El Terremoto

Costa Rica was just starting to feel like home and its already time to say good bye. The past four weeks have been a blur but I think i picked up a great deal of experience with the language, practical knowledge for the engineering, and had a ton of fun. After school we often played some pickup soccer or basketball in between rain storms. We often played against local guys on this court right in the middle of our residential area. They seemed particularly excited to exercise their repertoire of vulgarities in English and amiably referred to me as "Strong Man."

My only regret for the weeks here was that I didn't get to spend enough time with my host family. Last night we took some time and had some fun with the kids. Jonathan and Esteban were very excited to show off the song and dance they learned from a clown at a birthday party while Antoni was all radiant smiles as usual. They're quite a handful- especially Jonathan (wearing the dress and women's shoes). Flory calls him el terremoto (the earthquake).

City Tour

For Spanish class today, my group hit the streets of San Jose to see how the city was put together and how historical events persist in the architecture and culture of the city. San Jose was chosen as the capital city of Costa Rica for its convenient location nestled in the central valley between the coffee plantations on the west coast and the port cities of the Caribbean shoreline. As a city of government and trade, the city was built around two centers of power on the northern slope of the central valley. The commercial and economic center was based at a railroad and customs complex while the executive power was built around another locus with the courthouse and legislative buildings. Fanning out between the two centers towards the north (uphill) the upper middle to high class houses loom over well-paved streets and thick wrought iron gates. From a given street corner you might see the foreign influence on the upper classes: a German high sloping roofed house with earthy colored trim faces a bright Spanish villa and is backed by the arched and columned frontage of an Italian domicile. As you look southward, elevation and economic status decline sharply.

Costa Rica is one of the three countries in the world with no armed forces. They have been without a standing army for fifty eight years but would proudly tell you longer. As a reminder of the violence and lack of diplomacy that comes with having an army, the last functioning barracks still proudly displays bullet holes on its turret just ten blocks from the center of the city. A section of the Berlin wall serves a similar purpose poised outside of a legislative building.



The morpho is the Costa Rican national butterfly. This one at the national museum is drying its wings having recently hatched. You can just see from the picture the inside of its wings is stunning blue mirrored display.

The 4th and Patines Musica

Three of my favorite EWHers and their host mother, Rocío, baked a double layer American flag cake for the 4th of July. Funfetti cake, vanilla icing, red fruit loops, and an unconventional but intuitive inter-layer bed of sprinkles entertained and satisfied nearly the entire program. Thanks girls!

Patines Musica is your typical Costa Rican roller skating rink. A hard-floored, tin-roofed room substantially smaller than most roller skating rinks in the states (but with twice as many people) reverberated with the sounds of N’sync, Celine Dion, and Bob Sinclair. Patines also seemed to be hosting the national convention of All-Costa Rican doubles figure roller skating- some of the talent there was incredible.

¡¡¡¡Gooooooooooooooooooolll!!!

We exacted revenge on the (improved) Costa Rican team from last Monday! With fresh legs (and a few subs) we were able to put up enough scoring power to squeek by. The final score was 13 to 12. We even had the support of the EWH cheerleading squad who creatively produced a clever rendition of the hip-hop smash hit Crank Dat Soulja Boy appropriately called Crank Dat Solder Boy. “Build that circuit yeah you know- Now just watch that current flow…”

Hospital Nacional de Niños

The National Children´s Hospital has 325 beds, six operating rooms, an emergency department, neonatal ICU and a host of other facilities. During our visit, the hospital was only at 70% of its capacity. The hospital was spotless and appeared to run extremely efficiently; the electrical technition who gave us our tour claimed that it was the best hospital of Latin America.

As the United States largely designed, funded, and organized the hospital, we were very well accepted. I got a few pictures of some of the highlights for me. For Ned and Steve, I snapped a picture of the ultrasound scanner in use. I wasn´t quite sure how to ask if the transducers were wobblers or phased-array but I think they look like wobblers, clarify? For Dr. Stouffer, a picture of the Cath Lab. Can you believe they let 17 of us into the lab to check it out?

Costa Rica’s Namesake

The latest weekend trip brought me to Manuel Antonio, a beautiful beach southwest of San Jose with a national park. After last weekend’s intense hike into the clouds, the relaxing beach scene was a welcome one. Two days of fun in the sun left us all relaxed, refreshed, and reddened. I practiced some surfing and we played some beach soccer. For old time’s sake we played some Four Square. Much to our chagrin, the apparent All-American Four Square Champion, Sean, posted himself in the King square and could not be defeated by anyone on the beach.

We didn’t even need to go to the national park to see wildlife; the hostel was teeming with exotic animals. Large iguanas kept vigil on the roofs and happily took apple chunks for tips. I made good friends with a tree frog who joined us for our evening soirée.

Engineers Can Party Too

After long days of classroom learning (see: the fascinating lecture on the finer points of ventilators and anesthesia machines), the group had a barbecue to celebrate surviving the first half of Spanish classes.

Gladys, our host and the Spanish school owner, cooked for the entire group behind her classy house and we entertained ourselves with some good conversation. Later on in the night, after some of Costa Rica’s finest Imperial, we danced to some salsa and reggaeton. Any sociable non-engineer would be proud!