Pura Vida!

As I sit here in the airport, about to board my flight for home, I'm thinking about my trip as a whole. I can say without a single doubt that this was the best experience I've ever had in my life. At no point was I regretful or sad - it was three weeks of pure excitement and joy. My favorite part is tied between parasailing at Manuel Antonio and the combination of all the fun dancing we did!

Some things I haven't discussed yet about Costa Rica, but I have noticed, are as follows...

-The driving here is quite comical. People run red lights if no one is coming, ignore stop signs, and (get this) drive on the wrong side of the freeway! For miles! It's a bit scary, and I could never drive here, but I also was never in any danger. The drivers here are more alert because they have to be. I never even saw a car on the road with a dent!

-The water system is very different. When you use the toilet, you cannot ever flush the toilet paper (you just throw it away) because it will clog the toilets! Also, the showers are heated by electricity, so the way we knew our shower was "hot" was when our light started to dim (it was never that hot anyways...)

-As in many Spanish speaking countries, you greet everyone with a kiss on the cheek. Also, you must greet people profoundly before starting any sort of conversation. Always say hola, buenos, como esta (buenos is short for buenos dias. Most people just say buenos or buenas), and if you don't you won't be treated with any respect. It's very important to be friendly here.

-All of the people here have gates in front of their house. It's not necessary, but it's like "if my neighbor does it, I have to". We had three levels of gates in front of our house, all double locked. The only time I felt like I was in danger was just late at night, walking from the taxi to home, but usually someone was with us, and I was never put in any danger.

-"Tico Time" is hilarious. Tico time is, basically, an excuse for being late! People will be up to three or four hours late, and that is totally acceptable! Also, people will say they are coming somewhere but not actually go. It's very different than in the US!

-This is odd, but a lot of the trees have the first four to five feet of their trunk painted white. I have no idea why, and never found out...

-Instead of saying de nada, people say con gusto or mucho gusto when you say gracias. I like that a lot! I always remember my grandma, who was fluent in Spanish, saying she hated how people said de nada because it discounted your gracias.

-Speaking of my grandma, she would be so proud that I have traveled here, and would be excited for me to know that I plan on visiting a lot of Latin American countries!

-I am so confident in my Spanish now! When you're forced to figure it out, and I really feel like I have! I can definitely hold my own in a conversation now. I need to visit more Spanish speaking countries to keep it up and not lose it!

This has been such a wonderful, interesting, new, and profoundly fun trip! I will most definitely be coming back soon, maybe even for my spring break! Thank you to all the people who helped me get here - this was a group effort and I am so grateful that I had such an incredible opportunity!

PURA VIDA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1/22/16

LAST DAY! NO!!!

This morning, I had my last Costa Rican breakfast: Eggs, Platanos (not pictured because I devoured them...), hash browns, sausage and gallo pinto:



This is me trying to lock our gate in the morning. We always had such trouble locking it! The gates have to be locked twice - meaning you have to turn the key once to lock it and again to double lock it. It was never easy to get in or out!



In class we had our final presentations. Jess and I presented on costal ecosystems and how humans are destroying it (the theme of the class turned into how bad humans are to our environment!). Roberto told us he really enjoyed our class, and thought we were all very intelligent! We will miss him, however insane he may be!

We took a picture with our lovely mamatica Marjorie. She is someone I will definitely miss!



After class, Jess and I were both exhausted beyond belief. Three weeks of not much sleep has really caught up with us! We decided to take a nap. I was able to FaceTime with my best friend from home for a while, which was so nice. We also hung out with Morghan at home (she leaves tomorrow, too).

Around 7:30 we left to meet the rest of our class for our farewell dinner. Here's all of us, as well as Karen and me:



We also ran into Jake, Chris, and Drew (left to right)! Here's me with them:



This is the view of the side entrance to Veritas at night:



Dinner was very nice. Lisa took us to El Gaff, which was a nice restaurant. She got us all pizza and sangrias! Here's all of us:



We were planning on going out afterward, but again Jess and I were feeling just too tired, so we decided to sleep a bit before having to leave for the airport at 3 am!

This face sums up how we feel about leaving...

