On Sunday I switched from my swank hotel to the guesthouse provided by Aliarse/Skills for Life. The driver called me enroute from the airport, where he was picking up Patti from DC - nice surprise for me. We drove through San Jose to a suburb or adjoining community called San Pedro.
After experiencing small (from US perspective) apartments in Europe, this house is mucho grande with 3 big lounge areas and two dining areas. One dining room is in an outside courtyard, which has a tin roof and a spiral staircase to the roof for smokers. Owned and run by Ivania, the guesthouse hosts 8 university students in private rooms and has two bunk rooms for other guests. Our program uses this house (and two others) for the new teacher orientation. Also in residence at our house are two chihuahuas - Mostacho (for his mustache - he's 8 and kinda cranky for the most part) and Coco (the son of Mostacho and very sweet and playful).
Later in the evening we're joined by Amy from NYC, Arnelle from Atlanta, and Kristy from Melbourne.
Patti is fluent in Spanish so becomes our unofficial translator, and Ivania and some students begin to tell us about real life in Costa Rica.
Ivania owns a restaurant nearby called Chicago. When she bought it she considered changing the name to something more relevant to CR -- but since CR doesn't have house numbers and street addresses and mail is delivered based on references to the buildings around, changing the name would have impacted the deliveries of perhaps hundreds of people. So she left it. Needless to say, our dinner is delicious and plentiful.
