°°°Tico Customs°°° By Laura! =P

Despite the fact that I’m very proud of being a tica, I must admit that there are certain customs that people in this country generally have.

You’ve got to have the latest cell phone and it doesn’t matter if you can’t pay for it or if they kill you for it, you have to show it to the whole country. On the bus they call you and you answer very loudly “aló, diay mae todo bien” (hello, hey what’s up man) so that every single person in the bus notices that you have a call. You call a person who lives near you just because you are too lazy to go there and talk. You have your thumb in great shape from sending so many messages and you get depressed if at 3:00 pm you haven’t received at least 50 messages. If you leave it in your house you MUST go back immediately. It’s a number one priority.

When you go walking down the street it’s almost 100% sure that some guy will scream something weird at you. You keep on walking and you hear from the next block the motor of a guy’s car that thinks he’s some one from the fast and the furious movie with his sun glasses and his very loud “reggaetton”. On the next block you hear from a house the “merengue” and the maid trying to catch the little kids and from the other one the maid watching the soup opera while she’s cleaning the house. You have to be careful if you’re going to cross the street because very few people know the courtesy to let you cross and when you do it they will honk their horn. You see crashes every where because they don’t respect the traffic signs.

We arrive late every where. It’s almost a law called “la hora tica” (tico time) that says that it’s ok if you get somewhere half an hour or an hour late, so if they invite you to some activity at 3:00pm you know that actually it will start like about 5:30pm. The only two things that start on time, the news (which all they talk about is dead people) and the football games of course. You make up excuses for everything! Traffic jam! My grandma died! My dog was sick! Etc…

There are queues for everything! For the bank, for the supermarket, for the hospital, for the movie theater, for the food, for the stores and even for the bathroom!

But even though we have all these interesting customs I think we are a very nice, helpful, and friendly people who enjoy living in Costa Rica.

The most adventurous experience!... by Marco

I thank God because I can say that I have had some great and adventurous experiences. I am christian so I have been to some Christian Camps but I wil tell you about one where I went last december.

I was very excited because I was invited by a church where I had performed, but I didn't know anybody from that church so I was expecting to get to know many people and make some friends. I was told that we were going to do a lot of different extreme activities so I was excited but also kind of nervous.

We went to San Ramón, Alajuela. 120 people were leaving on Friday 26th at 7am to the camp and as soon as we got there we instantly started to do all the activities that they had planned. Firstable, we had a "rally". They divided the people into six groups and the experience started! There was some stops where you had to overcome some different challenges. You had to be very fast, logical and smart. When I had to participate on the "rally" I had to lay down and burst some balloons filled with water with a tiny stick that I had on my lips. At the end of the "rally" we ended up second!.

The next couple of days we went to a lake and played some water sports and games. We played something called "Crab football", that it was like playing football but with an enormous ball and laying on the ground, and we also did archery.
On Monday we went to the lake again and we did something awesome! We took some bikes and what you had to do was to ride the bike and go the fastest you could until you get to a ramp in order to jump to the lake with the bike.

Then, we did something called "Jungle challenge" that is a team competition where you have to go into the jungle and do a lot of thing. At the end of the activity you will be fully mud-covered!

That was one of the greatest experciences I have ever had and I wouldn't change anything about it... It was great and I really enjoyed it!

Changes in 10 Years/Name Game

HOW MUCH HAVE YOU CHANGED IN 10 YEARS?
****10 YEARS AGO (March 1999)

1) How old were you?

2) Who were you dating?

3) Where did you live?

4) Where did you hang out?

5) Did you wear contacts and/or glasses?

6) How many tattoos did you have?

7) How many piercings did you have?

8) What kind of car did you drive?

9) Had you been to a real party?

10) Had you had your heart broken?

11) Were you Single/Taken?

****TODAY (March 2009)****

1) Age?

2) Where do you work/go to school?

3) Who are you dating?

4) Where do you live?

5) Which friends do you see often?

7) How many piercings do you have?

8) How many tattoos?

9) What kind of car do you have?

10) Has your heart been broken?

11) Are you Single/Taken?


NAME Game Share

Just follow the instructions for each number. This is one of my good friend's example:
1. YOUR REAL NAME
Lindsey Schubert (maybe one day Bischinger)

2. WITNESS PROTECTION NAME (mother and father's middle names)
Marie Eric

3. NASCAR NAME (first name of you mother's dad; father's dad)
John Karl

4. STAR WARS NAME (the first three letters of your last name, first two letters of your first name)
Schli

5. DETECTIVE NAME (favorite color, favorite animal)
Purple Bunny (ha ha this one is great! can you imagine a detective with this name?)

