First of all, I apologize for it taking so long to blog again. The wifi doesn't connect to my computer in my room, so I have to come and take over Maegan's room. And, anybody that really knows me will know how easily I can get distracted. After several attempts to blog the past two weekends, I gave up. (I will try to get better at this)
Today marks 20 days that I have been in Costa Rica! These past few weeks have been quite an adventure, filled with a roller coaster of emotions. My school is great! It has a beautiful campus with lots of open air space and a beautiful view of the mountains. There is pretty much always a breeze and
surprisingly I am usually cold while at school.
(I know all of you back home probably want to slap me right now for complaining about being cold - I am actually really sad I missed the snow). Now, I won't bore you with the details of orientation and all of our meetings. Some of it was very informative, but I could have done without the hour-long presentation telling us how homesick we will all get at some point. Apparently there is research on it. You don't have to show me the research; I
know I will get homesick. Spending an hour talking about how I am going to go into a deep depression and question my existence (that may be a little bit of an exaggeration) just sped up the process. Totally unnecessary.
The past two weekends I have gone on some short adventures. The first was a day trip to the closest beach, Jaco (pronounced
Haco), 2 hours away. We hopped on a Saturday morning bus and stayed until a little after dark.
The sun sets around 5:30 here so it wasn't that late. The bus ride was full of changes in scenery going from the city, to highway (where we saw a stray horse in the median - totally normal right?), to the mountains, then finally the beach. This beach wasn't the best beach I have ever been to, but it was very relaxing and not crowded at all. I won't complain about a place where I can put my toes in the sand and get a little tan.
The second adventure was this past weekend to another beach called Playa Blanca. Now this beach was absolutely beautiful. Hands down the prettiest beach I have ever been to. Getting to it was a small challenge, but getting back to the car was extremely difficult. I think my new friend Christy put it best when she stated that she was positive that was what it felt like to illegally cross a border.
I promise we did nothing illegal. You see, to get there we had to walk along a beach and then climb over an embankment and then walk down the beach a little further before reaching paradise. So when we decided that we were ready to leave, we climbed back over the embankment to find that there was no beach - just ocean. It was only about waist deep (
maybe a little deeper for me since I'm not vertically blessed), but the bottom wasn't sand - it was really slippery rock. Now, we all know how graceful I am when walking on flat, dry ground...
I still have a scar on my knee from tripping over myself three years ago. So yes, you can already picture it - I fell several times and got slapped around by a few waves. Praise the Lord I made it out with only a scrapped/bruised knee, and a very nice Tico (
that's what they call Costa Rican's down here) helped me with my bag so it didn't end up under the water with me. I couldn't help but laugh the whole time and I really wish there was a video of this. What a day. I slept great that night.
--only down side to that trip: sunburn that is now peeling (
gross)--
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| Notice the mountains in the distance! |
I promise I am teaching too!
I absolutely love my kids. I have officially made it through two full school weeks and have already made some great connections with my students. These kids are so full of energy and can be quite overwhelming at times, but at the end of the day, they make me smile. So far I have just been doing homework review, helping with activities, and answering questions while they work. I will begin teaching my own lessons next week! Say a prayer for me - my nerves are kicking in.
