Only 2 More Days

Well, we're almost done here. Only 2 more days until I'm back in my own house. As always, it's hard to believe how much has happened since I last updated this blog. 

After our trip to Monteverde, we had a week full of last classes and final papers. We spent the week looking forward to an important ACM tradition: THANKSGIVING! As much as we were all wishing we could be home for Thanksgiving, we had a pretty good time at ACM. With the main room decorated with hand-turkeys (and some nice decorations from Iveth), we feasted on turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, salad, corn, cranberries, and rolls. One of my classmate's mom and brother were in town, so we got to share Thanksgiving with his family and with all of our teachers. The food was delicious, but some of us ended up taking naps on the floor of the library trying to let our food digest a little bit.

Early the next morning, we headed to Manuel Antonio for our last weekend trip. It's on the Pacific coast, about halfway down. The main attraction there is the national park, but we were staying in a hostel about 10 minutes away. We got to the town in the afternoon on Friday, so we decided to go to a nearby public beach instead of paying 10 dollars to enter the park for only a couple of hours. Of course, as soon as we got there it started raining. It was just a drizzle, so we decided to stay and wait it out. The problem with a drizzle is that when it goes on for 2 hours, everything you own is soaked. I didn't even get in the ocean that day, but when we left my towel felt like it weighed about 10 pounds and was dripping water everywhere.

The next day we headed to the park. A sloth happened to be hanging out in the tree above our bus stop, so I got a few pictures. As we were walking towards the park, we also saw a few monkeys running around the roof of a hotel. We walked for a while through the park, trying to scope out the best beaches. There are 4 or 5 different beaches within the park, but they were all extremely different from one another. Some felt like typical touristy beaches, while others felt like hidden little coves. We sat near one of the more popular beaches to eat our lunches, when an iguana decided he wanted some too. I've learned that iguanas have two speeds: still and sprinting. The iguana looked so harmless until it darted toward you. I stood up and kept trying to walk away from it, but it kept running at us, so I ended up eating lunch elsewhere. Eventually we settled down at a picturesque beach with hardly any people there. It seemed weird at the time that no one wanted to be at that beach, but I think we later learned why. I spent the entire afternoon in the water having a great time. The water was absolutely crystal clear and the waves were the perfect size to play in. We had also heard that it was a particularly safe beach in terms of riptides. Eventually we got out to dry off and put on some more sunscreen. 

While we were sitting up on the beach a park ranger blew his whistle and shouted something that I didn't quite catch. Then he said it again: Crocodile in the water! Everyone out! He didn't sound particularly concerned, like maybe it was a fairly normal occurrence. Since we couldn't go in the water anymore, Adam (or resident baseball fanatic) decided to start up a game of beach baseball. It consisted of a few lines drawn on a slanted beach, some big round seeds we found nearby, and a couple of sticks. And only 3 players, but that didn't seem to be an issue. After the game, we headed back out of the park and to a public beach to watch one of the best sunsets I've ever seen.

On Sunday, we went to the public beach one more time before our bus in the early afternoon. It's always hard to leave the beach, but it was particularly hard knowing it would be our last beach before we tackled the end of the semester and headed back to the states.

Sloth at the bus stop

Mama and baby monkeys outside the park

Manuel Antonio National Park

One of the first beaches we found

Monkey! It was making some crazy noises

The crocodile beach

Before the crocodile incident, Adam was teaching the girls about his favorite exercises

Baseball!

Adam was extremely excited to teach the others

I wish I had gotten a picture of the stick the girls were using - it was about 1/2 the length of that one and 1/3 the width

ACM surprised us this week with a big Christmas tree in the lobby/living room. The lights are usually on in that room, but they've been off all week so that we can fully appreciate the lights on the tree. It's really starting to feel like Christmas now. We gave our last ever presentations on Tuesday, did endless program evaluations on Wednesday, and today was one of the longest days of the entire program for me.

We showed up bright and early to take our written and oral Spanish exams (overall not too stressful). We hung out in the library for a couple of hours and had a great time ripping up all of the photocopies from the semester to recycle (we ended up unintentionally making "snow" out of all of the little bits that fell on the floor). After a couple of hours of that madness, our host families started showing up for our farewell lunch. The main room was decorated yet again, but this time in Christmas colors. We had a huge lunch (chips and dip, soup, portions of lasagna the size of my face, salad, vegetables, rice, and cake), followed immediately by some dancing. A couple of professional dancers came to perform for a little while (so that we could digest), and then we were pulled up onto our feet. I honestly can't explain much of what happened for that hour. I was laughing so hard I couldn't quite breathe, and then I thought I might throw up my lunch. We were a hilarious bunch of students, families, and teachers, all trying to follow these professional dancers. I haven't laughed that hard this whole semester (and I've laughed A LOT this semester). After the dancing we settled down again for... wait for it... cake. Yes, more cake. Everyone just laughed as they brought it out. My host mom and I weren't able to come even close to finishing ours. 

