Otherwise, school is kind of wrapping up… only about 3 weeks left to go!  I can´t believe it!  It would have been almost over for me this week, but my professors miss class so often that everything has been pushed back to the very end.  They don´t really take classes too seriously here.. especially when it comes to showing up. 

More about this past weekend, 6 of us, including Barb´s host sister Maria Jose, took a weekend trip!  Barb pretty much planned it because it was a place that she knew about and wanted to go.  Anyways, it started early on Friday morning, as usual, and we took the 6 am bus from San Jose to Puerto Viejo, where I have been once before.  We hung out there Friday at the beach and ate some delicious Carribbean food for dinner.  Rice and Beans is the main dish, which is exactly what it sounds like, but the rice is cooked in coconut milk.  There are also ´patacones´ which are plantain slices fried up.  Delicious.   

Saturday morning, we hopped on a bus to Manzanillo, which is about an hour south of Puerto Viejo, then we started walking!  The place we were headed is called Punta Mona, and the only ways to get there is by either 1. A 2 1/2 hour hike through the forest, 2. A 3 1/2 hour walk/hike on the beach/in the forest or 3. By boat.  It´s literally in the middle of nowhere.  We decided to take the forest hike, which was fun because the ´directions´ said things like ¨make a right at the end of the fence¨ and ¨walk along the beach until you find an opening that makes a sharp right¨.  Thus, we were not sure if we were going the right way pretty much the entire hike.  But we continued on and eventually made it, even though at one point or another each of us either slid down the mud or got our shoes stuck in it. 

What Punta Mona is is really hard to explain, so I am just going to give you a link to their website so you can check it out yourself. 

www.puntamona.org

So, once we got there, the workers greeted us and had a delicious lunch ready for us.  Everything they eat there is vegetarian, and everything comes from their own gardens, so it´s really good.  We all stayed in a room full of bunkbeds in one of the bigger house type places with a huge deck where we ate all our meals.  That afternoon, we took a tour of the farm where they have all kinds of different fruits, veggies, and spices.  Also, it is located right on the beach, so that is where we spent the rest of the afternoon!  The only bad thing about most all of Costa Rica´s beaches on the Carribbean side is that the jungle is directly behind you when you´re on the beach.  Thus, you get attacked by mosquitos on the beach!  It was really bad on Saturday during the late afternoon, and I am covered in bites!  Good thing the Dengue Fever outbreak is on the Pacific side! 

After dinner, we hung out with some of the people there, and this Costa Rican man who works there, don Miguel, made a big bonfire.  I have never seen that many stars in my life!  Since we were literally hours away from any city that would have a lot of lights, it was incredible to look up and see the sky COVERED in stars.  After standing on the beach for 20 minutes, I saw 5 shooting stars! 

Since the beach was facing East, we all decided we were going to wake ourselves up the next morning a little before 5am to watch the sunrise over the ocean.  We did, and it was really pretty, but there were clouds covering the horizon.  After breakfast, we took some kayaks out and went to this ¨island¨.  I put it in quotes because there was nothing there but Jungle.  One of the guys at Punta Mona desicribed it as ¨Bowser Level 5¨ (from Mario) because it was pretty extreme if you tried to climb it or explore it.  We just kayaked around it instead, and discovered that the water was crystal clear and we had to come back after lunch to do some snorkeling. 

4 of us went back out on the kayaks after lunch with some snorkel stuff that we borrowed from this man named Padi, who has lived there his entire life.  We pulled our boats up onto the island, and started snorkeling around!  It turns out there was a coral reef right off the island, so there were tons of fish all around.  My favorite was a huge bright turqoise one.  We decided to head back in since we were not sure what time it was, and we needed to head back to head home!  We had decided earlier that day to take the boat back to Manzanillo instead of the hike to give us more time to enjoy the beach! 

We all hopped in the boat, and he pulled us up right near the bus stop.  The first bus was about 2 hours long, and it went to Limon, where we waited a little bit until the 8pm bus from Limon to San Jose.  We got in to San Jose around 10 pm, took the bus to Heredia, and then I took a taxi home and arrived around 11:30 pm!  What a weekend!

Unfortunately… now I have school work to do….

Tonight, I am going with a few of us exchange students to the Costa Rica vs. Trinidad and Tobago soccer game!  It’s going to be huge!  I’m really excited, and am definitely wearing my red shirt today!  Go Costa Rica!  (They’ll probably lose because they are pretty bad this year).

