BACK IN THE USA

BACK IN THE US! 

Obviously.. 

Feb 7th 2013 marked the beginning of my 5 month journey. It's been an entire year since then.

I've been back in the US for around the last 7 months. New faces and places have greeted me since my return.. More experiences that I can share, and hopefully a grounding for a constant blog will be made. Let's recap...

My last week in Costa Rica, as I remember, was a whirlwind of smiles and tears. It was filled with goodbyes and last adventures in the country that had become yet another home. I'm still in contact with my host family, it's bitter sweet to read the regular emails. A sweet remembrance and  recognition of the life I made in CR, yet not being in Costa Rica and not having the capability to touch the wondrous surroundings and see their faces is saddening...

Arriving back in Arizona, I went to California for a writing camp at Stanford. Expanding my horizons in poetry and speech, I also met 5 girls who I consider some rockin spirits... It's incredible the strong relationships that can be built within 2 weeks, such a short amount of time. When telling friends about my CR experience, I found that my going abroad for 5 months at a tender age of 16 was extremely surprising to them. It's hilarious the responses I get, from a laugh of disbelief to a full round squeak of excitement, which branches into a sometimes simple, sometimes complex questionnaire. Whilst answering these questions, I actually find myself in disbelief that I did it. It all seems like a dream. 5 months that developed my mind, my self-esteem and my perception of others; An acceptance and understanding of who I was, who I am, and who I want to be. Deep, I know..

Anyhow, the writing camp was stellar, expanding my poetic devices as well as my songwriting.
When I returned to Arizona, I had one week left until the move to California. You may be thinking.. what?! Didn't you just get back from California? You're moving? Just after getting back from Costa Rica? We both wanted a change from the Arizona setting. Despite the great loss of close extended-family, we would have both my brothers in California. Scottsdale Preparatory was full of people I loved also... the goodbye was painful, leaving a group of girls I still miss.
 The move was previously planned before I left for Costa Rica.. Whilst I was overseas, my mum worked to sell the house and pack up our belongings, taking several trips to California to look at schools etc etc... So, leaving the dreaded August AZ heat where you feel like you've stuck your head in an oven when you go outside, wasn't hard. We made our way to the "sunny-state" with two spilling-at-the-rims-full pods of belongings following us. No house to go to, no concrete plans made, just two ladies in a Prius. [Plus my brothers who both helped tremendously along the way]. Two cities to look at: LA (close to my older brother, Barnaby, at Occidental) and San Francisco (close to my second-to-oldest brother, Dylan, at St. Mary's).

The first stop was LA. I fell in love with the beach as I knew I would. On the contrast, my mum was keen on moving on up to San Francisco because of the widespread of jobs available as well as the "good feeling" that was known to be in the Bay Area. Skipping all the gory details of arguments and petty complaints (mostly from me), we settled in a house in Menlo Park, near Silicon Valley, in the Bay Area. San Francisco, home of fogs, was now our go-to city instead of the heat-infested Phoenix.

Fast-forward... I just entered my second semester at Summit Preparatory High School, a charter school really close to my house... It's alright. The people are fantastic (mostly;) yet I don't find the environment full of sanguinity; I find my cheerful surroundings while working out now-a-days... rowing for a crew team. I joined when I started at Summit, beginning of junior year, and it's been a fuse of pain, laughs... pain and more pain. I'm no masochist; the intense 5ks that my coach has us do every weds are dreaded. Yet the unity that I have found among my teammates and I has been something to treasure. Not only this, but my coach is brilliant. A true nerd at heart (grad from Cornell in computer science), awkward in so many different ways, and he is absolutely incredible.
Crew is a enormous commitment, taking up to 2.5 hours on 4 of the 5 school days, plus Saturday 3 hour practices and Sunday races. Junior year has been overwhelming to say the least...

I'm still writing songs here and there and I plan to join a local center for the arts.. The practice I get is mostly when my brother, Dylan, visits and we sit down and have a jam session with his uke or guitar. Times like those, I cherish..

Song of the week: Buuuudapest - George Ezra, in honor of his gorgeous face
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiEMLOk9BwU

until next time


PS. s/o to the first Myers to get married #strittmaterwedding #beautifulpeople

check out the costa rica full album:
https://www.facebook.com/clionaaudsley/media_set?set=a.10200169921307433.189015.1133426356&type=3
Insta: clionaaudsley

Cirque de Soleil, Host Gradpaps Birthday, Orientation, & Jaco

1 Week Until I'm Back in the US

Really rough update....

Unbelievable. In one week, I'll be getting on a plane to go back to the US. It's crazy how fast this trip has gone. I've learnt so much and experienced many things that I will treasure for the rest of my life.

The weekend before the last, my family and I went to San Jose. We went primarily to go see Cirque de Soleil which was in Alajuela, around a 45 minute drive from my aunt's house in San Jose. We left on the Saturday at 5 in the morning and got there at around 8. My sister had a psychologist appointment and so that was our first stop. After, we made our way to my host aunt's house. It's huge. They live in one of the nicest neighborhoods in San Jose (with a gate, a view of San Jose, and a private park). It's easily the nicest house I've been to in Costa Rica, and the biggest too.