Eventually the families left and the students were left to say our goodbyes. A few of the girls knew we would cry if others started to cry. I can't be sure who started it while we were saying goodbye to our Spanish teacher (it could have been him, me, or 3 or 4 other people), but eventually half of the group was crying. We got ourselves together and headed upstairs, no one really wanting to be the first one to leave the building for good. Judy, who has become our "second mom" here, came to say goodbye next. We were all sad to say goodbye, but we were managing to hold it together. That is until she started telling us about how important it is that we follow our dreams and contribute something to the world. Yet again, we were a bawling mess. We said our last two goodbyes, and finally headed out the door.

I can't believe how emotionally and physically drained I feel right now, and I haven't even said goodbye to any of the other students yet. We're going to say a few goodbyes tonight to the three students headed to Panama in the morning. That will leave 5 of us until Saturday when 3 (including me) leave, and the last two on Sunday. We've all been wrestling with conflicting emotions, but today has been particularly bad. I'm getting more and more excited every day to go back to my own house, see my family and pets, eat my favorite foods, speak my own language, and just be generally more comfortable and at ease than I am here. But at the same time it's really hard to think about the fact that I may never be back here. I most likely won't see my host mom or teachers again. And even the other students live and go to school pretty far away. We were joking about a potential road trip to Minnesota next summer, but it's a 15 hour drive nonstop, I don't think there are any direct or cheap flights, and a bus ride would take at least a whole day. As much as I'd love to meet up with everyone again, I don't know how realistic that will actually be. 

I know that I'm going home soon, and I'm definitely ready, but the uncertainty of everything else is definitely making me anxious. Part of me wishes I could just fly home right now, because these next couple of days are going to feel like years. From here on out, I'm really just killing time before my flight home. It'll be a tough couple of days, but I think all in all I'm ready.

Monteverde!

Last Thursday afternoon, a few of us rushed out of our last classes of the day to head to the Monteverde bus station to spend our second to last weekend enjoying the cloud forests of Costa Rica. The bus ride was about 5 hours, and fairly uneventful. We didn't actually know which stop we were supposed to get off at, and eventually the road turned into a winding dirt road heading up a mountain in the dark. Eventually we made it to our stop, Santa Elena, and after asking a handful of people for directions we made it to our hostel. One of the highlights of the hostel is the owner's puppy, Comanche (which is the name of a Native American tribe in Texas?). Comanche is a 4 month old French poodle, and absolutely adorable. He's young enough that he's still extremely playful and clumsy, so we had a blast playing with him the whole weekend.

In the morning, we explored the town a little bit and bought groceries for the next couple of days (tortillas, pepper jack cheese that is neither spicy nor cheese-like, and refried beans). After lunch we were picked up from the hostel by our tour company (Selvatura) and made our way farther up the mountain and into the Santa Elena Cloud Forest Reserve. We were fitted with harnesses and helmets and led to a sort of training zip-line where a guide showed us the correct position and explained how to brake (this tutorial took all of about 4 minutes). We were on the lines before we knew it, although it took a few lines before we really got comfortable with the whole process. The tour was incredible, with lines running both through the cloud forest and above it.

Towards the end of the tour, we all tried the famous Tarzan swing. Basically you stand at the top of a platform, the guides push you, and off you go! They all told us that we weren't allowed to scream, or else we would have to stay in the reserve forever. I think every single one of us broke that rule. As some of the other people in our group were finishing the Tarzan swing, someone spotted a nearby tarantula. It's torso was about the size of my palm with legs about the size of my fingers. A guide told us it wasn't dangerous, but that we probably shouldn't touch it either. Our last line of the tour was over 3000 feet long, with almost all of it above the cloud forest canopy. It was so long that we had to go in pairs to give ourselves enough weight to get all the way across. We had great weather for the whole tour, with clouds starting to come in towards the end. By the time we got to this last line, it was starting to lightly drizzle (called "pelo de gato" here, meaning "cat hair" - a slightly heavier drizzle is called "frijol" which means "bean," and then I guess it just becomes rain) and we were going directly through the clouds. It was an incredible way to end the tour. We headed back to our hostel and spent the rest of the afternoon and evening playing cards, pick up sticks, and jenga with endless entertainment from Comanche. And then saw a sloth!! The hostel owner told us to come look at a sloth, but we all thought he was talking about a cartoon sloth painted on a mural in the lobby. He eventually got us to all go outside to see a giant sloth wandering around on the power lines right in front of the hostel! It was dark so we weren't able to get a great view, but it was still pretty impressive to see one so close to the center of town.

