The ladybug goes to school

Hello!

The ladybug has now officially started school in Costa Rica! Well…sort of. We aren’t technically in school, but we are still getting credit for exploring Costa Rica! Everyday is packed with trips and activities that will teach us about the economics and inner workings of the coffee production continuum. Fun stuff. But first, back to where I was last time.

Merel, Marina, and I were staying at the hostel in Panama. That night we had a fun time at the La Iguana bar, which is run by the same Rasta boys who owned our hostel. The bar played amazing Reggae music and was jam packed with young people dancing. After that everyone moved to another bar that made me feel like I was on a pirate ship. Everyone was dancing on this dock and if you looked over the edge you could see tons of little fishes and rusty ship parts. Michelle and Melissa (Michelle is Mexican and Melissa is Colombian) who are from my group danced the most since the music here was salsa and meringue. They were twirling and kicking incredibly fast, too fast for me to keep up.

The next day it was raining in the morning so unfortunately our grand plans of snorkeling and dolphin seeing were thwarted. However, Merel, Marina, and I did take a 40 minute bus ride to part of the Island to an AMAZING beach. Drago Beach is one of the postcard perfect places of palm trees and white sand and clear green water. There is this restaurant right there that serves fresh seafood which was so delicious. We lazed in hammocks and watched the waves while drinking ice teas. Afterwards we headed back to the hostel where we played cards and read a little bit before heading back out to the bars. I only stayed for a little bit though, because I wanted to catch up on sleep before making the long trek back to San Jose.

The next morning we left for San Jose at 7am. We caught a boat from Bocas to Changuola, which lasted about an hour. It was really neat to ride the boat this morning, because it went through some areas of mangroves and jungle. I even saw a few pink pelicans, and Silverio saw a monkey. From Changuola we took a bus (by the way, remember that all of the buses here are minivans that are supposed to hold 10 but almost always hold 15), to the border again. We walked over the bridge again into Sixaola where we waited until the bus to San Jose came. Melissa got really sick because it was getting really hot waiting around. We get on the bus and realize that this trip was just going down hill. Although the bus looked nice from the outside (it was a Mercedes), on the inside it was really beat up and smelled awful because of the insect fumigation that occurs at the bridge. The bus was really hot and after about an hour and a half of driving, something happened to the motor and we got stuck in the middle of nowhere, Costa Rica, waiting for the mechanics to fix it. About an hour of standing in this unbearable heat and humidity we started off again towards San Jose, and by the time we had reached San Jose we had been riding the bus for 5 hours. Sweaty and tired we managed to grab a taxi to Heredia, where we met up with the group again.

So now where are we….last night. Last night, we met our host families! Mine is pretty cool, I thought there were going to be kids my age but I guess the information is wrong because there is only one son and he is 12. When I got there my host family’s family was hanging out and boy are there a lot of them. My host mom’s 5 sisters and their kids were all there talking loudly over each other in a small space. Their kids are ages 3 to 5 and they are certainly spunky. The kids were all laughing at me because I couldn’t understand anything that they were saying. After I washed up I gave my host family the gift I brought, and they really liked it. I brought a large circular tile (about a foot in diameter) that an artist in Sequim painted and sculpted into a nighttime scene of the Olympic Mountains and a moon. I also brought a little picture book of Washington to compare the tile to. They seemed to really like it. After dinner, we went over to another host house where a girl, Rose, is staying. Her host mom is best friends with my host mom so we chatted and stayed for a while. It was nice because I think my host mom is uncomfortable around me since she doesn’t speak English and I can’t speak Spanish.

Today the group got oriented to the Spanish-English school that is our base. We had a scavenger hunt activity that took us all around Heredia, and it was fun discovering neat things about the place.

Okay, time to get off the internet. More to come soon!

Love,
Ceci