years ago to stay with the family, and comes now and again to work on his Spanish and seek out real estate opportunities. Now that I have some more time, Brad and I, well mostly Brad, but I´m starting to help now, have begun to seek out job opportunities for the daughters (aged 23 and 27). Times are a little tough now for the family, although things appear great on the ouside, they´re in huge debt, dad isn´t working either, and mom has some glaucoma issues. Brad and I get to practice our Spanish a lot, and he´s been paying the older daughter to read the Prensa Libre (National newspaper), so I sat in on with them yesterday.

After dinner, mom talks with us, and continues with her stock phrases of tough love and lecturing about respecting God and the house. ¨Please don´t slam the door chica,¨ "despacio," "despacio chica" "Slow, slow, everything is slow in Guatemala,¨ and her funny stories of previous students, and an interesting tale of how one day she began speaking in tounges in church, but you can´t help but love her all the same, she lets me do my thing, and doesn´t even care when I come home at 2 in the monring. Last night she recounted the history of how they became to house foreigners. About 9 years ago, she started asking God to help her find a job, (I believe around this time dad was on his way to Los Angeles for the next 8 years), but the answers from God weren´t yet clear. Her sister gave her the idea to house students. She shook her head in dicouragement, it was too much work, ¨I don´t know the kinds of foods that they eat, I don´t know anything about their customs or traditions.¨ Then one night she had a dream that two giant men with backpacks knocked on her door. It was fate. She went to visit a local Spanish school, and asked if she could work as a host family. They visited her home, interviewed her, and not long after, sure enough two giant Englishmen with backpacks came to her doorstep. ¨Un regalito de Dios,¨ she sighed in happiness. (A little gift from God).

Gutemala, Here I Am!

I just edited this post, because I was finally able to get a couple of pics up on the blog. It wasn´t working before, after three attempts. I still, however can´t get spell check to work. Apologies for that by the way. Well, I´ve arrived in Gutemala safe and sound traveling in style really. The Tica Bus, which carries locals and tourists alike from Panama City all the way to Southern Mexico is super comfortable, with semi clean bathrooms, easy border crossing, as well as movies to entertain you along the way.

Managua


The first night, Tica Bus stopped in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, which was much different than the second night in El Salvador´s capital city, San Salvador. In Managua I bartered for a room from $25 to $15, and I later found out other tourists were paying $5 across the street. But I know that it´s kind of the way things go sometimes, and I realized I needed to get back into the backpacker mode, and shop around first before chosing. Although we seemed to be in a quiet suburb of the city, I was told not to leave the hostel after dark, as an Argentinian tourist had been killed for his camera not two months ago. Even locals on the Tica bus warned me not to spend too much time in Managua.


San Salvador

On the second night in San Salvador on the other hand, I felt completely in control of my surroundings, and got a $4 hostel without bartering, with an English girl named Reena I met on Tica bus. We walked around the city center, saw the park, cathedral, and fruit markets, and returned to the hostel well after dark without fear. Because El Salvador doesn´t see many tourists, the locals aren´t jaded, and as a result, there seems to be less crime than in other capitals, like Managua. I´m not saying crime doesn´t exist there, in fact San Salvador is known for being quite dangerous, so it could perhaps be the location of where Tica bus stops in each capital. El Salvadorians seems to be very proud of the fact that their country has a lot to offer, and will explain that they have just as many treasures to enjoy, like mountains and beaches, sadly unbeknownst to manytourists.

Antigua

We arrived in Gutemala City early the next day, 2 dead rocker movies later (La Bamba and Selena), and Reena and I decided to team up with an English guy named Jamie. We all ¨got on quite well,¨ as the Brits say, and decided to take a Chicken Bus about 30 miles outside of the city, to a town called Antigua. What´s a chicken bus, you dare ask? Costa Rica doesn´t have them, but they´re basically highly decorated, and highly colorful American school buses, that are used as public transport. There are not seatbetls, and certainly no shocks, as you can feel every bump in the road (and there are a lot of those), and as most of the roads in Guatemala are cut through mountains you're constantly dancing your way through your trip, and bumping into your neighbor.