Tomorrow, I am going on a program excursion to Volcano Poas, where we will see the volcano, and zipline through the jungle!!!!!  That’s right…. ZIPLINE THROUGH THE JUNGLE!!!!   I am so excited, and I will let you know how it goes when I get back!

Saturday morning, I awoke around 5:15 am thinking it was at least 7, so that was a let down.  But I got up, Edith (pronounced E-deet) made me a breakfast of fried plantains, so it didn’t fill me up at all.  I hung around and played with the kids for a little while when I was served a second breakfast (YES!) that involved gallo pinto and an egg.  Then I headed to the school where I had painted the roof the last time, and continued to paint other parts of the outside with Edith and her sister Virgita.  It was alot of fun because the things we used to get the high parts were extremely unsturdy objects (sorry dad!).  BUT, it all worked out!  After that, about 6 teenagers/adults came to the school and we had some English lessons.  I do not get teaching skill from my mom, and I’m pretty sure they didn’t learn anything… but I tried!  haha, at least they had fun!

After lunch, Juan and I drove down to meet up with everybody else, and about 12 of us and some people from town went to a waterfall!  Juan drove his car with 5 people in it, and everyone else piled in the bed of Wilson’s (my host dad in the pueblo) truck.  It wasn’t a hike like the trip to the caves we took last time, we pretty much got to drive the whole way.  It was really fun when we got there, there were already 2 kids that had been jumping off, but it was not that deep and was way dangerous, so none of us did it.  We swam around for a while, and then on the way back we drove past this farm place with tons of trees full of this Costa Rican fruit called Mamón China.  It’s probably my favorite tropical fruit, although it is very strange, so we all hopped out and started climbing trees.  We ended up getting bags and bags full of fruit, so the whole way back in the back of the truck, we were just cracking them open and throwing seeds everyone on the side of the road!

That night, one of the ladies in town, Marisol, (she is actually a student in the high school even though she is probably around 40) invited us over to have dinner at her house.  It was really interesting, because her kitchen was completely outside.  It was basically like an outdoor room of the house because it had a roof, but that was it.  When we got there, she had everything ready for us to make our own tortillas… pretty much from scratch!  She had already made what is called the masa, which is basically like the dough made from corn that she had put through the grinder.  But we pressed out the masa and threw it into the skillet!  They were unquestionably the best tortilla I have ever eaten.  In fact, it’s on my top 5 favorite foods ever .  We had such a fun time seeing who could make the best tortilla (p.s. pretty sure I won).  We ate the tortillas  with her homemade cheese, and then she made us a full dinner with rice, beans, salad, and fried plantains (which are also on my top 5).  It’s amazing to me that this lady and her family offered us all this food when they themselves do not have much at all.  It just goes to show again how incredibly giving and appreciative the people of this town are.

So after dinner, we went to Estéban’s (one of our town friends) house to sing karaoke.  That’s right… karaoke.  I got the impression that on the scale of this town, this is the rich family.  They had this open patio outside with a TV and speakers set up… apparently they really like to karaoke because that was the entire purpose for their backyard.  It was really fun, Elaine and I sang Hotel California but in Spanish haha.  Then they played some music, and Costa Ricans love to dance, so we danced for a little bit.  I rode back to the house with the family, who came to karaoke as well, and went to sleep because it was late!  The next morning, we had to leave, but we will be back again at the end of October!

It’s Monday, and I’m back at school after a great weekend at the beach/Manuel Antonio National Park.  I have already been there once, but it is so far my favorite place in Costa Rica, and since two of my friends were going I decided to go back!  Who turns down the beach??  So Elaine, Barbara, and I took the 6 am bus from San Jose on Friday… dad got a kick out of knowing that by 6 am I was sitting on my third bus of the day, haha.  But the trip there was great, we got dropped off right in front of the park, and started walking around in order to find a place to stay.  Elaine’s guide book told us about a place that was super cheap, with A/C (unheard of!) and a TV (even more absurd!), so we went there.  It was called Cabinas Arenas, and when we got there, of course there were no TVs, but there was A/C,  it was $10 a night per person, and it was just meters away from the beach and also the entrance to the park.  Thus, we were sold, and gave José (the owner) our money.  As it turned out, the A/C sounded like it was working, but just put out room temperature air, which was extremely hot during the daytime.  We couldn’t find José to fix the problem, so we just went to the beach.  It was fabulous, of course, and we also happened to run into a guy named César who is an A/C maintenance man!  So he came back and talked to José and “fixed” our A/C!  By fixing, he actually just switched the unit with one in another room, which I’m pretty sure some people were staying in, but we didn’t ask.

