OUR NEW, UNWANTED PETS

I'm jumpng ahead a bit in my blog, but I wanted to let you all know of the latest news here in CR. Let me introduce you to our newest house-mate, cucaracha. That’s right, we have cockroaches in our apartment.

The day we moved in, we saw that there was a dead one in the laundry room. It didn’t really bother us because we knew that cockroaches as big as your thumb were as common here as daddy long legs are in Pennsylvania. The one in the laundry room was the only one we saw in our apartment until we stumbled across one laying belly-up in our living room on Tuesday evening. We thought it was dead at first, but we took a closer look and saw that its antennae were still twitching a little. Instead of squishing its guts all over the ceramic tile, we decided to let it die naturally since it was more than half way there. The next morning, we woke up and went to the living room/dining room to eat breakfast and saw it was GONE! Ants carried it away? It was just taking a snooze on its back? It died and was given a second chance at life? Whatever it was, we weren’t too thrilled about it.

Later that day at school, we were talking to some of the other teachers about our run-in with the roach. Danielle said that when she would see one, she found that spraying it with cleaner kills the thing pretty quickly and there aren’t any guts to clean up.

Thursday night, I was getting ready to jump in the shower while Brett was finishing up dinner. I turned on the water to let it heat up for a minute and the second I pulled back the curtain to jump in, I saw it by the drain. The cockroach was lying on its back, clearly alive and trying to get out of the water. Its hairy legs and forever long antennae were moving in every direction. Brett came to the rescue with some 409 spray and just as Danielle said, it was dead with no gut mess. He scooped it up with a piece of paper and threw it outside.

After dinner, we started searching the internet for DIY cockroach traps. Our search suggested that these gems hide in small crevices and areas such as cracks in the wall, coffee machines, microwaves, cabinets, and drains. Brett, who hates bugs in the house anyways, was automatically convinced there was one living in the coffee machine that he uses every day. I went over, pulled out the tray where he puts the coffee filter and found nothing. “Check where you put the water!” I put my hand on the lid and flipped it open so fast, just to find an empty space. No cockroaches in the coffee machine.

Every once in a while, we will hear a loud chirping noise coming from the bathroom/laundry room area and are wondering if cockroaches make noise? We searched that as well and Google told us that some do. This led to a search of our apartment with a flashlight. I checked under the couch, under the cabinets, under the stove…I found 5 dead ones. How long have they been there? Who knows. They could have been under there since before we moved in. Regardless, they are around.

That night as we were trying to sleep, we heard the chirping again. We felt things tickling our skin under the sheets. At one point when we were almost asleep, I could have sworn there was something crawling up my arm. I shot up out of bed and Brett had to convince me that everything was okay. It was really hard for us to fall asleep that night.

We were able to go right to sleep without any nightmares last night, but we are still on gaurd. I just hope we don't fid any baby cockroaches running around.

Oh yeah, if you weren't creepy-crawled-out enought, we also found this in our bathroom this week. Brett killed it, too.

GAUDY'S BACKPACKERS

It was concerning to people that we were going to be staying in a hostel until we found an apartment. In their minds, a hostel was the scene of a horror film. I’m sure some hostels are not-so-nice, but Gaudy’s Backpackers was wonderful for us. We stayed at Gaudy’s for a full week and never had a problem. Actually, we met a lot of really awesome, adventurous, and interesting people from all over the world and we became pretty good friends with two of the three people behind the desk - Andrés and Claudia.

We had to ring the bell for someone to let us in. We felt pretty safe there. 

The hostel was really nice! The night we arrived there, we decided to pay an extra $10 to stay in our own room instead of sharing a dorm room where strangers would be sleeping as well. We had all of our things with us, including all of our money, cameras and computers, so we were afraid that someone would snoop through and take them. In the future, however, I think we will probably stay in a dorm room. Not that a hostel is super expensive anyways, but a penny saved is a penny earned!