I had the whole day until the circus so I met up with my host cousin's (Sofia) best friend who is my age. We went down to the University where Sofia was and hung around San Jose with her and her friends. We went to this place called Casa de Manga, the heaven for nerds. I mean no offense when I say that... it's actually a pretty sick place. There were tons of comics and famous things from Japan and while eating, I got to watch my first ever Superman cartoon in Spanish. Epic.

After, we went shopping (which consisted mainly of visiting stores with lord of the rings, Star Wars things in them- not my forte) in one of the many big malls in San Jose. To go hardcore shopping in Costa Rica, San Jose is really the only place you're able to do it. In Liberia there are stores but not nearly as many as in San Jose. Also, in the whole province of Guanacaste, there's only one cinema and its in Liberia. Weird, right? In the US, there's one in every town and going to the movies is such an easy thing to do. Here, you plan weeks in advance to go as it's a big trip. 

Anyway, we made our way back to my host aunt's house eventually to get ready to go to the circus. Cirque de Soliel is a well known circus and it has toured all over the world. It was an incredible show: nerve-wracking, funny, and surprising. I'll tell you about one of the acts I saw.
Here's a video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PxM2uZmDs0E
It's kind of long, so I'd skip to the middle.
This act is called Silks and it doesn't look all that challenging at first. All you're doing is climbing up two thick pieces of cloth, and doing some twirly moves at the top, right? Well, no. For one thing, those long strips of silk are elastic, making them extremely difficult to climb and work with. Second, in true Cirque style, it's not enough to do pretty things very high up in the air. They've also gotta engage in long plummeting moves that leave their noses inches away from the floor.
So bloody exciting. There were a lot of other acts that were even more dangerous than Silks but they're terribly hard to explain. So I'm just gonna say, go see Cirque du Soleil! It's fantastic!
That night, we slept in my host aunt's house and then on Sunday, we went to another mall in San Jose. I got to learn how everything is so much more expensive over here! It's horrible. I kept finding things then putting them back because I knew I could buy it for much cheaper in the US. 

The next weekend was my host grandpa's birthday. My family held a huge party for him with a band, dancing, drinking, and tons of food. I got to practice my dancing skills with my host cousins and got to experience my first ever Tico family party. It was fantastic... Extremely loud, but still brilliant. We danced around with bandoes and even though I really don't understand why we did, it made the party more fun. 

The next weekend, I went to San Jose for an orientation. The great fact is, that this orientation was planned to be fun for us and not a weekend full of pointless lectures. It was the "End of your stay orientation" and so all the 5 month students came. 

So, I had to go to San Jose a day early as I live very far away and everybody who went early with me was German, Austrian, and Swiss (all speak a form of German). This is absolutely no problem, they're genuinally great people, but I really had no one to talk to. My German skills consist of saying "hi my name is Cliona" and nothing much else. It was great listening to them speak though; I tested myself in their language to see if I could understand anything. German is very similar to English, it's just the grammatical things that are so much more difficult in German (as well as different words and a harsher accent;).

 I also found that laughter is, in fact, contagious... I had no idea what the hell these girls were saying, but when they burst out into laughter, I found myself smiling or laughing along like a complete and utter idiot. I have no doubt they think I was laughing at them when in fact I was trying to laugh with them; I couldn't help it.
The next day, all the people with English as their first language came so I could relax my brain a little. AFS (my exchange program) presented us with situations that we might come back to in the US with our friends and family... I basically found out that it might be a little frustrating coming back with all these new stories under my belt, wanting to share them, unaware that not everyone wants to hear them. Hahaha... 

The next day, Saturday, we drove down to Punta Leona, a beach in Puntarenas. We stayed in the resort there for the weekend, without a curfew (??!!!!! :O). But that was pretty much all the freedom we got. It was a lot of fun seeing everyone though, hearing about their experiences. What I found the most interesting was the fact that a lot more Americans or Austrailians don't mind returning back home next Monday while most of the Germans or Australians don't want to leave. I believe the differences in our home countries is incredibly significant in whether or not you want to stay. I think I'm ready to return home, no matter how much I'd love to be with my host family a little longer. I miss my family, friends, and life.

 I spoke to a German girl and she said she has to go back to a life a lot different than the one in Costa Rica. It's a ton more strict in Germany, which I get, but I'm ready to get back into doing things instead of living the chillaxed Tico life. The Costa Rican culture is a lot different to the one in the US but I think it's even more different in comparison to Germany's culture. I don't really know the specific details as I have never been to Germany. 

 On Sunday, we drove back to San Jose where we each made our ways to our different cities.

This week, I decided to take another trip to Jaco with Anna C (the same girl as always). My  host mum had work there on Wednesday so she drove us down. On Thursday, we went and got surfing lessons which resulted in me having tons of bruises all over my body and one huge one on the side of my head. Both Anna and I had bad experiences with the surf boards; She practically got flipped over by a wave whilst on the board, and I got smacked on the side of my head with mine. Jaco is known for it's rough waves and a lot of deaths have occured over the years due to the rip tides. (Don't worry mum, I'm alive)...
I returned to Liberia on Friday and then yesterday, I went to San Jose for my host sister's psychologist appointment. I got to see Cartago (very green and cold, but beautiful), then we returned to Liberia today.
I'm not sure what I'll be doing for my last week here, but I promise to update soon! Maybe when I'm back in the US. :o

Thanks for reading!

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