Getting there was a bummer, though. I left Monteverde at 6am. The night before had been the Spanish club potluck, which was excruciating for two opposite reasons. Reason one was that everyone spoke broken Spanish which made it all harder. Reason two was that we spoke Spanish for hours which was exhausting. Also there was a reason three, which was that it was hard to not constantly correct everyone all the time. That day I also went to... the bat museum! It was very cool, with real live bats, bat skeletons (which are very similar to human skeletons actually) and scales that you could step on that were rigged to tell you how much you would eat if you were a bat. Banana scale: step on, that's how many bananas you would eat every night if you were a fruit bat. Bug scale: I would eat 52 gallons of bugs if I was a bug bat. Also there was a nectar scale. Very cool.
So I took a bus to San Jose, then a taxi to the Comtrasuli bus terminal. The Comtrasuli bus goes to Puriscal, from where I had to take a taxi to Amatierra. I had all of my stuff with me, and I got on the Puriscal bus without really thinking about putting my huge 50lb backpack underneath. There had been no opportunity to do so. And so I sat with it on my lap. These are very small seats, so I basically had my backpack pressed between the seat in front of me and my face. It was so tight it must have violated some human rights law. Seriously, making love has brought me less close to other physical entities. Luckily, this only lasted for half an hour before an empty seat freed up, and the 50lb backpack got its own special seat, all to itself.
I love Amatierra. It's a beautiful property with a pool, nature trails, a FANTASTIC cook, and a gorgeous open air yoga studio. The owners, Bob and Jill, are Chicago Jews who are absolutely lovely. My first day there I went to a singing bowl ceremony where we attuned our chakras to the vibrational frequency of the planet. I'm so into this shit.
I am going to be moving in with Kenny, Pablo, and Casper in a couple of days. We have a rustic house in town that is badly in need of furniture and decoration, but that will come in time. Right now the Winnie the Pooh wainscotting in my room will have to do. Pablo is a very sweet, rotund chef. He smiles a lot and his English is ok. Kenny is the hotel manager, 32, super fluent in English, and frickin' awesome. We are going to bro out really hard, I can just tell. The downside is that we mostly speak English, but I'm working on him. I really can't overemphasize how nice, fun, and relaxed eveyone is.
I haven't really started working yet; I'm going to basically be Jill's assistant and also, of course, teach classes. I get the feeling that I'll just be there to do anything extra that needs to be done, but since I don't know the lay of the land yet, I haven't done too much. Except take care of Casper.
Casper is 8 weeks old. Casper is a small white fluffy dog. Generally I hate small dogs, but there is one kind that I love, and Casper is the best kind: a Samoyed puppy! We are going to be best friends, I can just tell.
