Volcan Arenal

This week was great, classes have been going well and the girls are super fun! I am also getting adjusted to living with my new family. My little brother Max is still terribly shy toward me and hardly talks to me. My older brother, Mauricio is becoming more talkative because he wants to learn English and be prepared to know English well for the University. He is a really nice guy and is so helpful with everything, it will be fun hanging out with him more! My mom is really nice and a fantastic cook, the food here is ridiculous everything is so amazing. I could eat Costa Rican cuisine everyday. Yum yum yum. I am also becoming quite the avid coffee drinker. Coffee here is fantastic. I just feel like everything here tastes 100 times better at home because everything is fresh and REAL tasting, no preservatives, just fresh natural food. I also was able to meet my dad this weekend. The first thing we talked about was kareoke, he was quite sad when I told him that I don't sing kareoke. He was so funny, he had like a professional kareoke microphone and he also has a kareoke cd player in his car. Kareoke is huge here it is hilarious. Anyway, my dad is really cool and I am sad that he will only be at the house on the weekends.

This past weekend 14 of the 16 girls travelled to Volcan Arenal in the city of La Fortuna. We hired one of the girl's Tico family friend, Henry, to drive us. We left bright and early Friday morning and headed off. We stopped in a couple of cities where we saw some beautiful gardens. Then in La Fortuna, we bought some fantastic pizza and then heading to check out some tour deals. That day, we went to Baldi hot springs, which is a hotel that contains like 20 different hot spring pools that are different temperatures and heated by the volcano! There was a meal included with the entry fee and it was probably the best dinner I have ever had. It was fantastic. After that we went on a drive through some pretty sketchy back roads and found ourselfs face to face with Volcan Arenal. It was AMAZING. It was a clear enough night where we could see the flaming red lava spewing from the head of the volcano. SO so brilliant! Unfortunately, none of our pictures turned out but I'll never forget how cool it was to see an eruption! After that, we went to a local discoteca and busted out some mad moves. It is so fun all the girls love to go out dancing so we just have a blast. Unfortunately, it was a hot spot for Americans so all the Americans pretty much took over the dance floor. Not as fun as dancing with the Ticos! After the disco, we went back to the hotel and went to the pool and swam for a while, the volcano was literally right in front of our hotel so it was perfect. Our hotel was $20 for one night, our driver $20 for 2 days and yet we all still managed to drop about $100! We were paying in colones and it would have been better to use dollars because the exchange rate for colones is really weak in touristy cities...oh well, now we know.
Saturday, we got up early and had a great complimentary breakfast at the hotel (can you tell that I adore the food here???) And then went out to the beautiful Cascada La Fortuna (La Fortuna Waterfall), after a short hike, we arrived at the most amazing waterfall I could ever imagine. We spent the morning there swimming and laying out in the sun. Beautiful. After that, we went on a drive over to Lake Arenal. From there we took about an hour and 30 minute boat ride to the other side of the lake where we met Henry and continued our drive home. It was a great trip and I also continued my obsession with the Twilight book series by finishing the second book in about a day. A lot of the girls are obsessed like me so we are passing the different books around, I will hopefully start reading the third one soon! I am lame I know.

On Sunday, my family and I went out to lunch for my padre ticos moms birthday. We went to a really nice restaurant in Caldera. It was great, I met my papa ticos mom and 2 sisters. From there we went to Punta Morales where my papa tico works during the week. It was beautiful. His company trasports azucar (sugar) to the US and I was able to see a beyond huge building filled with crude sugar. We got to taste some and it was the best tasting sugar ever, perfect for my love of sweets huh? After that we returned towards Miramar and stopped to get a batido (milkshake) at Restaurante Monteverde, yet again, best milkshake ever.

So, yea, I pretty much want to stay here forever. We are planning on going to the Monteverde Cloud Forest this weekend...more updates later!

ADIOS!

Too much fun!!!

