word doc I made but never posted..

Thursday 6/30

That night Deivy was talking about how he had to go somewhere and asked me if I wanted to go with him, so sure why not, the last couple days here, I’d like to spend more time with him.  We ended up going to a little religious group somewhere in town.  It was all teenagers and it was kind of like just a community gathering type thing so that the kids could be involved with each other.  We played all sorts of really funny games, one involved having two lines, the boys and the girls. The first person in each line was the gallina and the people holding on behind them (like a train) were the pollitos!  Each gallina had to protect their pollitos and at the same time try to get the pollitos from the opposite line to let go.  It was pretty crazy but a lot of fun, they were all very nice and understanding of our language barrier.  They all had fun trying their hands at English, some were better than other hahah. 

Friday 7/1

Jenga.

Saturday 7/2:

Basically everyone already sold their phones back and the plan for today was kind of uncertain to begin with.  A bunch of people were supposed to go into San Jose to get all those last minute gifts (because you know we procrastinated) but I wasn’t originally part of the plan until I realized no matter what I really needed to go shopping.  So I went out looking for them at the time they said they would be there and no one was around.  The school was closed because it’s a Saturday so I walked around town and to all the bus stops and then decided they had already gone or decided not to go and I was heading back home.  On my way home one of the girls was waiting outside the institute.  We waited a little while but no one else showed up so we decided that we were going to brave the city by ourselves.  It was much better than I thought it would be, we didn’t really get yelled at by anyone and its strange the way you adapt to a culture… Once you lose that look of confusion (even though you still have absolutely no idea where you’re going) you blend in, kind of.  Granted we are clearly American but the fact that we look confident and speak Spanish prevents all of the creepy Ticos from telling you how much they love you.  We couldn’t find the market we were looking for but we found a different one that worked out just as well.  We got back to San Joaquin around 2pm and then for the rest of the day I packed and hung out with Deivy.  The whole time I was packing he was just sitting in my room, almost like he was afraid to let me out of his sight because I might disappear.  We stayed up really late in my room just laying around, listening to music, talking, watching videos, until it was really late and we were forced to go to bed because we were falling asleep. L

Tuesday 6/28 Only a few more days

Long day of classes, filling out surveys and taking tests for the institute, meetings and all that jazz.  Both my classes ran a little late and I had all sorts of homework and presentations to finish so that took up a lot of time.  We didn't go to the mall today like we usually do on Tuesdays because we're running out of time and it didn't seem as important because there aren't any movies playing that we haven't already seen lol so I stayed home and did my homework, chatted with people and hung out with Deivy and the family basically all night.  I stayed up sooo late again cause Deivy doesn't want to lose any time with me, so we watched comedy videos, I tried to teach him how to salsa dance, and then we tried to learn thriller together hahah unsuccessfully I might add, because that song is way to long to play over and over again. So we just talked, him in English, me in Spanish to get our practice in until almost 2 in the morning! Luckily I don't have class til 2pm tomorrow and I have plenty of time to write my paper, however Deivy is not so lucky and had to get up at 6am for classes :P

Monday 6/27 iBuenos Días Niños!