 

 

Every morning, Andrés prepared breakfast for anyone who was awake between 7:30 and 8:30am. Each morning, we were given two pancakes and two or three different types of fruit, usually watermelon, cantaloupe, and pineapple. If we weren’t down there by 8:25, there was a good chance we weren’t getting breakfast. There were two days when Brett and I barely made it…our punishment was one pancake each. Hahah, Andrés was not about to make more.  He wasn’t mean about it, just strict with his breakfast deadlines.

One pancake. ^

Everyone was responsible for washing their own dishes and we were allowed to use the kitchen and refrigerator to prepare our own meals. Jelly bread and bananas was an okay first meal, but Brett and I wanted to cook something tasty. We figured spaghetti was easy enough so we went to the grocery store on our street and bought four small packs of pasta and a jar of pasta sauce. I love pasta and was feeling especially hungry so I suggested making all four packs and just keeping whatever might be left over in the fridge for lunch the next day. Brett thought I was crazy for wanting to make all four packs and later suggested that maybe we should only make three, but I had already opened all four so that was what we were making.

Four small packs of spaghetti turned into an absurd amount of pasta. Our small jar of sauce was not nearly enough. We ate what we could, offered everyone in the dining room some spaghetti, and then had to figure out what in the world we were going to store this food in. Claudia, the lady who works behind the desk and is originally from Columbia, brought us a plastic shoebox… a storage container. She laughed at us sooo hard! Then, she told me that she has seen a lot of interesting people come and go from the hostel, but she has never seen two people make so much pasta for one meal. After she finished making fun of us, she gave us some of her pasta sauce to use the next day because she didn't want us to waste it. Unfortunately, we really didn’t like the sauce. At all. Brett couldn’t even eat it and I forced it down. We threw the rest out after that and we were ashamed for wasting so much food.  Lesson learned. Never make four packs of spaghetti for two people, even if the packs are small.

The next night, we decided to make a common Costa Rican dish of rice and beans with some onions, red pepper, garlic, tomato sauce, eggs, and tortillas. Neither of us had ever made beans before so we were unaware that they take 420852 hours to cook. Three different groups of people prepared their food, ate their food, and had their dirty dishes washed by the time we were ready to sit down to eat. Claudia laughed at us again.

Betsy showing us how to properly prepare beans.

The next day, we had leftovers of the rice/bean/egg meal. The day after that, we had the leftover rice/bean/egg meal again. It was tasty and we enjoyed the food, but we were ready for something else after that. We’re still working on how to portion food for just the two of us.

People would come and go from the hostel almost daily. We were able to meet a lot of really awesome people. Some were from Sweden, some were from Germany, some were from Columbia, Mexico, and Holland. Some knew two languages, some new five. Some were traveling alone, some were just living life and moving from one place to the next without any specific timeline. Some were on vacation for the week while some were just traveling for the year. Paul, a guy form Holland, was taking his good ‘ole time just traveling wherever he decided to go.  He told us that whenever he runs out of money, he will just get a work visa in whatever country he is in at the time and work for a little bit until he makes enough money to continue on.
  

One night, Brett and myself, Paul, Betsy, a girl from Columbia, a young girl from the states traveling by herself to meet up with her friend, Claudia (from Columbia), and her daughter were all sitting around a table talking about random things; politics, education, places to visit in Costa Rica, missing plane flights, the beauty of Columbia, superstitions, and whatever else filled the two hour conversation. As much as I usually avoid the topic of politics, hearing about the politics of other countries is quite fascinating.

Claudia blended up a fresh cup of maracuya juice for Brett and I after most of the group went to sleep. It was starting to feel like home there at the hostel, but we knew we would (hopefully) be moving soon into our new apartment. At least we knew that we had somewhere safe and comfortable to go if anything were to go wrong, right in downtown San Jose. 

SO, TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF.

Between two weeks and a week before we made the trip down to Costa Rica, Brett and I sent out our resumes and cover letters to nearly 30 different schools. Our emails included a message saying that we were interested in teaching English and that we would be in the country on the 4^th. Being that it was Christmas break for most schools, I didn’t hear anything back until we were down there. Brett, however, did hear back from the Washington School and was offered an interview on the 6th! The peak hiring season here for ESL teachers is January to early February, so we were feeling confident that we would hear SOMETHING once the break was over.