I couldn´t possibly be loving it anymore than I do here. Everyday is amazing and gets better and better. I feel like I always have something to look forward to. Last week, right when I got settled in with the Estrada Naranjo familia, I had to move! Very very sad, but more on that later! First, a replay of my weekend. Friday night I went to Justine´s brother´s futbol game, the people here are ridiculously good at futbol. My class was supposed to go to the game in San Jose against the US which I guess is a HUGE game for them but the tickets were sold out before we could buy any. So we are taking class off so that we can go a house of one of the families to watch the game on Wednesday. After the futbol game, Justine and I met up with all the girls at a bar that is in front of our school. It was so much fun and the girls got to know eachother a lot better! Good bonding time! I love the girls from my program, they are awesome and I have SO much fun with them. Saturday morning, we went zip lining. One of the most memorable experiences of my life! It was crazyyyyyyy went went through line 30 zip lines and rappeled twice. At one point in the middle, we stopped and swam underneath a waterfall!! It was amazing. We also saw monos! (monkey) They were climbing a tree right by us! The zip line crew of workers were pretty young and of course loved us American women and invited us out dancing! So Saturday night we all went up to the mountains to a little bar to meet up with them. It was funny because we thought it was a strip club at first because there were sketchy pictures of girls in lingerie but then discovered it wasn´t thankfully haha. Anyway, we DANCED the night away and the guys were whipping us around the dance floor teaching us salsa and all kinds of crazy moves that could only be done by Costa Ricans. So so so so so much fun! I have sooooo much fun with the girls here! Then Sunday, my family and I went to the mountains again to meet my abuelo y abuela (grandma and grandpa), it was really nice to spend the last day with my family and we had a really good time. When I had to say goodbye and leave it was sooooooo sad. My momma tica and hermana tica were CRYING it was so sad. I felt like I was really part of their family and only after 1 week! We are going to keep in touch though and I will be lucky enough to have 2 families here. Today, Monday, I moved to my new house in Miramar. My house is ridiculously nice. I can´t wait to put pictures up. We actually have a dog and 3 cats that I can play with which is nice! My momma tica is really nice and her personality reminds me a lot of my real mom! We also have a maid? Crazy I know, she washes all the clothes, cooks, cleans, ect. My dad is away during the week and my sister is at the university so I won´t see them much. My 2 brothers are really cute, they are much quieter than my other brothers. This family is much different than my last one. They also have a workout gym, a volleyball court (my brothers like volleyball a lot so I will have to work on my skills---DREW) a ¨ranchero¨ with a fireplace, hammocks, jaquizzi, everything thats relaxing in the world, haha and is surrounding by exotic fruit trees, coffee plants, vegetables, ect. I am able to take WARM showers here which is sooo so so so much better and I also have internet! The only problem is, my stupid computer doesn´t work so I have to use theirs and I officially won´t be able to skype while I am here. Oh well, anyway, things are wonderful here and this weekend we are planning to go to Arenal the gran Volcano of Costa Rica, very active! It shall be fun! More updates later!

Hasta luego

Settling in....

Wow, it feels like I have been here for weeks. Last weekend, I met my host family and they are wonderful. My mom, Eugenia, is a complete jokester. She is a homemaker and I swear she is like a housewife from the 50s. All that she does is cook and clean ALL day. It is bizzare. She is awesome and loves to tell me dirty jokes. My dad, Carlos, is great as well. I guess he is the boss of a major electrical company here. No wonder my mom doesn´t work. My oldest brother, Carlos, is pretty shy. He is a great artist and has shared some of his paintings with me. He also knows some English (so does the dad) which is nice. Here, they only have 4 hours of English a week. Needless to say, they don´t know much, even though he is in highschool. He loves Raven, from the Disney channel. It is interesting because they are really racist here! They make fun of chinese and black people all of the time!! It´s crazy. They also have ¨Nica" jokes. They are our version of blonde jokes, but for Nicaraguans. A ton of Nicaraguans immigrate to Costa Rica and most Costa Ricans have little respect for them and call them "tontos" which means dumb. Next, my brother Ricardo is 11. He is full of energy and I play ping-pong with him for hours at a time. He also took me on a hike to the top of our farm (which goes on for like a mile). It felt like we were on top of a mountain. I could see the next city over, Puntarenas, as well as the coast! Beautiful! On the way back down, however, a bull from the farm started chasing us and I felt like I was running for my life! We finally made it back to the house safely. We have 2 parrots, 1 that speaks spanish. My host mom said it can live to be 50 years old! CRAZY! Sadly, my dog, YACKIE, is only a watch dog and I can´t play with it. Animals are walking around here but the people just like have them for no reason because they don´t play with them!!! There are so many cute little puppies here though!! My little sister, Carolina, is quite a handful. She is a sweetheart, and is 7. She definitely defines the lack of privacy aspect of the Tiko culture. I am staying in her room with her things, but she is sleeping in the guest room. Not sure why? But yea, so she will just randomly walk into my room when the door is closed. She also wants to be with me every second of every day. I am used to having much more time to myself! Everything besides the lack of privacy...is great with my family! I am learning so much Spanish with them and they are so patient and helpful with me. I feel like a part of the family and it hasn´t even been a week. Unfortunately, Justine (a girl from the program) and I live like 5 miles away from the school and everyone else. We are supposed to take the bus and they said they would pay us back but sadly the bus situation is not working out. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn´t. There are different types of buses some go to different towns and others are really expensive. We have been having a hard time with figuring that out and yesterday the program director came with us to talk to the bus people and they said that there is no set schedule. SO, we may possibly have to switch families to be closer to everyone else OR we will have to figure out another form of transportation. It is up in the air right now and it causing Justine and I some anxiety and so that will be interesting to see what happens there.
School is great as well, my Costa Rican health care class is great. It is really interesting and it sounds like we will be going on some great fieldtrips to clinics and other medical facilities (so long as swine flu isnt an issue there). A lot of things are being put on hold because of the swine flu so hopefully by the end of the program more things will be certain and we wil be able to go. My spanish class is awesome as well. I have a HILARIOUS professor named Raul. He is from Nicaragua and everything he does and says makes me laugh. I don´t mind going to class everyday because the time flies by and we have a pool there to swim in and are classes are in a bamboo hut that is open and fresh air is constantly flowing through. It is wonderful!
The food here is amazing. I am eating far too much of it though and I am excited to start exercising next week. We have a soccer field that I am going to run in during our breaks between classes then I can go take a nice dip in the pool! My host mom is trying to get me fat! I guess the mothers that host girls here try to feed us as much as possible so we gain weight so that when we leave and see our real families again, they know that we were being fed enough! Ha! We will see how that goes. For breakfast, often I get Gallo Pinto which is rice, beans, and eggs and some other special seasoning because it tastes like heaven. I am also ADDICTED to coffee. It is amazing here. So good. We have breakfast, lunch, SNACK at 4 which is coffee and bread with different fruit spreads, then dinner. My mom packs a lunch for me everyday and everything is fresh, health and delicious...can´t find that too often! We have mango and lemon trees in our front yard so that makes things easier as well.
The girls in my group are awesome! I think we get along really well and we are having a lot of fun! We have already planned a lot of weekend trips here and I am looking forward to them a lot. Everyone loves it here!

