My Costa Rican Family

Me, Neivy, Arnoldo, Marcos, Mariana y Lorena

Family portrait :)

Mariana, me and Neivy- home stay sisters

Jefferson and me- Alyssa's homestay brother

Me, Andres & Alyssa

Me, Kevin, Jessica and Alyssa

Jenier and me

Manuel (the night guard) and me

Mallory, Daisy, me, Jessica, Isabel, Alyssa & Mavis

Saturday night, we had a fun dinner where all of our host families came and ate with us at UGA. It was great to see my whole host family again and all they kept asking was when I was going to come back to Costa Rica to see them, so needless to say, I am going to come back to this place multiple times. After dinner, we went out to Santa Elena to go dancing one last time.

Sunday, we walked to the soccer games again in lower San Luis to watch the San Luis teams play. Our friends that work in the kitchen were playing and they won! It was fun to watch them! We all came back to UGA and played soccer for a couple hours and later went to Lelo's for dinner. I have turned into a fish lover because we had the best tilapia ever! It was kind of weird because it was a whole fish that still had eyes and everything but it was SO good! Today and tomorrow are going to be overwhelmingly busy for me because my ecology final is tomorrow and I just have to get a lot of other stuff wrapped up. I am going to be so so sad to leave.

Pictures!!

Alyssa & me on the ferry

the beach at Cabo Blanco

Beautiful sunset

Roughin' it

We slept outside

Iguana

My roommates and me

getting ready to snorkel!

Alyssa and me underwater

Arenal Volcano

Our cute little villa

Johnny, our bus driver and me

Swimming in the hot springs

active volcano

overlooking the volcano :)

more hot springs!

Rope Swing at the River!

One more week :(

I realize it has been a long long time since  I have updated this, but so much has been going on! For the past week, we have been all over this country! I am glad to be back on campus, but I am really sad we only have one more week here!! I am going to miss this place so much more than I am able to explain.

Last Thursday, we left here at 7:00 for our 6 hour ride to Cabo Blanco. We had to drive for about 2 hours, get on a one hour ferry and then drive the rest of the way to Cabo. We stayed at a total nature reserve that you have to be invited to come in to and apparently only 12 groups get to go per year. Cars weren't allowed to even come in so we had to hike for about a mile with our bags up to this place. Cabo Blanco is on the southern coast of Costa Rica and it was HOT HOT HOT! It was similar to summers in Georgia...you should stood there and you sweat. But, it was absolutely beautiful. We were right on the beach and surrounded by gorgeous trees, plants and birds. The next morning, we were supposed to go snorkeling, but the earthquake that hit Japan sent a tsunami warning to us in Costa Rica. We had to go pack an emergency bag and hike up to a safe place and stay there until the warning was over. It was crazy because a lot of girls were freaking out and we didn't know how serious it was because we were so far away from any source of internet or TV. Well obviously, everything turned out to be fine and the rest of the days, we went on with our normal activities. Eventually, we did get to go snorkeling and it was awesome!! I saw so many cool, colorful fish and we also saw a HUGE sea turtle. We got to pull out our mattresses on the porch every night and fall asleep listening to the ocean, it was great. After 4 days at Cabo Blanco, we were ready to leave because it was miserably hot and the two old park rangers there were crazy, but that's a long story.

After Cabo Blanco, we were on our way to visit the Arenal Volcano (6 hours in the other direction). We went from roughing it, to absolute paradise! We stayed at a resort/spa type place with lots of hot springs and we stayed in cute little villas. The night we got there, we had a buffet dinner at the hotel and they had STEAK! It was awesome. The next day (first off, there was bacon for breakfast) we hiked some of the trails up the volcano and hung out at the top for a while to admire all the beautiful views. The rest of the day was simply relaxation...we went to another resort that had 20 something hot springs and 3 water slides. It was one of the nicest places I have ever been to. We hung out there the rest of the day and destroyed the buffet for dinner as well and of course took over the chocolate fountain. 

Today on our way back, we stopped at this cool river where you could rope swing into the river...it was AWESOME! I did it four times... and it was only like 9:30 in the morning. It was definitely one of the most fun things I have done here. I am going to miss all the cool little waterfalls and rivers that we have been to and the fun hikes to them. We are back now and I know this last week is going to fly by...especially because we are going to be super busy finishing up classes as well. I gave up Facebook for Lent, but I will load some pictures on here later tonight!

Pura Vida!!

Less than 4 weeks :(

Today, I realized I have less than 4 weeks left here. Although I miss so many people (and Chikfila) I am going to be really sad to leave here. We have been doing some cool stuff lately. Last week, we had the opportunity to teach at two local elementary schools. The schools were both tiny and had from 11-20 students each, but it was such a rewarding experience. We taught- in Spanish- about systems in the human body and then paired up with a student and drew a diagram of the body and labled the bones and organs in Spanish. The kids were really well-behaved and excited that we were there to teach them. Also, we got to tour the local highschool and learn the differences between school systems here and school systems in Costa Rica.

