Another of Carol's adventure that will make you never want to eat Mexican food in the U.S. again.

Hey everyone,

I don’t remember where I left off in my adventure last time so I will try to fill you in as much as I remember. I finished my first week of school on Friday and there was a big graduation ceremony for the students from England, with dinner (rice, beans and beef) dancing and music, and the English students left Saturday morning. Now that the British group has left I am just here with the group from the US. They go to Washington and Lee University in Virginia... I find them to be not nearly as friendly though. On the weekends I am all by myself because the college groups have outings planned for them that I am not a part of so it is a little lonely. I guess I assumed the language school would be more individual people like myself, rather than big groups, with me being the only person not in a group.

So, I went to Samara beach for the second time on Saturday...my second experience with the public buses, but not nearly as wild this time, maybe because it is a straight road and only 30 miles away. I tried to take surfing lessons but the waves were too big. The girl who was working at the surf shop was born in Ellensburg, WA...she is named Sunrise because she was born in a Teepee in Ellensburg at sunrise...I’m pretty sure her parents are hippies, as are many of the Americans that moved to Costa Rica. So instead of surfing I laid on the beach all day. We saw a turtle in the water. Also on the bus ride back we saw a bunch of monkeys in the trees, maybe 12 or so.

On Sunday, the rest of the students went to a wild life refuge, but I couldn’t go so I hung out in Nicoya. At breakfast I told my mom that I was going to hike the mountain with the cross on it that overlooks Nicoya (the one all the people climbed on May 3rd) but she told me it wasn’t safe for a girl to do alone because there are a lot of drug addicts that live on the mountain that will throw stones at your head, and when you go unconscious then they steal your money...I think she was being a little overdramatic....or I am really bad at translating, but anyhow, she said that the whole family would take me up the mountain later that day. Before that I went to the park and read my book (I saw the iguana in the photo below while I was in the park, it is on the side of the old church I already sent the picture of) so around 3:00, Nury, Eliecer (the dad), Zully (the 14yr old) and a cousin (Carolina) all climbed the mountain. It wasn’t quite my idea of hiking....we went really slowly. I am pretty sure that no one in Costa Rica ever does cardiovascular exercise. At one point Zully was complaining she couldn’t go any farther and her father said to her "if Jesus did it with a cross on his back and no water than you can do it with water and no cross!" The view from the top was great, we could see all of Nicoya. The cross itself was nothing special though, it is tall but made completely out of PVC piping, and covered in graffiti.

The food situation is about the same...everything fried, I have been looking forward to eating out at lunch each day but I find that those meals are even worse...or just not what I expected. I ordered a chicken fajita last week and it came out as little pellets of deep fried chicken, kind of like KFC´s popcorn chicken, but then deep-fried again. Then I ordered a chicken taco yesterday, picture this: little pellets of deep fried chicken then wrapped in a tortilla and deep fried again (overall kind of like a big taquito) but then it was covered in shredded cabbage with mayonnaise and ketchup poured over it. I just wish I knew how things were prepared here and then I could always ask for things on the side when I eat out but who would have thought to ask for a taco without mayonnaise on it! I learned how to make homemade tortillas in cooking class last week so I am excited to try that out when I get back home.

Nury has been serving me mangoes quite a bit this week which I have liked, but then yesterday when I was looking out my window I saw that she is stealing them from the mango tree in the neighbor’s yard using a long stick with a flower pot attached to the end to catch them :). I also noticed they keep eggs sitting out on the counter here....makes me not as excited for scrambled eggs anymore.

This week I have my classes in the morning with the Americans for 2 days and then I have classes in the afternoon by myself for 3 days. The good part is that I am in a class by myself and so I can learn at a much faster pace and get one on one attention the whole time, but the drawback is that all the activities are in the afternoon so I miss out because I am in class.

Yesterday I did get to go horseback riding which was quite an adventure (everything I think is safe is turning out to be an adventure here). I have ridden horses a few times before but I’m not all that fond of them and when I have ridden it has been very tame, we go very slow and all in a long line. This was the equivalent of off roading on horseback. We started off walking for about 5 minutes and then our guide whistled and all the horse just took off running, I was pretty sure I would fall out of the saddle a few times. Oh, and I forgot to mention that there were no trails; we were just running at full speed through the forest. Every now and again the horses would take turns around trees to closely and you would get your knee or your foot clipped, so we all have bruises today. We got to a top of a mountain though and had a great view of green mountains 360degrees.

Rainy season definitely began this week. Every afternoon/evening there is a big thunderstorm and it just pours rain. Our roof is made of metal so it sounds like you are surrounded my semi trucks on all sides but the rain helps the air cool off to about 80 or 85 so it is nice when it comes. But as if our house didn’t have enough problems already (cockroaches in the bathroom, geckos in the kitchen, flees in my bed, mold in the shower) the roof of our house also leaks so there were pots and pans placed our around the house to catch the leak.

Mucho Amor!
-Carol