We arrived in Antigua and spent one day exploring the city, and another day hiking Pacaya Volcano, where we almost burned the soles of our shoes off. I´m not kidding. Here´s a pic of the whole Volcano crew. Jamie and Reena are on the left next to me. The other photo is of one of the local dogs that makes the daily trek with the guides each day. What a cutie.

Ok...Antigua...How do I describe it? Antigua is what Liberia could be, but I´m almost glad that it´s not. It´s a quaint, colonial city with cobblestone streets butt up against spectacular mountain views. There are charming cafes, and plenty of international cuisine from Korean barbeque to German Shnitzel, and you can enjoy a beer at your token artsy fartsy bar, called Kafka or Che. Aside from the Guatemalan women lining the Central Park in their traditional woven skirts selling jewlery, Antigua really is like a slice of Spain, or even bears a lot of resemblance to posh Santa Fe, New Mexico. In some ways it can be hard to leave this little European paradise in the middle of Central America. We even got to attend an art opening with free wine on the first night.

While you can find just about anything in Antigua, it was difficult to immerse yourself in Spanish, because everywhere you turned there was an English speaking tourist, and even the Gutemalans couldn´t bother to practice with you. The expats are a little strange, as expats can be, like the Texan who owned the little coffee shop on the corner, who brewed his own honey chocolate, entertained us with his political poems, and slept on the burlap coffee bags when he was tired. It´s really hard to describe how beautiful, yet very odd this town is.

We had trouble finding typical hole in the wall bars or restaurants; everything was expensive, and almost too comfortable, and the more you stayed, the more those Guatemalan women in their typical dress were starting to look like paid decorations for the tourists. It was hard to walk anywhere without someone trying to sell you a tour, a taxi, or a bracelet. While we didn´t get to experience much of Antigua´s night life, most of the streets were dead after 10 anyways, and the lack of street signs constantly led us astray. Everything tends to look the same in colonial towns I suppose.

Xela

Reena and I parted ways with Jamie on Friday who was heading up North to Mexico for some good surf time, and we headed about 4 hours West to a city called Quetzaltenango, known to everyone as Xela. I posted earlier that the whole plan of coming to Guatemala was to come to Xela to learn more Spanish, and perhaps find work. The hostel owner in Antigua expalined that we had to take a chicken bus from Antigua to Chimaltenango, and there we would have to change buses to Xela. She expalined that in Chimal the buses pass by quickly and we would have to keep an eye out. Well, she wasn´t kidding, and this is why. As we approached Chimal, the money collector on the bus (every chicken bus has a paid money collector), screamed at me with wide eyes ¨Xela!¨ ¨Xela!¨ ¨Atras!¨ He pointed to the bus behind us that was still moving, which was the connection to Xela that we needed. ¨Ok, what do we do now!¨ I said in Spanish in a panic. ¨Come on!¨ he yelped, and grabbed mine and Reena´s hands, picked us up, and tossed us out of the back of the bus door. This was like a version of an emergency bus drill in elementary school, only this time it was real. He threw our bags from the roof, and ran with us towards the other moving bus. We sat down out of breath, and Reena said to me ¨I didn´t quite like that!¨ in an English accent.

Three hours later, many winding turns through the valleys, and ascents into Xela, the temperature got a bit colder. We were so entertained throughout the ride by food vendors, bible belters, and even a guy selling home remedy recipes, that you couldn´t think about how nautious you were.

When we finally reached Xela, we had a difficult time navigating the streets, so we took a taxi to the address of the Spanish school that my friends had recommended . The driver took us about 10 minutes outside of downtown Xela through narrow alleyways up into the highlands of the city, where I could see a gorgeous view. I knocked on a door of what I though was the address, and a little old lady answered the door, and was either deaf or could only speak a Mayan language, which is often the case with the older indigenous people, because she couldn´t understand my Spanish. (Maybe my Spanish still sucks). I eventually found the right door, and nobody answered, but another woman next door, who was a sister of a teacher at the school helped me call the family that had been arranged for me. The family came 10 minutes later to pick up Reena and I.

Reena and I spent a nice night with the host family, and with a well deserved hot shower. The mother is a little Guatemalan spit fire, but very generous. The house has pictures of previous students, and coffee mugs that say San Francisco and Emory University. They´re quite the entreprenours, as they not only host three or four students at a time, but they also have a little shop in their house where they sell candies, beans, and rice, the father is a tailor, and the younger sister sells makeup.