Last week, I was in my homestay again for 5 days. It was definately more comfortable this time because I was already familiar with the family and see my host mom almost every day because she works in the kitchen. I helped her make tortillas one night and was actually able to carry on better conversations this time. It's amazing how much my knowledge of Spanish imporved between the two homestays. I still speak really slow in Spanish, but I am able to understand a lot more. Saturday morning, I came to work here at UGA with my mom and helped her in the kitchen, mainly washing dishes and cutting up vegetables for lunch. Then about 6 of us hiked to the waterfall and ate lunch there. I'm telling y'all. that waterfall never gets old.

Sunday, there was a huge soccer tournament in lower San Luis. My host parents both had to work, so me and Alyssa walked down and stayed pretty much all day. So many people from the community were there, so it was cool to hang out with everyone. There were 3 soccer games and a bunch of good food. People were just sitting on their horses, drinking beer, watching the games and there were a ton of stray dogs running up and down the field- it was hilarious. The walk back was rough- it was all uphill for about an hour, but we did it!

This week has been busy so far, but I am glad to be back on campus with everyone. In about a week, we are going to Cabo Blanco (the beach) for ecology for another entire week so I am excited about that. I will update again soon... Pura Vida!

Back on Campus

Wow wow wow, where do I even begin? Our week long break was awesome! We have done so much in this past week, that I'm scared I'm not going to even remember it all. After we left last Thursday, we spent a night in San Jose and then got picked up from our hotel early Friday morning for our rafting trip, which has been my favorite thing in Costa Rica so far. 

We arrived at the rafting camp, ate breakfast, and had to pack a little bag because our trip was overnight. We got on another bus and rode to the beginning of the river to start rafting! Our luggage even came with us on a raft because we were spending the night on the river. I was a little scared to raft because I had a bad rafting experience on a Young Life trip where I fell out and floated down the river freaking out because of all the rocks. There were 5 Costa Rican guys as our guides and they were all really funny. We stopped along the river to take little hikes to waterfalls or to jump off rocks and eat watermelon and pineapple. After about 2 hours of rafting, we arrived at where we would be staying overnight, which was complete paradise. There were a bunch of tiny little cabins with 2 twin beds and no walls, just mosquito nets and a little curtain. We could see and hear the river from where we slept! The guides unloaded all the luggage and food from the rafts and cooked us an awesome lunch. We were in paradise! The rest of the day, we chilled in hammocks and read or sat in the sun, just relaxing. The food was the best I have had in Costa Rica, those guys could cook! The next morning, we left for about 3 more hours of rafting and stopped again along the way at waterfalls. I think I have seen at least 7 different waterfalls here in Costa Rica, all beautiful! I think the rafting trip has been my favorite part of Costa Rica so far.

Alyssa, me & Jessica getting ready to raft!

The river was beautiful!

Alyssa & me all geared up!

Our cute little room!

Our paradise!

The bar

Our awesome lunch

Another awesome waterfall. Notice the people in the background climbing up :)

Us with our guide, Esteban!

The river!

After the river trip, we headed back to San Jose and from there, left for our beach trip to Montezuma. It was just us students going and we really had no idea what we were doing. We had to leave the hotel at 4:30am to catch a  6:00 public bus and the taxis we called to come to the hotel never came so we were already off to a rocky start! It took 6 hours to get to Montezuma and we had to change buses 3 times and get on a ferry while also keeping up with our luggage so it wouldn't get stolen...it was pretty nerve wracking! When we finally got to Montezuma, it was about 90 degrees and HUMID! We found our hostel and got settled in. Our hostel was owned by recent college graduates from Colorado who had studied abroad and decided to open a hostel after graduation. There were howler monkeys everywhere! It was one of the coolest things I have seen. We saw families of them walking in trees and the sound they make is ridiculous. They woke us up around 6am every morning! We went to the beach everyday, hiked to a waterfall one day, and a couple girls got surf lessons. The water was beautiful and of course I bought about 2 ice cream cones a day. Most of us did not want to spend money on food so we bought a ton of peanut butter before we left and survived the 4 days on peanut butter sandwiches. But, one night the people at our hostel were making sushi so we learned how to make it and roll it which I plan to do for dinner a lot when I get back. It was pretty easy! 

When we got back to San Jose, all we wanted to do was sit in an air conditioned room and watch TV. I think we were all pretty beat. We left the room to go to McDonalds and also to get ice cream, which was perfect!  Now we are back on campus and our second session of classes have started. We transfer to our home stays Wednesday and I am pretty sure that I will be at the same one, so that's exciting! Oh and today was cool because this morning, we got to go to a local elementary school and teach a lesson about the skeletal system! 


That's all for now, Adios!

Hi! I don't have much time but river rafting here was AWESOME!! The place we stayed at overnight was so incredible and almost impossible to describe. We all had such a blast. We are in San jose now and leaving on a public bus tomorrow at 6am for montezuma. We will be at the beach for 4 days. I can't wait. I will update more next week when I get back to campus.

Pura Vida!