01/21/16

Our final was today! It wasn't terribly hard, just like the midterm. There were actually multiple choice questions along with our short answer, which was nice.

As soon as our final was over, Jess and I headed to the mall to pick up one last gift for one of our friends. We didn't find exactly what we wanted at first, but eventually found something better! We also went to the grocery store to grab some snacks for the plane. There, we also decided we are going to have a Costa Rica themed party when we get home, so we bought lots of food and drinks for that to bring home! That should be fun! We took pictures of both the Beach Club (left) and Hoxton (right). It's funny how Hoxton looks like an abandoned frat house, but is the best club to go to on Tuesday's nights!

I met up with Charlie and hung out at the school for a while before grabbing dinner at Don Ro, the nice man who has a small stand on campus. I've had his empanadas many times, however this time I got a hot dog (perro calliente!) and it was delicious! I ran home to change before heading to dance class - our last one!! There, we saw Luis (one of my favorite people at Veritas!). Here's him with Jess and me:

He's a goof ball, and is very nice. He always tells us we have "ugly eyes" (although it sounds like "oogly") because they're blue which is practically nonexistent in Costa Rica, but he later told us ugly was a good thing!

Here's Ryan and I, right before we had to say goodbye...

He has improved so much in dance class! I'm probably going to visit him over the summer. He's such a sweetheart!

After dance class, most of the people in class headed to Castro's Bar in Barrio Mexico (barrio means neighborhood), which is a famous salsa bar. Man, was that fun!! I danced with Charlie, Jess, and Jeron all night! The music was so great, and we have all gotten so good at dancing! We did bachata, merengue, salsa, and cumbia in class, and showed off all our skills at the club! It was probably the most fun dancing I have had this whole time!

Jess and Karen at Castro's Bar:

01/20/16

Today, we had another quiz in class! It was equally as hard. Hopefully the final won't be so hard tomorrow...

We had some interesting discussions about how humans have impacted the world and whether or not what we do is considered "natural", and also whether or not the world would be better off without us. People asked questions like:

"If Mars used to have life, is it possible that everything that happened on Earth already happened on Mars, but the humans turned the planet into what it is now, and the looks of Mars is our future?"

"Since humans have defeated our environment in the sense that we can control our conditions to our pleasing, is it possible that another species, like apes, could become smart enough to do that, too?"

"Are species only still alive because we want them to be, since we have the power to exterminate anything we want to?"

"Since it is a scientific fact that species will fight each other competitively intraspecifically for resources, isn't war a natural part of living? Does that mean war is okay?"

These really got us going, to the point where we didn't learn everything we were supposed to! And our final is tomorrow! Hopefully he won't test us on what we didn't get to...

After class, Jess and I went to Cafe Con Que to study and get some delicious quesadillas and brownies (the Spanish word for brownie is brownie, we learned) and, of course, some delicious cancer curing guanabana juice:



I really want to get a guanabana and smuggle it into the US... it is SO good!! We started to work on our final presentation that we have on Friday, and Charlie joined us eventually, too.

We walked home and rested, then I met up with Charlie again to hang out at school. We both then had to go home for dinner, but had planned to go out later in the night. However, after Charlie had dinner he got too tired, so I met up with Jeron instead. We were going to check out the soccer game, but when we got there it had ended, so we settled for Pescadito! Tomorrow will be a much more adventurous night!

1/19/16

Today was pretty fun! After class (which was extremely long...), Autumn, Jess and I went to the craft market to finalize all of the gifts we needed to get for friends and family. The craft market is downtown, near some museums, and is a long strip of tent-like booths where everyone has a"special deal, just for you". There's some nice handmade things there, as well as jewelry, bags, clothes and kitchen wear. We really lucked out! We all got everything we needed! You know you you are, expect some packages from me soon!

After walking around there for about 2 hours, we were starving! There is a small pizza place (more like shack) right next door to the school, so we got these giant pieces of pizza:



Then, we went home and relaxed, because we knew we had a long night ahead of us!

