Art Projects a.k.a. Stress Relief

From the professor who told us to "do something creative" for our final creative project, I'd say this was the most open ended class I have ever taken, although all of my teachers seemed to have that same style. As my art professor would always say, "Don't worry, be free!" I rediscovered a place in my heart for doing art again. I knew I always loved it, but this class reminded me how much I missed it! So when I was cleaning out my room of school supplies, I was sure to keep my drawing book, pencils, paints, colored pencils, markers, and crayons. I really can't believe I even got credit for this class, but I'm not going to complain. I learned zero about art history, but instead went to class twice a week to do some small project in drawing, painting, or sculpture. Here are some of the projects I did:

 Landscape

 Black and white still life

 Drawing of our ideal home.  Some had asked me and nope, I didn't use a ruler. This was one of my favorites! Made me think about going into architecture.

this was my creative project...more like just therapeutic messin around with paints

 black and white self portrait...it's me!

Updates on my Life Decisions...

Happy holidays and feliz navidad to everyone! I hope you spent it surrounded by people you love and enjoyed every moment of the traditions, good company, delicious food, and time off from work that comes with the holidays! 

Ok.. since my last update everything has become officially official. I have decided...drum roll please!...I am staying in Costa Rica for another semester to finish my spanish major. I'm taking one class in the spring at Universidad Veritas and still looking for a paying job while I am here. I heard that the call centers are always looking for english speakers and they pay well. Although if I take that job, I hope to look for another volunteer experience in a school to use my Spanish and get a feel for working in a school in another country. Also in my free time, I'm hoping to take some Italian classes at a local Casa D'Italia which gives lessons and discount for students from Veritas! It will definitely be a very different semester that the last, new students, new schedule, a class for only 12 weeks.

 I booked my flight back to the great land of 10,000 lakes for April 11.  So I will be in Costa Rica for Semana Santa, or Holy Week which I am really excited for! When I return, I am going to be taking a class at my home university in the summer and finally student teaching in the fall. After I graduate though, that will be another mystery at least for a while! ....Wherever my imagination will take me....

Major Life Decisions Decided by...ME! Yikes.

Major Life Decisions Decided by...ME! Yikes.

I know my parents will tell me what they think is best for me and that they will support me with whatever I choose to do, but I know that ultimately these decisions (and many to come all at once in the near future) will be mine to make...and it's starting to scare me! But mom and dad, I still really want to hear from you. This is part of the reason why I'm writing this entry. The other part is let out some steam!

I am writing this entry because I feel like I know what I want, it's just that I don't have my parent's approval or a best friend's (you know, the one who you talk to because you know they will agree with you). Since the beginning of my trip, I have been doing a lot of thinking and weighing my options.

Choices & Consequences

1. EARN: Spanish major, Elementary Ed, K-12 Spanish. 
1. complete at least 2 credits of cultural/literature Spanish course
2. one semester of Block 3 for elementary ed
3. one semester of student teaching- extended because dual licensure
1. TOTAL TIME TO COMPLETE: one year IF one semester is 20 credits otherwise 3 more semesters
2. EARN: Spanish major, K-12 Spanish
1. complete at least 2 credits of cultural/literature Spanish course
2. one semester of student teaching (which I apply for one year in advance)
1. TOTAL TIME TO COMPLETE: one year
3. EARN: Spanish major
1. complete at least 2 credits of cultural/literature Spanish course
1. TOTAL TIME TO COMPLETE: one semester

Problems (Or Should I Say, "Opportunities"?)

1. Apply for Plan B-- includes full application to graduate school (those words I was NOT ready to hear yet): 2 letters of recommendation, statement of purpose, completion plan, approval from advisor and department chair, and by the way "do all this ASAP" because it must be completed this semester

• Solution? Apply for Plan B. If worse comes to worst, I officially drop my education major, graduate in the spring with Spanish and figure out what to do from there.

1. Apply for Student Teaching for Fall 2012 by Dec 1 (yep, two weeks from now) is the deadline to apply for student teaching 1 year from now. If you are reading this entry, you can clearly tell I do not plan that far in advance. I come up with many ideas and provide myself with opportunities, which is why I am telling myself...

• Solution?... to apply NOW so I don't miss the opportunity and decide later whether or not I will student teach in the fall

1. I need two more credits to complete my Spanish major. In Costa Rica at Universidad Veritas it costs $750. At University of St. Thomas, $3000+. The class I need in Costa Rica has already been approved by my school. The problem? "University policy is that you cannot switch programs while you are abroad.  Switching from AIFS to directly enroll would be considered switching programs.  If you wish to stay in Costa Rica for spring semester, you must stay with AIFS." Tuition for AIFS: Study until March: $7000 or Study until May: $9000.... To stay in Costa Rica I am looking at paying either $750 vs. $9000...you do the math. According to UST, I MUST pay the AIFS tuition, I MUST take up to 20 credits worth of classes, go on all excursions (again), and be provided with housing and food. 

