but it wasn't. We woke up this morning to sun, sun and more sun. It was beautiful this morning. The first group went on their canopy tour (more on that later) and had a great time. The second group went and about halfway through it started pouring. It has been raining since about 11:30 this morning and hasn't let up. The electricity went out for a few hoursand the streets again are rivers. But thankfully, the electricity is back on and the Internet is working and we are nice and cozy dry inside Froggy's - our favorite cybercafe run by CREAR.
Oh! One other thing - I was having such troubles uploading photos that I deleted the slideshow up top. I am currently uploading photos to Facebook which is SO much faster and easier. If you want photos not from facebook, I will be putting all the pictures onto a CD if you want to use the CD to print some photos off. The link to the Facebook album is: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.522873516082.2017760.96100057&l=8636a36e40
All right - on to the good stuff. Since it's been a while since I've written, this is going to be a long post. Happy reading!
1) Macho men - During the "grill" bonfire, two of our macho Erics carried a large suitcase all the way from a girl's house to the school because she had locked her keys inside. They carried it almost 2 km and arrived soaking wet. They told us, "This is NOT water." After less than a minute, the guard at the school had sawed off the lock and we all did a little dance.
2) The next morning we got up early to go kayaking. We got to the school only to realize...
3) Our luggage had arrived!!! It arrived not long after we had left the night before after the bonfire. The girls were ecstatic to have their clean clothes and not wear dirty ones.
4) We started out kayaking, but it wasn't what we expected. The sea was much stronger than anticipated and a few of us flipped the kayaks as we launched. We eventually all made it to the check point, but waiting for everyone and bobbing up and down in the waves made some a little seasick. We did have one kayak turn back because it was too much, but the rest felt a little better once we got moving and especially when we got to the island.
5) We made it to a beautiful little island where we got to drink fresh water and rest for a bit. We got to explore the island and found a colony of hermit crabs (I seriously have never seen so many!) and went exploring around the bend. We climbed up and down rocks so many times, many of us rubbed our feet almost raw, but it was worth the beautiful views and sense of adventure.
6) We came back to our "camp" to find that our guides had brought us bananas and fresh pineapple from the mainland. Delicious! We went swimming in the undulating ocean before kayaking back to shore. We didn't go back to our launch point (Thankfully - that would have been a long, tiring paddle back) but they took us back to the school in vans. One was a party van, the other was the "silence" van. :)
7) The morning was beautiful for kayaking, but like every other day, we couldn't have the whole day sunny. It rained in the afternoon which was ok since we were just in class.
8) That night we all headed to go play some futbol! We had to walk about 2 km to the 5 v. 5 field, but we had a blast! We split up into 3 teams and played a little round robin for an hour. The Ticos had fun watching us and our "gringo" antics. After that, 5 of us got to play another hour against people at the school and most of the others stayed to watch and cheer them on.
9) The next morning was...rain. How did you guess? Good thing it was just classes in the morning. But then we realized that the Internet was down. And we couldn't do part of our activity for the afternoon. And that the rain was part of a Tropical Storm. (Or a low pressure system. It's hard to understand the weather here.)
10) Even though we couldn't do part of the activity, we realized that it was a blessing in disguise. This meant that EVERYONE got to work with the underprivileged children of Samara. We were going to help them make papier-mache maracas, but they hadn't dried from 4 days ago, so we went to plan B. We helped them make tissue paper scenes. The ladies who run CREAR are amazing and they have an amazing volunteer organization that works with the children of Samara who only go to school for 4 hours a day. They run sort of an after-school program for them. We got to play games with kids and had a blast with that!
11) After playing with the kids, we were hungry, so it's a good thing that we had cooking class. We got to make empanadas (kind of like a turnover with chicken inside instead of fruit). They were delicious!
12) We had a movie night that night and watched "Valentin", an Argentinian movie. The school gave us popcorn and cookies and soda. The storm came up again and it was FIERCE! We decided to take a van/taxi back to our different neighborhoods for everyone's safety. We were so glad to be back at our houses and dry off.
13) Friday we woke up and...it wasn't raining. Well, it did rain off and on and off and on. We took a test, had some class, went to a culture talk (we had different ones to choose from) and then we got to graduate! We had a little graduation from our classes and played a little game. We then had some free time to eat and what not. The Internet had JUST come back on so some of the students got to get online. I was not so lucky.
14) We had a hike planned for 3 and the rain let up! We were so happy! We hiked up to a look out, and then down to a beach. It was a gorgeous little beachthat had a waterfall and great views. We had a free night where we could finally relax after meeting at Froggy's for a devotion.
15) Today, like I mentioned, began with sun and then turned to RAIN. Ugh. I have not heard from the last group how their canopy tour went, but the first 2 groups said that it was AMAZING! We got to go on 10 zip lines and have a mid-tour snack up in the trees. We had an ocean view on one of the lines and had fun zipping around, even in the rain. Our final "line" was to rappel down a tree. INCREIBLE!
16) Well, we've had the afternoon off. Some went to practice surfing, some went shopping, and some are just lying around now. It is still raining and doesn't show signs of stopping any time soon, unfortunately. How sad that our last day and our free day in Samara was so rainy!
Tomorrow we will be getting up early to take a bus to Arenal. I'm hoping to be able to get one last blog in before we leave Costa Rica, but no promises! Tomorrow it's off to do some hiking and bathing in hot springs!
I hope I've at least satisfied some curiousity of what we're doing. Of course, you'll hear lots of stories from your kids, but we have been so proud of them so far. We have gotten many compliments on what a wonderful group they are, how helpful they are, and how impressed people are with their behavior and Spanish. Some people even thought they were from the University because of how mature they seemed! As a teacher I'm so proud and wanted to pass that on to you, as their parents :)
Blessings on the end of your weekend!
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