After dinner, we met up with Charlie and Ethan and walked back to school to go to dance class! We hadn't been in a week, so we were very excited. This is us outside at school just before class started:



Class was very fun! There were significantly less people, which made it easier to learn, however Luis was not there so Jess and I didn't get to learn from him. After class, we ran home for a quick second, met up back at pescadito, and then headed to Hoxton for Ladies' Night!

There were lots of us there - Chris, Charlie, Ethan, Drew, Jess, Morghan, Sydney, Rachel, Meghan, Elyssa, Julie, and our new Tica friend Kim (just to name a few). It was loads of fun!! Hoxton is very fun on Tuesdays because there are a lot of people there (considering girls get in free and drink for free too). We danced for hours, and ended up back at home around 2 am. It was a great way to get together with all our friends again before we have to leave... :(

01/18/16

Today we had a quiz in class - it was pretty difficult. This class is getting very specific, and considering we were absent on Friday, it was even more difficult. We managed, though, and took notes for the rest of class.

After class Jess and I split up - she went to eat and to the craft market with Autumn, Mary Rose, and Madeline. I stayed back to write my report of the weekend, and ended up hanging out with a few people, but mainly Ethan. We talked about quite a lot of things for a few hours, then headed home for dinner.

Mamatica had an old friend and her boyfriend over for dinner. She was one of Marjorie's first students traveling abroad to stay with her, and they have been in touch ever since! She was visiting from the Netherlands, where her and her boyfriend lives (he was from there).

After dinner, I met up with my friend Jeron to go watch the soccer game again - only this time, there was no soccer game! We decided to hang out at Terra U for a bit, but called it an early night since we were both exhausted from our weekends.

This is Jess and me in the cafeteria because "there was good lighting"...

Saturday 01/16/16 to Sunday 01/17/16

Well, we survived another weekend...

We got on the bus at 7 am on Saturday and drove for five solid hours. That was... fun.

As soon as we got there, we went on a three hour hike. It was HOT!! Not many trees in this forest, which means 0% shade. Then after dinner, we went on yet another hike for two hours. It was dark already, so we wore headlamps, which meant the bugs were attracted to our faces where the lights were. Our teacher got bit by a snake!

We woke up at 4 am to go on a morning hike. This was a seriously difficult hike! It was still dark, so again with the headlamps, and when we got to the top of the rock we were climbing to watch the sunrise (which was too cloudy to really see), we were attacked by swarms of mosquitos! Dawn is their favorite time of day apparently, and boy did they have a feast. I was eaten alive. I actually cannot count the amount of bites I have...

Then, you guessed it, we went on another hike after lunch! It was four hours long and the hottest I have ever been in my entire life. Here's some pictures from the hike:

The coolest part was probably seeing capuchin monkeys. Here's a video and a picture:

We had to sleep in nets because of the mosquitos. It was...quite a weekend. Funnily enough, on the five hour way back to school, our instructor told us we were stopping for "The World's Best Milkshakes!" That was probably the only time I've ever seen that man smile!



Now I am home, and about to go out with my friends to destress from the hellish time we had these past few days. I don't know how I survived it, but somehow I did. On to our last week in the rich coast! Hopefully no more bugs, or burns, and a lot more fun!

1/15/16

WOW!!!

Today was the best day I have had so far here in Costa Rica. We woke up early and had breakfast at the restaurant in the hotel. Then, on to the beach!!

We were instantly greeted with someone who offered us three lounge chairs and an umbrella for the entire day for $16, so we took it! The beach was so warm, the sand soft and the water incredibly warm. There weren't many waves, so you could just stay in the ocean for hours! We were also bombarded by people offering us drinks, massages, excursions, etc.



Eventually we got hungry, and went across the street to a Tapas bar. I haven't had good tapas since I was in Barcelona, and these were almost as good! They told us we could get 2 for 1 drinks, so Jess and I each ordered one, thinking one would be free. Instead, they brought us each two!



We went back to the beach and took a nap under our shaded umbrella for about an hour. I had been watching people parasail all day, and I finally got up enough courage to do it!

YES! I went parasailing!

It wasn't too expensive, and I was ready to go alone (Karen and Jess were too chicken!). When I was all set to go, one of the friends of the people working there asked if he could join me (he never had gotten a chance to before). I said of course! And we took off!

