ZIP LINING!!!!!

hola muchachos!

this weekend was so much fun! I spent it with several girls from our group (Liz, Jess, Jess, Natalie, Nichole, and one director, Lissi). We went to Punta Leona, leaving after school Friday and coming home around 4 on Sunday. It was a lot of fun just being able to chill with the chicas and relax. Friday night we watched TV then went to karoke at the discoteca but there was only a few older women there so we went home early and hung out. Laid back but just what I needed.

Then as for Saturday...we WENT ZIP LINING!!!! Need I say more? Well probably because some of you might not know what it is. Zip lining is going up high in the trees in the forest and flying on cables through the trees. Absolutely awesome. I did it just for you Aunt Karen, if you´re reading this! :) I had told her I would do it even though I was scared to climb up that high. And it actually wasn´t even a high climb cause we hiked most of it! (Some places just have stairs and more stairs...) I got some cool pics and actually have some ones that the photographer took too...I just have to get them from my friend. Our guides were awesome and let us go upside down once too.

After ziplining we were sooo sweaty and so we headed straight out for the beach! Playa Blanca was gorgeous although there were lots of big rocks in the water that I kept hitting my foot on. We stayed there for several hours...Jess and Liz rented a kayak but other Jess and I just wanted to relax. After the beach we went back and Liz and I took the free Salsa dance class (i´m actually getting pretty good believe it or not) where we were the only two people there. It seemed like everywhere we went this weekend (like karoke) we scared everyone else away lol! Then after dance we swam in the pool, got some dinner, and headed home to chill before going back to the discoteca. We had decided we wouldn´t go until like 11 cause apparently that was when all the young ppl came out. Well we fell asleep until 11:15 but went there after that and...lets just say I have the best-funniest-most horrible story ever. But its not one to tell on blogger. Lo siento.

Sunday we headed home after doing water aerobics in the pool. The aerobics were fun and resulted in this guy asking for my email hahaha...funny stuff. When I got back to Curridibat (town right outside of San Jose where I live) I went to the mall with the fam and then we got pizza. Fun times.

I can´t believe I only have 3 days left here. Plus a day of travel...so four days. It´s going to be so good to be home. I´ve been thinking that its going to be really really hard for me to leave here now cause I´ve become so accustomed to it (which it will be hard) but now I´m so excited to be comin home. I just went back to the Mercado and finished some souvenir shopping. I was pretty much done with buying gifts and so after I finished that I had a blast blowing some $$ and getting some sweet stuff. Jewlery, a photo album made of banana paper, a SWEET cutting board made of wood (sounds lame for a souvenir but you have to see it...) and I think thats it? I´m excited though.

I couldn´t be more excited that I get to go to church as soon as I get home. My flight comes in at like 9:30 Saturday night and although I will be exhausted I am craving the fellowship and the encouragment and challenge (if thats the right word?) of being in the body of Believers. When I was at the market today one of the shops I went into was being worked by a girl prolly a lil older than me and she had Hillsong´s ¨take it all¨playing in Spanish! I told her I recognized it and I loved that song and then of course I wanted to support her so I brought a bracelet lol. Well...I should get home!

Oh P.S. I have an oral ¨final¨on Thursday. I have to write a composition about any topic I want and then talk about it for 5 minutes in class. I´m not super worried cause my teacher is great and just wants to see how we are doing (Í have an A so far)...but please pray that it goes well and that I speak fluently and smoothly and can remember the words in the correct tenses! I am talking about my trip here :)

oh what a wonderful weekend!

Hola muchachos! This past weekend was long but the best yet! Friday the rain held off until after we left the volcano and the waterfall gardens. And let me tell you...the volcano was cool and the waterfall gardens even cooler. We drove up most of the volcano then hiked a little way (when I say hike, it wasn´t like actually hiking. They had huge paths and everything was cleared) to see the crater. Poas is not techinically active so it has greenish looking smoke coming out of it and it smells like sulfur (rotten eggs). That was pleasant. We took pictures then tried to decide if we were gonna go see the laguna on the other part of the voclano or just head back to the gift shop and hang out there for awhile. Well, this guy said that the laguna was SO beautiful we really should go see it if we had time...so we took our chances of being late and went.