As I said in my last post, I was offered an interview the day after we arrived there (January 5^th) and Brett’s was for the following day. We woke up extra early to give us some buffer time with trying to find the school in the foreign city. I put on a dress and Brett put on his tie. Andrés, the one man at the desk in our hostel, said we look “muy elegante” as we passed him on our way to the door. With the local map in hand, we headed to our first interview.

Our 30 minute walk was a little less than elegant. We probably could have caught a bus, somewhere, but we had no clue what bus we would take. Getting specific directions down here is impossible. For example, the address for point A might be something like the following: Point A is 800 meters west of point B. Okay, great! Where is point B? Point B is 30 meters north of point C.  Ugh.  Brett and I are bad enough with directions as it is. Actually, I will say that Brett did a fantastic job at navigating the map; I was thankful for that. Even when we did get lost (those stories to come later), I felt confident that he could at least get us back to where we started. Good job, honey. J

Being our first full day in the country, we didn’t realize that there was a main road for people to walk through, just a few streets up. Instead, we walked through streets with tiny, uneven sidewalks and a lot of realllllly terrible smells. There were little shops set up that sold fish and there was garbage everywhere. Blah. When I say the smells were reallllly bad, I mean we were holding our breath and still had the urge to vomit. So bad. It was mainly that one street so once we passed through it, we could breathe again.

Right before that, though, we were walking on a normal sized sidewalk and there was a big cardboard box pushed against the wall. As we got closer, we saw some toes, ankles, and knees sticking out of this box!  I expected to see homeless people here – it’s a big city. What I didn’t expect was to see a man laying stick straight on his back with his feet together. Brett’s and my first thought was that he was dead and that someone covered up his face with the box. Thinking we just stepped over a corpse,  Brett grabbed my hand and ran down the sidewalk. “Oh my gosh, is that person dead?” “I don’t know?!?!?!?!” We were optimistic in thinking that he would be alive and get up before we came back through after our interview. We had to wait and see, but the thought of it alone freaked us out.

We made it to the first interview at a school called the Universal de Idiomas. Even though this was technically my interview, Brett came dressed to impress and he was also given an interview! We filled out some paperwork and then I was called into the office to take a personality test on their computer. I was told to mark which of the four descriptions most represented me, and which of the same four least represented me. It was hard! Here’s an example: (a) responsible – can always be counted on (b) kind – considerate of others and their feelings (c) agreeable – you get along well with others or (d) creative – are able to make old ideas new and exciting.  Another example would be (a) argumentative – you think your always right (b) aggressive – you are willing to do what it takes to get things your way  (c) self-centered – don’t care about others or (d) a follower – unable to think for yourself.  I mean, I don’t consider myself to be most like any of those but I guess I’ll pick (d) unable to think for myself?

The second part of the interview lasted about five minutes, tops. After talking a little about my resume, the lady asked how long I was planning to be here and I told her I'd be staying until the end of June. Usually they look for people who can comit to a full year but she said she would call me by the end of the week with their decision. Brett had the same experience during his interview – short and sweet. We knew we probably wouldn’t get a call back, but we figured it was good practice anyways.

On our way back to Gaudy’s, we held our breath from the stinky streets and kept our eyes open for the man in the box on Avenida 3. HE WAS STILL LAYING THERE IN HIS BOX! As we got a little closer, we could see he was lying on his side so we knew he was alive. Thank goodness.

Back to the hostel, we checked our email and saw that we had more interview offers! This was a huge relief because the first one wasn’t very promising. We spent the evening sending emails back and forth, trying to schedule more and more interviews between other interviews. We still had Brett’s set up for the next day (Wednesday), two set up for Thursday, and then two more set up for Friday. When Brett or I would get an email about an interview, we would mention the other because we thought it would be ideal to both work at the same school and have the same schedule. Luckily, it worked. We were both able to schedule an interview for every school we heard back from. Interviewing and scheduling for interviews was exhausting.