The next morning, we woke up to a cool room, but with water all over the floor because the A/C leaked.  We told José, and he said he would clean it up and then get us some buckets!  So we went ahead and went to eat breakfast at this place we had heard about from one of our friends we made who sold artesan knives and swords.  He told us about this backpackers’ hostel that had an awesome breakfast for what turned out to be about $2.50 USD.  A plate of fruit, a pancake, gallo pinto, eggs, bread, and coffee!  It was delicious!  And the owner was this really funny/strange German man to whom we were not quite sure which language to speak.  That is a common occurrence when we travel to these touristy places…not knowing whether to speak English or Spanish because tons of the store owners and such are not from Costa Rica.  But after breakfast, we went around to do a little Christmas shopping in the artisan area, and then off to the park!  We walked on the paths through the forest and saw I think 3 different kinds of monkeys… white face monkeys, squirrel monkeys, and howler monkeys.  We also heard the howler monkeys howling like crazy!  Once we were done with the trails, we went to the beach and enjoyed some sun and saltwater!  We started taking some pictures of the white-faced monkeys playing in the trees right on the beach when one of them jumped from the tree and started running down the beach.  We thought this was really adorable until we realized that he was going for our backpacks!  We start running after him as he is rifling through Barb’s bag, probably looking for food.  Barb starts yelling and trying to shoo the monkey away from our bags when it looks up at her and gives us the meanest face I have ever seen… human or animal!  He furrowed his brow and stared her down for a few seconds before scampering away.  I guess we got lucky he didn’t steal anything…

During the night, it stormed like crazy, and I was awoken by Barb, who was moving her bed.  I asked what she was doing, and she said there was a leak in the roof, and it was dripping on her face.  So she moved her bed, when she realized there was another leak.  The third time was a charm, however, and we just went back to sleep hoping the whole roof wouldn’t cave in on us!  It didn’t, and we woke up Sunday morning and went to the same place for breakfast.

When we realized what time it was and that we had a bus to catch… we had to pay and run back to our room to grab our bags, and run to the bus stop, when we saw the bus leaving us.  Barb threw her stuff down so that she could run faster to catch the bus, and Elaine and I grabbed her bag and hurried behind as fast as we could.  We turn the corner and see Barb getting in a taxi, so we get on the local bus that goes to the next town where I knew the bus would make a short stop before heading to San Jose, hoping that that’s where Barb would end up as well.  After a few minutes on the bus, a taxi pulls up and stops in front of our bus and Barb is waving at us to get in the taxi quick!  Elaine and I get in the taxi, and he speeds off to Quepos (the next town) to try to catch the bus.  We get to town and see the bus driving, but it didn’t stop, so the taxi driver just pulled up in front of it and yells at the driver for us to let us on. haha.  Since we already had tickets, he let us on, and it was a major “PHEW!” moment.  4 hours later… I was back at the house!  Another great weekend!

This is me and Barb’s host sister, Maria Jose, and Barbara.

Lunch is the main meal in my house, but that may be because they are both retired, and they don’t really do much during the day.  We usually eat between 1 and 1:30, and most days I try to go home for lunch in between my classes because lunch at home is way better than my to-go lunch that she packs for me on days I have to eat at school.  It really varies, but the main ingredients to a Costa Rican lunch are rice, beans, some sort of cold salad, some sort of meat, and a vegetable.  Vera grills chicken with onions alot, she sautees huge fish filets a few times a week, sometimes she grills red meat, sometimes she makes a hefty soup.  She also makes “canellonis” alot, which is just the Italian style pasta that she fills with tuna.  It’s a little strange, but I always eat it.  Vera also LOVES cilantro, so alot of times the salads will be a little bit of lettuce, some sweet peppers, tons of cilantro, with just lime juice squeezed over it all.  She also makes many dishes with yucca, which I’m not sure if we even have in the states, but it kind of seems like it could be a potato substitute.  So it’s really pretty normal food… not like tacos or burritos or anything you might be associating here with… Costa Ricans will be the first to tell you that is Mexican food.  In fact, I have yet to even eat a taco down here, except for fish tacos at a restaurant in Jacó beach.  To drink, she always makes “fresca”, which is just straight up fresh fruit juice.  Sometimes it’s a mix from leftover breakfast fruit, and sometimes it’s just one fruit.  My favorite is “caz”, I don’t even know if that’s how it is spelled, and I have no idea what the fruit itself is because I’ve only had it in juice form, but it’s delicious!!

