Day 1 - Saturday, May 10, 2008

My first flight all by myself, going to a foreign country where they speak a language I still don't really know. Good times. Along the way to the plane I spotted cheap (like prices that were my discount at Twin Liquors) all over the airport in Houston. $39 for a silver patron, not bad.
Anyway, that's enough capitals too
we left the airport in San Jose and started off to Manuel Antonio. we made several stops on the way, buying alcohol, which we drank a fair amount of on the way to Manuel Antonio. There were a few pee breaks as well, but the bathrooms were rank and nasty so Emily, Laurie, and I all went around the gas station, near the horses in the back, and peed there. we think we were watched. or... the girls were watched, heh, nobody cares to watch a guy pee. anyway. another stop on the way was for some of the guys to buy some weed, which turned out to be apparently pretty shitty, as they smoked it once they got back in the bus. this is where we found out that cocaine and pot are only misdemeanors in costa rica, and only if you are selling them. i didn't smoke. i was expecting a piss test would await me when i got to Minnesota a few days after the trip ended. the piss test never came, and i turned down a lot of pot. o well, who cares really.

When we got ot Manuel Antonio we were dropped off at our hotels and we all met for dinner at my hotel, La Colina. Afterwards, half of the group, including the other Texas State students who were already at Escuela D'Amore, went to a bar, but left without telling the rest of us which bar it was. most of the rest of us went to the bar at the hotel after that, though few stayed long besides me and Daniel Jamieson. o boy.
Jamieson was taking shots of tequila with the bartender's boyfriend, John, and we both ended up challenging the bartender, Arlene the world's greatest bartender, and John to drinking contests, focusing on tequila shots. several other students came back from the bar in Quepos to join us, and that is when shit went down. I was drunk so a lot of the beginning is pretty hazy to me, but i'll tell it the best i can.
Jamieson had had way too much to drink, as had John and the hotel's owner, Mike, let's just say that right now. WAY too much. So Jamieson seemed to be picking a fight with anyone he could, including Ashley Champan (an Escuela student from Wisconsin), which lead to a escalating arguments between Jamieson, her, Seth (who we all thought was her boyfriend), John, and Mike.
The fighting became more intense as Jamieson apparently through a box of matches and Mike for no reason and him and John started fighting. I had to step in numerous times to break those two apart before it became violent. John later said it never really got violent. That is ONLY because of my intervention, and fuck that anyway, it did get violent, Jamieson just never threw a punch, and I was in the middle of half the punches that were thrown, so I got bruised a little, but not too bad because they weren't aiming for me, and Jamieson didn't get as beaten up as he should have been. Anyway, back to what happened. Jamieson was eventually kicked out of the hotel after starting another fight with Mike and John, and the matches deal with Mike. It's funny how matches or lighters seem to instigate so much shit (like my getting thrown into a window at that party right before Spring Break after the guy threw a beer can at me, which apparently may have actually been a lighter... whatever, we were both drunk, he didn't need to charge me like he did... anyway)...
Anyway, so Jamieson tore down the street at like 2am with everyone yelling at himt o come back and wait for a cab. i was freaking the fuck out, bawling, because the roads are so fucking dangerous there and he didn't know where the hell he was going, and the people weren't safe, and he didn't speak spanish and he was fucking drunk. i took responsibility for him when i stood up and stopped the fighting. i'm not sure why i did that, but in my mind, that's what happened. he was a fellow student, a fellow bobcat, and as much as i hated that, and rejected the idea we were ever friends, i knew i had to do my best to stop that fight and protect him. the bobcat thing was one of my biggest selling points to myself of getting in the middle of it all. i'd say that was the most school spirit i ever have had. getting in the middle of a fight in a foreign country to stop it and all that shit. anyway.
so we get back to the bar, i'm still upset and Mike and John are fuming. Arlene is fucking pissed at John and freaking out about how out of control it almost got, and that Jamieson had nowhere to go. she was begging John and Mike to go get him, but we explained to her nobody had any idea where he was. the gay guys in room #3 were bitching about how loud and out of control the hotel was that night, whatever shut up. then Mike and John started talking about how they wanted to bash his face into the ground if they ever saw him again anyway. naturally this is the time when someone says he is downstairs at the front desk. i sneak down the stairs and check, and sure enough, he's right in between two cops, who apparently didn't bring him back, they were just there. I ran back upstairs and started trying to get the others to help me, because the violence was about to escalate, nobody else knew it yet though. Nobody really had time to respond then anyway, because up comes Jamieson a few seconds later, still talking shit, and Mike and John just lunge after him, with me and Arlene trying to do anything to stop them. I kept picking up Arlene when she got in the middle of it, and pushing her out of the way. i didn't want her to get hurt. not a place for a girl to be.
Mike and I wrestled all the way through the restaurant portion of the hotel, as i held him back and Arelene stood between John and Jamieson. Mike ended up jumping off a ledge next to some stairs in the restaurant in order to get around me and to get to Jamieson, but he fell kinda far and hurt himself for a second before he recovered and went back after him. By then i was back in the middle of everything and Arlene was screaming at John to stop. Mike was probably the most fucked up of everyone.
Anyway, somehow we end up on the side street by the hotel, and they are throwing me out of the way to get to Jamieson, and I'm running back and picking up Mike (short little Russian) and throwing him to the ground and standing between John and Jamieson again, until having to either get back up after Mike pushes me, or throwing Mike back to the ground. this went on for a little while so things went back and forth. o, by the way, cars were driving by us and around us the whole time as they fought in the middle of the street. finally the other guys came running down and helped me break up the fight for good. and everyone else started going back to the hotel when the cops pulled up and arrested Jamieson. I ran upstairs to go find the number to call Buddy, and the cops in the parking lot by the front desk grabbed me and tried to put me on their car in handcuffs until my screaming and Arlene yelling at them and telling them in spanish what i was doing, and then they let me go and i ran to find that Ashley was already on the phone trying to reach Buddy, with no response.
The cops took Jamieson away as all of us tried to stop them. Jamieson was pretty beat up by then, we had to help him off the ground after the last onslaught. he said later that he was kicked in the head at the end there, i didn't see it. After the cops drove off and the guys reassured me that i did more than i should have and it wasn't my fault and it was out of my hands (i was pretty hysterical, i think it may have just been the drinking and the instant stress) everyone went back to the bar and fumed and updated the gay guys on what had just happened. i said fuck this shit and went to my room and started trying to write a news story for the Star about what had happened, but I only got a paragraph. I managed to cut up my foot pretty badly that night, and it took days for the swelling and green shit to go away, and it still hasn't healed all the way and it's been 3 weeks (wtf?). We ran into Jamieson the next day at the Blue Monkey, as we all headed to the beach. He was re-checking in into the Blue Monkey (apparently they brought him there after letting him leave the police station). then he said he wanted to kill Mike and John. A few days later he said he really regretted everything that night and acknowledged to Buddy, after i asked Buddy about my foot, that i saved his ass. he also admitted to being a total ass that night. at school people didn't like him, and hoped he wouldn't come back to school, some saying they would have joined in and beat his ass down. the girls were afraid of him, and that never went away for a lot of the girls. jamieson almost completely stopped partying then too. i told Buddy two days after the fight that i only protected Jamieson because it was the right thing to do, and i had told people before, while apologizing for his actions, that people at texas state were not like him. seriously a lot of school pride there, and i don't know where it came from.