Lazy Weekend

The weather has been getting warmer and warmer, stickier and stickier here. Apparently it has been the hottest summer on record (for as long as anybody can remember, because they don't seem to keep those statistics here). Saturday, we had some plans to take a bus up the mountain (which costs about $.60) to see the view from the top. What we ended up doing was crashing in the living room watching TV and napping. Any sort of movement brought about a new wave of sweat which took a full half hour to relieve, so we didn't feel too guilty about being lazy. To top it all off, our barrio (neighborhood) was set to have no water and no electricity from 8am-6pm that day. The night before we filled up tubs and tubs of water to use for the toilets, dishes, and anything else in case the water didn't come back on. Thankfully the water was only out from 8am to noon and the electricity stayed on all day.

Friday night, we went to see a movie, "Have you heard about the Morgans?" Movies here are very inexpensive...right around $4.00. However, we have to count in the taxi to and from the movies which is about $2 a person each way, so they end up similar to what they are at home.

Saturday night, we had tickets to the middle school/high school play at the Country Day School. As faculty, we were admitted for the student price of 2000 colones which is about $4.00. The show started at 7:30 and was held in the "cafetorium" (cafeteria/auditorium combo). Let's just say it was not quite "Untiet quality!" It was fun and neat to see students outside of class. The premise of the play was basically a remake of American Idol, so it was more of a talent show than a play. There were excellent singers, dancers, and musicians (though none as excellent as my little sister!). There were supposed to be mimes too, but one of them went to Guatemala for the weekend. ??!! The piano player in the show is a high school student. She misses every Friday of school to practice and apparently she practices all day Friday, Saturday and Sunday. She was a fantastic musician, but we all hope that the piano is something she really loves and isn't forced to do.

Oky was married until about 3 years ago. Since then and until we arrived, she worked in a wedding dress shop and used to be a little crafty on the side. As a hobby, she makes and sells animal bookmarks. She decided to give some to us girls. There were lots of animals to choose from, but I'm sure you can guess which one I chose! See the comparison?

Love you all!!

A random collection of notes...

- Today Bethany, our roommate and the first student Oky ever had live with her (she arrived in January), left to head home to Ohio. She finished up her student teaching on Wednesday and heads home to graduate. It was so bittersweet to see her go. We were excited for her to be done with college and go home to her family and fiance, but it was sad to see a fifth of our little Costa Rican family leave. It will be strange without her here! We celebrated her going-away by going out to eat last night at the Inka Grill, a Peruvian restaurant in Escazu. It was delicious! (and quite expensive, but definitely worth it). This is a picture of Oky (in the middle), Oky's daughter and husband (Gigi and David - on each end), and us girls (Bethany is to the right of Oky). It was a fun night! Today we got to take a little break from school to go with Bethany to the airport. It was great to see her off and we're all praying she arrives home safely!

- Earlier last week we had a professional development half-day at school. The students left at noon and the teachers' meetings went from 1:00-4:30. During the noon hour, students' parents had a pot-luck style meal for the teachers! There was everything from salads to lasagnas, fresh fruit to delictable desserts. And I can say that this was the first pot-luck I've been to (and I've been to my share!) that has had sushi!! Several of the parents own various ethnic restaurants in the area, so I'm assuming it was their contribution to the meal. Not only was there amazing food, but each teacher was presented with flowers as well! (Only grade level teachers...apparently teaching them English isn't all that important... :P)

- This past week was Art Week and Thursday was Earth Day. The school celebrated with art pieces all over the school. Each class decorated their door and on Thursday we had a Green Parade put on by the preschool and kindergarten classes. They held up whiteboard signs (not paper signs which would have been wasteful) about saving the Earth and recycling and wore sashes made of recycled products. This picture shows some of the art displayed at the school. See how open the hallways are? Crazy!

- Throughout the past two weeks, us girls have escorted three Gary-wanna-be's from our house. (If you're not sure who Gary is, you should read earlier blog posts...he's our local live-in gecko) These Gary impersonators were found eerily close to my roommate's rooms or even inside their room in one instance; however, using the technical shopping bag/shoe box approach, each was delicately placed outside to roam free. While using this approach, we did discover, unfortunately, that geckos are able to jump at least six inches high (which appears to be the standard height for a shoebox). Their presence in the house is appreciated because of their menu choice, but they run SOOO fast that they quickly give off an ominous vibe, even though they're only a 2-3 inches long.

