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