Then in the mid afternoon, we usually have a time for “cafecito”, which includes coffee, and bread or cookies or crackers.  It’s a great mid day wake me up.  Dinner time rolls around late in my family, around 8 or 8:30, and it is usually the same as lunch, just heated up, and sometimes with a side dish substitution or two.  By side dishes, that does not include rice and beans, because that is always present at every meal.

So we all piled in don Juan’s little KIA suv backpacks and all and drove for maybe like 45 minutes on a gravel road into the farmlands and mountains.  We had to stop at one point because a “bridge” had given way over this little stream, and a truck had gotten stuck so we had to figure out how to get around it.  If we had only been horseback or on dirtbikes, like most of the rest of the people, we would have been fine.  Then don Juan told us what we would be doing for the weekend:  Basically that Coleen and Barb would be living in a little town named San Antonio in what they called “cabinas” that were kind of like dormrooms, and Charlie and Brandon would be doing the same thing nextdoor to the girls.  So where did that leave me, I thought.  Don Juan told me I’d be living with a family in San Isidro, and working there with giving some English classes to a group of school kids, a group of adults one afternoon, and I would be painting the ceiling of the school most of the day, because, and I quote, “Es bastante grande”, which means, “you’re big enough”. hahaha, the rest of the weekend everybody called me la gigante, or the giant.

We arrived Friday afternoon at the “colegio” (which is pretty much high school) in San Antonio.  It was just one big building, with no classrooms, just groups of chairs set up in different areas.  I can’t even imagine how difficult it would be to teach/learn in that kind of setting.  But we talked with some of the kids, and started little workshops.  We had guitar (Barbara), frisbee (Brandon), basketball (Charlie), and cheerleading (Coleen).  I didn’t have one because I was going to the town up the mountain.  So they started on that with the students, and don Juan and Ivelina drove me up to my house in San Isidro.  My family was awesome!  The mom and dad were in their 30′s and super sweet, and they had a 9-year-old girl and a 4-year-old boy that were both adorable.  The dad, Wilson (in a Spanish accent), is a furniture maker, and he has a workshop out behind the house where he showed me some of his work, and it was beautiful.  He even built their entire house!

So that afternoon, I was supposed to give a little English class to the elementary school aged kids, but the only ones that came were the girl from my house and her cousin because it was raining pretty heavily.  But we had an OK lesson, they were really shy and didn’t really tell me what they wanted to go over, and I’m admittedly a pretty bad teacher.  haha.  But we had fun and sang some songs in English at least.  Then I went to my house, played games, listened to music with the family, ate dinner, and went to sleep on Eduard’s bed (the little boy), which my feet hung off completely.  Saturday morning I definitely woke up at 5 am, before the sun rose I might add, to go down the street to milk cows!  The mom of where I stayed, her parents have lived in San Isidro their entire lives, and they have farms that range all over the mountains I’m pretty sure, and so we went to their corral to milk cows.  It was funny, to say the least.

The rest of the day pretty much I was at the tiny school, where they told me about 8 students go, painting the ceilings!  The dad of where I was staying helped out, along with some other townspeople that would drop in a lend a hand every now and then.  ”My mom” brought me a delicious lunch of rice, beans, fried egg, and vegetables so I took a lunch break and chatted with some kids.  After lunch, Barb, Coleen, and Charlie came up to help.  They had been at the colegio (high school) teaching English classes that day.  We then had a “cafecito”, which is what Costa Ricans call a mid-afternoon coffee and bread break.  I had about 3 that day because ladies kept bringing me coffee and bread items.  I didn’t complain, of course.

That night, I just hung out with the kids in my family who were absolutely adorable, and Sunday morning we all hopped in don Juan’s car to head to the bus stop in Jacó to drop off 2 people who would be taking the bus home.  We all had such a great experience, that we are planning to go back 3 more weekends to do some more work around the towns!  I even got to drop one of my classes at school because of the amount of time I was committing to… and because I was avoiding writing a 10 page paper for said class!  All in all, it was a great experience for all of us who went!  I felt like it was a visit to the real Costa Rica.