I´m starting to really like Xela. Although it doesn´t have the beautiful fascade like Antigua, the narrow streets are very charming, and it has more of a city feeling. I´m also slowly getting accustomed to the more conservative culture of Guatemala in general. I have to remember not to lift my fork before we say grace, and to respect even certain ways Spanish is spoken. It´s a bit hard to explain, but Gutemala, as I´m sure anyone can imagine doesn´t have that spicy Latino culture like Costa Rica.

I´m also getting used to the cold, but I prefer it to Liberia´s heat. I´ll have to buy a jacket for the early mornings, and late nights. The lack of oxygen can be tough, as Xela is really high up, almost 8,000 feet, and I even feel it even when I go up and down the stairs. Reena and I will start Spanish school on Monday, and spend the weekend enjoying the city. I posted a few pics of Antigua and the volcano, and I´ll try to post some more tomorrow. Unfourtunatly, I lost some great photos of Africa Mia, but you can view some of them and others of Liberia from the link. (One link is for Guatemala and the other is for Africa Mia, Rincon, and Liberia). Enjoy, and become a follower so you can track my changes!

http://picasaweb.google.com/laurenb1981/AfricaMiaRiconDeLaViejaAndFriends#

http://picasaweb.google.com/laurenb1981/Gutemala#

Africa Mia and Rincon de la Vieja

Rainy Season Blues

Well, I´m finally posting again after more than a week. The rainy season is in it´s peak here in Central America, also known as winter. It goes from May to November, and is characterized by generally unpredictable rains, some lasting the entire day, while most of them occur in the afternoon, and usually don´t stop until the late evening. As if Liberia wasn´t boring enough, in the rainy season I´ve found myself searching for videos on You Tube, squeezing in some sunshine time at the pool, and drowning my jobless sorrows in Costa Rica´s national beers. October is said to be the worst month, but in a way, reminds me of the autumn that I´m missing at home. Sometimes I sip coffee with Shirley the woman downstairs who owns a ceramic business, while we wait for the rain to pass.

Africa Mia

I have however found time to go out on a few excursions, including the zoo, Africa Mia. To my luck, on this day, the sun was shining brightly, and it didn´t rain at all until I returned home around 3:30. In fact, the sun was scorching hot, and I walked 15 minutes in the 90 degree heat to sit on the steamy bus, which took me about 10 miles outside of Liberia in a town called Salto, and there I found a young guy at the roadside restaurant who told me the zoo was ¨largito¨ (a little far) for walking. In front of us only about 150 feet was a sign that said Africa Mia 400 meters (about four city blocks). I decided not to argue, maybe for him this was far. I walked on, but little did I know it was 400 meters to the entrance of the park, and another mile after that. Now, this would have been perfectly fine if I wasn´t drowning in my own sweat.

I arrived and decided to take the $30 deluxe tour which included a personalized guide in an open jeep, which was a step up from the $18 walking tour. The $65 safari tour is the most expensive, and takes visistors within the fences of the zoos to be closer to the animals. I had to wait another hour for my tour at 1 oclock, and I had left the house at 11. Things take longer in Africa I remember. I waited inside a beautiful white stone building with a veranda cafe, and at 1 I boarded the jeep with a couple from San Jose, and their two young boys. The entire tour was in Spanish, on a long stretch of a gravel road, where on either side were groups of different herbavores (there are no carnivores in Africa Mia), behind tall fences. At the end of the tour we got the pleasure of feeding carrots to the ostriches, who are carrot hogs by the way, and things that looked like camels, but have another name. During the tour, we couldn´t help but to feel jealous of the folks in the safari riding amongs the giraffes, and practically kissing the zebras, as we sat jailed behind the fence. However, I did get some good shots of the young giraffes, as Africa Mia has built a stone wall, allowing you to walk across and get a better view of the animals. The guide said they plan to build more stone walls in future for better viewing.

