Weeks 2-2.5: Trip to Nicoya Peninsula and Classes

Hello my fellow Blog-mates,
Here are a few highlights since my last post!

So classes started last week and are going well so far. Here's my class schedule for anyone who's interested:
Monday: Spanish 10-11:30, Paul 6-8:30
Tuesday: Complementary, Alternative and Traditional Therapies (natural medicine) 1-3:30
Wednesday: Spanish 10-11:30, Universal Lit. of 21st Century 1-4:30, Popular Dance workshop 4:30-6:30
Thursday: Costa Rican Dance Class 1-3:30
Friday: Libertad!

Here are some interesting observations and tidbits about going to college in Costa Rica:
1. I love the campus because it's really jungly. Most of the buildings have an open garden area in the middle (you may have noticed if you checked out my fb album).
2. Punctuality is not the norm. Most students show up between on time and fifteen minutes late. I was in a linguistics class that I ended up switching out of into dance, but the professor didn't even come to the first class. We waited for forty minutes, and then the Tican students passed around a sheet of paper that every signed and then they took it to some authority and we all left.
3. Classes are long! And they are very conversation and project oriented, whereas in the states it's a lot more of lecture and note-taking and quizzes. The professor goes on and on here! I kind of like the conversation-style aspect, but it's a lot to take in and a long time for my attention span.
4. In the longer classes, you get a coffee break!

Terapias Complementarias, Alternativas, y Tradicionales
When I had this class for the first time last week, I enjoyed it. We went over the plan for the class, and then talked about all the different kinds of therapies we could think of (including hug therapy and laugh therapy). I stayed afterwards to ask the prof (a small man maybe in his sixties) about the homework, and when I told him I was an exchange student he was surprised and told me he thought I was Tican! (yes!) Then he started asking me a bunch of questions about Hawaii and offered to buy me "juice" from a place nearby campus. It turned out to be a smoothie place with pure fruit smoothies and it was so good! Then he walked with me about fifteen more minutes toward my home, talking and went to visit a friend.

Trip to Montezuma
Early Friday morning, I went with my friends Abby, Callie and Corrylee on a trip to the Nicoya Peninsula in the northwest and stayed in a little tourist town right on the beach called Montezuma. We left our houses at five, took a taxi, a bus, a half hour walk in the morning sun, a ferry, and another bus, and about seven hours to get there in the early afternoon. We stayed at a hostel called Hotel Lucy for $10 a night - such a good deal! Friday we jumped in the water, found some food and signed up for a boat trip the next day. Saturday we took a 45-min. boat trip to "La Isla de la Tortuga" where we went out snorkeling twice, were served a delicious meal of fish, rice, , salad and fruit, and stretched out on a beautiful beach with white sand. The island had a peacock, a few turkeys, a friendly little pig, and of course a bunch of fish in the water that we saw snorkeling. That night we had Italian food for dinner and poked our heads into a bar where locals and gringos were dancing salsa and merengue and a couple of my friends got some latin dance lessons from the Ticos! Sunday, we hiked to some waterfalls, which was my favorite part of the trip. We followed a river up to the base of one that was probably at least 75 feet tall, then hike to the very top where a 15 ft. waterfall fell into a pond you could swim in and go on a rope swing, which also fed into another waterfall that was about 35 ft. tall that fed into a pond that fed into the 75 ft.ish one. After watching a local jump off the 35 footer, I did too! It was my first time actually jumping over a waterfall - I've jumped off rocks by waterfalls, but never over one, so it was awesome! That afternoon, we had lunch and took a long walk looking for a beach where supposedly people were surfing, but it started to get dark so we had to turn back : ( A friend and I did find a whole army of scary crabs with black bodies and bright orange legs that made their homes in dirt on the side of the path...and I'm sure they were plotting to attack. They were so scary. Then on Monday, we made the tired trip home...it was a good trip!

2nd Week of Classes
Not much to tell. Didn't have Pablo this week because Monday was a holiday. Lit will be the hardest. Lots of reading and writing and trying to understand all that symbolism the prof is telling us about. It's interesting though. I have to do a report about cucumbers and cabbage for my natural medicine class (the prof assigned me cucumber since I told him that Dill was an herb used to pickle cucumbers). My friend Corrylee and I had our dance workshop last night and I loved it and sweat buckets. I have my second dance class in about an hour so I gotta eat lunch and get going!

Love you all! Thanks for reading! I would love to hear from you and love it if you keep me in your prayers and let me know if you have any requests!

Till next time : )