All I wanted....

So, this is my first post really. Dave seems to like making fun of me...I mean writing. So, we went to the Caribbean (note the correct spelling this time). We took another 6am bus and Dave slept (as always). We went to Cahuita first and went to the National Park there. We saw a sloth there. Sadly it was dark in the forest and we are lacking a good photo. Then we went on to Puerto Viejo where we stayed at a place called Rocking J's. We were curious about the name, but soon discovered that there was a lot of Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and that Jammin' seemed to be playing over and over again. So, that's the name I guess. Also, a lot of people smoked weed there. Totally unrelated to the rocking name though. Obviously.

Anyhow, there was seriously A LOT of Bob Marley played. It was like Legend had just been released, cause that was the only one playing. You got on the bus: Legend. At the hostel: Legend. Walking down the street: 2 Legends (one from the store and one from the car driving past). Also, lots of hardcore girls into that look of looking like you don't try to look good but actually spending a lot of time on that look. I've never seen someone primp their dreads so much.

The place was definitely cool though cause we stayed in hammocks. Here's a picture of Dave pretending to be asleep in his:



Anyhow, on the first day we walked around...on black sand! And we ate. But we pretty much decided to leave all the fun til Saturday...so of course it rained.

BUT here's the black sand:




On Saturday it rained, but we still had a good day and got to go swimming in the afternoon. That evening it rained so hard that the power went out. I was in the shower which was awesome. Since the lights were out we went and had happy hour wine. I thought the wine was drinkable. Dave didn't claiming that the less than 3 dollar carton o' wine he bought in San Jose was better. He obviously holds our home made batch as his standard. When the lights came on again we went and bought a bottle of wine, which we drank over the evening. It was a quiet night at the hostel as we laid in a couple of hammocks. That was until a stranger came along and slurringly told us that he was an ex-pat American who had left the States 15 years before and had remained in Costa Rica surfing ever since. He then went on to tell us thatthere was a book about his life, which included stints in Vietnam and as a drug smuggler, and that Maxim had given it 4 stars. His name was Captain Zero. And according to Captain Zero Disney was producing a film of this book starring Sean Penn. We thought it was weird. But....

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0426492/

Also, everyone wants a piece of him, but he's just living the life. Apparently he has to sign 8 to 10 books a week. And then he left like the celebrity he was...only to come back a couple of minutes later offering to sell us some of his organic homegrown weed.

Anyhow, I'll leave you with a picture of the Rocking J's puppy. It followed us along the beach for a long time when we were leaving town.

Go Stephan Go

So its thursday and we're off tomorow for three days. So we decided this week to check out the carribean coast. I've heard theres more pirates. Also a lot more fishing with hawiian slings. I've never killed a fish while snorkling, but from diving in the past I've always remarked on how beautiful the aquadic life looked in its natual environment. Also easy it would be just to reach out and stab stuff. Also we're leaving at 6am again. I bet kim is just going to sleep the whole way. Thats so her.

PHOTO TIME

Photo #1... its called FIND THE MONKEY. You need to look hard cause its an endangered species.

PHOTO #2- Find the Monkey Part Two -its on the snowcone guys shoulder... just kidding


PHOTO #3- NOT QUITE A RACCOON... but still loves a little garbage-
this animal whose name i cant remember kept on stealing food from a french couple. Saque les BLUX.

PHOTO #4- This photo really makes you appreciate the polution in Toronto... these clean sunsets got nothing compared to apollos rays filtered through layers of poison gas....



Also now we can start concentrating on the Costa Rican Elections... im betting the guy with the nobel peace prize will win... the other guy has glasses and nobody likes people with glasses

Surf Lessons: BY SURFERS!!!!!!

So it's another exciting San Jose night as we watch the ULatina Bobkat Cheerleaders practice in the hall while waiting for election results to come in. Oh the tropical magic.

Anyways this weekend was a blast. After two weeks we finally got out of San Jose which meant a lot more mountains and trees and a lot less dumping of garbage on the middle of sidewalks. Although that mufflers thing turned out to be an urban legend. So Friday at 630 Am we took a bus to the west coast city of Quepos. A lot of people might wonder why we went there. Mostly it is because this entire trip is to in a large part due to the episode of the Amazing Race where the Gaghan family was eliminated on Quepos's sandy shores. So we decided it was really the right thing to make this the first stop of our little amazing race, and kim much like little Carissa kept running till the very end.
So Quepos was nice. It's pretty small but still cool and relaxed. After tossing stuff at a hostel we went to Manuel Antonio park which is about 7km away. Its a a pretty small park but it has some very nice beaches. Also MONKEYS. We saw two types of monkeys... well three if you count the kim type. hahahahaha That was a joke. Actually Kim made that joke about me while we were there. She can be funny sometimes. Not as funny as me though. But seriously it was great. The coolest one was the Squirrel Monkey which is an endangered species, an endangered species that apparenly didn't want the doritos a spanish guy was trying despretly to feed it. Seriously... he was trying to feed this think like it was what he was born to do.
ALSO WE SAW RACOONS!!!!! I know... its rare and you probably don't believe me but we did.
Actually the coons were eating vegitation and not garbage so it was sort of like a new animal.