So overall, I don´t know what else I could write about. I need to do a better job of journaling and organizing my thoughts each day so that when I get a chance to use internet, I can remember everything! So, thats it for now! I´ll write again after the weekend. We are planning on going zip-lining and to Puntarenas to go to the beach!

Hasta luego!

Meeting with the girls.

After bragging about how great of a hostel I am staying in, I went to go shower after I published my post and there was no water! Ah! Luckily, I was able to shower succesfully this morning! After reading about 200 pages in my Twilight book, I was finally greeted by the girls in my group. There are 16 of us total and I think we will have a really great time together! Learning names is another story...that may take me a while. We went to Marielos's house today for some orientation type stuff. It was a good opportunity to get some of the pre-program/family jitters out and get to know eachother a bit. Marielos also made some awesome food! I LOVE all the food here, it is delicious! Arroz con pollo for lunch (rich and chicken), and Chalupas (different from Taco bell- flat tostada, refried beans, meat, lettuce, picco de gallo, cheese, sour cream) We also took a dip in her pool which is basically on the top of a big hill so you can look out and see all of the valleys and volcanoes. Sweet view to say the least. Tomorrow is the big day to meet host families. We will then stay with them for the weekend, so we can get to know eachother better.

Much more on that later!

Arrival...

So, after the longest countdown of all time, I am finally here! Costa Rica is amazing. No picture can give this country justice. You have to see it for yourself. My first flight out of Minneapolis was great, I had the whole row to myself. I then had a 4 hour layover in Houston, where I decided to indulge in my last servings of Starbucks and Toll House cookies for the next 2 1/2 months. On my next flight, I sat next to a nice couple that was going to vacation in CR. They decided to change from their annual destination of Mexico which was probably a good choice. At times, I was saying my prayers because there was some crazy turbulence. I could actually see the lightning in the clouds below the plane from outside of the window. I finally landed safe and sound. Jorge, my program coordinator, was patiently waiting for me. I thought it would be an awkward ride but we ended up talking the entire way to my hostel in Bagaces. He is a really nice guy and will do anything to help us have a good experience here! The hostel I am staying at is called Bull House, and is actually way nicer than I expected. I have my own room, bathroom, AC, cable tv, and wireless Internet. Pretty sweet for only $22 a night! My hostel is in Bagaces which is about 30 minutes from Liberia, where I flew in. This is a very safe town and the people here have been wonderful in helping me even though my Spanish speaking sucks, as of right now. I bummed around the town a bit and it is very small. There really isn't much to do here. I did exchange some of my dinero into colones. It takes a while to get used to the money difference. The exchange is around 560 colones per dollar. Jorge, who is in his 30's, was telling me that when he was growing up it was 20 colones to the dollar. Hmmm...wow, little bit of a difference huh? Anyway, the water is drinkable both in Bagaces and Miramar which makes things easier. I have had a couple of great meals that consisted of rice and beans of course! Yum! I am incredibly excited for all the fruit as well!
Today, I went to my school with Jorge to help clean things up a bit. It was about a 2 hour drive from Bagaces. MIRAMAR is beautiful. Every house is painted a different vibrant color and has a garden with flowers. Since it is the rainy season, all of the vegetation is bright green and flourishing. My school is completely unlike a typical school. It is called AREMI and is a local community center. It is equipped with a pool, sand volleyball and basketball courts and soon to be roller skate park. We will have classes outside in an open hut like building, which is so refreshing since our school days will be about 8 hours long.
Jorge told me that my family is amazing and that my host mother is "the best" and a great cook. I can't wait to meet them on Saturday. I will write more about them later...
As for the rest of the weekend, Friday: the other 15 girls from my group get in. Marielos (the program director) has a house in Bagaces so we are going there for a picnic/orientation day. I guess she has a waterfall in her back yard so that will be amazing. Then, Saturday, we all pack up and leave to meet our host families in Miramar. Can't wait!

More after the weekend :-)