Getting back to sight seeing

So I finished my CELTA course last Friday. It was a relief to finally be done but now I need to look for a job. I HATE applying for jobs. Its so uncertain. Sending out tons of resumes, doing interviews and never knowing where is the best fit for me. The worst part of it all this time is that Costa Rica doesn't exactly have clear addresses or street names so I really have no clue where I am going to drop off resumes and do interviews. But got to do it and hope for the best.

Besides that we are talking about staying in San Jose for a year now. Mostly for me to get a good years experience teaching, Ryan to get a years experience working in the hostel (and hopefully become manager) and to save up money for South America. Oh how we both want to move on to South America but again got to do what we got to do to keep this adventure rolling.

Today we went to the Costa Rica Gold museum in San Jose. It was interesting. The first level display is all about Costa Rica's currency. From the first coin and paper prints to the currency in circulation today. They explained how all the currency designs are based on agricultural income of the country and the bio-diverse floral and fauna found in the countries forests.

The second level was all about a native artists. Mostly abstract geometrical line paintings. Some of it was pretty but we had the typical lame mans question, "how is this art? A five year-old could do that." Shows what we know.

Anyways the third level was our favorite. It was about the daily lives of the indigenous people and how they made figurines and jewelry out of gold. Most of the figurines were based on animals such as toucans, frogs, jaguars, turtles, crocodiles, etc. The figurines ranged from the size my hand to the tiny size of my finger nail. And so many of them are so detailed. The indigenous people designed wax models of the figurine shapes then surrounded the models with very high heat resistant clay. Next they paned for gold in the local rivers, melted it into liquid form and pour the melted gold into the clay bowl with the models. After the gold dried they cracked open the clay bowls to reveal the scared gold figurines. How awesome is all that. And there are hundreds of these gold pieces in the museum. This last level made it worth visiting the museum, as it should since it is called the gold museum.

written by

ryan & debbrial on March 8, 2010 from San Jose, Costa Rica

from the travel blog: Us Discovering the Latin Americas

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