We're engaged, and I'm not studying for my property final

Instead, I'm typing here.  We'll tell the story of how I proposed to anyone who'd care to know (because we both love to tell stories, and this is a good one), but I won't spend time doing it here.  Just know that we're both extremely happy and very excited, and I'm a little relieved that she said yes.  What?!  It wasn't my best hair day.

Maybe this is a function of me still studying for finals - or I'm supposed to be anyways, I guess that's why I'm at the library - we haven't discussed when we want our wedding yet.  Chances are, Megan's going to call me on her lunch break tomorrow, ask me how my property final went, and then give me a list of places to call to check availability, but thankfully that isn't how she's operating yet.

Gotta get back to studying.

Let the Battle Begin

In case anyone was keeping score, the chocolate-dipped, rich butter cookies at Morrison Foerster (MoFo) were better, no, way better than the oatmeal cookies at Bingham McCutcheon.  Man, I'm gonna have trouble keeping all these uber-WASPy names straight.

Also, Megan dresses really well and she doesn't spend $150,000 on Saks 5th Avenue and Neiman Marcus outfits.  Just a well-picked pair of slouchy boots here and there.  (How much of a non-issue is this, anyways?  Talking about this at all seriously seems completely ridiculous to me.)

Back in the US, Back in the US, Back in the US of A

Ok, so despite travelling to see a giant sea turtle lay its eggs on the beach, to one of the most remote and beautiful national parks with friends, and climbing the tallest mountain in Central America (which happened to be equipped with high speed internet, of all things), I completely failed to write a blog during our last few crazy and fun months in Costa Rica. Sometimes I suck at life.

I call them crazy and fun because on the whole they really were both. Newish arrivals from the States bumped up the partying, if not in volume then at least in quality. Ironically, I began to feel like a lot less of an alcoholic during the stretch run of our time in CR. I exercised less, probably drank as hard or harder - but significantly less often - and generally took pretty crappy care of myself. But travelling around was great and although my teaching schedule was brutal, I settled into a groove and ended on a high note. The big reward of slugging out 6 months with a borderline schizophrenic class that one day loved me and wanted to talk about feelings and opinions and funny differences between Costa Rica and the US and 48 hours later threw books at walls and the floor in violent, adult reenactments of 6-year-old era temper tantrums? A genuinely enjoyable little breakfast party with honest and laid-back conversation mixed between English and Spanish, talking about our futures, wishing each other the best of luck, and hell, I even got some presents out of the deal! Wow. Sally Field moment - "They like me, they really like me!"

On the downside, we maybe didn't get to say sentimental, sappy goodbyes to as many of our students as we would have liked. I flaked on dinner with my Griffith students, we threw a party not many of our students came to, and [important factor #3] Ticos are Ticos aka maybe the flakiest people on the planet. All in all, though, you have to feel like 7 and a half months doesn't require a spiritual level of closure. Maybe just getting drunk on 40s in beer cozies one night is enough. Or 2 nights. Much better.

So, regarding the present and the future... Megan and I got home safe and sound last night. Nothing of note to write about the plane flights except that it turns out that I am incredibly good at finishing in 2nd place in In-Flight Trivia. Oh, and headed into the 2nd to last question of the round in first place, the plane landed and they shut off the trivia. No glory for me. No sireeee. We're at my parents' house in PV now and mostly I'm basking in the wonder that is flushing my used toilet paper instead of making that NorCal Theez face (I have no clue how it's spelled or if that's the real phrase. I'm in over my head here with this reference) and depositing it in the trash can. Also, the food has been absolutely amazing. I don't want to sleep, I don't want to talk to people, other than trips to the bathroom I pretty much just want to eat stuff. I'm eating right now. Six different types of cookies, milk that tastes like milk instead of liquid-buttery-cheese-stuff that is unrefrigerated, and baby pig meat. My keyboard keys are glistening as I type. Actually none of this is true and before long I'll miss the fantastic fruit selection and Gallo Pinto of Mesoamerica, but for now I'm thrilled by my overall culinary upgrade. So are my taste buds, but my stomach walls are pissed. They're already stretched out to something like 9 1/2 times their maximum size in Costa Rica. Oh well, I'll go for a walk/waddle one of these days.

