End of the trip

For the students:
It's only been a day, but I miss you all!

This is the final post that I'll be writing for this blog. I'm so sad to have left Costa Rica, but it always feels good to be back home. Have you all gotten your fill of American food and comforts? I know I was glad to sleep in my own bed, take a nice hot shower (and feel dry afterwards), and eat my own food. Being in a foreign country always makes me appreciate what I have so much more - I hope you felt that way too!

For the parents (and other followers of the blog):

Here we go - the last post. I promise it won't be long because we didn't do too much.

1) Our last night in Samara, the teachers took the kids out to a discotheque to give them a little taste of what latino dancing and entertainment is like. We went to a little place called Tutti Frutti but we got there too early. Obviously, if you're going out on a Saturday night, you don't leave until 11:00 at night. So we basically had the place to ourselves with a few latinos who danced with us. It was a good experience and we had fun dancing the night away to some merengue, salsa, cumbia and, of course, good ol' American music.
2) We got up pretty early in the morning to leave for Arenal and of course...it was raining. Inevitable. (Sidenote - I was so distressed to see the rain today. I thought we had left it in Costa Rica, but it seems to have followed us!) We waited quite a while as the bus driver loaded all of our bags on the top of the bus and covered them with a tarp, but then we were off! It took us about 5 hours to get there with a stop for a snack and most people slept since they were up late the night before. When we got to La Fortuna, the town closest to the volcano Arenal, we checked into our hotel. It was a little hostel/hotel that only had 10 rooms and we took up most of the hotel, but were the only ones there.
3)We got ready to go and eat because we were hungry! We ate lunch and looked around the town. We were going to do a river swing, which is basically a rope tied to a tree that you can swing out and drop into the river, but because of all the rain, it was too dangerous. Our guides told us there was the possibility of a mudslide and the current was too strong. This was fine with me (and I think most people) because that meant more time at the hot springs! (By the way, our guides were great - they told us a lot about Costa Rica on our drive there and back)
4) BALDI!!! This was the name of the hot springs resort we went to and it was AMAZING! 26 hot spring pools all of varying temperatures ranging from 67-113 degrees. All natural hot springs, though the pool sides and the tubing was all man made. It was gorgeous and relaxing and a wonderful way to end the trip. I don't know what else to say about it except that it exceeded my expectations and was the most wonderfully relaxing place. It also had 3 crazy water slides that we tried out and at the end of the night we all got to eat a huge buffet. Que rico!!! Pura Vida.
5) That night, we though it would be an easy night, but of course, nothing can be super easy right? We had fights with cucarachas, mice, and bats and won them all, though we didn't sleep much. That was all right since we were going to be traveling quite a bit the next day.
6) Good bye Costa Rica - We had to travel 4 hours to get to the airport, so it was another early morning. This morning, though, it was not raining. It was a beautiful day. We got to see Arenal and were lucky to see it because it isn't always clear enough to see (it's usually cloudy and foggy). We arrived at the rinky dink airport (seriously - tin roof, open on all sides, 2 boarding areas, one restaurant, board from the tarmac) and had to wait in the heat for a while. Thankfully the payment of the airport tax and getting our boarding passes didn't take too long. It was only then that we realized that our flight from Atlanta to MSP had changed. This was good though because I don't think we could have made our flight with all of our bags if we had been on the earlier one.
7) We flew. We ate delicious American food in Atlanta. We flew home. We made it safely back with all of our bags. Thanks be to God for a wonderful trip, a great learning experience, and for protecting us through it all!

Blessings on the rest of your summer!

P.S. - I have put all of the pictures up on Facebook and since there were so many I had to make 2 more photo albums! Here are the links to the two new albums:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.522945157512.2017798.96100057&l=acfe623f3c&type=1
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.522956345092.2017805.96100057&l=7cf3adb079&type=1