• Solution? Help me with this one, please! I only need one class. I should be able to take that class and have my credits transfer. Ideally, I take one class, have an internship or job teaching, and I pay to my host family exactly what AIFS is paying them for my food and housing. (I think is $13/day).

5 Years From Now...

Yes, the big life question and an updated list of goals...

• Live abroad: Spanish speaking country, Italy
• Be Fluent in Spanish & Italian
• Be Engaged or Married (to my best friend)
• No kids yet! I want to travel with my man! (some of these words I've written have to be so shocking to you, dad...sorry)
• By now, I will have had some experience in teaching or another career and will know what area I would like to continue my education in. Therefore, 'begin my master's degree' has been added. Now how about adding, begin master's degree...abroad?
• Have no specific plan, provide myself with lots of opportunities, and be flexible!

So if anyone has still stuck around to finish this, and you have any thoughts at all, let me know with a comment. I couldn't sleep tonight because this has been on my mind. I know it always eventually works out, it's just a matter of when and how. With a little faith in God, I know that I am right where I am supposed to be. Here's a quote I like when I start getting anxious about all of these life decisions:

"Don't waste your life in doubts and fears: spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours or ages that follow it." 

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Procrastination Station...Let's Talk about Food.

I am sorry for these not-so-great photos. They were taken from a housemate's phone and fail to do justice to the cooking of Mamatica. I really just put up pictures of food to call your attention to the left of my blog where you will see my new link called "Recipes". Enjoy it. I stayed up late for this one, really taking my time so I could procrastinate as much as I could with the novel I'm supposed to be reading. It comes with much more appetizing pictures! Enjoy! :-)

Surprise Field Trip, Wine Included!

Reasons Why I Love My Art Professor

• Our homework is due in "Oh it doesn't matter, how about December?"

• "So what do you guys want to do today, watch a movie?" Yes, yes of course we do! "Ok, I'll go to the library"

• "We have a surprise field trip today!"

• He shows up to class 10 minutes late because he has to get his tea in the cafeteria first. We talk for the first 15-20 minutes, we never finish on time because he never looks at the clock or watch (which yes, when you are doing art is a good thing!) This mentality of Costa Rica I really appreciate!

• We do art projects every day in all different mediums- collage, drawing, painting, clay, paper.

• We use Google Earth everyday and just 'travel' around the world.

• What do you guys want to do tonight? Do you want to go to Los Pros and draw a scene there? (Los Pros is a local bar that we have been telling him about, we mainly tell him about it to see if he will actually take us there. He talks about it as if we will go someday, but have yet to go! Maybe tonight we will!) 

• He is learning French and is a native Spanish speaker. So we are able to have trilingual conversations. 

Night at the Museum

1) First Stop? UCR San Pedro

On our surprise field trip last week, our professor drove us first to UCR the local university in San Pedro to the art school to walk through their art gallery. I really enjoyed driving through campus to experience the environment of Costa Rica's public school (it's also ranked 3rd in the world! Although I have to find the source so I know who ranked it). Our professor also teaches there so he had a special access card to get us into the campus and able to see everything. I wish I would've taken pictures because it felt like a college town, only it was in the jungle. It is a really big school with 30,000 students. It had a medical school, art school, business, education, and more. 

2) Second Stop? El Museo Nacional

The following pictures are at our second stop of our field trip: El Museo Nacional in San José. We are walking through downtown San José to the museum which is offering an opening night of an art exhibition to one of our professor's artist friends. We knew nothing about it, only that we love field trips! When we got there, we learned the exhibit was entitled "Reinas de la noche"which approached the topic of prostitution. 

Above and below are pictures of the entrance into the museum.

Above in the striped shirt is the artist welcoming us to his exhibit.

Wine during class? Yes please. We felt so sophisticated.

^ Our professor knows everybody and really loves to talk. This was just one of many people he ran into at the museum. Our class ends, according to the schedule, at 8:00 PM and Cale and I were supposed to go with our program to rollerskating at 8:00. But we were still at the museum. We left at around 8:30 and our professor drove us to the skating rink. How nice of him!

^Our class of four students with our professor- the one in plaid pants!

^ Here's a picture with us with another artist we met, who of course, knew our professor.

Rollerskating! a La Salón de Patín en San Pedro

La Salón de Patín en San Pedro

We went rollerskating with our program which was a free event for us. It brought me back to the good ol' days of going to Cheapskate for class field trips. I think the last time I went rollerskating was in grade school. I forgot how hard it was! It took me a little while to get used to the feeling again of walkin while rollin. 

One funny event happened that involved me and half the people in the skating rink. Me, normally I don't like to draw that much attention to myself especially in public places, and this event was definitely out of my control. 