It was insane! Instantly I felt my heart bursting out of my chest and a loss of breath. I couldn't believe the view! It was so gorgeous. We went around the bend and saw just how green and luscious the land of Manuel Antonio, and really all of Costa Rica, is. Miguel, my new friend, was telling me about how he is from Cuba and is passing through Costa Rica in attempt to get to the states, but people like him are running into problems because Nicaragua won't let them through. I told him I was a dancer, and he insisted I try dancing in Cuba one day!

Unfortunately, I got extremely sunburned. Oh well - what's Costa Rica without a little sunburn?!

Parasailing in Costa Rica was hands down the best experience I've ever had in my life. I will never forget how beautiful and jaw dropping the views were, and how exhilarated I felt being so high up!

We took the bus home, and packed for our next field trip tomorrow. We are going to Palo Verde. Hopefully this weekend is better than last!

01/14/16

Irazu was beautiful! We got to school at 7 am and rode the bus for about an hour and a half up the very windy side of the volcano! When we got there, we could park right at the top, so there was no hiking. Here are some pictures of me in a dormant crater and the active craters as well:



You can see that we were above the clouds - 11,00+ feet above sea level! It was gorgeous.

We stopped by an abandoned hospital while on our way back to Veritas. I wasn't too impressed. It really just seemed like an old building that hadn't been preserved and needed to be remodeled! Here' a picture:



After a very, very long class, Karen, Jess and I met up at school and got a taxi to el parada del autobus a Manuel Antonio, which was called Tracopa. We easily bought a one way ticket (only around $8) and got on the bus almost instantly.

After about four hours on the bus, we finally arrived in Manuel Antonio. It was about 8 pm by this point. We got a taxi to our hotel, Los Almendros, and were greeted by Jorge, the night guard. He was hilarious! He showed us to our room and told us that the pool was empty and open! We immediately got in our bathing suits and jumped in! It felt so good. The water was warm and clean, and after four hours on a hot bus it was exactly what we needed. Here is our room:



We were starving, so our friend Jorge called us a cab and sent us to La Cantina:





Tomorrow will be amazing!

1/13/16

Today, Lisa got back to us. Karen, Jess and I met her in the Tico Viajero office again, and she told us that there isn't much they can do. Veritas refused to change the course load, but did agree to work with CIS in order to prevent this next time this program runs. We were told that this is the first time they've done a three week program, so therefore there will inevitably be kinks. We continued to insist that there must be some way we can explore, and we ultimately decided on a short morning trip to the volcano Irazu tomorrow morning for all CIS students (free of charge). This sounded like the best compromise we were going to get, so we took it.

However, we weren't satisfied with just that. Karen, Jess and I decided to plan a trip for Manuel Antonio for Thursday night and stay there all day Friday (we get two absences in our class - might as well use them!). We booked a hotel through the office and they gave us the bus schedule. We are very excited!

After class, we joined Charlie and Chris once again at the hammocks and stayed there for a few hours. Eventually we went to dinner, but I met up with Jeron, and later Charlie again, to watch an informal soccer game the gringos played at the nearby park. It was pretty fun - I think I need to learn soccer so I can keep up with the Tico boys! We decide to go to Pescadito for a bit after that, but we all got tired pretty fast. Here is the soccer game (or what I could see of it):



I definitely needed my rest, because Irazu and Manuel Antonio were coming up in the morning!

01/12/16

Today was maybe the most fun day I've had this whole trip! We had a midterm in class (that was not the fun part). We got to school at 8 am and studied for four hours before class! I got breakfast in the cafeteria:



But guess what? We didn't need to!! The midterm consisted of a grand total of three questions... It was extremely easy and took us all only about 30 minutes to finish.