I got to school a little early today (a little before 7am) because we're traveling to a school somewhere nearby to teach a class of 30 nine year old kids (3rd grade) about tropical ecology.  Everyone was very unprepared but we had a power point that we could follow at least the topics we should be talking about.  So Casey and I had to talk about the importance of fruits in a bosque so we created a little play for them.  It went something along the lines of I acted like an ignorant child that hates healthy food and only wants to eat chocolate and then finds out how great fruit is and learns all about protecting the environment to save the fruit and animals, etc.  It was pretty overall hilarious.  We even had them interact and asked them questions and it was the most adorable thing every they would all chime in at the same time and  be like "Si!!!!" even when we first walked into the classroom they all stood up at the same time and said "Buenos dias" and when we asked how they were they all responded in chorus "bien y ustedes?" it was the cutest thing I think I've ever seen!  They all wore uniforms and sat in little circles and all the boys had there hair gelled up into little mo hawks--so cute.  and our teacher is basically just the man and so he brought in a machete, an axe, and a lumberjack hat for one of the students so he could pretend to be the bad guy and cut down the forest (which we pretended to be--helpless trees)  and all the kids cried out no no no don't cut the trees! it was so much fun!!  When we were leaving one of the little girls came up to us and asked us why we laughed so much, I guess we're just happy people lol  After we left the school we went to  a nearby park and planted trees for about an hour until it was time to leave.  After class some of us went into the little downtown section of San Joaquin and bought these delicious smoothies!  When I went home Deivy tried to teach me how to juggle after lunch, without much success I must say, I'm kind of terrible at anything that involves hand-eye coordination lol  and then off to my second class.  I skyped with Steph for a while and hung out with Deivy all at the same time, so now they're acquaintances lol and I invited him to come to dance class with me too, with the intention that he would dance... which he did not.  He just sat there for two hours and watched haha hes a little shy I guess cause he said the only place he would dance was in the house and I couldn't even convince him to let me teach him!  Oh well, it was fun anyways.  When we got home we ate dinner finally, even though we were the only ones still up, so we went upstairs and played Uno for a while because we were bored.  He didn't want me to go to bed though.  Hes pretty upset that I'm leaving so soon, and I am too, we're pretty close and its going to be awful to not see him anymore, or at least for a long while... so we stayed up and just laid around watching tv and talking for a while until midnight and I told him that I needed to sleep and he begged me to stay up but finally relented. 

Sunday 6/26

We hung around until the shuttle left at 10:30 and then headed into town because that's where our bus leaves from.  We sat around at the beach for a while and found a store to buy miscellaneous snacks at for the ride home because we wouldn't be leaving until 1pm and probably not arriving in San Jose until about 6:30pm.  The bus ride was very long and for the most part I sat in the very back with a whole row of strangers but it was okay, they were all very nice.  I was exhausted by the time I finally made to San Joaquin and before I could even get to the door Deivy had it open because he was waiting for me to get home haha hes so funny, the first thing he does is bring me into the kitchen and show me how hard hes been working on learning how to juggle.  So I'm standing there falling asleep (even though its only 7:30--traveling makes you tired) with all my bags still and hand and hes just waiting for my approval while he throws the little limes up in the air.  I finally went and put my bags down and he followed me upstairs because he wanted to show me what he had done all weekend.  Apparently he had a field trip with school (which doesn't happen very often) so he sat me down and showed me all the pictures that everyone had taken.  Meanwhile, I'm starving, I haven't eaten anything all day and there doesn't seem to be any dinner around.. luckily though about half an hour later a pizza guy showed up! Yay!! We hung out for a while until about 10pm and I decided I needed to sleep so he let me go hahah :)

Saturday 6/25

Woke up just in time for breakfast, didn't even really get dressed, went in our pj's, and then went back to bed afterwords.  We literally did absolutely nothing ALL day, it was great :)  we laid in our beds for a while and over-analyzed Spanish music videos, went outside to lay by the pool until it started raining again and basically did nothing until around 6pm and we were starving.  We didn't eat lunch because the hotel food was outrageously expensive, so by that time we were all very very grumpy and about to pass out.  It was pouring and we made it to the closest restaurant in town just in time for their buffet deal, so we were served immediately!  We ended up talking for about an hour but the rain was coming down so hard and we could not find a taxi anywhere.  One of the girls didn't have an umbrella or a raincoat so I gave her my raincoat and just used the umbrella but the rain was so intense that my umbrella was leaking the whole time! Needless to say we were pretty soaked.  I literally had to walk through a lake to cross the street, luckily I'm always prepared and had all of my things in plastic bags hahah parents taught me well :)   It took us 4 hours to find a way back to the hotel and that night we just stayed inside and talked because the rain was so bad.

Friday 6/24 Tamarindo

Breakfast ends at 10am and we barely made it in time because we slept in so late.  It was the most glorious night of sleep Costa Rica had ever shown me though.  Because we arrived on a Thursday there was no one at the hotel, only the 6 of us, and we were much further from the downtown area than they led us to believe so there was no noise at all, only the lovely white noise of our air conditioner :)  The shades were even room darkening!! It was so amazing, words cannot even describe.  A shuttle would take us into town at 10:30am and pick us up at 6:30pm for free so looked like we were spending the day in town.  It was already starting to rain, no sunshine at all, and when we made it into town everything was pure red mud.  Needless to say we got dirty.. but we found our bus station and bought tickets for the way back in the sketchiest corner of town (of course) and then ended up walking around through the souvenir shops.  I think today was the first day I actually bought anything in Costa Rica besides, excursions and food (which is kind of terrible, I leave in a week... sorry guys!)  After shopping we went to this little restaurant and ate the most delicious Paninis and then just talked for hours.  It finally stopped raining around 4 and so we headed out to the beach and laid out until it was time to leave.  We were given free wrist bands for entrance to the main club in town called Aqua so we went back for dinner and to get ready and then headed back after 9pm... It was kind of a crazy night, but lots of fun! We have a great group of girls from UNH on our trip and we've gotten pretty close so all of us looked out for one another tonight, it was awesome, everyone kept everyone out of trouble :)  We all went back to our hotel around 3am, exhausted but we ended up talking and having the most ridiculous conversations, its insane how close we've become in only 5 weeks!  Very happy to have met these girls though :D  fun night, so thankful for being able to sleep in the next day though!!

Thursday 6/23 No More Pirates Please!

Crazy busy today.  Woke up early to eat breakfast, finish packing, make reservations, and then headed to the bank so I would have money for this weekend.  Brought everything to school and left directly from class at 1pm to go to San Jose to catch our bus.  The bus we were supposed to take though would have apparently arrived in Tamarindo at midnight, so we had to go to a different station and take a different bus (double decker!) So by 3 we were on the bus and on our way to Guanacaste.  We were staying at a Best Western and all of us were kind of unsure where we were going so when Casey saw a Best Western she was like oh! lets get off the bus! and it sounds stupid that we listened to her, but everything happens so fast because you literally have 15 seconds to decide or the bus just keeps moving.  I didn't even have all my stuff and they were out the door so I ran after them and had a terrible feeling about it, but no choice, you can't really separate the group (Casey, Alicia and I).  So its about 6:30/7pm and its dark out and we are dropped off about 100meters from this Best Western which is NOT our hotel. ok so how bad could it be?  We asked some guy how far Tamarindo was from there and he said oh not far just down the road that way about 20 km.. ok so we'll just grab a taxi and be fine.  He gets us a taxi, but the problem is, in Tamarindo there aren't any taxi stations and almost every single taxi isn't a real taxi.. SO first pirate taxi ride. great. So we asked him how to get to Tamarindo from there and he brought us to a bus station and then said for $50 he could bring us there. uh no thanks, I think we'll pass on the overly expensive unlicensed taxi.  Now we're at the bus station and the buses to Tamarindo are shut down for the night.. its only 7:30pm but ok, so we talked to another person that said we're 40km from there and we can take this bus that will take us within 15km and from there just grab a taxi. Not so bad, thats great news.  So we take this bus and get off exactly where they tell us to, and its at a gas station.  There are a few cars parked outside and no taxis to be seen, so we go into the gas station and ask how far we are from Tamarindo: 36km! WHAT? how did that happen?! We just rode a shabby crowded bus for over an hour and we're no closer?  Apparently the bus station was 80km away not 40, and now we were stuck at this gas station in the middle of no where. AWESOME.  The cars parked outside the station are more pirate taxis but that was the last thing we wanted to do.. so we called around for a real taxi but every line was busy or unavailable. after bargaining for a while, with no choice we jumped in another pirate and for $30 he brought us to our hotel.  we were SO happy to be there and when we met our other friends we were so happy to see them, hugs all around!! no dinner, because the kitchen was closed (it was 10pm at this point)  so we just ate a few crackers and went to bed.  such a long day!