All in all, Africa Mia is a work in progress, and progessive it surely will be. For some reason it kind of reminded me of a weird Jurassic Park experiment. It wasn´t like other zoos, but was it worth the $30, probably not. The best part was that the family from San Jose took me back to the bus stop at Salto, and turns out they speak nearly perfect English, because they had lived in Philidelphia for four years. I took the bus back to Liberia, and when I got off I felt that amazing moment before it rains, when a refreshing wind hits you. Never did the rain feel so sweet after my day in the sun.



Rincon de La Vieja National Park
http://www.liberiacostaricainfo.com/Rincon-de-La-Vieja.htm

Yesterday I took a trip to Guanacaste´s largest volcano park, which includes a marked trail with waterfalls, rivers, hot springs, and mud pots, about an hour ride from Liberia. Check out the websie for more info. Because many national parks in Costa Rica aren´t very accesible unless you have your own car (as you read about in Africa Mia), I arranged transport with one of the local hotels in Liberia, met the driver Ofi at 7 in the morning, and we picked up three more German tourists on the way. We made our way up the rocky steep incline to the park, and paid an initial $2 entrance to ¨fix the roads,¨ and arrived at the ranger stations. I said goodbye to the Germans, and decided to go on my own. They asked me if I was from California, because I spoke such good Spanish. Silly Germans. There were two paths to take from the ranger station, one to the waterfalls and the other to the volcano and mud pots. The ranger recommended I take the waterfall path first, and continue later with the path to the volcano, he said because the waters in the rivers will rise in the afternoon if it rains.

As I started on my way, the path was clear, but later I realized what the ranger meant by rising waters, because I eventually I had to cross both rivers by foot, one of which came up to my mid-thigh. As I walked on, I was sort of hoping to see the Germans and stick with them, because I nearly broke my ankle about six times on the slippery rocks. In the rainy season, the trails are a bit tougher, and I only had simple running shoes. I made it to the end of the trail to find a beautiful watefall cascading into a bright blue pool of water, where I sat and had a snack. I wasn´t hot enough to go swimming so I decided to walk the 2.6 Kilometers back to where I had seen a sign for Cataratas Escondidas, which means hidden waterfalls. I began the 2 Kilometer Trek, which was what appeared to me a steep 75 degree rocky incline above the treelines. By this time I was really hot, and decided my reward for such a tough climb would be a dip in the waterfall pool, and a chance to fill up my bottle.

As I walked higher above the treeline, the little white arrows disapeared, and I looked around to find breathtaking rolling hills. I was glad I had decided to walk it, and perhaps if it wasn´t so cloudy I could have seen the volcano. I also heard the sounds of the watefall, but they sure weren´t kidding when they said hidden. Ok, no more hide and seek, I knew it was somewhere in the valley next to me, but looked too difficult to get to. See the picture above, my look of desperation searching for the waterfalls. The chase was up. I was disapointed, and it was starting to sprinkle, so I made my way down the incline, followed the path, and met the Germans at the river crossing.

I crossed with my flip flops, but lost one down the river, and the Germans started laughing ¨Oh no!¨ they said. At this point, the rain started coming down in buckets, and filling the trails up to my ankles. I waved good bye to them (I would later find out they hadn´t made it 100 feet more). I walked for about 45 minutes, so soaked that even my rain jacket was competely saturated, and I reached the station once again to find a couple from Madrid I had seen on the way. They too, had not been on the volcano path, and even though the Germans didn´t think it was up to snuff, we decided to walk together on the path for only 20 minutes to the first mud pool. It was a faulous site, with hot vapors rising into the atmosphere. We took a couple of shots, and ran back to the staion. Ofi came to pick us up around 2, and I asked him if we could look for my sandal at the bottom of the river. He laughed.

Future Plans
After a little deliberation, I´ve decided to head up to Guatemala by bus to a city called Quetzaltenango, known to locals and visitors as Xela. Xela is known for it´s Spanish schools and volunteer opportunities. I plan to do both, and can do it all very cheaply. For $120 the La Paz school will offer me Spanish classes daily, a homestay family, and all meals provided. Not a bad deal. I´m taking what´s called a Tica bus, a well regarded bus company that travels daily from Panama City all the way up to Southern Mexico, making stops in all the major Central American capitals. The bus picks me up at 10 tomorrow morning, and I plan to arrive in Guatemala City several days later, at which point I´ll take a five hour bus ride to Xela. To be honest, I´m a little concerned about doing it alone, but I plan to team up with some gringos on the bus if I can find them, and search for hotels with them when we stop in the capitals. Typically there are hostels and cheap hotels close by the bus stations, and Tica Bus has given me a list of reommended hotels, and tips. I´ll blog once I arrive in Xela, and tell you all about the experience. Hope you enjoyed the post, and please check out my new photos from the link. I takes me too long to upload all the photos, but I did as much as I can today, and will add captions later.

http://picasaweb.google.com/home

Liberia To Change or Not to Change

Hi Friends!