The next day was Brett’s interview with the Washington School. Though I was allowed to come in for an interview as well, the lady said they don't usually hire couples because they would be down two teachers instead of one when we would do our border run to renew our tourist visas. That tidbit of information kinda stunk, but we were off to our second interview anyway! This was going to be our first shot at trying to catch a bus to where we wanted to go. We again talked to Andrés at the desk and he told us we had to catch bus into Guachipelin, then take a taxi the rest of the way. The bus stop was three blocks away and we were already sweating by the time we got there. The first bus pulled up and I asked the driver if it was going to pass through Guachipelin to which he responded “no”. We turned around and stepped off of the bus like the tourists that we are. There was a bus on its way toward us and a woman behind us pointed to it and said she thinks that it is the bus we need. We were excited to see that she was right.

We arrived to the Washington School and were really impressed with the playgrounds and plethora of trees in the gated area. This school was for children so I was super excited about that! Together, Brett and I sat down with Miss. Danielle and we talked a little about our resumes. She then started to describe the school and said they have preschool through high school there and that the school is bilingual. They have talent shows at the end of the year, we would get to decorate our own classroom and the school would reimburse us. We would get paid in cash biweekly and the school day was from 8am to 3pm. If we wanted, we could start our own club or tutor for an hour after school for extra moolah. Everything she said sounded perfect. Danielle actually was certified through the International TEFL Academy just like we were! She started teaching last year but loved it so much she decided to postpone grad school and stay this year, too. We left the interview super excited, but sad that they likely weren’t going to hire us both.

Day three of interviews…here we go! The first interview was at Pro-Language. This bus stop was a lot farther away than the one to Guachipelin but we made it. On our way to the school, I pulled out my trac phone (oh yeah, we both got trac phones the first day here) to check the time since we had to walk longer than we expected. I saw I had a missed call but I didn't recognize the number. I asked Brett if he knew who had called us so he pulled out his phone and saw that he also had a missed call from the Washington School. We just stared at each other, both nervous and excited at the same time. He called them back and Danielle answered the phone. I couldn’t hear what she was saying so I was watching Brett’s face and listening so close to the tone of his voice. Then, I heard the single best statement that I could hear him say… “We accept.” He hung up the phone and we burst into laughter. We called Pro-Language and said we just accepted full time positions with another school and wouldn’t be in for our interviews. We called the other three schools who we scheduled interviews with and canceled those, too. We had jobs.

Instead of going the whole way to San Pedro, where our interview was going to be, we decided to turn around and go back to our hostel in downtown San Jose. We didn’t know the best place to get off of the bus so we stayed on, hoping it would maybe loop back around? It didn’t. We got to what apparently was the last stop of the day and the driver kicked us off of the bus. Hahaha. He really did. We were going to stay on as long as we were allowed. So now, we didn’t know what town we were in, just somewhere between San Jose and San Pedro….umm. We walked a few blocks until we found a bus stop and just waited there. Soon, a bus came by that had “San Jose” written on the front of it so we thought we were saved. We jumped on the bus without asking for sure where it was headed (dumb). Five minutes or so down the road, we realized that it was not headed back to San Jose but rather farther from it. San Jose is wehre it STARTED. We got off the bus and waited at yet another, random, bus stop. We were lost, but still so incredibly pumped that we were going to be making money here soon. Nothing could ruin our day.

We made it back to Gaudy’s safe and sound without too much trouble after all. To celebrate BOTH of our NEW JOBS at the Washington School, we took the rest of the afternoon to ourselves and hung out at El Parque Metropolitano La Sabana.

Brett and his bamboo trees.