6. SOAP OPERA NAME (middle name, town where you were born)
Elizabeth Pittsburgh

7. SUPERHERO NAME (second fav color, fav drink, add 'the' to the beginning)
The Orange-Yellow Amaretto (at least it rhymes)

8. FLY NAME (first two letters of your first name, last two letters of your last name)
Lirt

9. ROCK STAR NAME (current pet's name, current street name)
Monty Roedernweg

10. PORN NAME (first pet, street you grew up on)
Duffy Mariposa (dude this sounds like a guy's name)

11. GANGSTA NAME (first three letters of your real name, plus izzle)
Linizzle

12. IRAQI NAME (second letter of your first name, 3rd letter of your last name, first two letters of your middle name, last two letters of your first name, then last three letters of your last name)
Iheleyert

13. GOTH NAME (black, and the name of one of your pets)
Black Harley

14. STRIPPER NAME (favorite perfume, favorite candy)
Tribu Twix

Reading Quiz for next Saturday's Class, March 20th

1. Who saw 3 waterfalls in the same river?
2. Did Dan escape any injuries?
3. Who had a jacuzzi?
4. Who had the most multi-cultural experience?
5. What special type of soup was tried by someone?
6. How did rafting turn out to be petrifying?
7. Who had eggs and milk for breakfast?

My adventoourous experience by Andrés

Well, it all started on a...I think it was monday...I had been saving some money to go to my dad's for a while and finally I got the chance, it was about a year ago, He lived in Montezuma back in those days so I took the bus and the ferry to get there...a 8 hour trip...everything gets better once that you have a "chocoleta".
It's amazing how lazy we are...there were ten persons on the row, still a guy got really upset because I didn't want to give him a space, you gotta be kinding me man...there are three guys behind me, that was upsetting, he wasn't going to lose his seat or anything.
I got the ferry, there's where the "chocoleta" comes in, oh mighty "chocoleta" all that coldness in just one stick could frozen up the heat of a thousand suns...finally I got to Montezuma, about noon even when Montezuma is still a small town, it is really...well...colourful, it's the meeting place of a bunch of hippies of all over the world, I met german, italian, argertinian, brittish, north american, african and even a guy from Norway...who plays the trumpet...it was kind of funny, I can't imagine a viking playing a trumpet...it sounds cliche, but was the first thing that I thought when he told me where he was from.
I got some friends over there, so as soon as they could, they took me to the Montezuma waterfalls, three waterfalls in the same river, we got to the first one(the one which was more far from the entry of the place, then we started going down, there was a point when you had to decide between a huge wall of stone or walking about a kilometer, well I decided to have a go on the wall...bad idea, it wasn't completely vertical, in fact I used as a giant sled...but...well...it was noticed that I wasn't used to it, I didn't turned to jelly, still...I did some stupid things that I prefer not to talk about, finally I got home, which reminds me the viking trumpetist, behind the house I was staying( it belonged to a friend of my father...my father is one of the hippies who lives there from the very start of the town, so he knows almost everyone in the town)well, that house was surrounded by bars, so...there was ska music every night, thanks God I kind of like ska or I wouldn't have peace on those nights.
One day, I went to an art exposition in the middle of the beach, where I got rejected by some blues players...screw them, but i tasted the best fresh tune of all my life, and a "chifrijo" that I'll never forget, I really had a great time around the fire, talking about perspectives and other artistic stuff, we chatted almost all night until sunrise, about life, death and other things related as you may imagine almost everyone was on drugs, I wasn't...I'm one of those who is always high.
I had two great weeks over there then I came back to a funeral of my friend's mother on sunday and highschool on monday, that's a really big change in life's pace.
Hope you had enjoyed reading this and I mean it, I wasn't high.

My Most Adventurous Experience

All of my classmates were raving about the River Pacuare so much that I finally decided to check it out for myself. Along with a bunch of friends, I booked a spot on a rafting excursion. I was really excited but didn't realise what was about to come.
When we set off in the raft, the scenery along the river and mountains was breath-taking. When we started hitting rocks and rafting faster and faster down the river, my knees started to turn to jelly. Water has never been my best friend, as I'm a fire sign and all.......
Within 1 split second about halfway through the journey, I was thrown involuntarily from the boat onto some huge rocks in the middle of the river. It was more my friends' looks of petrification than anything that got me hypoventilating. The rafting guide panicked himself and jumped into the water after me. When he failed to grab me, I really started to wonder if those were my last few seconds alive!!! He scrambled back into the boat and threw me a lifebuoy, which he really should've done as soon as I fell out. At least he finally got round to rescuing me... better late than never!
I was OK and had to keep on rafting for about 15 minutes more. I don't think I had ever known what adrenaline was until that incident happened to me! I couldn't eat lunch or anything afterwards as I was on such a high.
My neighbour in the boat smashed his foot against one of those rocks in the river and cracked a bone. With hindsight, after hearing about so many rafting deaths on that river, I don't think I would do it again!!! But it's a good story, I guess and you can't kill a bad thing!!

"A Friend's Experience" by Jenny

We were a bunch of people, and there was a friend of mine called Dan, he loves motocross. Since he was 15 he wanted to have a go to manage his motorbike, and also he has been trying to make tricks with it. In 2008, he invited us to see what he had managed, he was increadible. He told us that once when he was trying to make a trick for the first time, he was so nervous that his legs turned to jelly. And he said he might want to compete with some of his friends, and we thought he was kidding, but he did. At the end he got hurt. He said he had a great time and he would rave about his achievements. Now he is trying to become a pro in motocross.

My vacation in Lake Tahoe California. By Alberto.

It was on december the 30th when we arrived at the internaional airport of Los Angeles, we were just about to rent a car and go at the San Diego Zoo, when we saw a magazine with some pictures of a beautiful place where all was snowed and white, it was beautiful, so at that exact time my grandfather said: OK!! change of plans! now we're heading to that place!

It is called lake tahoe, it is a ski resort where you can do ice-skating, ride snowmobiles, and also you can ride on a sledge pull by dogs which is pretty funny because when you stop, your face is totaly freeze! and it hurts a lot but it is pretty funny at the same time. So I can't complian about that.

Oh!! One day I remembered that when we were just about going up hill on those trams, i remebered that at the middle of the mountain it turned all foggy and you don't even saw the cables that holds the tram, but when the fog goes away you could see a beautifull landscape of the valley.

The first time i try to stand on my skis it was extremly hard because I felt a couple of times, ok ok a i felt everytime! but when i learned how to stand well on the skis, i was a machine :D no one could stoped me. We spent our nights at the Harras Hotel, it has a jacuzzi, a warm pool, like 3 or 4 restaurants, bars, casinos, shops, sourvenirs, anything you like, you could find it inside that hotel, but the best part of the hotel was that we were on the highest floor at the penhouse, with an espectacular view of the lake and the mountains.

We satayed there for about a week, and everyday we went sekiing, we don't even had lunch it was like a felony for us because we had never done that before I mean we had never had skiing before. So we only ate at the morning and in the evening. I remembered one day that I went with my grandfather and my cousin to a restaurant and we ordered a vittelo soup and for those who don't know what is that, is a deer soup, it was great!!!! y ordered two that night. I can't imagine how hard was to preperd that delicious soup.

At the end of our trip the weather turned upside down and no one could go out or enter in the city, it lasts for about two days, it was awfull, we had to stayed at the hotel for two long daysss!! and almost kill myself!! But the worst part of it was that in the middle of the storm the hotel ran out of electricity, but fortunately it has a power plant that can supplie all the needs of the hotel for everyone.

But at the end of all, that trip to Lake Tahoe was the greatest trip I ever had in my hold life! Oh and of course and not less, beautifull girls. ;)

"My adventurous experience" by Laura

Last vacation I went to my aunt’s house. It’s very far from the city, about 7 hours.
There’s a point when you just can’t get there in a normal car, you have to go in a truck or in a very big car so the adventure starts even before getting to the place. It’s a very big mountain in Talamanca and it has a spectacular view and you can breathe the cleanest air. You get incredibly in touch with nature.
The road is made of rock and you find cows and horses in the middle of it.
When I finally got to my aunt’s house I was exhausted so I went right to bed because it was late.
I had forgotten that country people get up extremely early so the next day everyone was up at 4 am! I went with my cousins to milk the cows and collect the chicken eggs for breakfast. At 9 am the heat was increasing so they suggested going to the river and I said yes because they told me it was very near… Yeah right! We walked for about 45 minutes down the hill. Besides my cousins I was with a bunch of friends that were from the city too and when we got to the river we were so tired that we took a huge swig of water.
The water was freezing but the weather was so hot that we got into the water without even thinking about it.
The river had a beautiful waterfall where my cousins always jumped and they suggested that I jump. I agreed. At the beginning I was very excited and brave but when I started to climb the rocks to get to the top I realized that it was very hard work and I fell time after time. At the end and with much difficulty I climbed the rocks and got to the top of the waterfall. I have to add that up there it wasn’t so beautiful.
I regretted going up so I decided that I wanted to go down but we had no equipment and it was impossible to get down without jumping off the waterfall. I thought “man you’ve got to be kidding”; I was so scared that my knees turned into jelly. Finally I knew I had to do it so I jumped off a 6 meter high waterfall and it was awesome! After that I did it like five times more. When we got back I had to do it in a horse because I was so tired that my legs didn’t responded.
I loved the experience. That whole trip was an adventure… from the beginning to the end.