Costa Rica

Ok, so i'm here. i have been for about a week and a few days now but i finally decided to write a little something about it because i know as soon as i get back to the states i am not gonna wanna. So here goes.

Costa Rica is a gorgeous country. We arrived in San Jose the middle of the night after having driven in a van for about five or six hours from Douglas to Orlando to catch our flight and spending two hours at the airport with the Briceno children loud and in full effect. The trip was.....long. I mean i have had some long-behind trips before (refer to the entry called "i need a massage" from my trip to Iran last Christmas) but never with five kids who run all over their mom pretty much and eight other students i really didn't know. Fun times. CW and i instantly bonded. We both have a love for obnoxious sarcasm so in a sense we broke bread and made nice. I also made friends with JF. BTF was.......BTF. There are about a thousand and one things that went on that me and JF and CW laugh about all the time but i will spare you the details, just know it was quite the experience.

So we get here and instantly decide we cannot handle all the Briceno kids in saturation. It was night time when we got to San Jose so we didn't see much of the sights, besides we were pretty knackered from the trip. We got to the guesthouse an found out we had a ruise the next morning and had to be out of the house by 6 am. What kind is that? The cruise was fun though. We were on a ship for about two or so hours and it was such a relief because of the wind cuz Costa Rica is bloody hot. Who'd a thunk right? But you cannot prepare for the inferno awaiting you in Costa Rica. So we sail for a few hours with a bunch of other tourists and take pictures left and right and then we get to our island which was pretty. They set it up nicely and there was this spot!! Oooh, my spot. It was such a sexy spot, let me tell you. It was in the midst of a bunch of palm trees and there were hammocks hangng from each respective tree. They were serving pina coladas and sex on the beach and all that good stuff and they had a live marimba group playing, setting the whole tropical mood. It was sexy as all get out. Too bad i was there in the single capacity. Surprise surprise right? Ha! I kill me.

I walked up and down the beach, hung out with the guys i came with and just chilled on the beach. Shock horror, i wore i bathing siut. A bikini no less!! Me.
..............So no guys talked to me. I'm kidding...well, no guys did but i wasn't worried. If they had i would have had to be mean. They looked kinda rough yo. Except these two guys, they were hott. One had long, surfer-like hair and was ripped-for-America. Yeah, so there are no black people hardly in Costa Rica except on the Carribean side which is a ways away. Anyway, i wsan't into finding a guy or anything like that i was into the beach. Perhaps having a guy there with me would have ruined the whole reverie. I think it just might have.

We left the beach late that afternoon and went back to San Jose. I wasn't in the mood to go out so i didn't, BTF did ( go figure) and the rest of us went to doss (sleep) and got up early to catch a bus to Turriabla to meet the families.

So how about we gt off our rather disconcerting two hour bus ride to Turrialba and everyone's family shows up but mine. So Senora Briceno waits with me and i am scared silly about looking like a head case cuz my spanish sucked. So my mamma tica finally shows up and explains that her husband said the bus was getting there an hour later than they thought, but she was early in any case so my wait wasn't long but i felt kinda dumb. Then it started. Briceno left and i was lost in translation. Apparently they don't have a car. Granted their house was all of three or so blocks from the bus station, but they must not have known they were getting a girl. I had buku luggage. Hmmn. And she couldn't get a hold of her hubby on the tele. Hmmn. So we walked the streets with my five billion articles of heavy-behind luggage. Fun times. Fun times. Scooby-dee-bop! More like Scoobi-dee-not really. So we get home, cute house nice location and all and i met the older of my hermano ticos. His name is Esteban and he's 16 and about the most adorable thing ever. He has this crooked toothed smile and is really tall and lanky and just adorable. He is gonna grow up to be a stunner. Granted they invest in braces. So then pappa tico and hermano tica number two show up after twenty minutes of awkardness over a glass of tap water i was too shy to refuse but too worried about to drink. Then it was mre people sitting around the kitchen table just trying to talk. I did pretty good, i was just so focaused on messing up that i asked them to repeat everything, including things i already knew.

