Virtual Levin

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.

Our first actual day was on the 29th of May and we packed our little bus with all of our luggage and headed to the college of architecture (Colegio de Arquitectos de Costa Rica) in San Jose for our first lecture on the history of housing and the materials that were/are used. We were told that houses that have monument status cannot be changed without prior approval; repairs are okay but also need approval. Owners of homes that have monument status get repair products for free and don’t pay property taxes to the government. For a house to get monument status, a historical event must have taken place, such as it being the home of a previous president. Instead of immediately being dropped off at our home stay families we spent two nights at the Los Llanos Field Station that is owned by the Monteverde Institute (MVI).

The field station was really nice and it provided an opportunity to get to know each other. I originally thought there were only students from the University at Buffalo participating, but the professors that will be teaching the courses are bringing students from their universities. So the majority of the students are landscape architects and they are from the University of Maryland and the University at Buffalo; there is another planning student from the University of Illinois, and me from Cleveland State University. Only two of us are graduate students working on our masters. The others are undergraduates.

The Field Station had two dorms in the same building that had the kitchen and common area with a porch on the back. There were also a few other buildings that provided more dorm rooms. We had a beautiful view from the back porch. After arriving back at the field station after orientation and prep at the institute, the back porch was a popular place to have an afternoon cup of coffee and chat with classmates. The back porch was also popular for an after dinner cup of coffee until the bugs persuaded us inside—there were some pretty large bugs. And way too many spiders, which my roommate felt it was her calling to kill not only the ants but also the spiders.

The Monteverde Institute is where our class lectures and Spanish classes are held. Our group also has a rather modest sized outbuilding that is to be used as our studio area. I hear from the architecture students that our studio will become our home away from home and that we will spend plenty a late nights working on our projects. Apparently they also like to pull all-nighters before projects are due. Thank goodness we have our own space that we can lock up, complete with three computers, wireless internet access for our laptops, desks for all of us and our own fridge (and plenty of coffee). Our studio has two floors and is constructed entirely of wood. Most of our work areas are on the top floor, but it gets quite hot there so we have set up some additional desks on the first floor for those of us who want “air-conditioning”—the first floor has a drastically cooler climate.

Wednesday we had an orientation about our home stay families and what to expect living here with a family. Thursday we had a lecture about the projects that we will be working on and they all sound really exciting. I will post more on those soon.
---Anne