Insta, Nicaragua, Cave Woman, Anna C, Excitment

Craziness ONE MONTH LEFT 

Just got an instagram-- clionaaudsley

 I honestly don't really know how to use it, I just post pictures.

I'm trying to post photos everyday so follow me...or don't... 

Back to the blog 

I swear there is no speed limit in Costa Rica. My host mum drives so bloody fast I'm always thrown into the door at least once when in the car. Now I know that that probably just set my mum off on an email to my host mum to slow down, but there isn't really another way of driving here. Everyone drives like they own the road. Also, Costa Rica's roads normally have two lanes (cars coming different directions in each) and my host mum is always passing up people, driving really fast in order to not get hit by the car coming in the oposite direction. There are times when she peaks out the car to see in front of a big truck if she can pass and sees a car coming really fast so she justs swerves back into her lane. I tend to freak out a bit. She just laughs. \m/

I'm going to talk about the weather now, so if you have absolutely no interest in that kind of thing, I suggest you move down to the next paragraph. I actually think you should read this though because if you run into an awkward situation, you have the backup of bringing Costa Rican weather into the convo. Such a life saver. Moving on... the weather has gone through a dramatic change. If you've looked at my pictures from the beginning of my trip, you would see the (pretty much) dead nature in Costa Rica because of the tremendous amount of heat. That was during dry season. Costa Rica has two seasons, unlike the US, called dry season and rainy season. As you can guess, dry is when the land's dry and rainy is when there is a downpour at least once every day. To be honest, I'm loving the rain. The country is so green now, it's much more beautiful. 

The past three weeks have been pretty crazy,  and I apologize (if you care) that I didn't update sooner. I am actually quite angry with myself, because I wanted to keep having 2 posts in each month. Now that's pretty much ruined due to my procrastination and busy schedule. (I have one post in May then all the other months have at least an even amount of posts... it just looks prettier)

I'm going to start with Nicaragua first. I went with my family on the weekend of May 18th. We left on Saturday, early in the morning and arrived at the border in around 1 hour (Liberia is very close to Nicaragua). We went through customs and I was expecting problems (I don't know why, I'm just a super sketchy person ya know?) but none at all came my way. My host mum said this was because I'm from the US. Everyone's just so trustworthy the US right?.......
When we first got into Nicaragua, I automatically noticed the difference between the two countries I'd seen in Central America. In Nicaragua, there is a lot more poverty and it is a lot less developed than Costa Rica. My mum told me that there are the really rich people and the really poor people. There isn't a distinct middle class in Nicaragua.   

The first place we visited was a volcano. Still active, it smelt horrible (like sulfur--eggs and farts) and all you could really see was smoke. We went to a couple of other tourist destinations then made our way to the hotel in Granada. Honestly, nothing really exciting happened and so I won't bore you with the details of the afternoon. At night, we went out to the main part of the city to eat. While eating, my family liked to point out transvestites that walked into the club opposite of where we were sitting. Just tells you a little bit about how my family is pretty weird...Also while we ate, we got our own little show of Nicaraguan men playing their native music. Pretty sweet. 

The next day, we went island shopping. No joke. We actually took a boat and toured through the water neighborhood, houses still determined by number but separated by the sea instead of by walls or fences. I saw what it would be like to be a billionaire. Some houses were crazy big and just holiday homes. There were some which were a little on the scruffy side but they still held that great selling point of privacy. No matter how the house or land looked, the islands cost millions of dollars. Crazy how wealthy and how poor people are, the contrast in Nicaragua is very noticeable.

We returned to Liberia that day and that week was pretty boring for the most part... I spent it either at school, or at a cute cafe I found that I absolutely love going to, for writing. 

The weekend came and my host mum and I decided to go up to Nicoya (another city in my province, Guanacaste, around 1 1/2 hours away) to go look around some caves. We went 20 meters down into Earth and the first thing the guide said to me was to not touch my face because there's bat poo everywhere. Fantastic. But for the most part, it was pretty cool, and there were all kinds of different shapes made from the stone: a lizard, tortoise, trumpet and a family of people. There were probably many others but I thought those were the most distinct. The family of people was kinda creepy though... They actually seemed to have eyes. 

We returned back to the house and Sunday, I spent working on my online school. The next weekend, my friend Anna (same girl who I went to Jaco with), came to visit me in Liberia. She arrived on Friday and we went to the mall in Liberia for the night and ate tons of crepes. On Saturday, we got up early and took a 27 kilometer bike ride down to the beach. At one point, there was an incredibly steep hill and so being the lazy people we are, we got off the bikes and walked. Bringing me to the fact that I still haven't checked how much I weigh... I really don't want to. I like to think I've maintained my muscle by running and doing workouts but the beans and rice here are known to make every exchange student a little bit fatter. Anyhow, we went down to the beach and ate the best nachos I've ever tasted. Once we had spent around two hours at the beach, my host mum came to pick us up (no WAY were we repeating that bike ride) and we made our way to my house. That night, we went to the mall again to go see Fast & Furious 6 (thankfully in English with Spanish subtitles). What Anna and I both found extremely annoying was that everybody laughed at the stupidest stuff in the movie. Another thing I've noticed is that people here have the most obnoxious laughs ever. A joke is never THAT funny... And even if it is, it's rare. People here laugh so loudly at the stuff that should be rewarded a little chuckle or smile. The movie was evident of this. The jokes in it were okay but not laugh out loud worthy, nevertheless, everyone around me and Anna laughed laughed and laughed. Everyone. I eventually broke down into laughter also, but after everyone stopped because I was cracking up at the hilarity of how they found the lines funny. Which was perfect. And awkward. I also nearly fell on a couple while trying to get out of the aisle. I guarantee people thought I nuts. Not my brightest moments.
The next day was Sunday and Anna and I went to the center of Liberia to go shopping for some souvenirs. We purposfully missed her bus so that she could stay another night, and the next day (Monday), she left to return to Puntarenas.
On Wednesday me, my mum, and my sister drove to Monteverde in Puntarenas for some work that my mum had to do there. Monteverde is pretty much a tourist town resided mostly by Germans (a lot of Germans live in Costa Rica). Everybody in Monteverde speaks English. I saw tons of white tourists and hardly any central American looking people. The city is also really high up in the mountains and so it was completely green and beautiful. As I spoke about earlier, it's rainy season, and so it was pouring down. We went souvenir shopping and I got to practice my slowly fading English with the shop teller. ;)

That was last Wednesday and so the weekend that just passed (July 8th), I went to San Jose to see Cirque de Soleil (a famous circus). I'll talk about it in my next post! Teaser: It was amazing.

Still getting my salsa on in my dance classes!!

Thanks so much for reading!!!
Promise to update sometime in the next two weeks!

xoxoxox