The next day we wandered the town in search of a few last souvenirs and got some delicious ice cream. Supposedly Monteverde and Santa Elena have the best ice cream in all of Costa Rica because the milk they use is so fresh. Eventually we loaded onto a bus headed for San Jose, and we drove down from the mountain at the perfect time of day to see one of the most beautiful sunsets. I didn't have a great view from my seat on the bus, but we also glimpsed a few rainbows on the way down. I think the official rainbow count was 7 or 8.

All in all the trip was a success, but I think we were all a little distracted by the thought of how soon the program is ending. Yesterday we turned in our final projects for Literature (and made paper hand turkeys to put up in ACM!), tomorrow will be our last Literature class, Thursday is our last class for Biodiversity (and the famous ACM Thanksgiving lunch!), we'll spend our last weekend at Manuel Antonio, and then we'll really start counting down the days. Next week will be filled with final presentations, exams, and evaluations and a goodbye lunch with all of the students, staff, and families. It's getting harder and harder to think about saying goodbye to everyone, but at the same time I'm getting more and more ready to be back in my own house in just 11 days!

Starting to Wind Down

We've got about 2 and a half weeks left here, but classes are already starting to wind down bit by bit. I worked ahead a little bit last weekend, so I'm done with all of my essays for my classes. Our last Intro to Costa Rica class was this past Monday, and our last ACM field trip was today (we went to see a couple of famous churches in Cartago). We're close enough to the end of the program now, that I pretty much know what I'll be doing every day until I'm back in Nashville. This weekend we're going to Monteverde, and on Monday we'll be taking our Intro to Costa Rica final exam and turning in our final project for Literature. Tuesday and Wednesday we'll have a lot more free time, with only one class each day. Thursday is ACM's famous Thanksgiving lunch!! A lot of my Thanksgiving favorites don't exist here (like cranberries) so I'm not sure what we'll be eating, but just about anything that comes out of Iveth's kitchen is delicious. We'll be leaving town one more time next Thursday or Friday to go to Manuel Antonio (a beautiful national park/beach on the Pacific coast). That will be our last full weekend here. Then we've got final presentations for Biodiversity, written and oral Spanish exams, a bunch of different evaluations of the program, and a going-away lunch with all of the ACM staff and host families. We'll have that Friday free to do something as a group, and people start flying home on Saturday (including me).

It's really hard to believe how quickly this semester has gone by. I realized today that no matter how much I can squeeze into these last two weeks, I'm going to be going home with a lot left to do here. As our classes finish up, we'll have less and less work each day, so hopefully we'll be able to take more advantage of our free afternoons!

3 More Weeks

It's crazy to think I've only got 3 more weeks here! The time has absolutely flown by. Since I last wrote, we've spent 1 weekend in San Jose and 1 in Puerto Viejo de Talamanca. 

For our weekend in San Jose, we went downtown a couple of times to see the Children's Museum and go to the park for Zumba classes. The Children's Museum was so much fun. One of the highlights was an earthquake simulator! Supposedly it's very realistic, but I wasn't too impressed. Seeing as we're all earthquake experts now, I think we're prepared for just about anything. And just because the simulator wasn't realistic doesn't mean it wasn't fun! Unfortunately a school group was coming in behind us, so we couldn't spend too much time playing on the simulator. The museum also had sections on history, the human body, ecology, government, electricity, and some other completely random exhibits including a house of bubbles (yes, just a room full of supplies to make the coolest bubbles ever), a petting zoo (except I'm not sure if the petting part was allowed), and a house of illusions (but it closed right before we got there). Only a few of us went to the museum that day, and some other students want to go before the end of the program, so I think I'll definitely be going back! On Sunday we went to La Sabana, a huge park in downtown San Jose. There's a small lake to rent peddle boats, horses to rent, tons of sidewalks, soccer fields, basketball courts, jungle gyms, baseball fields (what are those actually called, anyway? Isn't there a name for that?), a track, a hockey rink, and tons of open areas for picnics. In general it's a pretty busy place, but it's especially crowded on Sundays. Every Sunday different hour-long classes are offered for free to whoever wants to come. They've got aerobics, zumba, and dance classes (and probably a bunch of others, too). We thought we were going to zumba, but we're pretty sure it was just aerobics. Either way, we had a lot of fun making fools of ourselves in front of strangers! 

After our weekend in San Jose, we had a pretty normal week of classes at ACM. Everyone had a couple of essays due for different classes, and we all started to realize how close we are to the end. Everyone's glad to see the countdown for our essays slowly dropping, but that means our time here is almost over too.

