Building site in downtown San Ramon
Tuesday
We started back at the dangerous building site, but following a visit from the area co-ordinator have decided to stay after he told us the President is visiting next week. I assume it’s El Presidente of Costa Rica but should have checked. Will be underwhelmed if it’s the president of the local supermarket or something.
Also found out that 3 more girls are coming to live in our house in San Ramon next week. The more the merrier, but I don’t expect to the see the bathroom again for some time with 10 people in the house.
Wednesday
Spent most of the day falling over in the mud.
Finally found the door to the cinema, so in the evening went to see ‘House by the Lake’ – probably the most objectionable film I’ve paid to see.
UPDATE: Turns out it’s called ‘Last House on the Left’ in the UK, and it’s still awful.
Thursday
On Monday a new volunteer arrived who is really quite annoying. Despite having spent a week at a Spanish school in San José before coming to San Ramón she hasn’t learnt a word, so frequently shouts ‘Translation Needed!’ at whoever is in earshot. Apparently doesn’t know Please or Thank you in English so no need in Spanish either, and even the ever patient host family are getting tired of her.
She won’t go out alone, so with the others having (unwillingly) agreed to pick her up and go to the bar, Kelly and I took the opportunity to do a runner and went into town for dinner then back to the cinema to see ‘Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs’, or ‘It’s raining hamburgers’ as it’s called here. Being animated the film had been dubbed into Spanish so I was pleasantly surprised to be able to follow most of the dialog. Probably missed some of the more subtle jokes, but there was quite a bit of slapstick as well.
Friday
Nice easy day at work filling cracks and plastering, so we left at two to allow it all to dry before making a start on the floors next week.
Spent the afternoon wandering round town showing the new chaps the sights, which I expected to take about 30 minutes, but with having to repeat everything 4 times for the hard of thinking it stretched to a couple of hours, so I was relieved to bump into the other volunteering group (that we’d met in Manuel Antonio) from the other side of town and headed off with them for a drink.
Eschewing the usual two bars we ducked into a local dive, where we knew the newer volunteers would never look. This was half the price but missing the little things, like real toilets. The alternative turned out to be a room at the back without a toilet or urinal, but where people just go on the floor and walls. No English was allowed here and we had to avoid eye contact with the local drug dealer, as he seemed quite insistent.
As may be obvious my camera didn’t survive the beach too well, so no photos for a while, which is a shame. I’ll get a few from other people at a later date.