Back at the hostel we enjoyed a few beers from the grocery store and toasted to our new life in Costa Rica. Salud and PURA VIDA! J

PRIVATE TAXI

Waking up at 3 in the morning on January 4^th, 2016 wasn’t nearly as hard as it usually would be. On this particular morning, Brett and I were lacing up our hiking boots that wouldn’t fit in our luggage and heading to the Pittsburgh airport. Mom and Dad waited while they rerouted our flight from D.C. to Houston, which meant that we were going to arrive to Costa Rica even earlier than our original flight! They checked our bags (luckily, Brett’s was exactly 50.0 lbs) and we were off to security. We got in line and waved good-bye to los padres and told them we’d message them on Facebook when we made it safe and sound. The flight went really smoothly and our layover in Houston wasn’t any more than fifteen minutes. Because of our new flight schedule, Brett and I weren’t going to be able to sit by each other; I’ll admit, we were pouty about it. We sat in our assigned seats as people piled onto the plane behind us, but, as it turns out, Brett was given permission to take the open seat next to me so we were able to keep each other company after all. I slept for most of the flight, but that’s beside the point.  Before we landed, Brett woke me up and we were glued to the window watching the miles and miles of trees pass under us. Everything looked so green. As we got closer to landing, we started to see small towns made of one story houses, and eventually, Costa Rica’s capitol, San Jose.

                                  

Going through customs was pretty easy. We had our ticket to Panama out and ready to prove we would be “leaving” within their 90 day requirement for a tourist visa. At first, the lady wasn’t sure if our bus tickets were acceptable, but after a minute of holding our breath, they let us pass.

While we were still in the airport, we wanted to take out some money for the taxi/hostel. We had to figure out how much money to take out of the ATM since $1 ROUGHLY converts to ₡530 (colones is the Costa Rican currency). It fluctuates from day to day so there isn’t an exact conversion. I’ll have a whole post on the currency here soon.

After the ATM dispensed the multicolored money, it was time to step out of the airport into what would be our new home for the next six months. As soon as we rounded the corner into the open air, countless people were crowded around us. Some people were holding signs, looking for specific people, but the majority were cab drivers trying their hardest to get us to hop in the back of their car. Obviously, we did need a taxi to get to our hostel, but we had heard to only trust the red taxis with a yellow triangle on the side. It’s not that uncommon for some taxi drivers to take the long way around when they know their passengers aren’t familiar with the area; a longer taxi ride = more colones. Keeping all of this in mind, one guy came right up to Brett and started talking to him in English (we are clearly gringos here). When Brett asked if we could see his taxi before agreeing to go with him, the guy replied by saying, “it’s over here. It’s a private taxi”. Okay, no thanks. We’ll find another one.

I wasn’t super surprised with everyone hollering about taking their taxi because it was similar in Ecuador. Brett, on the other hand, was not a fan in the slightest. He asked a policeman which taxi he would recommend and the officer pointed behind him to another man. We followed him to his red taxi with the yellow triangle and hopped in, hoping that he really did know where Gaudy’s Backpackers hostel was located and trusting that he’d take us right to it.  Five minutes into the taxi ride, I looked over at Brett and I could tell he wasn’t exactly thrilled with our first couple minutes in Costa Rica.

We arrived to Gaudy’s backpackers just as we had hoped. We checked in at the desk and decided we would only pay for a night at a time since we had absolutely no clue what the next day would bring. We stopped at the grocery store just two blocks away and literally had jelly bread and bananas for our first meal there. Since we technically had no income, yet, we really had to watch what we were spending.

           

     

There were a few gecko lizards that kept us company on the walls above us and this older lady named Betsy came over and introduced herself to us, explaining that she was also staying at Gaudy’s for a few days. She is from Scranton, PA, and was down here to get some dental work done. I guess it is cheaper for her to fly down here than to get it done in the U.S. so she decided that she would just travel around a bit while she was here.

We finished the jelly jar and started to get ready for bed. Thankfully, the hostel had pretty good internet and we were able to check our emails. I had gotten a reply from a school saying that I had an interview the next morning at 9am and Brett had one for the day after! That is what is so exciting about this trip - we came down here with nothing more than a certificate and our bags, praying that we would find a job and a place to live. These email replies gave us the you’re-making-progress moment that we needed. Next task: interviews.

MOM, DAD... WE'RE MOVING TO COSTA RICA.

In March of 2015, my (at the time) boyfriend, Brett, told me that he wanted to learn Spanish. I always knew that he was the determined type, so this didn’t surprise me all that much. However, what did take me by surprise was that he asked me if I wanted to move with him to Latin America. At first, I thought he was kidding, but I quickly realized that he was genuinely interested in moving. 

