I'll take a cafe negro.

Do you know the way to San Jose?  I do.  You take the Route 27 bus for about an hour, and viola!  You have arrived at the one place that Ticos (an informal name for Costa Ricans) pleasantly don't favor.  It's strange.  Usually, a capital city tries to act as a summary of the entire country and its pristine beauty, but according to Ticos, someone done messed up with that job.  I actually had one conversation with a guy who said they should change it from that nasty capital city to Atenas.  Note to Costa Rican government officials: take a look into that, por favor.  I did a day trip to San Jose last week and didn't see the entire beef against it, but I did take some mental notes on some "constructive" criticism.  Get it???  As in, they could construct new buildings and renovate the others.  Like the phrase.  You know??? Construction.  (Reader's mental lightbulb turns on and scornfully dislikes Nick's humour.)

Moving on now...

The first month of work here has been a little challenging to fully take in.  I'm part therapist, part P.E. instructor, part cultural ambassador, and a dash of international man of mystery (a.k.a. Global Citizenship class assistant).  As the weeks have gone by, I've become more comfortable with this new smoothie of roles and have started to make some good relationships with the staff and students.  Working with high school boys can be challenging.  It's part of their job to push buttons and find themselves by making your life difficult.  On the other side, it's my job to constructively guide those button-pressing fingers to the non-nuclearly oriented buttons on a smooth sine/cosine ride through the ups and downs of their high school careers.  In a sense, it's completely awesome practice for when I become a dad someday.

Next point.  When your off days are Tuesdays and Wednesdays, coordinating your life outside of work is a bit tough.  Conversations go as so...

"Hey man, want to go to the beach this weekend?"
"(Frustration building)  I can't.  I work the night shift on Fridays through Sundays.  Are you free this Tuesday?"
"(Double Whammy Frustration) Free as in the sense of working the morning shift?  Yes."
(Cue both people sighing and making futile plans for the future.)

Although my Google Calendar doesn't match up with others, I've been trying to make some local friends whose schedules do fit well.  Ticos are amazing friendly and nice.  I went to a party a couple of nights ago and didn't speak more than 50 words in English the entire night.  More nights as such are to come, but I'll need to check my Google Calendar first...  Damn it feels good to be a gangster, I mean, an employed person.

Cafe negro.  The morning enema.  Black gold.  Smiles in a cup.  It's basically the most efficient way, other than shooting up some black market caffeine, to start your morning and keep your afternoon slump slumping back to the depths of your hippocampus.  At first when I got here, I was appalled at the amount of sugar and milk being left to dry in the fridge when the morning coffee began to brew.  I personally take my morning slap with a dash of milk and creamer.  No sugar.  Ticos, however, love to make my job of referencing the movie Airplane waaaay too easy.  [Excuse me, I happened to be passing and thought you might like some coffee.  Oh that's very nice of you, thank you...]  If you don't know this classic scene, youtube Airplane movie coffee.  Then we can resume being friends.  Back to the coffee scene though.  Coffee is a huge part of Costa Rica.  HUGE!  Atenas and in the nearby mountains are some of the best places for people to grow coffee because of the high altitudes.  Coffee costs about $2 per normal U.S. coffee sized bag, and it's good stuff.  I went on a weekend tour to a bunch of coffee plantations that one of the school's staff owns.  The views were absolutely out of this world.  Also, I learned that picking coffee is one tough job.  You have to walk up 60 degree incline hills with 80 pounds of coffee strapped to your back.  Those people are so strong that they could probably make a bull whimper in pain.  The tour was incredible.  Not many people get to see from start to finish how coffee ends up in your Starbucks Venti.  It blew my mind.  All those years of studying Spanish for business kind of accumulated into that one 3-hour tour of those coffee fincas (plantations).  Pictures to come and as well as more coffee plantation tours.

That's all I have for now.  Four days from now I'll have been here for one month, but this place seems far too familiar far too quickly.  Home is where the heart is?  No.  Home is where I drink my dank coffee in the mornings.

This is my Nat Geo worthy shot.