In the next few days I'll have sufficiently cleaned and organized my crap so that I can help the lagging Megan do the same, then we'll pack up my car and drive to Northern California. When, around Fresno, we have refill the tank, we will then ditch the fuel-less car and hitchhike with as much stuff as we can carry the rest of the way. I'll come back down and get my car when I get my student loan at the end of August. Good plan, eh?

Actually, we're planning on driving up probably either this weekend or on Monday, straight to Megan's parents house in Newark. This will begin Operation Victory Lap, during which we will try to parlay cheap gifts from Costa Rica into warm hospitality, which could be sincere or faked, it really doesn't matter one way or the other to us, and free drinks. Next stop on OVL is Davis, where literally couples of people (that is one step down from dozens, right?) will be relatively overjoyed to see us. After we will have recognized that these "starving students" have just enough money to get themselves drunk but can't/won't pitch in on our bar tabs, we will then move on to wear out our welcome at Mark and Erin's house in West Sacramento. This shouldn't be too difficult; I have practice at this in general and also specifically at Mark and Erin's. Once, while housesitting, I ate all their microwave popcorn - which was a feat in and of itself since upon my arrival they possessed 3 1/2 Costco packs of it - and proceeded to clog the toilet. I called Mark, who was driving home that very minute from the airport.

Me: "Uh, hey Mark, you know, uh, that bathroom you guys have downstairs?"
Mark: "Yeah, of course. Dave, what's up?"
Me: "You guys, uh, don't have to use it very much, right? I mean your bedroom's upstairs, and so's the office, so it's not like you're goin into the downstairs pisser on a daily basis, right?"
Mark: "Well, the TV's down there, and so's the kitche... Dave, just tell me what's goin on."
Me: "I'm just saying, the bathroom upstairs is prettier. Nice atmosphere. Smells good."
Mark: "Dave, seriously. What's up with the downstairs bathroom? Did Lox get in and crap in there instead of the litterbox? Again?"
Me: [seeing an out] "Yeah! Yeah, that's exactly what happened! I told you that cat's bad news. Bad fucking news, man. Gotta watch out for that cat."
Mark: "Alright, just clean it up. Sorry it happened. One of the job hazards I suppose."
Me: [seeing that my Macho move of blaming the cat has already run out of steam] "Uh, so actually what happened is that I, uh, had an adverse reaction to some of the food you guys left behind and clogged your toilet."
Mark: [crushing silence for a couple of moments] "That sucks. Happens to the best of us. Except that it doesn't happen to most of us, it just happens to you an unbelievable number of times. So get a plunger and fix it."
Me: [already regretting this housesitting gig. At 512 F Street I could always just tell Josh it was Scott Mallery and based on his track record he'd take the fall] "Uh, you guys don't have a plunger."
Mark: "There's a Target down the street. You've been there, I dunno, like 50 times to play the first level of video games for free. Go pick up a plunger and fix the toilet and if it doesn't work we'll call a plumber."
Me: [so cheap that I'm trying to evade having to pay for a plunger I will never be able to call my own] "I think it's a Jewish holiday today and Target's closed. Maybe your neighbors have one? Ken and Barb from Wisconsin aren't Jewish, are they?"
Mark: "Go get the plunger Dave. Then stick it in the toilet, pump it a few times, and flush again. It's not rocket science. How smart did you say you were, again?"
Me: [last ditch attempt] "Mark, I gotta be honest. I'm not gonna lie. I did not clog your toilet. Megan did. And Lox did too. Megan went #2 in there and then tried to flush Lox down with her creation. It's a mess in there. State of Emergency. Get Arnold to call in the National Guard. Sandbags. Gun turrets. It's like a jung..."
Mark: "Dave - B-U-Y A P-L-U-N-G-E-R. It's 7:13 right now. Target's open till 10. You cannot possibly stall that long. Fix your mess. Stop trying to blame the most constipated person on the planet and a cat. Grow a pair."
Me: thirty-eight seconds of whimpering, small sniffles, no sobbing... ok, a little sobbing
Mark: "I'm going to hang up now, Dave."

Note that I took some liberties with the telling of that (more or less) true story. End result - that, combined with a nearly 5 week self-invited stay while we saved up for Costa Rica and finished our online TEFL training, means that the mere fact that we can set foot in West Sac without getting shot in a turf war by mercenaries Mark hired to keep us the hell away shows that they are plenty patient with our visiting. Almost saintly. So, we'll come traipsing along again and procrastinate there for as long as possible, which appears to be a pretty healthy holding pattern for us.

Eventually, Megan's going to have interviews for positions at zoos, aquariums, and animal parks in the Bay Area. I'm going to try to do little tutoring and/or translation gigs while hunting for apartments in SF and taking care of law school paperwork. Probably as soon as I realize how insanely expensive living in San Francisco really is, I will embark on my own Eagle Scout Project #2 and begin building myself a treehouse in Russ and Laurie's backyard. Hopefully for everyone involved, though, I will have found an apartment by August 22nd, when my school's orientation starts.

I am thrilled to be going to Hastings and am really excited for school to start. I have no idea if I have what it takes or if I'm going to be reeling just a few weeks into it, but after years of pretty aimless studying, I think it will be rewarding to focus intensely on a very practical and challenging topic. Also, as I explained, drunk in a mall food court at 3 in the afternoon, to Labat, I have a chip on my shoulder and expect to harness that petulant little boy anger towards the noble goal of getting good grades. Then I'll fall back into complacenc... wait a second, no I won't. I'll keep kicking ass and taking names. Well, don't hedge your bets. We'll see. I hope to survive, pass, and maybe even get decent grades.

So, if you were unlucky/bored enough to read this whole damn thing, maybe you care enough about me to get in touch. Please do! Just don't speak Spanish to me, because I will hunt you down, cut out your spleen, and feed it to Rudford Wellsley, my pet Coatimundi I snuck through customs. Oh, and "Surprise!" I came back from CR and don't have a cell phone anymore. Growing up is so nice. So send me an email or even a ridiculous Facebook message and I'll fit you into my busy (scoff!) schedule. Maybe I'll find the inner strength to download pictures off my camera and put them on the computer, possibly even write some about our trips around CR. But it's late so bye for now.

Crocodiles and Grandmas

Well, just how are the two related? Monday my mom and grandma came to Costa Rica in the middle of their Central America cruise. It's always been one of my grandma's (and mom's) dreams to see the Panama Canal. They had one day in the Pacific port of Puntarenas, Costa Rica, and Megan and I took Monday off to go spend the day with them.

We had to get up early enough - we took a 6 AM bus from the Southwest corner of the city, so we had to meet the taxi in the street at 5:30. But we had a nice taxi driver, a smooth trip to the bus station and all the way to Puntarenas. It was the beginning of a good day. When we got into Puntarenas we had some time to kill waiting for my mom and grandma to get off the boat. Some German guy who organizes tours for cruises came up to Megan and me and asked us if we were crew members from the ship waiting for friends. That's going to be our strategy for the next time we go to Puntarenas - sneak along on a cruise ship crew tour.

But Monday was far better than even that. Around 9:30 or so they got off the ship and Megan and I had something better to do than laugh at all the 50-something cruise ship tourists on buses for the "Beautiful San Jose Tour." Haha, suckers. We hugged and quickly met a taxi driver who spoke English, and my mom hired him for the day. First off we went to a private home about 30 mins away from the port to see carapechin (white-faced) monkeys and coatimundis (the weird raccoon-like things that we saw in Fortuna). Soon tons of tours from the cruise ship were there, but luckily we were the first in our taxi and we got to feed the monkeys and coatis.

After stopping off at El Puente Tarcoles aka the Crocodile bridge,

we then took another 30 min taxi ride and stopped at a kind of touristy replica of an old Tico village. The next part was the cool part - a boat ride down the Rio Tarcoles to see the mangrove-estuary ecosystem, tons of birds, and some big crocodiles ridiculously close. My grandma was a real trooper and handled the crocs and everything really well. Also, she looks really, really good for a 77 year-old with cancer. Seriously, that's one tough Swedish lady.

