You know how estate agents use those euphemistic terms like “cosy” and “bijou” to linguistically hood-wink their prospective clients (yes I admit I occasionally watched A Place In the Sun, mainly when the remote was too far away to warrant expending the energy needed to change the channel.) Well it turns out my place in the sun has been rather imposed upon by what the guidebooks so charmingly call “rainy season” but which is, it turns out, a period when 2/3 of the world’s water supply is flung from the sky in a constant and torrential deluge onto our little town.
Don’t get me wrong, being from Britain I secretly like nothing more than being able to complain about the weather (there is not so much call for debating the price of fish and chips here), the issue here is the rain has gotten pretty dangerous in the past few days. You may have seen on the news there’s been serious landslides in a suburb of San Jose not too far from here. As for us, our usually fairly treacherous road to uni just turned into something out of a video-game, with falling boulders and bits of road dropping away over the side of a cliff (and giant mushrooms that give you super-powers if you jump on them).
The rains really started coming down last Wednesday and we were called on Thursday morning to say campus would be closed. Unfortunately the rains also caused a power-cut and, ironically, our water supply cut off. Stinky and sat in the dark it wasn’t the funnest day, so I de-camped to my friend who was house-sitting our ex-diplomat, professor’s house equipped with all the modern luxuries of flushing toilets and functioning lightbulbs. The next day the uni team decided we should go to school so we took a harrowing hour’s journey edging up the mountain in a big yellow school bus only for the heavens to open again and for us to be sent home early before the entire place dissolved.
But honestly I got away so luckily, a lot of people died in the landslides in Escazu and a few friends here in Ciudad Colon were evacuated from their homes because it looked like a dam was breaking and the river was going to flood. To be honest I had a bit of a strange experience, my friend Marion and the two girls staying with her were evacuated because Marion’s house is right on the river. She called to say could she come here and of course I said she should come on over, it was pouring down and had had to hurriedly pack all her prized possessions. I then went and checked with flatmates all of who said it was ok except one girl who said she didn’t want them staying because we didn’t have much water for showering. Now, as Ciara will be saying to her computer screen, my attitude towards showing may be slightly more lax than your average person’s but I was pretty shocked, I hadn’t prepared myself for the notion that anyone studying at the University for PEACE would turn away people in need. But Marion managed to find somewhere else for her and her friends to stay and I learnt a lesson about making assumptions on people’s characters. Generally though it has been wonderful to see how all the students have pulled together and taken care of each other.
Ok other news..... Well for one glorious week I had a dog! Diego’s cousin Daniel was driving down the road when the car in front of him opened its door and kicked out a beautiful golden retriever onto the road. Shocked Daniel stopped, opened his door and the traumatised door jumped right in. Now, Daniel lives on the 6th floor of a block of flats so he asked if he could bring the dog round to us while he looked for a home for it (we’re not allowed to keep pets here- boooo- but the landlady said he could stay while we found a home). We named the poor thing Stinky Pete and ironically christened him by giving him a good wash to get rid of the smell. The next week was lovely- insert montage scenes of me walking the dog, trying to teach a Golden Retriever to play fetch, trying to teach a Golden Retriever the ancient art of alchemy, slowly winning the poor thing’s trust, etc. But after a week the other flatmates were sick of him, and possibly my constant goofy grin and dog slobber covered clothes, and Diego’s parents agreed he could stay with them, which is great cos it means I can still see him on weekends and every other Tuesday.
I also managed to get myself to a gig, Green Day came to San Jose and at the very last minute we decided to go. There is a very ridiculous story I can’t really go into here but it basically involves me and my friend Isabelle almost getting arrested twice but instead getting chatted up by the policemen involved, giving them our numbers and then getting 53 missed calls from said weirdos that night. I fought the law and the law persistently tried to hit on me. Anyway it was a very fun night of bouncing around at the gig and scurrying into taxis post gig on the run from the cops, I finally got an opportunity to jump into a taxi and shout “JUST DRIVE!” to the poor, bewildered, Spanish-speaking taxi driver.
So basically there hasn’t been any travelling, because we’ve mainly been trapped in this town letting the days go by and the water hold us down, but I’d been having fun, doing lots of work (Mum and Dad!), almost getting arrested (Bad-ass friends), have found an awesome singing partner and am teaching him all of Slow Club’s back catalogue so we have a little sing virtually every night, and generally holing up from the rain.
In two weeks, weather permitting, Isabelle and I are off to Cuba (this is a girl who has been banned from Mexico because of a “Spring break” incident- I pick the best travel partners!) So holding out for that to sate the travel-bug. For now am enjoying the intermittent sunny spells and excuses not to start training for the 5k Santa Run which I know all you delightful people will be sponsoring? Pretty please?
Lessons learnt:
When other classes can’t go to campus they will creatively find new places to hold classes. International law students will say “ah screw it then” and just go back to bed- this is a quite worrying prospect for future legal challenges to human rights.
Even though it got vetoed Yo Momma is still, in my opinion, the greatest dog's name possible. "I tried to go for a walk by Yo Momma kept humping my leg", "What smells so bad- Yo Momma", etc.
It is quite frustrating when it has been raining for 3 days straight but you can't get a glass of water from your tap.