I´ve decided to start my own little blog about my 2nd big adventure in Latin America. I´m starting in Costa Rica to visit friends, and plan to travel to another country to find work with an organization or to teach English. Although I haven´t brought a computer with me, I plan to visit the internet cafes, and add posts weekly (or at least I´ll try). Also, excuse me if I miss or add punctuations, but I´m still getting use to the keyboards again. Then again, I was never so good with punctuation!

I was here a few years ago from Nov. 04 until June 05 teaching English mostly in Liberia, the capital of Costa Rica´s Northwest province, Guanacaste. As the guide books claim, Liberia, a large city by Guanacastean standards (about 35,000 in population) is dotted with colonial clapboard houses, where you can still see old couples sitting in rocking chairs in the shade of their patios. Because the province is so sparely populated, there are plenty of farms and ranches, and a cowboy culture that features two big fiestas each year, including rodeos and a Miss Liberia cowgirl contest. The province is surely steeped in tradition, and proud of their unique history, celebrating their independence and annexation from Nicaragua each year.

However, there´s another side to Liberia, and the province in general, that at times overshadows some of the cowboy customs of the past. Since the Costa Rican tourism boom, Liberia has been the portal to the best beaches in the country. Of course, with tourism comes a lot of change and Americanism. When I was here three years ago there was plenty of tourism to go around including hotels, restaurants, and tourist souvenir shops. Now there are inevitable changes, like a new shopping plaza complete with ¨Jumbo Market,¨ bar and lounge, a Mexican and Peruvian restauraunt, and three more surfer clothing stores (Do we really need any more Roxy in this town?). Liberia now sports a small casino, ironically the windows are decorated with blow up shots of Liberia´s past from the 1800´s rodeos to the 1950´s building of the Liberia airport (which sat unused for a while until the tourist boom).

Liberia now hosts the only place in the world where you can see Africa for about a third of the price of the ticket! Since I´v left, Liberia has a zoo called Africa Mia (My Africa), owned by a guy who now owns the soccer team called Liberia Mia. ¨But the animals are really free, not in cages¨ says my friend Gustavo. Although I haven´t been yet, I imagine lions and zebras running amongst the grasslands of Guanacaste, which do often resemble parts of Kenya that I´ve visited before. Clearly it was primarily built for tourists as a way to offer one more excursion to their package. I haven´t been to Africa Mia yet, but then again zoos usually make me sad.

Now, not to say that all of this change is bad. Costa Rica and Guanacaste are what they are, and tourism provides employment opportunities for the locals in so many ways. With tourism, comes new faces, new ideas, where both tourist and tour guide are forever changed. Now, I can enjoy the new Panaderia Paris in Libera (Paris Bakery) owned by a crazy French dude.

Speaking of change, I drove by the school where I used to work, Universidad Central, to sadly find it occupied by another business. It was a small building with two classrooms, and more of an adult learning center than a University, with very little materials and organization to speak of. So, alas, I asked around and made my way to the new UC about a quarter mile outside of town in a beautiful facility with five classrooms, brand new curriculum and materials, and a brand new director, my former secretary Yessenia. Now at only 25 years old, she promotes and manages the entire school. She toured me around looking quite mature and adult-like with her braces off and a new engagement ring. ¨Todo ha cambiado¨ (everything has changed), she said. But to mix the old with the new, she asked me to come back and teach some conversation club courses that they´re starting. I said I would think about it. We´ll see where the winds of change take me..... Enjoy the photos. I´m still figuring this out, and the computers are slow, so you´ll have to view them through my link, but please be sure to read all the captions! I hope it works.

http://picasaweb.google.com/laurenb1981/Liberia