Catching up on life in general

School is officially done for the kids in 6 1/2 days...I don't know if they're counting the days more than their teachers are, but everyone knows we're getting close. It has been an eventful month. One of the highlights has included checking blood off the list of students' bodily fluids that I've had to deal with this year. One of the boys got his hand smashed in a door and ended up fracturing two fingers. Luckily his mom was also on campus and she was able to take him to the hospital. Another highlight included successfully completing the big second grade Rivers Presentation. It's become a tradition that the whole second grade shows off what they've learned about rivers at the end of the eight-week unit. I can't say my students were crazy about the idea of dressing up as the "Upper Section" of the river or as a "Riverbank," but they were pretty cute for all of that.

Here is a smattering of pictures from the last month and a half:

Rosa and the family took us on a trip to the nearby private beach of Punta Leona. It got a little cloudy, but was still a fun day. It's not often we see wild macaws, but it does remind us that we are in a Costa Rica!

Puerto Viejo is a small beach town about four hours south of San Jose. It makes a fun weekend trip! A group of us went to Puerto Viejo for a three day weekend and rode bikes up and down the coast to some of the nearby beaches.


During Semana Santa I did a lot of traveling by myself. I had so much fun on the last river rafting trip I did that I decided to do the two-day trip. We stayed at a beautiful little hotel right on the river and got to do a short zip line and hike to a nearby waterfall as well.











After the river rafting I went down to the Ojochal area and stayed in a nice B&B run by a Dutch couple. Aside from being in the middle of nowhere, there was also very little electircity and no internet connection. It made for a fun, if slightly more rustic trip than I had originally imagined as I traveled by myself. However, I also got to do a beautiful snorkeling trip to a nearby island. We saw so much wildlife! During the hour boat ride to the island, we saw turtles, dolphins, and lots of fish. This day definitely made up for any inconveniences in accommodations.

River Rafting on the Pacuare

My housemate Laurie and I decided to go on a river rafting day trip. The Pacuare River is on the Caribbean side of the country so it was fairly humid and warm, even though it was overcast for much of the day. It was such a fun trip that I decided to go on a two-day rafting trip during Easter vacation. Updates on that adventure to follow!

SLOTH!! (and Monteverde)

Well, check goal #1 off of my list. Let’s just stop for a moment and admire this progress: I have officially been in Costa Rica for just over one month and already I have successfully completed my first and second goals. Not bad, if I do say so myself. I guess my next project will be to come up with a few more goals…

Vocabulary phrase of the week:

Pura Vida: literally, it means “pure life.” However, it’s similar to the Australian’s phrase, “no worries.” Saying “pura vida” is appropriate in contexts where you wish to convey sentiments similar to: 1). No problem, don’t worry about it 2). totally awesome and completely cool! 3). well, that’s Costa Rica for you 4). way to be. Basically, there isn’t really a wrong way to use it. I suspect it’s a little more touristy than authentic, but hey: Pura Vida!

In terms of adventures, last weekend was an especially good one! The Westmont group joined with two other Lincoln teachers and we all drove up to Santa Elena, a small town near the Monteverde Cloud Forest. When you picture “rainforest,” this place is it! Santa Elena is a one- main-road town that pretty much just functions as a hub where tourists can sign up for fun things to do in the rainforest.

On Saturday, all of us participated in a charity run/walk for an international school in Santa Elena. It might be interesting at this point to stop here and take a vote to see who thinks I did the run and who thinks I did the walk.

However, that takes up more space and time than any of us can spare for a blog like this.

I’ll be honest: I walked. There is no way I’m a distance runner, especially at that altitude. The walk was lovely. It was fun to see some of the back streets and scruffy forest in the area. I’m especially glad I made the choice I did when I came to this hill. This picture does not do the hill justice. Picture a completely vertical line. Slant it about ten degrees. That is the incline of this hill. It was a killer, even for the walkers!

On Saturday night, three of us signed up for a night hike, which was one of the coolest things I’ve done so far on this trip. Not only did we see four sloths (one of which had a baby!), but we also saw lots of bugs, several birds, a tiny tree frog, two tarantulas that were bigger than my hand, and a poisonous snake in the tree above our heads (it was pretty windy, which didn’t make the situation any more comfortable. One kept imagining the possibilities of falling snakes…). To be honest, seeing all of these animals made me wonder how many were out there, close by us, that we didn’t see.

On Sunday, most of us got up at some unreasonably early hour and took a bus to Monteverde itself so we could be there when the park opened at 7:00. We were pretty much the only people the in the park and we hiked up some great trails. Of course, they call this the cloud forest because the mountains are literally in the clouds. Our goal was to hike the continental divide, and we did. We even saw the sign to prove it. However, our visibility was all of about ten feet. I’m sure the view was lovely; we just couldn’t see any of it. The hike, though, was worth it. We heard a howler monkey at what we thought was fairly close range, and got to spend the entire morning wandering around in the thick jungle. If you’re ever in Costa Rica, I would definitely recommend making a stop in this part of the country!

Goal 2: check, done!

This is Volcan Poas, one of the few active volcanoes in Costa Rica. We got to see it on a completely clear day, which is apparently pretty rare. As stated in my list of goals, we did walk up pretty close to it and hike on the nearby trails. Poas is about a 2 hour bus ride from San Jose and has a big change in elevation. It wasn't exactly cold, but I was glad that I had my jacket with me. We had a picnic at the lake in a nearby crater (picture on the left. The picture on the right also has some sort of lake, but I'm pretty sure it's mostly sulfur :)