                            

http://www.resort-costarica.com/about_costa_rica.html

We started looking into programs in which we could teach English in Spanish-speaking countries and we came across the International TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) Academy. This program required an eleven week online course and a 20 hour practicum that included a combination of observing an ESL classroom and student teaching. The course we signed up for started in May and we were both able to complete everything by the end of October.  We were super excited when we got our certificates in the mail!

After the course came the planning and organizing of the trip. We had to get our typhoid vaccines, scan and make copies of documents, try to familiarize ourselves with San Jose for when we first got there, and book our ticket out of the country. For Costa Rica, it is a requirement to have an exit ticket out of the country within 90 days while on a tourist visa. We decided to book our bus ticket for Panama around the end of March! Shout out to Mom and Dad for buying us those tickets for our early birthday presents.  

Christmas was soon right around the corner and both Brett’s and my Christmas list consisted of the following: backpacks, sunscreen, bug repellent, de-wrinkle spray for our clothes, microfiber towels, flashlights, a flip belt, and reusable water bottles. I’m pretty sure we have enough sunscreen and bug spray to last us the whole trip now. :) Bill and Carrie got both of us a sweet backpack that has a metal mesh inside to prevent pickpockets from slashing our bags and stealing our stuff. (If you’re interested in antitheft bags, https://www.pacsafe.com is a great way to go.)

After Christmas day was over, I thought I had everything I wanted for the big trip that was starting in less than two weeks. Everything seemed to be falling right into place, exactly as we hoped it would. One important detail was missing, and Brett was the one who made sure it was taken care of... Say hellloooooo to the future Mrs. Heber!!! Yep, that’s me! On our two year anniversary, just a week before we left, Brett asked me to marry him. Now, I get to tell everyone that I am on this six month trip to Costa Rica with my FIANCÉ and I couldn’t be more thrilled about it! I’m a lucky girl.

Right before New Year’s, we started to pack our bags. Packing was a little more challenging than I expected. Since our plan is to teach English while we are there, we had to pack professional clothes in addition to what we were planning for hiking volcanoes, swimming in the Carribean, working out, going salsa dancing, etc. Our 50lb checked bags can only hold so much, ya know. Luckily for me, one of my very best friends, Alana, was there to teach me how to pack. I do have a picture of her making my packing list and literally rolling up my clothes/fitting them into my suitcase like a puzzle, but I forgot that memory card back in PA. Boo. But Alana, if you’re reading this, I might need you to fly down here to help me pack to come home. Please?


After many hours of organizing my room, putting my remaining clothes and things away in bins, and stressing over making sure that my documents were all scanned and saved somewhere safe, I was ready to meet Brett and his parents in Pittsburgh on January 3^rd, 2016. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 6:01 am from Pittsburgh on the 4^th, so my parents, Brett’s parents, my sister Morgan, and her boyfriend Nick all met for supper the night before. Brett and I were really excited about this because we love our parents and love when we are all together at the same time. We also wanted to be sure that they understood how much we appreciate their support with this trip, even though we know they were sad about us leaving. I know that with my parents, they gave me my sense of adventure and I know that they want me to take advantage of opportunity when I have the chance. So, to our Moms and Dads, please know that we don’t take your support for granted. We know that we wouldn’t be here in this crazy, unpredictable, awesome learning experience/adventure without you guys. XOXOXOXO

 My parents (Matt & Lisa), myself, Brett, and my future in-laws (Carrie & Bill)!
We can't forget Mya there, too, at Mom's feet.

Brett and myself with my sister, Morgan, and her boyfriend, Nick.

After dinner, Morgan was nice enough to allow us to stay at her apartment to catch a few Z’s before heading to the airport at four in the morning. Mom, Dad, and our dog, Mya, passed out in the sleeping bags on the living room floor without any trouble. Brett and I, on the other hand, lay there laughing in disbelief, knowing that our newly engaged selves would soon be walking the streets of San Jose, Costa Rica.