A Very Specific Question

I need Cell Phone advice. As you may know, I HATE cell phones. I hate calling on them, and I think text messages are one of the worst inventions humanity has come up with. I don't want a cell phone for the phone. But, I like internet, and when I'm traveling it's nice to have a phone if there's an emergency, since there don't seem to be pay phones anywhere anymore (especially in the US).

Does anyone who lives in Costa Rica know if there's a phone or a plan that could do the following things:
-Get internet reception through 3G or whatever that's called
-Block text messages
-Turn off incoming calls
-Work in the U.S.
-A camera would be nice, too.

Maybe what I need is one of those Palm Pilots or whatever from a decade ago! Anyhow, if you know about this, maybe you can give me some advice...

(Image from http://www.groove-quantize.com/grooveblog/?p=236)

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Back From My Class in Guanacaste

I got back from my Wednesday class in Guanacaste.
Here are the official results:

Sad Jesus Head Decals:
-Trip in: 36*
-Trip back: 23
Round-trip total: 59*

*(New Records)

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Good Good Good

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Clustrmaps

I am still not really sure why YOU all look at this blog, but I know that one reason that I look at it is the little map you see in the column on the left. It's called a "clustrmap," and it basically puts dots on a world map based on how many visitors come to your site. You can click there and it'll take you to a larger map, along with a list of countries and the number of visitors from each of those countries (scroll down a bit).

The thing is, it only keeps your stats for a year and then it resets them. That's supposed to happen on October 8th or so, so the map may look blank when you read this. As of now, though, it looks something like this:

You can also click on "Map with smaller clustrs" and it'll show you something like this, where it's not as consolidated:

Now, maybe this is just the geography nerd in me, but I think this is really cool! And interesting; for example, I can obviously account for the big dot in Central America and for the huge one around Colorado (hi, mom!). Plus, that huge blank swath running north-south through the whole continent of North America pretty much confirms my suspicions that the states there are pretty worthless, anyhow. But what's harder to understand is how I'm getting visitors from all these other places.

According to the stats, in the last year I've had 3,147 visitors from the U.S. and 534 from Costa Rica. Fair enough. But 292 from India? I don't even know anyone in India! I also enjoy scrolling down that list and checking out the "one hit wonder" countries, like Iran, Montenegro, and the Faroe Islands.

In any case, it's food for thought. If you're ever checking out this page, have a click on the map on the left (and while you're at it, feel free to do a Google search in the box a bit higher or check out any of the ads). Especially feel free to check out the site if you're somewhere in the global boondocks, so I can get a cool dot from a place like Antarctica or Chad.

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Pictures of the Day, September 27 - October 3, 2010

Here are some Pictures of the Day for ya:

September 26: Some eggs in our fridge. The egg trays are pretty strange, since they don't really fit into the fridge door like they're supposed to, and because they only hold 10 eggs. But I guess that's the sort of quality we've come to expect from our Salvadoran refrigerator.

We usually buy our eggs from our neighbor, which I guess makes them "farm fresh." Nice.

September 27: Cats like milk. Over here, we're not in any hurry to break through stereotypes.

September 28: Angela built another candy train, this time for her nephew Maikol. She got the idea from my cousin Brian, apparently. And I have a feeling I already know what I'll be getting for my birthday.

September 29: I always think it's weird to see cacti in a country as ridiculously humid as Costa Rica, but they're here, ridiculous or not.
In fact, the other day I saw a three-story cactus in downtown Palmares!

September 30: At the "Taiwan-Costa Rica Friendship Bridge" over the Tempisque River. I know I've talked about it before, but it's always nice to mention, since it really was a pretty stab-in-the-back move on Costa Rica's part to abandon Taiwan for China, once they'd used up Taiwan's generosity.

I don't read Chinese, but I hope this sign says, "Thanks for nothing!"

October 1: It's been raining a lot, so it's good maté weather. I started drinking it out of the wood mortar and pestle thing we had, and it's worked quite well. Good Argentinean fun.

October 2: This is a view of the altar area of the church in Zarcero. Pretty elaborate. Angela and I went to a wedding there. A girl from Berlin (this one, not the real one) was marrying a guy from Spain. It was a good time. It was actually the only wedding I've been to in Costa Rica, besides my own.

October 3: We have an Australian flag towel, although I've never been to Australia. I took it from my folks' house because it was in a closet and my mom said I could take whatever towels I needed from there. I only saw the Union Jack part and thought it was a British flag, actually, since my sister had been to England a few times. But when I got the towel here, I discovered it was an Australian flag, not a British one. And I know my brother spent a year in Australia, and I think my sister may have spent some time there, too.
So, if this is your towel, sorry, I took it.

Well, that's it for today! Hope there was something interesting there for you. Until next time, thanks for reading, and have a good day!

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The Picture of the Day From Yesterday...

...because this is Blogtoberfest, after all! And there are only a few minutes left in the day!

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Wedding

I barely got home in time to get in an October 2nd post, but here we are. Today we went to a wedding. I'll tell more about it later, but here's a picture from the reception:

That's the Wall of Sound, mariachi-style. You can't stop it; you can only allow yourself to be serenaded by it.

By the way, if you noticed that the third mariachi from the camera is my old taxi driver Mario, then you've got a good eye!

Blogtoberfest continues!!

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Aber Hallo! It's Time For Blogtoberfest!

I'm not sure how I could have almost forgotten it, but it's now officially October, which means it's time for Blogtoberfest!

Let's see if I can get a post per day, just like a few years ago.* In any case, my post for today is to share with you the German Language Learning Page from Deutsche Welle. It's pretty cool, and I didn't even know it existed until I saw it mentioned on Deutsche Welle when I was in a hotel the other day. It's pretty cool if you want to freshen up your Deutsch!

So, that's it for now. I'll try to get back to you soon with more Pictures of the Day and other things I've been meaning to put up on the blog for a while.

*Alright, I admit I didn't get a post a day that year, either. But "Blogtoberfest" is still a great word.

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Pictures of the Day, September 24 and 25, 2010

Here are the Pictures of the Day from yesterday and the day before:

September 24th: These are two of our nieces, Guadalupe and Veronica. They're in the 11th grade, so it's their final year of school, and the school year's wrapping up for them soon.

So, most schools have a tradition where the 11th graders wear costumes and go on a parade. Lupe (blue dress) was the tooth fairy and Vero was Cupid. They're both very lovely and beautiful and everything, but it was also pretty funny to see them both in diva form getting ready.

My sister-in-law Antonieta called us early in the morning (OK, not THAT early, since it was only about 8 am, but we definitely weren't up yet) to ask us if we wanted to see them in their costumes. Well, seldom does a Picture of the Day opportunity present itself before I've even gotten out of bed, so we simply HAD to go over.

Thanks to both lovely nieces for letting me take their picture!

As the fairies left, our dog-in-law Bon Jovi watched them go.

September 25th: We went to Angela's folks' house for dinner. These are some butterfly magnets on their refrigerator.

Thanks for checking out the pictures... have a great day!

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Pictures of the Day, September 13-23, 2010

Hi Everyone! It's been raining like mad here, and I've been spending a lot of time on and in the roof. I've still taken the Pictures of the Day, but I didn't have time to post them... until now!

September 13th: Our cat Chubby has been systematically destroying these slippers that Angela has. He'll regularly attack them and try to drag them off to the garage. He mainly goes for the eyes, the little creep.

Also, the other day he actually got into Angela's purse and took out her wallet with his mouth. What's going on with our sweet little cat?

September 14th: My coworker Marcia's shoes. I know that I also took a picture of Monica's shoes earlier, but it's not because I have a foot fetish. It's just because my coworkers wear shoes that looks like leopard skins or whipped cream. When you've got 365 pictures to take, then they seem like a good subject!

September 14th: This is a horse trailer that I saw in Palmares, and although I'll say it's "Picture of the Day," I didn't put it up on the SeeVida group because of the breasts. But still, it's a pretty funny picture. Nothing says "I'm classy" like airbrushing a naked woman with big boobs onto your horse trailer, and then parking it on your lawn in downtown Palmares.

September 15th: It was Independence Day, so we had a barbecue.

September 16th: Cows are cool. I took a walk around Berlin and came across a couple of them.

September 17th: Remember Childcraft? They have a set of those books at the lending library at work.

September 18th: A butterfly on the bathroom wall at the school where I teach. It's weird having a camera in the bathroom... it's like that episode of Fraser where they were weirded out by food in the bathroom.

September 19th: Even though they're stainless steel scissors ("Rostfrei"!), they still got rusty. Costa Rica will blow your mind and break your heart.

September 20th: This is the first part in my "I Hate Tin Roofs" series. This bucket and mug were catching the stream of water dripping into my office.

September 21st: The next picture in my "I Hate Tin Roofs" series. This is a sort of polyurethane sealant. I basically tried to cover as much of our house as possible with this crap.

September 22nd: Some nice clouds on the way to my Wednesday class in Guanacaste.

September 23rd: Next in the "I Hate Tin Roofs" series. I had to put all the crap in my office into big plastic bags since water was coming down the walls and also streaming from the middle of the ceiling. Ugh.

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Pictures of the Day, September 3-12, 2010

Hi Everyone!
Here are some Pictures of the Day from the last week or so:

September 3rd: This is a water tank near our house.
Angela and I went for a walk on the road into Berlin to check out some of the new landslides. (Note: This is a very poignant example of how there's nothing to do in Berlin).

September 4th: Independence Day is coming up soon, so there are decorations all over (including ones that take up a major chunk of my white board when I teach).

Living in another country can either promote or kill your own personal patriotism, and for me, I think it's done the latter. Sort of like religions that have heavens that are mutually exclusive to other beliefs, it's hard to get pumped about any country, when you realize that all countries have good and bad things.