Because the rainy season is quickly approaching, the bicho (bug in Spanish) group in our home is growing. We've had several "May bugs" as Oky calls them, which have the diameter of a quarter and fly really fast. They make the noise of a herd of mosquitoes and are very attracted to light (or so we have learned). Within one 10 minute block, we (Oky) killed 6 of them in our living room as each one divebombed my roommate and I watching TV. From now on, we're suffering through the heat with the windows closed!

Don't be alarmed...I can still hear the real Gary in the patio by my room each night screaming/laughing just to let me know he's still there eating bugs. Which I appreciate more than I can tell him.

And last, but not least...

Geoff and I are homeowners!! The picture below is our new house in Waterloo, Iowa, that we closed on April 20. (Actually Geoff was the only one at the closing and he had to sign my name for me, but nonetheless...) Both of our moms (who are AWESOME, by the way!) not only drove the three hours from Spencer to see the house, but stayed for a few days to help clean it and pack up our things! THANK YOU MOMS!!!! I can't tell you how appreciative we are for all your help!

Just one month until I'm home again. It's amazing how time flies. I hope you are all enjoying the spring and the close of winter. I look forward to seeing you soon! Love you!

Puerto Viejo - A weekend on the Carribbean coast!

Friday afternoon, all five student teachers from the Country Day School (my three roommates, one other student teacher, and myself) left school in the middle of a downpour to make it just in time to the San Jose bus station for our 4:00 bus to Puerto Viejo. The bus was a large modern-ish Gray Hound, but without bathrooms and air conditioning. (Reminder: This is summer in a Central American country...That means it's warm!) I was lucky enough to sit by myself in a seat with nobody next to me, so I scooted to the window which allowed the air to blow right on my face the whole drive.

The drive was pretty pleasant for the most part. We drove through a cloudy rainforest before it got dark, which was beautiful! I was happy to have Kim's ipod to listen to some music too. The four hours went pretty quickly, though rationing water in the heat was quite a pain. The roads were in much better shape than I anticipated; however, the bus stalled 3-4 times and had a hard time restarting each time. We finally arrived in Puerto Viejo around 7:30, where we found a taxi to take us to our hotel, La Costa de Papito.

While at La Costa we stayed in a bungalow, where we had our own porch (complete with a large wooden table and chairs and a hammock), three beds and one bunk bed with blue zebra print sheets and mosquito nets, and a bathroom which had a border around the top open to outside. This was not my favorite part of the room, mostly because the toilet was black. Who would have known if something had crawled in there during the night?! We kept the lid shut and the door closed to the main room, but that would have been one major change I would have made!! Thankfully there were ceiling fans to help (albeit very little) cool things down. We stopped in the hotel dining room for supper and to catch up on all the water we couldn't drink on the bus because of the lack of bathroom.

Saturday morning we had breakfast at the hotel (rice and beans, pancakes, fresh fruit, coffee, and juice) and headed in to town. We had to get our bus tickets to come home and did a little looking in the shops. The rest of the morning, we spent on the beach. I've never felt such heat! I reapplied my SPF 50 sunscreen four or five times throughout our two hours. The beach was gorgeous. There are no hotels on most of Costa Rican beaches, so the background to the beach is all natural and untouched by human hands. It really reminds me of Jurassic Park, the way the trees are so thick and green. For lunch, we went back to the hotel and crashed for a few hours. The sun wiped us out! Around 2:00, we went back and stayed until sunset. It was so much more comfortable then! We watched some crabs and even saw a wild horse run by! We didn't do much actual swimming because of some strong rip tides (plus, you know me and fish...we DONT mix!) but we did a lot of wading in the water which was a stunning clear blue-green.

After a refreshing shower, we went back to the restaurant for supper. By this point, we were all low on cash and using any sort of card charged an extra 16%, so we continued to eat off the appetizer menu like we did for the two previous meals. Sunday morning found us back on the beach admiring God's creation for a few minutes before taking a taxi back to the town to catch our bus. After some confusion with our tickets (we needed to upgrade them because the main road was shut down ? [we still don't understand it all!]), we found the bus stop and waited in the shade under the hottest tent I've ever felt in my life. In fact, I found myself desiring to be out in to the sun just to be able to feel the breeze.

The 9:00 bus finally left the bus stop at 9:30 and we began our six hour trip home. You might be thinking 'Wait, the trip to Puerto Viejo only took 4 hours.' I was thinking the same, no worries. Just like the trip here, we rationed our water, not knowing if there would be any rest stops. Well, we ended up stopping more often than the first trip. We had two 15-minute breaks and then picked up various people along the road.