So, what was the boat ride like? Well, there were only 6 of us on this skinny, long river boat that's normally meant for dozens of cruise ship tourists. I spent the whole trip climbing over seats and going from side to side with binoculars or my camera - YES! we have a camera now because my mom brought mine - taking pictures of crocs, birds, the ocean, everything. From where we started out probably about 4 or 5 miles from the coast we went toward the ocean and saw the estuary, a mangrove canal, crocs, probably about 20 different types of birds and of course a ton of iguanas. Those things are everywhere. Pretty close to the beginning our tour guide fed the biggest female croc on the river, lovingly nicknamed Monica Lewinsky (see below).


Maybe the highlight was when the boat rammed its way up this little tributary off the main mangrove canal when the guide heard a pair of macaws calling. We stayed quiet and after about 5 minutes we saw them take off and fly through the jungle -a pair of scarlet macaws, flying probably 100 yards from our boat. We couldn't snap a picture in time, though, because the jungle was dense and we only saw them fly for a few seconds. It was incredible.

Next up we were all pretty hungry and we went to Villas Caletas (read: fancy hotel) for lunch. I was envisioning a step up from your average beach-side soda but as reality would have it we drove 15 minutes up these hills overlooking Jaco and entered this ridiculously nice restaurant on a terrace with a view of the surrounding beaches - Jaco, Punta Leona, etc. - and ate the nicest meal by far we've had in Costa Rica. The view was beautiful, we had a fun time talking, and my grandma and I laughed about other fun times we've had travelling together.

We had had plans to try to do or see one more thing after lunch, maybe a rainforest tram, or a visit to nearby Carara National Park, or for my mom a walk on rainforest suspension bridges. But it was already pretty late and we agreed just to hustle back to Puntarenas, talk and enjoy the sunset. Security wasn't all that tight (not so lax that we could get onto the ship, however, dang it) so we could walk along with pier and chat about the day, what living in San Jose is like, and possible plans for my mom and dad visiting in July. When we said our goodbyes everybody was crying but me - ok, I know I'm a terrible son, grandson and person - and my mom and grandma went back on the ship. Megan and I caught the bus and were exhausted but happy and home by about 8:30.

Please, Call me Macho

The fact that we haven't posted in a month and a half should be taken as a good sign that we're starting to adjust to life down here. Work is work and playtime can range from fantastic day-trips to the crater of an active volcano (Poas, about an hour away from Alajuela) to simple games of basketball against Ticos who love to foul. And besides, we won't have pictures to post up until we either cave and buy a "used" digital camera, euphemistic for buying the stolen camera that some other poor Gringo had taken from him/her, or I get mine in the mail. This post will be a short one, but hopefully we'll put some more up this week. We've got some good stories to tell.

We were warned during our first couple of weeks of teaching that we should prepare ourselves for the hilarious honesty of Ticos, particularly the men, in the city. The other teachers weren't kidding. In some ways, our experiences with students have reinforced the prevailing stereotypes that Costa Ricans are almost childishly non-confrontational. Instead of emailing me, talking to me privately, or calling me out in class, two of my students wrote page-long letters to my boss about how I don't include enough conversation activities. Thanks guys. But in the realm of nicknames, Ticos could almost compete with Germans in the realm of in-your-face up-frontedness.

Here's the deal - if you want to catch the attention of someone in the street, you call him or her by their most striking attribute. Fat people get called Gordo/a, black people are called Negro/a, short people Bajo/a, tall people Alto/a.... well, you get the picture. It's not even considered rude. In Megan's case, she gets called Guapa (beautiful) pretty consistently by men of any age, regardless of how angrily I stare them down. For me, though, they haven't settled on just one nickname for me. Depending on how they feel about me and how old my fuzzy half-beard makes me look, I am usually called Gringo, Machillo (little blond guy), Machito (really little blond guy), or Macho (just plain old blond guy). It doesn't matter that I'm probably average or above-average for height and weight here, I'm still usually Machillo.

So, just ignore me or please forgive me if, upon returning to the states, when someone calls me David, Nims, or Nimblybimbly, I insist that he or she dispense with the formalities, forgo pretense, and just call me by my new name: Macho.

Longest Blog Entry Ever!

