Geoff Jones

Inveterate dabbler in business, travel, gadgets & life

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Geoff estudiante

After yesterdays fun trip along the coast to Corillo “yo monto la bicicleta” with Kerry who is also lodging with Nuria

Today was the start of Geoff as the “estudiante” after a very brief test at 7am I was, surprisingly, assigned to the beginners class 🙂

Wow! Nelson our teacher doesn’t speak ANY English in class so it’s real immersion. In my class of 6 there is Margaret an English GP (whose husbands blood pressure has dropped whilst she and her dog have been away! The dog returns later this week..)
Two Swiss German girls Sandra & Caroline – Caroline was my class amiga and pushed me along. Maiete from Holland and Rebecca.

It was straight into “la presentación personal” ” Yo me llamo Geoff, Mi apellido es Jones, Yo Vivo en Cambridge, Yo soy de inglaterra,etc etc
Then we had to do an introduction of our class amiga. Followed by going through the alphabet & fonètica bàsica.

No wonder my head hurt. But not so much because I signed up for two weeks at the Sàmara Language school and maybe if I still enjoy it for another couple of weeks.

This evening it was intensive salsa lessons, really great as it was given by a guy so I could easily follow his steps.

The atomsphere is great and everyone is so friendly if only I could say hija (sorry Emily that wretched j does me in).

Now for those 3 pages of homework to do 🙁 before tomorrows class.

Iphone internet access

As wonderful as the iPhone is you still need a connection to the outside world.

Here in Samara there are a couple of Internet places offering wifi at 1000 colones per hour (about £1.50) not sure how they define an hour for a mobile device!

Or maybe I could use the local I.C.E mobile operator although it’s not showing an Edge or 3G connectivity on the iPhone display and anyway O2 would want at least £6 per MB.

Which leaves trying to find some altruistic person leaving their wifi open. So far I’ve found two, both hotels. I was kicked out of the first one whilst trying to buy a drink for 3000 colones which I thought was a bit weird as I would happily promote his hotel for free, PR which would be priceless – alas not to be 🙁
The second hotel I will wait and see….

It strikes me there is a need for an open wifi system that only allows iPhones to access – since the iPhone ( in the form sold by Apple) is really only a low usage user. so places could display an apple to show they are iPhone friendly.

Time to go sniffing this time for dinner!!

I can recommend the wifitrak application by the way to sniff out networks.

Local life

Had an incredible nights sleep on my boardlike bed, the secret is a quick shower then straight to bed so the latent heat of vaporization cools you down. It’s great to be woken by the squealer birds, just wish I wasn’t so stiff when I woke up. Need to do my pilates again. I visited the local Pilates place here but with all the free weights around, didn’t look like my kinda place.

I really love exploring new places, and could easily live here for awhile, just wish I could speak the local lingo, although my sign language & smile usually gets me what I want.

The town is not busy today, Good Friday is obviously a big deal here, although it was a very motley group parading behind the cross! So maybe it isn’t the religious centre of Costa Rica!

Today I’m meeting up with Evelyne & Mathias from Switzerland who sold up and have been touring the old British Dominions since January. Would be rather neat as a package tour concept. Tour the red bits of The World,. My Britanica 1890 edition would be ideal as the tour guide 🙂

Finished my Cafe Negro (not cafe solo here) so back to the beach.

I’m using the iPhone WordPress application in offline mode, just had major system lockup trying to attach an image 🙁

Thrown out of the original hotel, the owner refused to sell as drinks and switched the wifi off!!

Found another open link now – this time will keep it’s location secret 🙂

Samara

Finally made it to Samara at 11pm last night. The bus was totally packed with some folks standing for the five and a half hour journey from San Jose. I was wedged in behind some guy who insisted on reclining his seat 🙁
At the bus station I met a young couple from Switzerland who are going to the same school as me, but for 3 weeks..
Eventually my host turned up on a trail bike, so with my rucsac strapped to my back we roared off into the night! Hairy or what 🙁
I have my own one room apartment with kitchen area, shower etc so quite luxuourios although the bed feels very board like.

My hosts are very friendly, but to say there is a language barrier is an understatement, Emily where are you?

Breakfast was lovely fruit and toast with some local cake speciality. Dinner is at 7, should be interesting.

Samara itself is a pleasant seaside resort, I mapped the whole village with my GPS this morning and also walked along the beach – all to try and find an open wifi connection, full marks to Hotel Las Brisas del Pacifico – you will have my trade for the rest of the week 🙂

The weather is much hotter and stickier than San Jose so I’m sure I will be ready for the mountains after a week although maybe I should do the 3 week course here!