We also had a stop at a police barricade where we were all escorted off the bus. As the wise travelers we are, we brought our bags with us. [Make sure to do this when you travel! The girls in front of us didn't do this at any of the stops...Reminder: Saving your seats are not as important as your stuff!] Anyways, they asked the passengers to get out passports so they could be examined. Well, four of us had copies of our passports, but nobody had the actual passport. Sam didn't even have a copy of it. To add to matters, Costa Rica only allows tourists to stay for 90 days without a visa and three of our five girls are here past their 90 days. Thankfully, by only having the copy of the passports, the police officer was unable to see that the girls were here after their 90 days and allowed us all through (including Sam with just her driver's license).

All in all, it was a quick awesome weekend!

Poas Volcano

Here's the first picture of Oky and the four student teachers who are living here. Me and Sam, both from UNI, are on her right while Bethany and Kristen, both from different schools in Ohio, are on her left.

This weekend Oky took her four daughters to see the Poas Volcano. We left Escazu on Saturday morning around 10:00 after a HUGE breakfast. The breakfasts here are so big, that we all struggle to get even close to finishing each day. A typical breakfast would include:

- bowl of cereal with milk (which is the only thing I would eat at home)

- one egg scrambled or fried

- 2 large (when I say large here, I am referring to the size of a hoagie bun but a little bit bigger and hard like French bread) pieces of toast with blackberry, strawberry or my favorite, pineapple jelly

- a glass of juice (occassionally fresh pineapple, sometimes Sunny D)
- a mug of tea or coffee

This is a very typical breakfast, but at least 2 times a week the cereal changes to gallo pinto (rice and beans), french toast filled with guava jam, cheese-filled mini pita pockets, sweet potato pancakes, etc. All in all, it's pretty delicious, but so much food!

Anyways, the drive to the volcano was only 40-some kilometers, but we got a little lost several times and the roads were very curvy and mountainy. It was sunny in San Jose, but as we got closer to the volcano the clouds appeared and it began to rain. Unfortunately as we got to the National Park entrance line, the worker informed us that there was absolutely no view of the volcano that day. With a $5-10 entrance fee per foreigner, we decided it wasn't quite worth it to look at a cloud.

Instead we visited some souvenir shops and ate lunch at a pretty awesome restaurant. We all had casados which are typical Costa Rica lunches. They're only about 2200 colones which is less than $5 and they come with beans, rice, vegetables, plantains, tortillas and a salad. Here's a view of the restaurant:



After lunch, we tried the volcano again and saw this:

Instead of this:

so we went home. Even though we weren't able to see much, if anything, we still had a good time being all together. Hopefully we'll be able to go back when the weather is nicer!

the Last Semana Santa pictures...

I almost forgot to share these photos with you! They are the last ones from my Semana Santa spring break trip. The first one shows how rainy/sunny it was in Monteverde, the rainforest area. There was a beautiful rainbow over the valley and this was our view from the bed & breakfast we stayed at. Gorgeous, isn't it?!

The next couple pictures are the landscape from Monteverde to San Jose. It was constantly changing just in the few hour drive. Again, it was so beautiful!

The last pictures are of some monkeys and parrots that we ran into at a rest stop where we switched buses. It was definitely the first time I've ever seen these animals in the wild, which was pretty cool!

Our internet hasn't been working, so I apologize for my delay in posting these pictures. Hopefully I can keep you updated better from here on out!

Hanging Bridges/Butterfly Garden - Monteverde

Our final stop in Monteverde, after the ziplining excursion, was the rainforest itself and the butterfly garden. The tour company we were with had some wonderful paths created through the rainforest floor. We were able to see a little bit of wildlife, including the following photo: (KIM BEWARE!!) The second photo is much safer. I'm not sure what kind of a plant it is, but it's pretty cool!

One feature the area had to offer were hanging suspension bridges. They moved a little as you walked on them and had an amazing view of the rainforest. There were about 8 different bridges and some were over 5000 feet off the rainforest floor but still hadn't broken the top of the canopy. The following views are taken from various bridges. Some were on top and some were more in the middle, but from all of them, literally all you could see was green.

Right before we left, we got to see the butterfly garden. #1: there were pink bananas growing! Our guide told us that they aren't edible, but I still think they're pretty interesting to see. #2: The building is the largest butterfly garden in Central America. #3: There were all stages of butterflies and this picture shows the locked shelf full of caccoons. What a sight!