I started typing this longest blog entry ever, and then Bethany, the Academic Director came and I had to stop right here. But here we go:


The tail end of our vacation in paradise (Santa Teresa) was a good sign that we were ready to go back to San Jose and have an income. That´s not to say that it was bad - New Year´s Eve was really fun, snorkeling at Cabo Blanco National Park was great, and surfing and hanging out were still really fun. But within two days of our amazing fake family Christmas, when there were only four tents in the whole campsite, we were sharing our little slice of heaven with over a hundred other people. Pretty much a couple hundred high, drunk, loud techno fans. So much techno music. So much.


Snorkeling was a great day - we wound up being good friends with Manuel, a 26 year old German guy who has been living in Switzerland and building tee boxes and greens for golf courses. We normally spoke German, but he and Megan could carry on a conversation in English. So one day he met us at the campsite and we found a spot to rent snorkeling equipment and bikes. A dusty but pretty 5k bike ride later we were at the entrance to Reserva Absoluto Cabo Blanco, the first national park in Costa Rica's extensive and impressive system. We walked our bikes through a tiny opening in tall boulders to a nice beach with only about twenty people. We timed it so that we were there at low tide, and while the water wasn't as clear as in the Caribbean, and there weren't massive schools of fish, there were some cool things to see. We probably saw about 15 different kinds of fish, some kinds even had different colors for each fish, and starfish and sea cucumbers. Manuel spotted a lobster and I think I got a pretty good picture of it (haven't gotten that disposable developed yet). We jumped back on our bikes and depsite the sunburns were pretty happy with our day. A couple days later we grabbed sushi with Manuel, and walking on the beach back to our campsite from the main strip at Mal Pais, we saw baby sea turtles scurrying down the beach from the treeline and into the water. We picked a pretty fast one and watched the little guy (or girl, a la Stephanie Colburtle the turtle) make it out into the water. That was awesome. Their shells were about the size formed by touching your index finger to your thumb. We'll get some of Manuel's pictures.

Megan kept getting better at surfing, and one day we even went out with Gabe and Andrew, two of the guys from Washington, to surf the big kids' waves. Turns out we're still out of their league, but I had the boogie board ride of my life on my longboard. Nope, didn't even bother trying to stand up. That group from Christmas just kept getting tighter and tighter, and at the end of our time there, everyone came to see us off at the bus stop.

Ok, New Year's: I wasn't feeling well leading up to New Year's Eve. I had a headache, both of us were sunburned (pretty much a fresh one everyday), and we hadn't slept all night from the club-style rave that took place the night before in our campsite. I won't tell that story right now, but lemme tell you, it's a good one. (Megan went crazy). We went to Casa Zen, the nearest hostel and a Thai restaurant, and we ate a really peaceful, tasty dinner together. We skipped out on playing "Edward Literhands," like we swore we were going to play with the Washingtonians, and thank heaven we didn't. The huge party was at Luz de Vida, the same resort where we had seen the baby turtles. We wanted nothing to do with that rave or its $10 cover charge, so we and our crew went the other way on the beach to a Brazilian bar/restaurant/resort for a huge bonfire and a good time. At midnight there was no champagne, but we sang Auld Lang Syne, waltzed, and enjoyed a good long kiss. Our parents read this, but that's ok because we're in love.


Next morning - neither as romantic nor as enjoyable to write about. I was sick. Stomachally unwell. Out both ends. I haven't been that sick since Monodiet in Minnesota 2006. Megan blamed the booze. I blamed the bonfire (when it collapsed after midnight the smoke blew right towards us and we breathed in a lot of it). But realistically it was probably just a 24-hour bug. We had planned on leaving that day, but we thought I was just too sick to handle the 7-hour trip. After spending the entire morning beginning at 5:30 in a bathroom or asleep on the ground, Megan and I decided to suck it up and get out of Dodge. We packed up, said goodbye to our friends and Lola, and hiked the mile or so to the bus stop. We made it there almost three hours before the bus left for San Jose, but still we were something like the 40th people in line. It didn't help that it was one of the hottest days we had experienced in Santa Teresa, and I was dizzy and afraid that I wouldn't make it through the trip without some kind of health disaster. Riding with Gabriel (the Italian) and Werner (the German) behind us, we managed to get through the bus-ferry-bus trip, even though it lasted every second of the expected 7 hours. We spent the night in the hostel where we had stashed our stuff, and I woke up feeling somewhat better.


That day we met the owner of our company, Brian. We were waiting for him outside our company's office when he drove up in his little SUV (which is generally speaking the vehicle of choice here). When he got out I noticed two things: wow, this guy's young, and he's tall. He's probably about 6'3" or maybe 6'4", but here that's like a giant. Also, he's 31 and looks it. He picked us up at the office and drove us to our apartment complex. Well, that's kind f a misnomer because it's really just a row of four apartments. Anyways, it's a really nice living situation, and we're nearby other teachers and in a relatively quiet, nice area. It's a 7 or 8 minute walk from our office, and a supermarket is about the same distance in the other direction. Oh, and the landlords, Flor and Gonzalo, are really nice.


We had the next couple of days to settle in and get over our illnesses. Megan came down with the same thing I had on New Year's Day, and took us both lots of rest and saltines to get over it. Training started on the Saturday before work started. Brian talked (kind of shouted) for 6 hours about the company. It was exhausting and by the end we were really hungry. The next day we met up with Bethany, our new Academic Director, and she went over the day-to-day stuff, like, well, how to teach English class. We got folders and books for our classes and spent the rest of the day doing lesson plans and feeling nervous. Monday morning Megan and I were up and getting ready by 5:30. Luckily, my first class Monday and Wednesday morning is really nearby, and I walked there with another teacher. I was taking the class over for another teacher. Because the company is hiring four new teachers (Megan, the guy we trained with, me, and one other guy who's coming this next weekend), classes are getting shuffled around. Plus, many classes have just started at Intel, and a couple of companies are starting classes at the beginning of February. I showed up really early where I was supposed to meet Molly, the other teacher who was going to show me where my classroom was, and waited for her. She's going to be my teaching mentor, too. She's really funny, and we'll probably write more about the other teachers in another post. Even though I was nervous, my first class went pretty well. I did some last-minute review, administered a written quiz, and gave and graded individual oral quizzes. Taca was a strong class, and they did pretty well. Plus, they're really, really nice and made me feel less nervous about my lack of experience and being so young.

I had some time off in the middle of the day, so I went into the office and tried grading the quizzes and preparing myself as much as possible for the Equifax class in the afternoon. Bill, the outgoing Academic Director who hired us, dropped me off and set me up with this class. There are four guys in the class, but only three showed up, and since they all showed up half an hour late, I was sitting there nervously wondering if I was in the wrong place, or maybe that the class was cancelled. That night, Megan and I went with Bethany, the new Academic Director, to observe her teach at Scotiabank. That was pretty funny, since a 60-year-old Tico hit on Megan while I was there. haha, not really hit on her, but he did say that she had beautiful eyes.

The rest of the week was crazy. We observed classes, taught almost our full schedules, and had multiple other training sessions having to do with company policy; how to turn in attendance, grades, and payroll; and grammar on Friday night. But when we were finally done Friday night at 7:00, we were so relieved and I honestly felt triumphant. Megan and I went to the local bar and restaurant and got cheap dinners and a few beers. Besides Labat, the other new teacher from Atlanta, we were joined by Shayne, a scruffy-looking, really nice guy from Milwaukee. Around 9:30 or so we decided to go to a bar in Rohrmoser, a nice neighborhood a short taxi ride away. The bar was hilarious -there were about a dozen screens where they played ridiculous music videos (stuff from the 80s, national pop hits, I don't know, everything). We hung out there and had a good time - beer and booze is relatively cheap here - and went to bed exhausted. Phew, so nice to be done with our first weeks on the job.

This past weekend I went to La Sabana, the biggest park in the city, to play basketball with Shayne, Labat, and some guy named Jason who's kind of a tool. But he gave us a ride so that part was nice. We played a few games, schooling some Ticos for a while and then we got really tired and lost 13-11. Labat is black, so he's really good, and Shayne isn't that tall but compared to the average Tico he's like Chris Bosh. I looked like John Stockton out there. Old white guy that can ball.

Ok, this post is long enough. I have more to say but I'll save it for a later date.