Los niños

 love children. I knew even before coming down here that I wanted to look for an opportunity to work with children, see the Costa Rican school system, or volunteering with children. I was able to combine this desire with my photography course. Our final projects were photo essays. A photo essay is a story told through a series of photographs. I decided to take my photographs of the children in an orphanage nearby the university. This is not an orphanage in the traditional sense of the word. The children are not up for adoption and they all have a least one living parent. The parents cannot financially provide for the children and this foundation La Fundatión Mi Tía Betel has given the children a place to live. I loved every second I spent with these children. They did not care if I misconjugated a verb or if my sentence was not in gender agreement. I was able to practice my Spanish, take photographs, and get down on the floor and play. It is really inspiring to see a child, who is not being raised in necessarily the best of environments, smiling, laughing, crying, playing, and just being a child.

Crowding around a phone

Playing with my lens cap

The bond between siblings

Siblings

I love the faces she makes

Finally looking at the camera

He swiped my sunglasses

Life Behind the Lens

For the month of July, I took an elective course, Cultural Photography, in the afternoons. I love being in a photography class finally. We mostly meet on campus and show each other the photos we took for whatever the day’s assignment was. Some days we have gone downtown to the plazas, to museums, to art galleries, to see graffiti, and even to meet a Costa Rican photographer. We have had some very interesting assignments and experiences. I loved talking to the photographer about his work and seeing his dark room. Some of the assignments were also projects I have previously thought about doing, but never actually completed, such as the light painting. We also viewed work of other Latino artists, worked a little in Photoshop, and tried doing photo transfers (transferring a photo onto another piece of paper using alcohol… it did not completely work, but it was a neat concept). Overall, I really loved the class and it was a good prompt to help me continuously take photos in Costa Rica (not that I really needed any reminding). I do, however, wish the class had focused a little bit more on the cultural part of the title. I thought we could have visited more local places and less touristy ones or meet and photographed more ticos, Costa Rican citizens.

Light painting

An assignment on finding lines

Line assignment

Biblioteca Nacional

Downtown San Jose

People in motion

Repetition and patterns downtown

Downtown San Jose

Art Museum

Art museum

Costa Rican Photographer

Photography Transfers

Pura Vida

This past weekend I was able to escape San Jose for the rolling mountain sides of Monteverde, Costa Rica. Monteverde is beautiful with lush green forests and has more of the adventure sports for Costa Rica, such as ziplining.



Our first night was spent at the Balding Hot Springs Resort. There is naturally heated water as it flows through the volcano Arenal. Balding has piped this water into waterfalls and pools for guests to relax. The water also creates natural saunas. Some of the pools were as hot as 104 degrees Fahrenheit! It was nice to relax in the waters, but it fogged up my glasses a lot!

The next day we drove to La Fortunate and hiked to the waterfall. It was a lot of steps to climb, but nothing when compared to the waterfall we climbed in Nicaragua! This waterfall, however, had a bigger deeper pool at the base of the fall. The water was a little chilly, but we still got in and swam. The waterfall was beautiful and I can officially check swimming in a waterfall off my bucket list!

Our last day was the adventure day! We went on a zipline tour. There were 10 regular ziplines, 1 superman zipline, 1 rappeling aspect, 1 very rickety wooden bridge, and 1 Tarzan swing. The ziplines were a bit of a workout. Being too short to simply clip me to the line, I did a bit of a chin hang every time they needed to clip or unclip me. The superman zipline was one of the scariest things I've done! You went across the zipline stomach down, facing the fall below you. I screamed the whole way across. The Tarzan swing was kind of like hunger jumping feet first. Needless to say, I opted out of the Tarzan swing.

My face on the superman zipline.

 The beautiful green of Monteverde

Overall it was a great trip and I met some new people. I was finally able to zipline and it was great to get away.
Pura vida!

The world is a book...

& those who do not travel read only one page.
St. Augustine

Month two has been in full swing! I am taking two classes this month and it is a lot of work! In the mornings, I am in Spanish (advanzado uno) for four hours and I spent two hours in the afternoon in cultural photography. Last month, I started advanzado uno and did not felt prepared. This month I am much more confident in my ability to complete this class! The conversation class really did help my Spanish improve. I enjoy my teacher and the other students in my class. The class is challenging and we have a lot of homework, but I do enjoy it. The cultural photography class is not as advanced and I thought it would be, but it is still fun. I enjoy receiving the different homework challenges, as they invite me to take pictures I might not have otherwise.

Here we did light painting 

 Did you know Picasso was this first? Google it! This is my picasso.

 Teatro Nacional at night. I was downtown at dusk shooting and got this image!

 In the Biblioteca Nacional

 The inside

 I wrote a narrative off of this picture that I captured. I loved that look of pure awe.

 We played with different kinds of motion in photography, such as this motion blur.

 We took photos inside one of the local markets.

 We were looking for texture, patterns, colors, etc.

 And we interviewed people working at the stands!

 While shooting downtown, we got to watch these two doing some really cool tricks.

 We've been to several art museums and galleries around town.

 I loved looking at all the work.

 This is a cork tree!! They make cork from it! It feels so weird and cool. The tree is kind of squishy.

 We shot graffiti downtown.

 And different houses around Barrio Amón.

 Still life photography (of course I used Dr. Seuss and keys!)

 Black and white photography of lines (These are my bedroom blinds!)

 Photography of lines, dots, and curves.

We also got to meet this Costa Rican photographer! He showed us around his house and let us look at a lot of his work.

I stayed in San José for the first two weekends of the month. I was able to explore the city more and do some shopping. By one mall, there is a wine store. We went inside to ask if we could take some corks for free. The guy not only let us take as many corks as we wanted, but also gave us the full tour of their wine cellars.

I also visited with newborn (2 weeks old) kittens! They were so tiny they could have fit in one of my hands.

I also attended a flamenco concert. The school drove us to the restaurant that held the concert. It was definitely on "tico time" as the concert went casually on and off for almost four hours! There was music played and a male and female flamenco dancers.

I really love her dress

Pura Vida!