Luckily, that meant we could all leave for an excursion we booked to Jaco beach early! It was most of  my class, plus Morghan, Charlie, and Chris. We loaded the bus around 2 pm and headed out! Here's us on the bus:



We got there around 4 pm, and the beach was still warm and perfect. It wasn't terribly sunny, but that didn't mean the water was cold - it was so warm! The waves were too small to surf, so Ethan couldn't rent a board, but we all had fun jumping around in the waves! There was a gelato stand nearby, so we all got yummy gelato. The beach was pretty beautiful, with dark cool sand and clear warm water. We wanted to watch the sunset, but it was too cloudy. Here's our view:



Here is Morghan, Jess and I relaxing:



The boys found a coconut and started playing football with it:

We all got hungry around 6, so we walked a block or so inland and found a place to eat called Surf Dogs. It was pretty delicious beach side food, and they split our check 12 ways which was very nice!
This is all of us at the table:



At 8 we were picked up and headed back to San Jose. After dropping our stuff at home, Charlie and I, as well as Brandy my roommate, went to Hoxton for girls night. There, we saw many people like Jeron, Jake, Sabrina, and more. Everyone was there - almost too many people! We left after a few hours and passed out - it was quite an exhausting day!

01/11/16

Today it was difficult to wake up! The weekend really wiped all of us out. We had to wake up early, though, because we had another quiz in class! It wasn’t terribly hard, although tomorrow we have a midterm!

After class Charlie, Ryan, Chris, Drew and I got empanadas from Don Ro, a sweet old man on campus who has a little barbecue stand!

Charlie and I hung out for a while, then went to Beach Club for dinner. Jess took Morghan out for her birthday (it was yesterday, but still!). They went to Hooters!! Here's a picture:

This morning, before class, Jess, Karen and I met with our director named Lisa. We told her this:

-We felt unprepared for the field trip (our professor asked us to buy many things when we were told we didn’t have to).

-We were told we would have one day excursion and one weekend excursion, but have been denied both.

-We were told that we had class only four days a week, but instead we have five. This leaves us with a grand total of 0 days off!

-On the syllabus, it says this class includes 60 contact hours. However, we did the math, and when you add up 15 hours a week for 3 weeks and the two weekends, our class comes to a total of 109 hours! That is way more than 3 credits worth.

-Most of us feel that if we had known this is what the course entailed, we would have chosen not to take this course.

Lisa was very concerned and interested, and very compassionate. She wants us to explore Costa Rica just as much as we do, so she is going to talk to someone higher up, and she will then talk to someone at the university. Hopefully this goes somewhere, otherwise I don’t know what we will do!

Saturday 01/09/16 to Sunday 01/10/16

Today we woke up nice and early, and walked to Veritas to get on the bus to head out to our field trip. Jess and I weren’t exactly excited, though we tried to make the best of it. We drove a few hours to a biological research station called La Selva, and instantly when we got off the bus I felt weak and dizzy again. By now I had started to take a strong antibiotic for a stomach bug.

We immediately went on a long, three hour walk through the rain forest. The rainforest is absolutely beautiful, but it looses it’s charm after you’ve seen your thousandth tree or leaf cutter ant or tree frog. Also, we had to stop almost every ten feet or so to talk about whatever species it was we were looking at. Three hours of that was a little…much, to say the least. I started to feel very dizzy and faint, and after dinner I asked my professor if I could go to a clinic (equivalent to an emergency room). The doctor told me that the antibiotic I was talking, as well as the intense humidity and amount of physical exertion and sweating I was doing, made me clinically dehydrated. He gave me an IV of a salt and sugar solution and sent me home with orders to drink lots of water and Gatorade and rest.

When I got back the rest of the class went on their night hike and I stayed in the cabins to sleep. The cabins were not air conditioned and I continuously woke up in a pool of my own sweat finding it hard to breathe. I woke up the next morning at 4:30 am to go on our early morning bird watching hike (we saw only two birds in two hours, and they were of the same species), but after that began to feel faint again so I decided to not go on the next four hour, very strenuous, walk through the exact same route in the rainforest that I had already seen. We finally went home after lunch.

The field trip wasn’t terrible, but it was not what I wanted out of my stay here in Costa Rica. Jess, Karen, and I decided we wanted  to talk to our program director, Lisa, about how we felt we were given false advertisement as to how our study abroad trip was going to go. That will have to happen tomorrow.

Here are some pictures of the creatures we saw, and of Jess and I looking really, really "excited", and a video of the area as we were driving home: