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!