Many Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) here in Costa Rica spend a large chunk of their time in schools. PCVs lead all kinds of activities depending on the sector the they work in: youth development, community economic development, or English.
Today marks one week since unions around Costa Rica called for an indefinite strike to protest a proposed tax-reform bill. Carolina Hidalgo, president of the Legislative Assembly, called on lawmakers to start debating the bill today as protests enter their second week.
Ana Paula Rivera is a stage artist, yoga teacher, massage specialist, producer at the Heredia Symphony Orchestra and more.
She's basically a restless human body.
President Carlos Alvarado urged the Catholic Church and university presidents to serve as mediators in talks with the unions that have been protesting a tax-reform bill since Monday.
It seems like Isaac Montero barely looks at the bar while he is assembling his equipment. He quickly stacks cocktail mixers, puts down tiny bottles of homemade cocktail bitters and fastens his black leather apron all while talking. Everything he needs is meticulously arranged to be at the reach of his hands.
Dozens of people waited for the independence torch in Peñas Blancas, the Costa Rican town on the border with Nicaragua. There, the two countries are divided by a diagonal line where Costa Rican asphalt meets Nicaraguan cement.
I have fond memories of El Sotano. Sipping cheap red wine in the darkened room to the tune of an unbelievably talented Scandinavian cello master performing his jazzy craft along with a couple of equally-skilled local musicians. It could well have been 1920. On a more recent occasion I had the pleasure of seeing local punk band Ave Negra play a standout show to a roomful of rowdy fans.
Violence broke out on the third day of tax-reform protests in Costa Rica. Protesters confronted police outside the Legislative Assembly in San José on Wednesday afternoon and students clashed with police outside the University of Costa Rica later that night.