Plus, Costa Rica is also home to the "red, white, and blue."

September 5th: Our fenceposts have finally started sprouting! Ha ha!
Compare it to this picture.

September 6th: The pay phone at work. I had this in mind for a while as a "backup" plan for a day when I'd not found a good Picture of the Day.

I like this phone. The last time we went to the US, there weren't any pay phones anywhere, and it was a pain in my ass to try to call home. Finally, our cool waiter at the Irish restaurant at the Dallas airport loaned me his cell phone.

Damn cell phones.

September 7th: A street lamp near work.

September 8th: The bridge over the Tempisque River in Guanacaste. It was donated to Costa Rica by the government of Taiwan, and was called the "Costa Rica-Taiwan Friendship Bridge." Then, of course, Costa Rica dropped Taiwan because China offered to build the country a new National Stadium, and sweetened the deal with some shitty new police patrol cars.

So now the bridge is referred to as the "Stab in the Back" bridge.

September 9th: Actually, now that I see this picture, I realize that I don't know what these things are. Surely, they go into the ocean, but beyond that, I'm not sure what they're called. I taught my Wednesday class at the resort again, and I had Thursday free to check out the beautiful beaches.

September 10th: The market in Palmares. We were waiting on some tires, so we walked around town a bit.

September 11th: This is a sort of sculpture made out of mufflers. The sculpture is a man with a bazooka riding a motorcycle. It's on the roof of an auto repair shop in Quebradas, which is one of the few places on Earth I genuinely dislike. It's a small town in the hills between Berlin and Palmares, and I have to drive through there every day to get to work. The narrow road is always filled with cars, kids, chickens, dogs, people walking or sitting in the street... you name it.

In any case, I'd meant for a while to get a picture of this bazooka guy, but it's in an area on a sort of incline, and it's a very difficult place to stop (and eventually get going again), but I finally did it. In the leftovers you can see the sign for the auto shop, and know that I'm not just making this all up.

September 12th: It was a pretty slow day here in Berlin. It rained quite a bit, and we mainly hung out inside. Even Chubby didn't want to go out, but he did the next best thing: he slept on the top ledge of the high garage window. That's about 9 feet off the ground, and he's gotta somehow get up there from inside the garage. That cat has some pretty crazy skills that we just don't even know about.

I've also been uploading a lot of pictures from 2008. So far they're mostly from around Costa Rica, but I'm hoping to get more up soon, including ones of our trip to Colorado and Mexico.

So, that's it for now. Thanks for reading!

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It's Alwase Nice To Remember The Good Ol' Days

My sister Di told me about this, which she re-discovered recently:

She wrote it in her "Babysitters' Club Little Sister Diary" when she was about 8 and I was about 11. It's pretty funny!

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Pictures of the Day: August 25 - September 2, 2010

Hi Everyone! Here are the Pictures of the Day from the last few days. Hopefully there's something interesting for you in there:

August 25: "We're all equal in our big, happy world... except you, Pablo. We hate your scarf. You're out."
This was in a classroom where I teach in the evening. It's a grade school during the day.

August 26: I've seen this sign quite a few times on the way out of San Jose, but it's always been too dark (and possibly unsafe) to take a picture, so I made it a point to go a bit early and get this picture before my class on Thursday.
In any case, that seems like a very appropriate visual image for a rehabilitation school.

August 27: Some cheflera (schefflera, in English, I believe) that Angela was planting in our yard. Looks good photographed. I still think it's incredible you can just put a little stick of this in the ground and you'll have a bush within a year!

August 28: When we got back home from work, the power was out again, and it was getting dark. Plus, it had been raining all day and the condensation from the morning's showers was still on the windows.
Basically, a good time to take a nap.

August 29: Some flowers at Lucy's house. She invited us over to play Scrabble and drink coffee. Good times!

August 30: A pair of earrings that my grandma gave to Angela.

August 31: If you went to Timnath Elementary School in the late 80s and early 90s, this may look familiar to you. Or it may not. I remember being taught how to multiply this way. I was trying to explain it to some coworkers, so I went back into the past, drew up the grid, and multiplied some numbers. This is 312 times 725 which, as we all know, is 226,200. I can't believe three things:
1. That this technique for multiplying numbers actually exits and works
2. That I remembered the technique
3. That they actually TAUGHT this technique to us in 5th or 6th grade

September 1: The faucets in my hotel in Guanacaste. I started teaching an English class on Wednesday nights in a resort up there (Guanacaste is the northwest province in Costa Rica, where the most tourists go, but where I had only passed through previously). It was very nice, and I'm looking forward to continuing the class for the next seven weeks!

September 2: A windmill on the side of the road in Guanacaste. It was the first time I'd really spent any significant time or driven around much in that province, and I can see why it's the big tourist place in the country. It was pretty nice, and quite a bit different from where I live.

So, that's it for now. Thanks for reading!

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