All in all, it was a fantastic Semana Santa. We had an awesome trip and came home early on Thursday morning on the same type of van that took us to Arenal on Saturday. The rest of the weekend was spent with our other housemates and Oky. We spent some time at the Costa Rica Country Club, where she's a member, went out to eat and got to spend Easter morning at church. This week is a little tough, coming straight from a full week off. Even the kids are a little bit out of it this week, but overall it's going really well!

Hope you are all enjoying the warmer Iowa weather I've heard about!

Love in Christ,

Molly

Canopy Tours / Ziplining - Monteverde

Our final day of Semana Santa was Wednesday of last week. Our adventure of the day was an excursion with the Selvatura Tour Company. The company picked us up from our bed & breakfast around 8:30 and drove us into the depths of the rainforest. It was sunny with blue skies at our hotel but cloudy and raining within a few minutes as we reached the forest. All you could see in every direction was green life. Trees, vines, ferns, leaves, bushes, etc. All green.

We started the morning with ziplining! One of the all-time favorite activities to do in Costa Rica. We were strapped up to a (very thick) wire (trust me, I checked it over!) and sent sailing through the top canopy part of the Monteverde Cloud Forest. There were 15 different cables and one trip was as long as 1 kilometer! Multiple times the clouds were so thick that we couldn't see the end of the cable as we were sailing into it! (This became a little bit of a problem with my glasses as the water droplets filled it up, but I could still see enough for it to be fabulous!)

The following pictures are some snapshots into the adventure. The first two Kristen snapped of me as I was landing. The last one I took of someone else on the zipline as we were exploring the rainforest, but it shows the the extreme height of the cables! Quite the exciting adventure!!

After we finished the 15 cables, they had an optional extreme Tarzan swing. Do you think I'd say 'no?' Of course not! I have to tell you a secret though...it was a little scary!! The worst part was the beginning because it started with a a total free fall before the ropes caught you and pulled you to out to the swing. That big tree on the right is the one supporting the swing. I was praying for it to continue being strong while I was swinging on it! The picture below is me swinging out yelling my best "Tarzan" yell and the video after that (if it works) is one I took of Kristen. If you listen closely at the beginning, you'll hear her yell "Are you serious!?"

El Trapiche - Monteverde

After visiting La Fortuna and the Arenal Volcano, we traveled via a jeep, a boat, and then another jeep across a man-made lake (which has nothing on Okoboji) and over the bumpiest road I have EVER been on. Imagine the worst Iowa gravel road you can think of and take that bumpiness times 40. We literally went 10 kph at several points of the trip to be able to navigate the crater and boulder filled roads. Of our 2 hour drive, approximately 10 feet were paved. These 10 feet were pretty dangerous as it was a curve on a very steep part of the road. Needless to say, I was happy that part was paved.





As I'm sure you guessed, we made it safely to our destination, Monteverde. Monteverde (which means Green Mount) is on the edge of the Monteverde and Santa Elena Cloud Forests. Cloud forests and rainforests are pretty much the same thing to the average citizen. They only differ by amounts of rain, types of vegetation, and altitude. Here we stayed at a B&B for two nights which was definitely lacking in comparison with our previous hotel. Our first afternoon (Tuesday), we visited a sugar cane/coffee plantation. It was a really fascinating tour. These pictures below are the sugar cane plants from start to finish.





The plants look a lot like bamboo, but taste just like sugar but with the texture of celery. The middle picture shows how they use oxen to squish the plants to force the sugary juice out. Next the juice is heated in a big pot and finally, you can see Kristen making a sugar cane candy out of the juice. It was so sweet that we couldn't eat much, but it was really tasty!

The pictures below are of the coffee portion. We saw baby coffee plants, big coffee plants, coffee beans before and after drying and washing them, coffee beans being roasted, and finally got to taste the finished product. With a heavy hand of cream and sugar, I actually liked the coffee! Poco a poco (little by little) I've tried it more and more and I'm growing to like it. Costa Rica coffee is known world wide for its amazing quality. This is true because, as we learned on our tour, it is illegal to leave the country with any coffee except the premium. The Costa Rica government knows that because of the limited land size, they can't compete with the other countries on quantity of coffee exported, so they compete with the quality. Costa Rica citizens drink the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade coffee and the 1st grade and premium coffee are exported around the world.

Hope you all had a fantastic Easter! I was able to attend the International Baptist Church this morning and it was an amazing service. The pastor spoke of Jesus' resurrection and the way our belief in Him should impact our daily lives, not just allowing us a place to spend eternity. It felt so good to be in a place where so many Christians are together from so many different backgrounds. He is Risen!

Con amor, (with love)

Molly