As I was turning the corner near the entrance of where many new skaters enter the rink, in comes a big bear size of a man with three ladies next to him going way too slow as should be allowed to enter into the skating rink. I couldn't turn quite fast enough and ended up skating perpendicular into his shoulder, meanwhile placing both my arms on either side of him as if I were hugging him. He in turn, took the hands of the other ladies that were next to him who in turn grabbed the hand of the third lady. All the while I was still rolling and hugging this man, the three other girls go down, feet up in the air and pulling the guy down with them in the process. While me, I somehow managed to stay up on my roller skates. (VICTORY!!) But I offered a hand to a girl that ended up on the floor, who wasn't ready to get up yet. One stayed on the ground for a good five minutes while she held her elbow. My friends later said they thought they saw the man's roller skate hit one of them in the head (probably why she wasn't quite ready to stand up yet...oops). This of course, drew the attention of everybody else in the skating rink as more people began to come around the corner and couldn't avoid the ladies on the ground. More skaters tripped over them and also ended up on the ground. A serious domino effect that started with me.... It was a disaster but definitely something to laugh about later! I guess I should keep practicing!

Cinépolis VIP Movie Theater

It was our friend Taisha's birthday last week on the 2nd. After deciding between a jazz café or Cinépolis, she chose cinépolis and invited whoever wanted to come from the program. About ten of us decided to meet at the bus stop and head there together. Something fun to do in the middle of the week! I suppose normally, on our week nights we don't do something so big. We save that for the weekends.

We went to see Contagion!! And if you know anything about the movie, you will know that it takes place in none other than....MINNESOTA!! It was so exciting to see Matt Damon and Gwenyth Paltrow talking about Lake and Lyndale--about 5-10 minutes from my apartment. Anytime they showed the snow (they must have included that to be MN's identifying factor between the other locations of the film), Park Nicollet, or the Armory, I kept hitting Berto on the shoulder and 'scream-whispering' (I'll call it) that it was in Minnesota. And poor Berto never complained about bruises or being distracted. He looked just as amused as I was! How crazy to be so far away from home, yet know that everybody around you-all of your friends from all around the United States and all of the Tico-strangers who were there that night, have now at least heard about Minnesota and Lake and Lyndale. People from New York and California must experience this all the time...like my friend Nicole from California who said she got really excited when they showed her KFC that's just a couple blocks from her house in the movies. Although she said, the movies sometimes wrongfully depict her neighborhood full of gangs and dirty lookin.

A short bus ride away from campus is the Cinépolis movie theater which offers VIP movie seats. Equipped with reclining leather seats with cup holders, handsome young waiters in dress pants and button up's who will come to your seat to take your order from the menus which have food and drinks from crepes, paninis, caramel popcorn, frappuccinos, and cocktails to the traditional popcorn and candy. And the best part--it's so cheap!! In the US, if you go on a date you can expect to pay up to $30 maybe $40 just on two tickets and movie theater candy, pop, and popcorn. For the VIP movie theater it was c 4000 or $8. For a regular movie on a Wednesday it costs about c1,300 or a little under $3.

In all of Costa Rica, if you go see a movie on Wednesday nights, it's 2 for 1! So far in movie theaters I have seen Lion King in 3D, Contagion, and I am making plans to see the fourth Twilight in about 2 weeks.

Small list of other movies I have seen since being in Costa Rica for class: Frida, Volver, La Historia Oficial, and Pedro Páramo. 

Here Berto and I are ready to browse the menu...hmmm yes...fancy schmancy

Mom, notice that they have "ESPRESSO" on their menu!! Yes, believe it. I wish you could have been there! We will have to go when you come visit!

Putting our feeeeet uuuup :D How relaxing...

 ^Taisha and Nicole.

 ^Ashley and Kiersten.

 ^Taisha and Casey

Taisha's Birthday Surprise!!

Taisha got a question mark on the top of her cake this year. It's all her mamatica had. She said it was because she was thinking.."Whaaaaa?? You are already 20?"

 This was a lemon cake with a sweet tastes like cool whip frosting with apples on top. Yum!

 ^ This is their Mamatica cutting the cake! So young!

 ^ Cake, ice cream, jello, and a cookie. It has been really common here to see jello and ice cream together. Although I still think it's a weird combination. I'll bet cher bottom doller that when I get back to the States, I will be going shopping for just that. It's the little things like this that I'm going to crave when I'm not here anymore.

It was nice of their Mamatica to let so many of us come over for her surprise party. Usually, Ticos go outside of the house to hang out with friends. 


My own Mamatica allows people over, but that is a rarity. We are learning every day that our Mamatica allows quite alot and has always been so sweet and caring to us. A lot of people are jealous and Ashley, Nicole, and I feel really lucky and blessed to have been placed with our Mamatica!