These weeks somehow continue to fly by! Wednesday I celebrated my birthday with my friends by going out to dinner. We went to a place called Wok & Noodles a short taxi ride away. It was a cute place and really delicious! Since it was my 21st, I did order a drink called a "Maracuya Colada." Maracuya is Spanish for Passionfruit, and it was a delicious drink! I haven't had much at all to drink even though it's been legal for two and a half months here and for four weeks in Europe just because it hasn't really interested me (or tasted very good to me!) but I had to since it was my 21st! I figure I've been saving money and calories that way too! Anyway, I got Pad Thai to eat and we had a really nice dinner together. My friends paid for me which was so nice! I really scored with the friends I've made here!
On my actual birthday I started the morning early for a volunteer activity with a group of ISA students. We walked Downtown and handed out food, clothes, and blankets to the "habitantes del calle" or homeless people. It was really awesome! I hadn't done a volunteer activity in awhile and I always love volunteering. Everything went great there except for one man who got really angry because he thought we took a picture of him and so he chucked his juice at a guy in my group! No one was hurt but it was certainly a little scary seeing how angry he got! That was the only issue thankfully. After that we rode the bus back and I met my friend, Stephanie, for lunch. We went to the French Cafe I've probably mentioned before and got their yummy pesto chicken sandwiches. She also bought my lunch and she had bought me a Coke Zero too (she knows how much I love coke zero and I don't get it very often at all here!). How nice was that?
After lunch I had my one class that day which I now like to call my "arts and crafts" class. We do a lot of creative activities, group games, and even started class on Thursday by dancing as a sort of "stress management" activity. I'm not complaining! It's a very fun class and I don't mind going to it at all!
I then went home for about 30 minutes and checked on all of the kind birthday messages and emails and posts on social media. I have so many wonderful people in my life!! Then my host parents picked me up and took me over to my host dad's parents house for a small birthday party! It was just more of his family and we had delicious burgers while we chatted and then a delicious tres leches cake complete with candles and singing! It was so nice of them to truly treat me like part of their family. Oh and they bought me a cute shirt for my birthday too! It was also very unique to get a rendition of happy birthday in Spanish this year!
After the party I FaceTimed both Jeremiah and my family. They are all (including Jeremiah) on our annual ski trip to Beaver Creek, Colorado and that was probably the hardest thing to miss out on so far. This trip is something that we all look forward to for so long so not being able to experience that with them (especially when it corresponded with my birthday) was very hard! It was still great to FaceTime though and see everyone enjoying the beautiful hotel and skiing!
My host family plus my host dad's mom and a cousin in the red shirt.
I realized more than ever this year how much I don't need gifts. I was able to volunteer my time and also spend quality time with friends, my host family, and with my actual family via FaceTime and that was more than enough!!
So Friday morning I got packed up and at 12:30 I met my friends at school and we took taxis to the bus station and headed to Montezuma, Costa Rica! Montezuma is on the south end of the peninsula on the west of the country. It was a six hour trek to get there, with a bus, a ferry, and then two more buses. But it went by pretty quickly and we got to watch a beautiful sunset from the ferry! Once we arrived at our hostel we were all starving so we found this delicious Italian restaurant and all ate way too much! I had a homemade Pesto Pasta that was really really good.
Saturday we got breakfast and then hit the beach! If you couldn't tell, the beach is a very popular thing to do here! With a name like Costa Rica though, I suppose that makes sense! It was beautiful of course so we spent quite a few hours there in and out of the water. After that we got gelato as our lunch and then went to find some waterfalls we'd heard about! It was a cool little hike along a river. We didn't even actually make it all the way to the large waterfall because it became rather precarious, but we had some great views along the way and found a place to stop and swim for awhile! After that we then went back to the beach to watch the sunset and got some beautiful views! Then we all showered off and got dinner at a restaurant right off the water! This morning we were up early and on the 6-hour trek back to San Jose!
So I am officially under 2 weeks until heading home! I'm still enjoying it here but am also anxious to get home too!
Pura Vida
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