Funny that while I was in Costa Rica I was fantastic about keeping the blog updated, but since I have been back, it has been a mess. So now I will catch up on the last week of classes in San Jose, and then in subsequent posts will put some pictures from my travels around Costa Rica. But first, my last week of classes, which was the last week in April. For our cultural activity, we went to the Museo de Arte Costariccense and had a tour of their special exhibit Adentro/Afuera, see a photo of the entry to the museum.
The exhibit had a bunch of stuff done in Costa Rica or indicative of Costa Rican life, but it was done by either native Costa Ricans, ("adentro", inside) or by non-natives - typically spanish, ("afuera", outside). The main point of the exhibit was to display and point out the large differences between the traditional Costa Rican culture and the culture brought by the spanish many moons ago. Here's a nice gate at the museum.
Most of the art from natives was a bit more emotional, wild (like the lovely crazy haired lady in the painting), and just overall a bit less exacting. The art of the non-natives, and yes, usually spanish, was the old stuff you expect to see in museums - portraits of people who look like they are staring off into space and thinking about something as exciting as macaroni and cheese. What was most interesting was how prominently the exhibit pointed out the cultural difference, and how that was actually the main point of the exhibit.
All good things do come to an end, and indeed our classes came to a close. Overall, they were just super. We had a new teacher each week, and since the classes were only a month this didn't get too confusing or maddening. I think I actually picked up some spanish along the way too, which was a great bonus in addition to all of the lovely travel. ; ) Here is me with the two other students in my class for the month... Casey and Melissa.
As a final event together with the other students at the school, we all went and ate. Sweet. So here are the main folks I spent the month with. There's me (hopefully you can find that one), next to me is Emy who is a fun Costa Rican woman who works at the school, Melissa, who was in my class and I traveled with a bunch, Casey (digging into the food) who was visiting his girlfriend Mica (next to him) who was working at the school for a year. Next to Mica is Liz who had been taking classes at the school for a couple months before we arrived with two other girls (not pictured), and finally Julie, who I was not in class with but did travel with a bunch.
As a last little jaunt after our last day of classes, a group of us went to an artists fair that was in San Jose of work from different people around Central America. Costa Rica has some nice art or craft type stuff, but does not have an overly large indigenous population so is not the most culture heavy of the central american countries. Nice scenery in Costa Rica, not a lot of traditional culture.
And the next post will be of more of that nice scenery that I saw on my last week of travels after classes. I went to a volcano, cloud forest, and rain forest, and they were all stunning. Lots of pictures to come soon.
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