Where Am I?

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009-- San Jose, Costa Rica, Central America, Northern Hemisphere, Planet Earth. This may sound like a specific location to you, but in fact, my exact location has been difficult to pin point. According to Wirlan Delgado (our land lord) we live “Del Final del Boulevard de Rohrmoser, 200 meters Oeste.” The address is elusive and for those of us who don't carry around yard sticks and compasses in our pockets proves to be difficult to locate. At least my street Rohrmoser has a name (although, it is clearly not of Spanish origin). The name, however, is a huge start. Most streets outside the heart of downtown have no identification. While I have yet to see a sign where the name is written out, at least every Tico (Costa-Rican) innately knows where this unsigned street lays and is happy to point you in the right direction. I am not even sure what neighborhood we are in. While neighborhood Rohrmoser, would be a logical conclusion, many other indications show that we are in Pavas, a neighborhood specifically identified by Lonely Planet as one to avoid. While the neighborhood is nothing to boast about, I have few complaints and do not feel unsafe, so perhaps we are not in Pavas either. And after the three of us have spent many hours, heads bent, pouring over our map of San Jose we have concluded that we are, in fact, not even depicted on the map. Even for passionate map readers, like my mother, a city without street names and a mediocre map with few noted land marks makes finding our house challenging. After cross checking with a google earth picture, we decided that we are, like the Order of the Phoenix, unplottable.

The house, however is adorable. It takes 5 different keys to unlock the series of gates/ padlocks to get through the front door but once inside everything is beautiful. We have a glass dining room table, a wooden couch and two wooden armchairs, a kitchen with beautiful blue and tan tiles on the wall. Upstairs the master bedroom has a little balcony and a walk in closet about the size of my side of my dorm room. My room has two twin beds and a big window, There is also a good sized bathroom and laundry room with a skylight. Under the stairs there is another half bathroom.