Hola todos!  Before I get to the weekend, a few things from last week: Wednesday night we went to see the Hangover 2 and it was pretty funny.  Here it’s called “que paso ayer” which is “what happened yesterday” haha.  The movies are in English but with Spanish subtitles.  And on Wednesday nights they’re super cheap!  The ticket costs the equivalent of 3-4 dollars.  On Thursday night we went to the national theater in downtown San Jose and saw a percussion show.  The theater was really pretty, it was all lit up outside and inside looked old and had paintings and sculptures everywhere.  The group performing was from Spain so it was kinda funny to listen to their accent.  They played marimbas…the show started a little slow but got better and more entertaining by the end.  So I got my culture in haha.

Yesterday at school I wore my hair down and at least 3 different kids came up and started like touching and petting my hair…haha I’m not sure if they’ve never seen it before or just never noticed before yesterday…and another girl asked me how to pronounce my name and when I told her, she said, “that is a very beautiful name” haha super sweet.  Sidenote about my name—no one can pronounce it.  Usually I’m “Yenna” or “Jana” or “Jayna.”  Oh well, I guess I’m just super foreign sounding haha.

Other sidenote: I’ve noticed the guys here are different because they generally put a lot more effort into their appearance than guys back home.  Everyone—guys and girls—loves their hair gel, and they use LOTS of it sometimes haha.  But the guys just look more put together, like their clothes and their hair and stuff just look more put together.  And they have more decorative type piercings…I’ve seen a lot of eyebrow, lip, ear, and even back of the neck piercings.    

OK, on to the weekend!  This weekend we traveled to La Fortuna, home of Arenal.  Arenal is an active volcano but hasn’t erupted in several months.  Sadly I did not see any lava.  We left on Friday, and when we got to the bus station we found out that the bus actually left half an hour before we thought it did.  We were missing one person in our group, but had no way to contact her to tell her of the change.  As the bus was pulling away, we see her and caused enough ruckus to stop the bus and let her on.  Haha it was so funny, so she really made it the last possible second! 

When we arrived, we found our hostel and it was actually really nice.  It had a nice pool and a swim up bar and everything.  I love staying in hostels because we’ve met so many people from around the world…this weekend our friends were from Australia and Switzerland.  As soon as I arrived I discovered that my camera batteries had died, sooo….video camera to the rescue!  Lucky for you guys, you now get to see my weekend in live video.  Apparently the batteries in things run down even if you’re not using them…learned my lesson. 

Saturday was a very busy day.  We got up in the morning and took a taxi to the bottom of Cerro Chato, an old volcano that’s right next to Arenal.  We hiked up it…it was brutal.  It took two hours to get to the top, and it was literally a vertical climb.  I think the whole thing was less than two miles, so you can do the math on that one.  My misery was a combination of being hot, dehydrated (yeah I only had one water bottle) and not being able to breathe because of the altitude.  So it was pretty rough but I’m still glad I did it cause I feel accomplished now.  Inside the crater at the top of the volcano was a lagoon.  So after climbing to the top, we climbed straight down into the crater to get to the water.  As we went along, it became less of a “here’s a trail for you to follow” and more of a “find your own way to climb down this tree” type of thing haha.  But once we were there in one piece it was pretty cool.  We were the first people there so I felt really isolated and it was really peaceful.  The water was green and cold and you really wouldn’t want to get hurt up there because it was so secluded you wouldn’t get help for a long time!  One of the guides that came shortly after us told us that a guy had died there of a broken leg.  Lovely.  So after a bit we start climbing back out to start the hike down.  A guy from Illinois joined us on the way back, and he’s studying biology in school so he had his guidebook and was pointing stuff out along the way.  I found a snake on the way down but we could only see its tail.  We also saw some frogs and bugs and parrots but that’s about it I think.  Oh and lots of lines of leaf-cutter ants.  We made it back down in about an hour and a half so that part was more pleasant than the way up.

Next we set out to find the waterfall.  There was no place to eat so our lunch consisted of snacks from the store at the front…some cookies and plantain chips, so healthy.  Getting to the waterfall involved more hiking, which caused me to have flashbacks of that morning and my legs to hate me a little bit more.  But once we got there it was beautiful.  It was a small waterfall but still really awesome.  We swam around it and I stood behind it.  I might even venture to say that it was my favorite part of the trip so far.

After the waterfall we headed back to the hostel and I took a nap in a hammock in the yard.  When we met up with the rest of our group we headed out to Baldi, the hot springs.  We had heard that the real hot springs has problems with people stealing your stuff, and we were exhausted, so we went to this place that has hot springs but they’re really not natural, it’s more like a water park in a hotel.  It was super nice though, I’m sure it’s really expensive to stay there.  They had a ton of different pools, some of them had pool bars and TVs, they had waterfalls and even water slides!  It was so much fun and so relaxing after a very physical day.  The pools were different temperatures but some of them were super hot, like it hurt to get in it at all.  We stayed there until they closed, and we got to eat a big buffet dinner too…it was so good, and they had a whole buffet just for dessert!  I went a little crazy and got 2 plates of dessert and almost had one of everything…but it was awesome, I’ve been chocolate deprived lately so I needed to make up for it…I mean they had a chocolate fountain, what would you do??

After our big day we all slept like babies.  Sunday morning we got up and did the canopy tour, aka ziplining!  We drove up the mountain (thank god they didn’t make us walk it, I was so sore) and clip you on to the line, and send you off, soaring over the open jungle and land.  It was quite scenic, cause you can see all the countryside below you.  It was really fun and not scary like I thought it might be.  After that, we all just hung out at the pool at the hostel until it was time to catch our bus back to San Jose. 

Through our weekend trips we’ve learned quickly that they also overbook the buses, so if you don’t get there early you might not get a seat.  This time we had great seats on the bus, then it broke down on the side of the road.  We all had to get off the bus and wait about 20 minutes for another bus to come retrieve us and take us the rest of the way home.  What an adventure haha.

For this week I’ve switched Spanish classes…I don’t really know why, I think maybe because there’s a ton of new volunteers that came in recently so they needed to switch around the schedule.  So I don’t know if the change is only for this week or if it’s permanent but I have a different teacher and I’m in the advanced class, yeehaw.  She’s very nice and I like it better because my class is 2-4 instead of 4-6 so I don’t have to wait so long in between volunteering in the morning and class in the afternoon.  Speaking of volunteering, I’ve realized that even though I am teaching English at the school, it helps my Spanish too!  It’s interesting to see how they go about teaching English, since I’ve never really thought about how to acquire the language before.  It definitely helps that I know Spanish too, because if the kids don’t know a word in English I can translate it for them, and when they have questions they ask it in Spanish so I know what they’re asking.  I’m learning new words as we teach them English too because as we translate words, sometimes I don’t know the Spanish word for the English word that they’re learning so then they’re kind of teaching me too.

Yesterday I had my first tandem conversation.  It was so much fun!  It’s these two guys that are 19 and 20 and we just talked for almost an hour.  It’s great because I get more speaking practice, and they’re really nice and funny.  They are learning English at Maximo too.  I was kinda sad I only get to do it once a week cause I wanna be friends with them now haha.

We have four girls living upstairs now, and one downstairs.  Always new people showing up!  Like I said before, there’s a huge group of volunteers that arrived recently.  I haven’t met them yet but mostly they’ll travel to places I’ve already been so I need to start getting creative on my weekend travel plans cause I don’t want to repeat somewhere I’ve already been.  Yikes I don’t wanna run out of things to do and places to see!  Cause I have to convince someone to go with me haha.  But don’t worry, I have a plan for this weekend…

Now, for your enjoyment: the video series I’ve entitled, “Arenal: to the edge and back.”  Haha enjoy! 

PS these videos were a pain to get on here so I hope they work!

My lovely travel group...that's a volcano behind us :)

Episode 1: "Life is still pretty good"

Episode 2: "I am fading..."

Episode 3: "...and fading..."

Episode 4: "I might actually die"

Episode 5: "This is cruel and unusual punishment"

Episode 6: "Success!"

Episode 7: "Chillin in the waterfall"



Episode 8: "Is my life in danger?"