Virtual Levin

Today is Saturday and I am the only student from our group in Monteverde. The others decided to travel to the Volcano Arenal. It rained all night and cleared up this morning. When I walked to the Monteverde Institute the sun was bright, the view was clear and I was hot by the time I got to the studio. Now, about an hour later, the mist is rolling in as I watch it from my desk on the second floor of the studio and I am wishing I had brought a sweater. For the most part it is quiet here, the bugs do their little buzzing thing, and you can hear birds chirping and screaming in the trees and there is some thunder in the distance. There is, however, a little industrial noise pollution but that is the price we have to pay for being within a 5 second walk from the Monteverde Cheese Factory where they have awesome cheese and even better ice cream.

It has rained to some extent everyday since we arrived. Today we woke up to rain and everything is wet and damp, and things just do not dry. Up until now we have had a lot of meetings to get oriented with our projects and yesterday afternoon we chose what projects we wanted to work on. The projects are: The Los Llanos-Santa Elena road side planting and trail improvements (this project involves designing and planning a trail that will be used as a walkway for elementary children on their way to school. Right now there are no trails and children are walking alongside the road where there is a lot of car traffic as well as large tourism bus traffic. This is my project and I will be working with a landscape architect student on this).

Hello. Originally I thought I would post this text and an attachment of the text with photos, but attachments take a long while to attach, so as soon as I figure it out, I will post it. I may be that I have to go to an internet cafe to do big attachments. Now, on to the post....

This will be my first post to Virtual Levin from Costa Rica. I arrived on May 28th and stayed with friends for one night. The following night I took a taxi about 15 minutes away, to a part of town that I was not familiar with, to the hotel (Apartotel de Esteyo) to meet the other students from the group. The other students arrived after 9 pm and we all walked a few blocks away to get some dinner.

Unfortunately I won't be able to post pictures, not until I come back. The weather here is very hot and humid. The number of automobiles has increased tremendously since my last visit and the city is very smoggy. I found out that people who live in this region get 15% added to their paychecks because they live in a heavily industrial region. My grandma says that when the local power plant used coal, oil and gas to heat up water to generate steam, the air quality in the city was much worse. Now the plant uses only gas.
60% of Orsk population has fruit and vegetable gardens ouside of the city. My grandparents have one also, about 15 min away from their apartment. There they grow everything from cherries to potatoes. Just two days ago we finished planting green peepers and eggplants.

The Cleveland Section of the Ohio Planning Conference is sponsoring an event during one of the Goodtime III's happy hour cruises on Friday, June 16.

Planners on the Cuyahoga

The cruise runs from 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM; boarding time is at 5:30

The boarding location is in Voinovich Park at 825 East 9th Street Pier, near the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.
It is a short walk from the GCRTA Waterfront Line

Cost of the adults-only event is $4 for OPC or APA members and all attendees of the LGA Planning and Zoning Workshop
Cost for non-members accompanying members will be $8.
All prices include one drink ticket.

We got here after 18 hours of travelling. Everything is changed here, but people are still the same. We went to the imigration center today to check-in and stood in line for two hours to find out that we don't have the right documents. Then my mom and I went to browse the city and found an internet club, yey. It costs 50 rubles for an hour, that't about $2. I'm happy to find this place so close to where we are staying. Next entry will have pictures I promise. The weather is about 20C or about 70F.
Thant's all for now.

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