Dancing and good conversations

Sorry to leave you all in the dark the last week and a half. This whole updating thing is hard sometimes. Sus and Aunt Linda, I always love reading your comments! They're so encouraging and make me feel so happy :) Can't wait to see you and the fam next week! (And I like everyone else's comments too, don't worry guys.)

Last week after Puerto Viejo we had a free day that Tuesday, so we went to the zoo in San Jose. The pics are up on facebook, but it was really sad. The cages were really small and the zoo was dirty because it was in the city, so that was kind of a bummer, but we went to this really good Chinese place for lunch and the buffet was like $7.50, all you can eat, they brought everything to the table, and we got fruit for dessert. It was so good, and I don't even like Chinese!

The day before on Monday we had cooking class and I went to my host sister's house for it where we made desserts. SO good. My favorite here is something called arrollado and then we made little fruit tarts too. Arrollado is super easy to make. I can put up the recipe after I get it from my tica sister.

Wednesday we went to see Ice Age 3 in Spanish. SO cute. Go see it.

Thursday we had another informal cooking class where we learned to make this incredible layer cake. My host family is full of incredible cooks. We made cakes at my aunt's house who has her own cake making business on the side. Just cuz she likes to make cake. We made 2 different kinds of cake and tried them both afterward. They were so good, but so rich that that ended up being our dinner, and we went to yoga later that night to work off some of the 6 sticks of butter we used in the cakes.

Friday we had a class field trip. We went to a different zoo that was much better. It was so cool, it had peacocks just walking around everywhere. They mostly stayed by the snack shack though because the parents usually let their kids feed the birds. I was eating crackers and one broke and fell on the ground and this peacock was trying to be all stealth like and sneak up behind me and grab it from between me feet. I mean, she succeeded, but it was crazy. They just came right up to you.Mike and Holly

The group at Arenal-
Thomas, Erica, Omega, Holly, Molly, & me!
(Thomas, Holly, & Molly are from Summer 3)Our hotel
We played voleyball down there Saturday afternoon
Our driver Jorge is not only very competitive, but really good at volleyball!

For the weekend I went to Arenal again. The place with the hot springs and waterfall and bungee jumping. It was by far my favorite weekend, mainly for the reason that for the first time, I had real conversations with people. With every person that was on the trip, including my director Janiva and our driver Jorge, except my roommate, I was able to sit down and learn more about who they are and about their lives. At the hot springs Molly, Holly, and I sat there for 2 hours and just talked about so much and were joined by the rest of the group after that where we ended up talking about adoption, foster care, and having kids. I talked to Thomas at dinner that night about Chirstianity and stereotypes true of some that ruin it for so many people and about how he wants to be a preacher at some point in his life even though he doesn't agree with 90% of Christianity. Janiva and I talked about what she wants to do with her life and I got a little history lesson about Costa Rica in there too. Omega (she's not with our program, but she is a student living with the same family as Molly and Thomas so she came with us) and I talked about what it was like growing up in Mexico and how hard it is to make any type of a profit there in agriculture because of NAFTA and how so many of the men leave their families to go work in the states because work in Mexico won't support their family.

It was such a good night! So many interesting people and lives and part of me regrets the fact that this didn't happen until my last weekend, but at the same time, I'm glad it even happened at all. Not to say that the students from my session aren't interesting, but I just felt like I clicked with the Summer 3 students so much more.

We went for bungee the next morning, and I did bungee AND the rocket launcher this time. SO great. Flips!MollyErica jumped like this

If you go bungee jumping don't jump like this
You'll have a very very sore back and neck the rest of the week

Let's see, this week has been great except for the fact that I keep remembering I'm coming back. I mean, I want to, but I just had an amazing weekend...and now I kind of don't want to :)

Monday, I had another heavenly 2 hour massage covered by Sol. In-credible. Carlitos and I watched 12 Rounds later that night. That's a good movie too. Speaking of Carlitos, this is him:

Tuesday we had another photography class, I liked this picture:And that night, we went out dancing! My favorite night out so far. I maybe sat down for 20 minutes the whole night after we started dancing. The place we went to, the guys just kept coming up asking us to dance. They're all older guys, but they're such good dancers! (And it's not creepy here to dance with an older guy.) We danced Merengue, Salsa, Cumbia, and Bolero. I made a new friend too. His name is Charlie and he was really nice and asked me to dance like every other dance. Got a lot of good practice in!Charlie and I dancing BoleroCumbiaMore CumbiaThis guy was so much fun to watch, and Molly is such a good dancer.

Salsa: Chicho and MollyMore Cumbia, and this dude had some crazy fancy footwork. It was like Cumbia meet hip-hopOmega and Chicho Salsa-ing.

The dancing was a blast. I think Molly and I are going back to Tipico tonight.

Well hopefully I'll post one more before I leave super early in the morning Saturday.

Besos y abrazos!

En Costa Rica...
14. They don't have anti-itch cream here. If you have bug bites they tell you to use lotion.
15. Stop signs are more like yield signs.
16. On the roads, if you see a heart that has a halo above it in a yellow box, that means a pedestrian has died there.
17. Home phones don't have answering machines.
18. They don't have blueberries here.
19. Rice, beans, butter and cilantro are staple items.