Another fine mess you've gotten me into!

Damn, how does a quiet night with a couple of drinks and some food turn into a nightmare descent into darkness followed by a rise to glory!

I was intending to finally hang out with Carlos after class on tuesday, my last class finished and Roberto and I were drinking in Sand making the most of the cheap prices. After four or five and no news from Carlos we chowed down at the mall and tried to connect once more. He replied but was already home warming his tootsies in front of a fire with a cup of F-ing cocoa and was therefore a big going out disappointment!

Whatever, Roberto and I decided to get hammered and find some adventure and traipsed around a few bars and street drinking parties looking for diversion and people to hang out with. AS the evening dragged on a lightbulb switched on over Rob's head.

"Why don't we buy a bottle of rum and go drink with my alcoholic dad?"

A new mission was underway and so we dropped our unwilling charges and raced to the AM PM in time to buy the bottle and some muffins and chase down the last bus up to Guadalupe. We played some pool at his local cantina and shared cigarettes with chortling, toothless bums, chatted up the 4 foot 8 barmaid Marina and left in high spirits to wake up his Pa.

Arriving at Rob's house we opted for a few joints out the back to prepare ourselves for the high energy drinking session that was about to ensue. We rolled out by the wall and enjoyed the views out across the city towards the volcano Irazu in the distance. Whilst smoking down to the end of the first joint I swung my hand out to the left and accidentally dropped the still smoking butt into the neighbour's back garden... down a 20 foot sheer wall... Roberto eventually laughed it off but he was pretty concerned for a while that his neighbours would bring it back round the next day and embarass him in front of his family. To chill things out he passed me the second joint to smoke and would you believe it, I accidentally tossed that WHOLE UNBAPTISED joint down after the first one.

It only took a minute to soak in but when he recovered his senses Roberto was furious and I was distraught. I've never done anything quite as ridiculous as that in my life and now I'd just done it twice! Awful. Rob was cursing and trying not to scream and shout under his breath, saying how I'd be going to the worst section of hell where I would drop precious things down steep cliffs for eternity!

He was really mad and we were starting to feel some bad karma building when he mentioned that he had a climbing harness in his room. A desperate plan was hatched and Roberto left me to ponder my descent of 20ft in pursuit of the runaway doobies. When he returned I was totally psyched about what was ahead and eagerly strapped on the ropes before testing the weight and support by free hanging.

We moved over to the wall, me with a cycle helmet and wearing only socks, trousers and a wife beater, and I climbed carefully over to begin the climb down. It was easy enough making it down to the ground although it burned my sides slightly but once I was down there I was mobbed by the friendliest guard dogs ever, licking and sniffing like maniacs. Poor fellas probably didn't get much attention, least of all from visitors coming down from the skies in their normally quiet Orange grove.

Trying to avoid the dogs and to avoid stepping on too many oranges I found the butt and the fresh joint after about half an hour of scrambling and scraping and pocketed the evidence with a boyish grin. Then came the tricky part. How to escape from my blatant trespass without shattering the calm of the night and bringing disgruntled, scared, gun wielding Ticos running to engage me in a lethal defence of their property!

We tried scaling the vertical face but had less than no luck with that attempt, getting only a few hand scars in the process. On the right was a low standing shed with some beams underneath and so we replaced the rope more to the right hand side and attempted my climb again. This time I was glad of those sessions in the gym trying to lift and haul my body weight around. TOby would have been proud of my scaling of the shed and Roberto was a veritable Hercules at the top heaving my body weight onto the ledge and up over the wall to safety!

Safe to say that was the happiest most exhilirating joint I'd smoked in a long time and we vowed to pass down this hilarious incident to all future generations we could! Viva San Jo!

"What you risk reveals what you value. "

Killing time my darling

The date is set and the escape from San Jo draws near. The city of innumerable muggings and robberies, of drunken depravity and so much pura vida (read walking too slowly and driving like you've been recently released from a mental asylum) it hurts my poor little soul.

So long to Poker tuesdays and pool thursdays, to winning and losing at the Radisson, to almost dying everytime I attempt to cross the road in my normal gung ho fashion and to the ladies with their ridiculously slutty dress sense... I salute you madames of madness.

All in all Costa Rica hasn't been bad to me. I will however be runnign far far away from San Jo as soon as my contract is up, probably to the coast once more to surf and sunbathe and sleep off the joy excess of teaching.

I want to take a monkey with me to Buenos Aires and have it do my board work for me!

Mmmmmm, real meat and proper football! I can't wait!

"Do you want superman to fly around the world and turn back time?"

Estudiantes chistosas

1 - "Who put on your make-up, Your dog?"

2 - "I once killed a dog with my bicycle and a rolled up newspaper."

what am I teaching them?

Today I did a huge lesson on repeated speech and it was soooo cute to see their little faces all screwed up in painful learning agony! Normally I'm so laissez faire but this one showed them the real mental sacrifices they'll have to offer up to the ESL Gods to gain any decent level of English!

"Cruel to be kind, in the right measure."

Beer bar blitz

In true British style I blitzkrieged the bars last weekend, harassing the locals, jibing the bartenders, being loud, drunk and ever so much jolly fun! Ooh-rah!

My manic beer chasing began on friday night as Roberto, Kevin, Eli, Asi and I knocked back a hasty few whilst dancing with old ladies in Virus before Rob and I caned it down to Rafas to dance with fire and shoot the shit with some kids in the calle.

After my class on saturday morning I ran some errands, rented Factotum and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, "Everyone here is heavily armed and drunk.. It's like Gone with the Wind on mescalin!", played a rough and tumble game of football, that almost saw Tom start a fight with one of the fatty pie eating Ticos, went home to shower and change and then proceeded to wander around the post office building downtown looking for the elusive Embajada! That cantina was full of slobbering whiteys and empty beer bottles and I remember having a great time arguing the toss between Cricket and Rugby as the greatest sport in the world.

Anyways, we drank and shouted and wrestled our way through many beers and various shots until we ended up on the main avenue drinking in a mariachi bar where I confused the security guard by asking him about the availability of soft drugs in the area. Unperturbed by his nervous disposition I continued shooting the shit with him before I got bored and wandered home.

Sunday was quiet. I watched those movies, ate some popocorn for breakfast (damn my inadequate shopping habits!) and did some marking before topping off a great hangover by watching the hilarious Borat in the evening. I never knew movies could be so senselessly racist and yet so funny!

Scooba Mopping Robot

Monday saw a return to drinking form at El Cuartel with Kevin, Randall and Alex. We spoke to lots of girls, danced with some more, drank a moderate 4 or 5 beers, Kevin almost got into a fight, some guy and his sister talked my ear off about Monty Python and Snatch - normally I wouldn't mind chortling heartily over British comedy quotes in the midst of crowded, sweaty bars but the guy's favourtite quote was:

"If you hold back anything, I'll kill ya. If you bend the truth or I think your bending the truth, I'll kill ya. If you forget anything I'll kill ya. In fact, you're gonna have to work very hard to stay alive, Nick. Now do you understand everything I've said? Because if you don't, I'll kill ya. "

The night rolled on and eventually I tired of the mainly Germanic meat market and stumbled off to my bed but on the way I was shocked to see a half-naked man jogging down the road towards my house with his equally naked woman friend and a 2 foot machete in hand, scraping it against the railings on his way to God only knows.

I tailed him for a while but when I eventually passed and he started to follow me it was luckily only a short sprint to my front door and the sanctuary of my room.

"If the milk turns out to be sour, I ain't the kinda pussy to drink it."

Violence is endemic

Hmmm, today the vocabulary that my students asked for was - Tazer, rape, ransom, talk-time and poverty. Are Costa Ricans conditioned to violence in their society?

Last night I broke even at poker but with some good chances to win a few big hands. Darn it.

"Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd."

Bang bang you're dead...

Yesterday I scored 12 goals in Futbol 5. Wow! Although it didn't really matter because we were only playing with 9 people so it wasn't a proper game as usual. Drat.

Afterwards Toby, Tom and I ate dinner and went around some of the bars in San Pedro, meeting some Ticos (no Ticas) and drinking till late in Sand and Virus.

I reached home safely enough and slept a good 6 hours before having to get up to play paintball on the morrow when Kevin Wong came a knocking. We ate toast and I beat him at chess before Toby and Robbie meandered over and I said a curt farewell to Tobias, oops, and the other three of us went with some folks to play paintball in Escazu.

A great game all in all. Randall's girlfriend Alex actually owns a paintball field in Germany and so was a crack shot at times and very sneaky, utilising many flanking manoeuvers! Kevin Randall and I had a ten pace duel as well which was lame because we all missed, Kevin even having the cheek tohide behind a barricade!

Great japes all round this weekend!

"Friendship make prosperity more shining and lessens adversity by dividing and sharing it."

Funny weekends follow flat weeks

The crazy lady I mentioned briefly at the end of my previous blog was in fact Maria Gabriella or Gaby for short. A Tica who approached me in the mall and demanded to be my girlfriend. Intrigued, and having nothing else to do after watching the overrated but well shot Babel, Robbie and I accompanied her to El Pueblo and later to a Karaoke bar where she proceeded to regale us with tales of times when she had almost been killed by men she described as literally being daemons who would vomit whenever she discussed her religion (can you guess it?).

Although she was speaking fantastic English I couldn't help but interject with some subtle quips that luckily only Robbie caught. Anyway, she was a very direct person and demanded I be her boyfriend. I kissed her briefly in the taxi on the way home, sitting in the back, but it was quite possibly the worst kiss I've ever experienced! I wont ruin your happy lives with the gruesome details but safe to say it was awful for someone who must have had her share of experience of life and love... Horrific. That was one taxi ride that couldn't end soon enough...

I saw her again on friday and tried to let her down as gently as possibly but she wasn't taking it and gradually lowered her expectations down from boyfriend status to just friends with rights but even this i refused. I don't feel like being a toyboy right now for some Christian mentalist.

"To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead."