Exams & Fortuna!

school is chill// costa rican wildlife//

Short update!

This trip is going by so unbelievably fast. I'm now nearing the two month mark on April 10th. I've found that the more I stay here, the more I regret not doing a year. I miss my family a lot but the people here are great and the whole air of the place is so relaxed. I am not looking forward to returning to the life of practices, schedules, due-dates, plans, and keeping up with the status quo. Honestly, in Costa Rica, there are no worries. Hakuna Matata 

Okay, so I just got done with my Exams for school and they were (obviously) difficult for me because they were all in Spanish (except for the English exam which, personally, I think I aced). It was a hectic week of trying to study and failing miserably in the end. Taking Chemistry is hard enough in English... And Psychology, I had to make up stuff to answer the questions that I didn't understand. But I tried, and that's what counts, right?
Funny story (inapropro) .. I've found that it's hard to understand what music people like here because the accent makes it difficult to say the name of a band or singer. For instance, when my friend asked me if I liked Linkin Park, I though he said l&$-@?#ng c@*k. Talk about awkward... I was completely confused and ended up walking away not realizing that I misunderstood until later...

Anyways, last weekend I got to meet more of my host family.. Xinia's brother, his wife, and their two kids. We went up to Fortuna (a two and a half hour trip) and went to a Snake Zoo near Arenal Lake. It was great to see all the different kinds of animals that inhabit Costa Rica. We also went to a farm close to the Arenal Volcano. We got a tour and frankly, I didn't understand why. We pretty much just walked around the farm and it smelt rank... We even went into the room where they kept the cow dung. Yeah... I didn't see the significance. But I did find it interesting when they explained how they made recycled soap of some sort.
On Sunday, we went fishing. Keep in mind I've never gone fishing, so whenever I got one on the hook, I sorta freaked out and just yanked at the chord. Safe to say, I lost a lot of fish...

I have the next week free from school. It's a vacation week for everyone called Santa Semana (Saint Week). These past two days, I've spent all my time at the beaches that are near me. My family and I plan to go to the family beach house for three days this weekend. Everybody in my host family will be coming.

Spanish: It's definitely improved! However I still struggle immensely with understanding the conversations between my family members; they speak so fast. I can now manage a conversation easily and can talk with my host mum about anything.


Nothing much else to say.. Will update next Monday on info about my Santa Semana!

More photos are on my Facebook!

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10200169921307433.189015.1133426356&type=1

Thanks for reading

One Month!

one month here already... 

It has officially been a month since I left Arizona! Crazy. Time has flown by. These past two weeks have been very relaxed. I'm just getting into a routine with everything however there is no consistency with school. Every day is different. Especially the timing. I've arrived home this week varying between the times of 10 am to 1 pm. Last Thursday was my first ever full day of school; I came back at around 2:45 pm. I found the day to be extremely long, being used to the random short days that I normally have. The only reason we had the full day was because there was no school on Friday; the reason being that the teachers went on strike. An ineffective strike, as nothing seems to result from the inconspicuous days off.
Anyway, It's progressively getting hotter and I am dying in my long blue pants that I have to wear for school... I always rush home and change. April is the hottest month of the year and I'm dreading it. Even though I've lived in Arizona where it's known for the scorching heat, I can't help but feel the weather here is more uncomfortable. This may be because there is hardly any air conditioning here. My school doesn't have it and neither does my house. Only my host mum's office in the house has AC, and I've learnt to treasure it. :)
I've made a great group of friends at school! They help me with understanding teachers and subjects. I take a lot of classes here: (classes translated into English) Tourism, Music, Art, Physical Education, Maths, Biology, Chemistry, Physical Maths, Spanish, English, Civics, Psychology, Religion (optional), and a lot of free periods. I have to pay full attention to the teacher if I want to understand the class. It gets very tiring but necessary and helpful for my Spanish. Exams are coming up this Thursday. They will last for a week and there's one for each of the classes (except the extra curricular).
The fiesta finished last weekend, so I went to watch the torros one last time. The next fiesta will be right after I leave, on July 10th. I leave July 7th. Spectacular timing.
I went on a hike with my host mum last weekend up to the Volcán Rincón de la Vieja. It was beautiful but honestly, the smell of the smoke was rank. The sulfur scent made me want to be sick... But yeah, it was really pretty. There were monkeys too! So amazing. One time, it seemed like one of them was trying to hit me with the beans that were on the trees. He kept on shaking the branches so loads fell down... Sadly, I didn't get any good photos of them, but in one, you can see a monkey swinging!
So, that was great.. And I had some great conversations with my host grandmother! One night, out at dinner, we were talking about marriages. My host grandmother was saying how her and my host grandpap have been married for 60 years. She then went on to whisper in my ear that it's been "way too long" (in spanish of course). Another day, we were talking about the hot boys in Liberia. Everyone was saying how there's this beach (can't remember the name), where the men are beautiful. Abuela said that they weren't beautiful, they were sexy (then began fanning her face)... They may have been had-to-be-there moments, but I think they get the message across. I love her!
I have been swimming and exercising as at the orientation, they repeated many times that we would all be getting fatter on this trip...  I have been thinking about doing a competitive race of 5k with my host cousin. He's supposed to be very good at running, so I think I would be running way behind him haha. Long distance is not my style... It would be beautiful as it is going to be on Playa de Coco. It would be painfully hot though. To go running for exercise, people here have this specific park where they run in circles. Nobody runs during the day, only at night. The mosquitos are crazy at night. It's horrible but better than running in the heat and getting home looking like you've just had a shower when in reality it's all sweat. :) Picture that. Lovely.
This weekend I went to go see an old family friend from England! The last time I saw Max was when I was moving from London to Scottsdale. So... around 4 to 5 years ago maybe. I thought it would be hard to talk to him again but it was incredibly easy! We spoke about everything and all the things that had happened during the past 5 years. We had obviously both grown up a lot. Max is now 19 and going to be studying Psychology in university back in England (can't remember which one). It was great seeing him again and catching up. Max has been working at Playa de Junquillal for the last six weeks. It's volunteer work, looking after the beach turtles. The volunteers have the weekends off so most were away, but Max and two other girls of the same age were there. We met up in Santa Cruz (an 45 min bus ride from Liberia) and then got another bus to Junquillal (an hour bus ride). We hung out and went down to the beach. It was beautiful and the waves were huge. The beach was free of people and the weather was boiling hot. When going into the water, we had to run for it as the sand literally burned your feet. At night, we went down to the beach and watched the stars. It was absolutely stunning. Since Juniquillal is a tiny place with no street lights and no city lights close, there was nothing that effected the sight of the stars. You could see everything.
I had a great time and on Sunday, I left Junquillal in the morning to get a bus back to Santa Cruz, then a bus from there to Liberia. The full trip took around an hour and a half. It was worth it though.

Anyway, that's my post! I will try and update at least once a week from now on....
Thanks for reading. :)
Just a few pictures this time! More are on my facebook!