OK, fast forward. We got to the school that night for oreintation and it went fine and the next day me and CW and CH walked to skwa together. We got class assignments and i am lower than everybody except Jonni cuz i have taken the least spanish. There was a black guy from Long Beach named Marcus. Could be cute but he just doesn't make my liver quiver you know? PLus he has a kid and is 31. Ya. Not so much. But he's cool though. Met some snobby med students from Texas. The one is OCD and something else and we were talking and the chick tried to diagnose me with every emotional disorder in the book like her and said i should be on meds. Perhaps that is why she's on the meds. Hmmn. Satying away from that one.

So we have lunch every day at this place called Betty's. Not so much, It's like a Costa Rican Lillies yo. I am not even trying to be funny there, i mean it. We have cooking class there once a week....which is funny beauce cooking class basically is chopping class. That is all we ever do. Someone brings a six pack of beers ( i have a ginger ale usually) and we chop veggies. Everything in bloody Costa Rica is so damn fresh. I hate that. It's like fruits and veggies at every meal. would love it if i could eat raw fruits and veggies but i can't, they make me nauseous for some inexplcable reason. And then their fruit juices are freshly squeezed. No additives or artificial flavouring. Dammnit. So i spent money on ginger ales and force down the rest of the fod. I swear, i would kill a homeless woman for some Burger King right about now. I ain even playing.

I loved dance class. We are learning the salsa and merengue. I was having so much fun last eek and apparently i did good cuz she had me and JF dance in front of everybody else to show them. They all said it was cuz we are the two black chicks. Pah. OK, so maybe it was. No, i'm kidding. Really. I am. We have dance again tomorrow night. It is in the movie theatre (ya, i know right) and it is bloody hot, like every where else here. Oooh, and it rains evrey blinking day. Not too much, usually a light shower in the afternoon but this past week it has been bloody storming. It'll be ridiculously hot in the morning but raining all hell in the afternoon. Oh, so everybody here gets up at blooming five in the morning. When they told us that the fisrt night we were like why? Now we know. The sun in bloody confused here. I swear it is in full effect at blooming five in the morning. I mean, it looks like noon at five. Oy! So i am always up at five-ish and i have school everyday from 8 till 12:30. Then we have excursions. Which we learned quick fast are always a bloody hike somewhere. They went to a serpentarium the first day, i so didn't go. I don't play. And then the first Saturday we climbed a mountain on some nature hike to see this waterfall. I could have stabbed these people. The waterfall was nothing but a damn tap in the woods. It was not woth the two and a half hour hike up a steep muddy mountain. OK, i like the outdoors, but shorty don't play. Then the vrey next day....let me emphasize that....the VERY NEXT DAY we went to see the Volacno Turrialba. Another blasted hike, except this is on of the hardest hikes known to man. It was muddy, rocky steep, three hours almost and then when we got to the summit, the fog set in. My legs were screaming bloody murder and ironically my psyche was too. Me and JF sang the whole way down, just to stay sane and out of a Central American jail that night. We didn't get to hike into the crater, we just went back down the mountain.

I forgot to mention our tour guide last weekend. He was sexy as hell. His name is Eddie (Eduardo) and he has a voice that will make a straight man blush. He is Costa Rican but had a dash of American in his accent and he was hott. He is an adventure racer and so his body was just gaw-geous! And he kept joking with me.....ok and all the other people on the hike. But he blew on my neck to keep me cool and massaged my shoulders. Ha!!

OK, i have talked your ear off and i have soooo much more to tell you but i wont right now. I am getting better at speaking with my familia tica. I have conversations with them now, it's fun. I am really getting into spanish, i want to pursue learning it serously and cntinue when i get back stateside. Yo etoy muy emocionada! Yo quiero hablar espanol mejor cuando nosotros regressamos a estados unidos, yo creo yo hacendo bien, no? Este mas facil! No, i'm kidding, pero, este no mas dificil.

Oooh, this weekend the rest of the group are going white water rafting but me and JF are going to spend the weekedn in Puerto Viejo (one of the most beautiful places in Costa Rica) cuz us balck chicks would love to so the whole white water rafting thing, but we can't get our hir wet. If you are not balck you just won't understand but it is a serious issue yo! But i am seriously excited about this weekend. I'll have to let you know what goes down. Smooches, my time at the cafe is up!