The next day we went to a beach just outside of the park that was free and much cooler but had a lower Squirrel monkey population but a larger one of the grease variety. Acutally this beach was pretty nice because as soon as we arrived we rented chairs and an umbrella for cheap and then all these guys in uniforms straight out of the Saved by the Bell beach club episodes started coming up to us with menus trying to sell us daquiris and 1.25 beers on the beach. It was pretty cool cause it made you feel classy like a resort but you didn't have to worry about tipping like at those all inclusive joints.

Later that night we watched an amazing sunset over the pacific at this bar called el Avion. The bar was made out of this US bomber that got shot down with an American pilot inside, while illegally bombing Nicaragua in the eighties, really tipping off the Iran/Contra thing. It was kind of cool. The best part though was when an extremely overwheight guy sat next to us wearing a tank top that read ¨Freedom Isn't Free.¨ I despretly wanted to point the irony of the situation out to him but Kim made me not.
Also i got a sunburn. it sucks.
Kim didn't. I want to write about my sunburn and how i blame it on expired sunblock that exprired Jan 06, but i also bought it in Jan 06 from shoppers in toronto, but kim is saying that if this is too long people wont read it.

Freedom isnt available at the moment
dave and kim.... who probably supports the taliban

¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡DISCULPE!!!!!!

Well... it would seem our life of acadamia has made us negligent about our duties to the online community. also we didnt get our passwords for the school computer until yesterday. also we cant use msn on them either. and occasionally we get kicked out becuase there are classes in the labs. at least i think thats what it is. once again, i dont speak spanish.

anyways, all our classes are good and the students are very very appreciative. its a lot better than toronto where students would ask how to say insulting words, only to then use them in refrence to you.

We spent a lot of time this week gettting settled into our new pad. pictures will come when i remember to bring my camera... although im not sure if i can connect it to the compys at the school. anyways, our place has two bedrooms and one kitchen/living room with a back room for scrubbin laundry. we think our landlord said he'd bring us a laundry machine, but much like our 'contract' with him, it was in spanish so we can only guess. anyways we have a spare bedroom and couch for anyone who wants to come and visit. the guest room is blue, but also stucco.
also our landlord included a tv with WAY more channels than either of us had in Toronto. There are awesome movies on all the time. also i'm learning spanish through subtitles. sorry is 'disculpe'

anyways we are going to finally leave san jose tomorow and go to the pacific coast for a couple days. we are staying in quepos and going to this huge national park near by. i cant wait. rumour has it there are less cars without mufflers there. what a place.

Pretty in Pink

So we got sick of looking for the perfect house today and settled with the second one we saw. Although after we moved in, by which i mean our funny tico landlord and his family came in and gave us a crazy amount of furniture, dishes and linens, it didnt look half bad. Although the entire place is stucco. Also it is bright pink. BRIGHT PINK.

Also its like i finally live on earl street. Although unfortunatly its like i teach at St. lawrence college. But we{re near bars which means it MUST be safe.

well talk more when we get our internet codes from the school

until then be safe..... we will.... try.....

dave and kimba

Go Bears Go!

The year after finishing undergrad, virtually everyone we know is trying to find ways to stay in university a little longer. Those with a lot of foresight decided to ´miss´a couple of credits, so they had to stay another year. Others came up with the story that they´d be getting a second degree or a ¨Masters,¨ whatever that is. Still others just never left Kingston, or they summer there every weekend. Luckily we just found our scam. Next week Kim and I will start our professorship in the English school at Universidad Latina in San Jose. Its a grand old Alma Mater, much like our beloved Queen´s, except where the quirkey student would be smoking a cigarrette on the steps of the J-duc, picture a security guard with a giant shot gun. Or better still just picture Queen´s around mid-September next year and add some tropical plants.

Anyways the school year is just starting here, and there´s a real FROSH vibe going around the ULat campus. In a couple weeks they have the annual football match where the ULatina Bears take on their arch rivals, the U Costa Rica Buzzards. I think its going to be intense. No car flipping intense, but a close second with more salsa music. And salsa.

So now we start house hunting. It should be fun. Kim is excited to start calling places tonight and speaking spanish. Much love to Adam for his phrase book with a ´renting an appartment´section.

Office hours are monday and wednesdays from 12-3.

Professor Messer and ...kim (theres no clever way to make it rhyme)

R U The Girl??

So we´ve seen a lot of paint around the city saying this.


Apparently songs telling people to not chase waterfalls is problematic to an economy that relies heavily on people chasing waterfalls as opposed to staying at home and sticking to rivers and lakes.

Actually the NO TLC grafitti that is around the city has to do with an upcoming referendum about Central/North American free trade. According to a guy at the hostel everyone in Costa Rica wants free trade. The only people who don´t are the ones who buy spray paint.

Anyways, we´ve spent the past couple of days job hunting, which sucks. We have some really good leads, but spending hours trying to figure out pay phones, and then running around the city to interviews has been annoying. I can´t wait until it is over. All the running around, however, has given us a lot of chances to see different parts of the city. Central San Jose can be pretty crazy, eventhough it´s supposed to be tame compared to other Latin American cities, and it´s been nice to see the suburbs which have a lot of really nice shops and well dressed people. Ironically, outside of the city they don´t want no scrubs.

My new favourite part of San Jose is the fruit guy who comes by our hostel with his cart everyday. Yesterday we got a coconut and pineapple for just over a buck. Today I got another coconut (cause they just cut it open and give you a straw) and some other fruit that I´ve never seen before. Unfortunatly when we opened the mystery fruit up it is just full of goo and seeds. Like an alien pod I tell you. Oh the wonders I have seen.


SPANISH:
I really hope we have a job by the end of today. ¨I don´t care about the spanish. I just really hope we have a job by the end of today.¨

Left-Eye Dave and Lil´Kim

BELIEVE IN YOURSELF!!!!

Whazzzzzup!!!!!!!!

So yesterday we decided again to get out of San Jose and headed to the city of Heredia. It was actually really nice. Because it was a beautiful Sunday there were people hanging out everywhere. Much ice cream was eaten. There was a really nice square infront of this beautiful old church and it was teeming with families just enjoying the day. We walked around the church gardens and then decided to check out the inside. Dave was kind of hessitant because there were a lot of people kneeling inside praying (eventhough it was like 130pm), but we decided it would probably be cool if we just stayed in the back row. So we went in and sat in the back and it was absolutly beautiful. Then this old man beside us got up and walked out the side door closer to the front. We had seen gardens on the other side so we thought there might be more on the other. So quietly, we followed the old man out the door where we discovered he hadn´t really gotten up to leave the church, but rather to piss in an urn full of sand and cigarrette butts. It was fun.

After that we went on a tour of a coffee plantation. We just took the bus and a cab to get to this place, but everyone else on the tour was with a massive tour group (they all had name tags and stuff... it was pretty funny). So it was us and this huge group of the tackiest, loudest, most eager to give away money, american tourists you could ever imagine. The best thing we saw was a woman who before the tour even started had gone to the gift shop and picked up two full bags with tee-shirts and coffee and every stupid thing they sold. She was also wearing a shirt saying how she had ´survived´a rainforrest zipline tour, i assume earlier in the trip. wow. We were a little dissappointed by the tour because it wasn´t so much a real tour as a play put on by three actors who humourously showed us the history of coffee and told us how it is picked-etc. After the tour a bunch of people from LA were asking the actors who wrote such a clever play and encouraging them to move to Hollywood, cause they could make it. I now know there is a form of theatre more demeaning than childrens´ theatre.

Now we´re gonna start looking for jobs. i can´t wait.

Be safe out there folks!!

Kim and Dave

ps. sorry for spelling errors... the spell check is in spanish. - d

I´m a millionaire.

So today was no big whoop. We just decided to get up and go visit a volcano. Its called Volcan Poas and it´s about 1 hour outside San Jose. Here´s the thing with Costa Rica. Because it has so many mountains and valleys the weather changes all the time. We got up and it was like 20, then in a city 20 mins outside of San Jose it was over 30, then at the volcano it was freezing cold and raining. I didn´t bring a rain jacket. Kim did. Thanks for reminding ME Kim!

Anyways I know why you´re all here, for the PHOTOS:



LOOK AT THE AWESOME GLORY OF NATURE!!!

So we couldn´t see all that much. The bus driver explained why to us in Spanish. Kim thought he said it was clouded over; however I translated what he said as meaning the volcano was making so much smoke that it was hard to see cause there was too much lava. We agreed to disagree.

Later on I took this other picture by myself.


Kim put the numbers in to represent the different parts of the volcano. number six is the Carribean Sea. Yup. We could see all the way to the ocean.

Also the park was home to a rare type of cloudforrest squirrel. We tried really hard to find it, but all we could see were stupid regular squirrels. What a drag.

Tonight we will eat beans, rice and meat.I can´t wait.

love.
dave and kim

Oh, i also went to the bank and the recipt told me i´m a millionaire. Unfortunatly it´s in colones.

Yeah.... so really should have learned some of that spanish before now..

Yeah, so we got here today. Whatever. Most people would be phased flying to a foreign country. Not us. We´re just taking it as it comes. Living life second by second. So we´re in this bad ass hostle also. I just met my first travel friend as a matter of fact in the washroom. We briefly discussed how it was strange that there were urinals in a co-ed bathroom. His name is Dave and he´s from California. We havn´t exchanged emails yet but i´m sure we´ll be friends for life. Also the people who own this place really like insense, bob marley and dreads.

On a side note, prostitution is legal in Costa Rica which I don´thtink the average tourist would notice, except at the airport where there are giant signs saying ¨Hey Tourist... You have sex with anyone under 18... We´ll pay for your trip to jail.¨ These signs are even funnier because they´re attached to cardboard cut outs of guys who look really surprised, and are holding it like they´re a limo driver waiting for a client.

anyways I´m tired. Tomorow we´re going to explore or something. I hope i don´t get mugged. my mom would be pissed if i lost my new camera. her final words to me before i left were ¨Be Cafeful of your VALUABLES!!!¨ There may have been an i love you in there... but i had my game face on and missed it.

(((HUGGS)))
Dave -and lazy asleep kim

also more spanish

I really should have learned words that don´t have to do with long term relationships: ¨?QUE?¨¨

ps... spanish keyboards are fun

KIM ON NO SLEEP GO... PARTY!!!!!

photo: kim mcleod at 8am after overnight flight

Funny story about her flight though: She arrived at the airport around 10ish for a 12am flight and then her flight got delayed until 1. So she decided to get a cup of coffee to stay awake and not miss her flight. Well, after she was boarded she was thinking about taking a Gravol so she could get a good nights sleep on the plane. She was thinking this until the flight attendant announced that because the flight was delayed, alcohol was free for the entire flight. So then she decided instead of taking a Gravol, it would be more economical and fun to just drink until she passed out. And that's were we get this picture of kim... Dazed to the world from 4.5 hours of high altitude drinking.

Actually I made the end of that up. Instead of drinking herself to sleep she decided to just have a *sigh* apple juice. The free alcohol thing though was true. I'M SO DISAPPOINTED IN HER.

So Kim just got in. Really I had hoped a picture would have been a little more dramatic. Like she looked like a vampire or something. Also I used the red-eye reducer as much as I could on my computer... But I guess she's stuck with it... cause that's the flight she took. (sorry... that was terrible)

Anyways, now we're off to see Narnia. We leave tomorrow at 8.
rock
Dave


SPANISH:
Lets move in together :"Por que no nos vamos a vivir juntos?"
Sorry, I'm busy. : "Desculpe pero estoy ocupada."

Only Two More Slumbers (or one... Depending on how you look at it)

Good Evening Friends.
Well as I sit in my study in my cozy pajamas with cup of sleepy time tea, warm and clean from a relaxing jecuzzi bath, I thought I should update you all on our progress, because if you consider women objects, things are really starting to move.

As I am here in Toronto preparing for a warm winters slumber in my posturepedic bed with nice clean sheets (200 thread count Egyptian cotton) our little Trojan Kimberly is starting her long trip across the country. Yes, as I am drifting off to sleep, being interrupted now and again by a particularly funny 'headline,' Kim is boarding a plane, being served a ginger ale and getting ready to watch the adventures of Sarajevo in a few hours.

At 730am Toronto time, as I am engaging in my usual banter with the snooze button, Kim will land in Toronto refreshed, if not from sleep, than by the exhilaration of flight. I know that some of you back in Vancouver are worried about our little warrior flying at night, but don't you fret. I will be at the terminal at 7:40 to 50ish (if I'm any later I can always fall back on pointing out the irony that my father makes clocks for a living, and I'm totally unpunctual) digital camera in hand to show her excited face to all of you.

*yawn*

Well my friends, the sandman is a callin, so I'll leave you now.
Be *yawn* well


but a bit more Spanish first:
Do you have a light? : "?Tiene fuego, por favor?"
I'm here with my boyfriend :"Estoy aqui con mi noviao."