The next weekend we took our first weekend trip by ourselves. We all went to Puerto Viejo de Talamanca on the Caribbean. It's on the Southern part of the coast, almost to Panama. Our teachers told us to expect a very different culture, but I wasn't quite expecting the culture we saw! The general vibe in Puerto Viejo is tourist hippie town. Tons of people were selling handmade crafts on the sides of the road or offering hair wraps. Each and every booth, store, restaurant, bar, and hotel plays Bob Marley music 24/7. It's common for people all over Costa Rica to say "Pura vida!" which is usually used in the same way someone from the US would say "Take it easy!" It's common all over the country, but everyone in Puerto Viejo seemed to be 100% sincere about it every time. For the first night, we stayed at Rockin' J's Hammock Hostel. I'm not sure I will ever be able to accurately describe that experience, but it was certainly a different culture. The hostel is basically a tourist hippie haven covered in mosaics made by the guests over the years. It was definitely a new experience for me, and I'm glad I got to see the place, but the night we spent there didn't go so well for a couple of us. One of the guys in our group and I had a lot of trouble sleeping in the hammocks, especially in a room full of strangers with music playing all night and strange mosaics staring back at you. The two of us decided to next morning to find a different hostel for the second night. 

But first, the two of us were off to the national park in Cauhita! We took a walk on a beach trail for the morning, and it was absolutely beautiful. For the first half, the trail was in the forest, just a few meters away from the beach. It was drizzling, but that just meant we had the park to ourselves. We didn't see any animals (other than lizards and crabs), but we heard some howler monkeys off in the distance. The rain eventually died down right as the trail started to drift closer and closer to the beach. Adam and I wished we could have stayed longer on the beach, but we were crunched for time to get back and meet up with the rest of the group. The hike ended up being about 9 kilometers, but we were both exhausted by the end. Hiking in sand is a lot tougher than you'd expect! Despite the many mixed messages we got when asking for directions to and from the park, we managed to get back to our friends without any problems. We got some delicious bagel sandwiches, which were well-earned after some of the conversations we had. We spent a remarkably large chunk of our hike talking about food. Our favorite foods, Christmas cookies, Thanksgiving food, comfort foods, Costa Rican foods, all of it. As hard as it will be to go home, at least we've both got food to look forward to! After spending a little while at a nearby black sand beach, Adam and I moved into our new hostel. It was absolutely perfect. The hostel advertised itself as "clean, cheap, safe" - exactly what we needed after a night in the hammocks. Our room was simple (2 single beds and bathrooms across the hall), but it was a huge step up for us (and several dollars cheaper than dirty hammocks, too!). We went out to dinner with a few other students, and both ended up going to bed around 9:30 that night. We slept so well!! 

In the morning, the other students wanted to go to the park in Cauhita, so Adam and I explored some of the other nearby beaches. It was beautiful, but we got caught in some rain heading back to catch our bus home. We made it back in one piece, bringing home mountains of sand in our bags, shoes, and clothes.

The start of our beach trail

Crystal clear water! There's a coral reef not too far off, but we only saw a bunch of washed up coral.

A field of Sensi plants! Caitlin, you better be reading this!

Playa Negra (Black Beach) near Puerto Viejo

I forget the name of this beach, but it was FULL of surfers!

The past week was another fairly normal week of classes, but on Wednesday we took a field trip to see the quetzals. We actually only saw one (a female, and supposedly the males are even prettier), but it was a great field trip. For the first time, we went on a trip with Mario and Chris (two of our teachers - usually they switch off for trips). We walked through the cloud forest for most of the morning, but stopped for a break on the side of a beautiful hill overlooking a field of cows. It felt a little bit like The Sound of Music to me. The trip came at a great time for a few of the other students. It was their test to see if they're read to climb Cirripo (the highest point in Costa Rica - supposedly you can see both oceans from the top). They left yesterday to begin the trek with ziploc bags full of banana pancakes and more tortillas than I could imagine. They were definitely a motley bunch as they pulled away in taxis to the bus station, but I'm sure they'll have a great time. It's been raining in San Jose since they left, but hopefully they can stay relatively dry for their hike! I can't wait to hear the stories about their trip.

Meanwhile, a few of us are staying in San Jose for the weekend. We are going to meet up downtown in a little while to wander in the Mercado Central, and hopefully I will be able to meet up with a friend from the University of Costa Rica this afternoon (she studied at CC as an exchange student last year). I was planning to make tomorrow my work day to get as many of my essays out of the way as possible so I can enjoy my last few weeks, but I might end up going to my host mom's childhood town instead. As much as I want to be done with my work, I'm sure we'll have a good time traveling together tomorrow. On Sunday I might go back to La Sabana with a couple of friends.

Next week will be our 3rd to last week here. Monday will be our last normal class for Intro to Costa Rica. On Wednesday we'll take our last big field trip to Cartago to see a famous church there. Otherwise it will be a fairly normal weekend. Hopefully we can take advantage of our free afternoons to explore a little more in the city, and then we're planning to spend our weekend hiking and ziplining in Monteverde! We have yet to plan anything for that trip, but we're getting pretty good at the last-minute scramble.