Groundhog Day

My groundhog day of 2012 was definitely one of the most pleasant groundhog days I have ever had. I went on a nice hour run which I think is going to become my regular run here as it is up a nicely paved road that leads to the Arenal waterfalls; however, it is not near as busy as the main road in town. Although I would usually get bored of running the same route everyday in the U.S., I really don't think I will get tired of this run, not with the Arenal Volcano looming over me and the other mountains covered in their green rain forest coats, the many different tropical flowers, the different plants, watching the farmers I run by collect potatoes, run around the many different types of dogs, and just enjoying the warm atmosphere. I also still like to see what I'm going to see with people traveling around on bikes- since yesterday I also saw a guy carrying a weed eater and a chicken! Last night, I was once again unable to have class as all but one of the officers were out working late again. Although I was a bit upset to not have the entire group once again, I enjoyed my one on one conversation with this same officer, named Victor. He is the cook with this group so he's usually there, and he is a really nice guy. Last night he and I got into a more in depth conversation about religion, churches in the U.S. and in Costa Rica, whether or not aliens exist, whether climate change is happening, and even touched on the topic of marriage and sex. He confirmed some of my suspensions that it is common for people to have sex and children at a young age here; in fact, a girl can legally get married at the age of 15 here. He also said, that most fathers here don't really talk to their daughters or discourage them from having sex at a young age so lots of teenagers around 13 and 14 have sex. After the conversation, I felt very accomplished to have been able to have a full in depth conversation in Spanish! And since I got home early, I spent the rest of my evening relaxing and watching TV in our apartment- the cable here is really good with HBO, Cinemax, and many other American network shows. I even got to watch a bit of the hilarious movie "Groundhog Day" in Spanish.
This morning, I had breakfast with Evi and instead of more rice and beans I had buttery toast with jelly! Speaking of bread, yesterday I broke down and went into one of the awesome bakeries in town. The bakeries here have lots of AMAZING bread, including lot of yummy dessert breads with fruit and chocolate filled inside, and most for around $1 or under. I got a strawberry filled pastry thing that was so good after over a week of rice and beans. Nonetheless, I will have to force myself to visit the bakery very sparingly. The police officers reminding me that I'm going to get fat while I'm down here should help with that. I then spent more of the morning reading "Water for Elephants" on my kindle, which if you have only seen the movie as I had, the book is definitely more rated "R" than the movie, but a very interesting book about the circus industry at this time. I also when on another long run and am enjoying my free time as I will not be working for the boat tour for another 14 days. I also like spending some of my free time watching the news programs here and comparing them to the U.S. (surprise surprise coming from the Mass Comm grad). I find it interesting that the news here includes more long story packages with little air time with just the anchors reading stories known as "readers" which take up most of the time in a news cast back in the U.S. The type of news that is important here is also interesting. At 7am, which with the Today Show is the start of the show and the most important news is given, the morning news show here spent 25 minutes with a sit down small-talk interview about what state marriage is in here in Costa Rica with a call in poll of whether or not people still believed in marriage. During the entire show of the Today Show there is not a single issue or block given that much time, let alone at the start of the show. Also, when covering a news story like traffic accident, the news here show much more of the action including the bodies being put on rescue beds and loaded into ambulances. They also interview the red cross rescuers at the scene, which is generally not considered very ethical in the U.S. news industry. It's neat for me to see the differences in my chosen field, for sure.