One week

I have one week and a few hours until I leave for Costa Rica.  The puzzle which is packing has been stressing me out some, but I will eventually manage to throw something together.

I will be spending the first month in Orosi, a town outside the capital, San José.  Orosi is south of San José.   The orientation will serve to give me the tools I will need to teach English in Costa Rica.

I will also be using the month to practice my Spanish.  I have hardly had any reason to speak it since last April.  It should come back to me though I will have to work on understanding a new country's words and various quirks with Spanish.

A few days ago I saw the blog, OMG I'm the adult.  While I had a few moments over the summer as supervisor at the YMCA where that thought went through my head, it was still essentially the same job I  have done since I was 16 years old.  I am equal parts nervous and excited about having that feeling many more times over the next year.  I  will definitely be the adult.

La Fortuna

I found out last night that I will be teaching in the school, Zeta-13.  I will be living in La Fortuna, which is a town about 5 hours by bus from the capital San Jose.

La Fortuna is in the northwest of the country relatively close to the Nicaraguan border.  La Fortuna has roughly 6,000 people in it.  The town is mainly a tourist town.  It is a starting location for taking trips to the hot springs and waterfalls all around the town. 

Also of note is the active volcano, Volcano Arenal, which is the picture at the top of my blog.  While sometimes obscured in clouds, I certainly hope to be able to see the Volcano in all its glory in my time in Costa Rica.

Zeta-13 is the name of the town which I will be teaching at.  This is a school for mainly the children of the workers in the tourist industry.  The school has roughly 450 students.  I will be teaching science and English to kindergarden-5th graders at least, and maybe 6th graders. 

I m excited to know where I am going to be teaching.  The placement seems good. Also, I will be able to have people visit me if they have the time.  In such a touristy town, there are a plethora of hostels and hotels to accommodate friends and family.

new netbook

Yesterday my new netbook came in the mail.  This is exciting for a couple of reasons.  First, it means a new computer for me to play around with which is always fun.

Second, now I have the computer I will be bringing with me to Costa Rica which is really good.  I bought  an ASUS netbook , which comes with a 6 cell battery, which should last a fair amount of time.  It also comes with windows 7. So far, Windows 7 has been good.  I can't say its much better than xp, but it certainly has done what I need it to.


My next project with it is to figure out open office.  I should have some sort of word processor, since I bought this with the idea of trying to do some writing while in Costa Rica.  Since I need to break out of my post-Nanowrimo lack of motivation, I figure trying out writing on my netbook could be what I need.

Just about a month

I'm leaving for Costa Rica in just about a month. There is so much I have to finish before I can leave. Just figuring out what to bring alone is enough to stress me out. I should be able to finish up the paperwork this week, or at least mos of it.

The trickiest part of the paperwork is definitely the visa application. I had to wait for December 1 to start the process, which compresses the time considerably. I have a birth certificate which I received on December 1. I will be receiving a CORI saying that I have no record in the next couple of days.

The next step is to have the birth certificate and the personal CORI certified by the secretary of the state's office. This can be done in person. Then I have to find a way to have pictures taken of me in the correct size, which has proven to be somewhat tricky.


In other news I won Nanowrimo, with 50,328 words. While not one sentence is anywhere close to publishable, I still wrote over 50,000 words on one story. I am hoping to continue writing in Costa Rica in any free time I have.

Approaching departure date

I am now less than two months from my departure date. I will be flying to Costa Rica via Dallas/Ft. Worth on January 7th.

I am nervous about the entire experience, but at the same time I am ready to move on. While living at home has been fine, it is time for me to do something else. I have been working at a local YMCA lifeguarding, which is fine but not what I want to do long term.

In a couple of weeks I have to start the steps to securing a visa, which is my next big challenge. While some steps will be straightforward such as requesting a new birth certificate, I will be working to make sure the steps involving the Costa Rican consulate go as smoothly as possible.

In mid-December I will be finding out where specifically in Costa Rica I will be teaching. I'm excited for this part of it, since I want to know where in the country I will be.

That's all for now. Back to Nanowrimo for me.

First blog post

I have considered attempting to do a blog of my own for a few months. I never felt I had anything particularly witty or interesting to say. While that has not changed very much, I will be using this blog to attempt to keep people informed who are interested in my travels in the next year.

I will be teaching English in Costa Rica for WorldTeach. Anything I say in here is solely my opinion and not that of WorldTeach as a whole.

That's enough for now. I will most likely be writing here to work on developing my own voice and method of writing. This should allow me to read prior posts without wincing in pain. However, since I am not going to actively promote this site for a while, chances are few people will read this.