**Have I mentioned that the last one back on the bus when we do our excursions has to sing?**

Ya, so none of us wanted to sing. It was all uphill to get the the laguna...a 20 min walk. Whatever, we kept telling ourselves how in shape we were going to be and how we were gonna come home skinny. When we finally reached our destination...it was just a lake. We were expecting tropical flowers, tropical plants...nope. It was a lake in an extinct crater which looked just like every other lake I´ve seen. But still in good spirits we made it to the bus without being last!

The waterfall gardens were absolutely beautiful. 7 waterfalls and all kinds of gardens (frogs, snakes, birds, monkeys, butterflies). For those of you who don´t know, butterflies kinda scare me. I don´t know why and I´ve been teased endlessly for it. So of course, as soon as I ventured in to the dreaded butterfly garden I glanced over to my left and what did I see? A butterfly that had so kindly chosen to honor me by landing on my shoulder. I let out a little squeal of disgust and all my friends were like ¨smile, we are gonna take your picture!¨ (FYI my smile looks very forced in those pics). We did a lot of hiking and stairs to see the waterfalls, and were very thankful that a shuttle took us back up to the gardens and we didn´t have to climb all the way back up (it was at that point we had regretted going to see that stinking LAKE). The day ended wonderfully, we were all exhausted and went home so we could get up at 4:45 the next morning to go on a cruise!

The cruise to Isla Tortuga was amazing. The weather was perfect (God has been so kind in holding off the rain!) and we took about an 1 and 15 min cruise to the island. I got to go snorkeling and on a banana boat (the banana boat was my first time). It was sweet! We saw so many beautiful things and my friend who was on the end fell off once. So funny. I got some sun but I didn´t get burned and I´m grateful for that. (Although sometimes I feel like I get darker if I do burn).

So then Sunday was the perfect end to the weekend. I went to church with (let´s just say) a friend of a friend (cause it can get so complicated). Once we got there Tanny (the lady I went with) informed me that they have what´s like Sunday School first and then the main service. So she brought me into the college age group (18-30...just like at home!) and introduced me to her cousin, Abraham (24), who took care of me and showed me the way for the rest of the day. He spoke fluent English (which was nice, let me tell ya lol), and translated for me ever so often when I missed the point during the College group. Then I went with him to the main service and we sat in the balcony b-c apparently the first floor was for the old folks. haha. I liked the message from the college group better but it was awesome to sing in Spanish. The whole morning I just fought tears because I was so blessed by the people of that church and the encouragement. After church I was going to go straight home but then Abraham suggested we go to lunch so we did and it was a nice time of encouragement too.

**Ahem, let me stop here and clear all of your assuming little thoughts. I don´t like him and he was just treating me with the kindness of a brother. Everyone straight? Good.**

The pastor of the church has a Christian English based school and offered me a job there lol. I told him I still have 2 years left of school but he said to give him my email anyways cause he wanted to send me an application. Abraham works there as a 5th grade teacher. The nice thing is they are on the U.S. school schedule so they are off right now. There was a lot of missionaries from the U.S. at the church and it was awesome to see what they were doing. A lot of the people from the young adults group weren´t actually attending the meeting b-c they were serving. A nice taste of home. (oh..and during the sermon the pastor mentioned integrity and how if the service starts at 9:30 we should be there at 9:30. How much more like home can you get?! lol).

The rest of the day was spent celebrating el dia del padre con mi familia! It was a blast. I got to call home as well and that encouraged me and made me happy as it always does. My dad was nicely surprised as well. They celebrate very similarly to us...gifts and spending time together. Sara and I bought some chocolates for our tico dad and brother-in-law (who has the little girl). They were blessed. Then we ate a feast, had cake and ice cream, joked around A LOT, and ended the night with dancing in the living room! It was my favorite night so far. Victor and Joanna (my sis and her husband) are great dancers and great teachers. We practiced salsa and merengue cause that´s what I´ve been learning in class. SO much fun.

And to end, we got another student at my house for two weeks. He is from Texas and his name is Greg. (again, not interested fyi!!! lol). Just letting you know whats up. He´s pretty serious and didn´t seem to enjoy our party yesterday, but hopefully he will want to be a part of the fam!

3 dia fin de semana!

Sorry I´ve been kinda lazy and there hasn´t been too much going on here!
I almost had pictures uploaded yesterday but then my camera died...and right now its not working. So I guess you will have to be waiting in anticipation for me to come home!

Classes have been good. We get evaluated by our teacher at the end of every week in Spanish class. So far I´m doing great! She said I listen and understand-comprehend very well. My vocab got the lowest score this week, but I´ve been noticing that. I`ve just been having the hardest time finding words! I like to describe it as the biggest brain freeze ever.

Well we have to go eat dinner. But one quick thing...I am going to church Sunday and I`m super excited! David Hamstra`s friend, Andres, is from here and his sister, Tanny, is going to pick me up and bring me to her church. After that I am coming home to celebrate Fathers Day. Her church is 2 and a half hours long...which almost scared me away but Im still going lol!

And I´m taking pictures with me in them, its just way more difficult than I thought Bipin!

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Dreamin...

So after this weekend my new dream is to live on a horse ranch and either give tours of this beautiful country or do something! I would love to ride more. This weekend was so gorgeous and wonderful. Saturday we went to Baldi Hot Springs for a few hours and it was nice, but not nearly as wonderful as Sunday. Btw, we didn´t get to climb the volcano like we had all thought because apparently it is still very active and it´s not allowed. I guess we didn´t communicate with our directors well or I would have known that lol. We will get to climb one on Friday though.

Saturday we got up early and went to the horse place. We rode the horses for an hour to the waterfall where we got off and had to go down 480 stairs to get to the base of the waterfall. There we got to swim for a little bit in the base of the waterfall. It was super cold at first but once I went under it was great. I had to coax everyone else in cause it was so cold...cause how could you NOT swim in the base of a waterfall? Talk about a once in a lifetime chance.

We then rode back to the horse place to get back on the bus. Oh wait, I forgot to mention I had to climb back up 480 twisty, uneven stairs. I don´t even want to go there....I thought I was going to die and just prayed so hard that God would give me the strength to make it up. Obviously I did. And yes, today my butt and legs hurt. But it was completely worth it and now I want to be ¨cowgirl¨although that cant really be the term cause I want to work with horses lol. Riding horses here in nothing like at home...we were able to go faster and all kinds of fun stuff..not like in the U.S. when the guides freak out if you get out of line. It was so fun.

Oh, I just want you to know I had a post ready to go with pictures and it had taken me an hour to get ready cause I had to download all my pics to the computer to do it, but then it had an error when posting so it deleted itself and I had just deleted my pics off the computer so I couldn´t repost it. I´m so sorry, but if you want to see the waterfall I swam in (and pretty close the actual waterfall), you can google La Fortuna Waterfall and look at the images.

Once again, thanks for the comments and emails! It was so nice to read today when I was having some homesickness and needed some encouragement!

Happy Birthday to my best friend in the whole world!

Ya, I know, two birthday posts in a row, but tomorrow is my best friend´s birthday and I´m sad I´m not going to be there with her to celebrate. Alyss is turning 19 and we always spend every birthday together. (Well we do everything together lol). I just talked to her on the phone to surprise her which was awesome. She even answered and she never answers when she doesn´t know the number...so it was definately a God thing. :)

I probably won´t post again till Monday as we are going to visit Volcano Arenal tomorrow, staying at a hotel, and then going to La Paz Waterfall Gardens on Sunday where I will be riding a horse down the mountain to the bottom of the water falls...then swimming in the base and riding back yup. Ya...sounds like paradise. It is.

Although I love my class, I´m so glad today is Friday! My teacher didn´t give us any homework but told us to study our vocab...easy enough. After school we went to the mall and I got really hyper so I was being goofy as Sara tried on some cute outfits for tonight and we had the boys try on some stuff too. Oh, speaking of boys, I need to clear this up lol. Josh and Matt (weird coincidence considering my brothers), happen to live like 2 blocks away from us so me, sara, lill, and alex started riding the bus with them. (It helps a lot with guys on the street making comments like ¨how cute¨and ¨you´re beautiful¨...which is a cultural thing here and very normal, so don´t freak out dad. I never go anywhere alone). They are just our friends. Liz is one of my best friends here, prolly the best besides Sara, and she went to South Sub too. So now you know the ppl I´m with the most. We got drenched on the way home from the mall even with my poncho and umbrella, but it was fun cause I was so hyper lol. Tonight we are all going to a Jazz Cafe...just to hang out and whatnot. Should be cool I guess.

Ok so the random fact was that I had a big piece of a banana in my soup the other day. It was gross, if you couldn´t guess. We eat bananas most days at dinner, in all different forms. Usually they are good but the soup was weird. hehehe. Ok so random again but I´m sitting near the door of this cafe and some kid just whistled and stood there for like 2 min but I thought he might be talking to the guys next to me but he just walked away. I just ignored it. It´s so different here lol. Well, can I just say I really miss my family today and alyss...but God is good and I´m gonna keep pressin on!

Happy Birthday Kelsey!

First of all, I want to say happy birthday to kelsey! We have been spending a lot of time together and really getting deep with the Lord, and in doing so we have become so so close. I love you Kels and I hope you had a wonderful day!! I tried to leave a message at your house but it was really weird...the machine kept cutting me off. Hopefully you got some of it though! :)

Other than that, whats new...
Did I mention that the people down here drive like crazy? It´s worse than anywhere I have ever seen. (Cause you know, I´ve been to a lot of places ;). But seriously, its bad. Everyone cuts everyone else off and its weird to walk down the street or be in the house and NOT hear a horn honking.

Classes are still good, I don´t have a lot of homework tonight and I´m grateful for that. After class today I did the dance class! It was a lot of fun. First we did some meriengue (sp?) and then salsa. I think I like meriengue better...salsa gets a little...ya. But it was fun and a good workout and I cant wait to learn more!

Then we had a town meeting...which ended up just really being our group meeting and going over stuff. Afterwards Sara and I decided we wanted to go home and walk around our neighborhood a bit but then she and Matt were talking about how bad they wanted to try walking all the way home...so guess what we did? Walked all the way home. Josh and I didn´t want to that much, but it was good to exercise. We think we´ve walked about 4 miles today. They want to walk to school one morning but that would mean leavin a little before seven to get there by 8:15 and I´m not sure I'm feeling it. Maybe one day I will wake up ambitious though. :)

I had a random fact I wanted to tell you, but I forgot what it was. I thought it would be cool to end with a random fact everytime I blog. Hehehe. Since I can´t remember though, I guess it will have to wait. I hope you are all doing great! =)

I'm still Alive! hehe

I talked my my parents last night and they told me you guys were waiting anxiously for another post, so here it is! Sorry my computer access has been so limited and I still haven't found a computer that I can upload my pictures on...but maybe thats good cause then you'll really want to see me when I get home! :)

I couldn't ask for a better family. My tica mama cooks some good food and we talk to them for hours at night. Last night after I got off the phone with my fam my tico dad came in my room and asked me if i wanted help with my paper. We all sat at the kitchen table and they helped me make corrections and write. It was so funny and we just laughed and laughed...it definately did my heart good cause it felt more like my real home.

I placed into intermediate Spanish so I have to write my papers in Spanish but they aren't too long and since my family and my awesome roomate helps me I am doing good. My teacher is awesome...she is 25 and super fun and stylish. The school is so small, there's only 7 people in my class including me. We get to practice speaking so much...I love it. I wish classes at home were more like this.

Other than that we have field trips in the afternoon sometimes, and if we don't then we go to the mall, walk around town...pretty much the same stuff people do at home. The food here isn't very different either, the other night we had fried chicken and fries for dinner....with rice and salad of course lol. They eat rice a lot but thats great with me, i love it.

Thanks SO much for all the comments, I loved reading them! Someone please show Alyss and Courts how to comment cause the two chicas can't figure it out. haha. It's so nice to hear what's going on at home.

Lar-it is SO important for me know what the cubbies are doing. and can I just say HECK YES!!! First place baby!

Besitos! :)