Theology and The Cycle of Being Homesick

I was told when I first arrived here that I would go through a cycle of missing home and then not missing home and then somewhere in between. I've decided that this idea is crap. I still miss pickles, driving, a choice of what I get to eat, and the feeling of safety I feel almost continuously in the U.S. On the plus side, though, I have definitely grown to love my host family. My host mom is super sweet, and does things for me that I would never ask anyone to do. (Like crawling into the attic space to run an internet cable into my room so I could have internet in my room at all times. I was blown away by this because it was totally awesome and unnecessary.) My little host niece, I guess you would call her, loves to come into my room and hang out with me. She's 6 years old, so we watch a lot of Disney movies and play normal 6-year-old games, lol. I will definitely miss them when I come back to the States. I have met so many wonderful Costa Ricans since I came down here, and it makes me wonder if there are as many people in the United States that would be willing to open their homes and welcome foreigners into their houses. I've decided that I think I would like to be a host family someday. It's just so thoughtful and compassionate.

In other news, I had my weekly Theology class tonight, and normally it's incredibly boring, but tonight was different. Our professor had some of her colleagues come sit on a panel and we got to ask them questions. About halfway through class we were told to get into groups and one of the colleagues came to talk to us. The man that came to talk to us was incredible! I think he is probably one of the most educated men I have ever talked to. He was born in the poor mountains of Costa Rica, and had to walk two hours to school everyday during grammar school and then walk an hour and ride a bus for another half hour during high school. He eventually received his bachelor's degree in Philosophy and obtained a scholarship to the U.S. where he went to a different school to get a different degree. His wife is from New Jersey, and he's lived all over Europe and the U.S. He's fluent in Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, Italian, Latin, German, and I think he speaks a little Hebrew, too. Basically, it's ridiculous, lol. He's so well read in all types of religions that he could probably have been raised in any of them. He said that he attends a Christian church, but a lot of times things in the church make him angry, so he just has his own personal beliefs. Pretty much everything he said was extremely thought-provoking and complex. He looks at things so differently than Christians in the States. It was one of the best classes I've had to date in Costa Rica, I think. I definitely learned a lot.

So, as you can tell, things are going well, and I should be headed to the beach this weekend! It's called Cahuita and it's close to a larger beach called Puerto Viejo in the province of Limon. I'm excited. It will be nice to get away for the weekend. Oh, there's a few pics from my parent's visit at the top of my post. I think they had a really good time.

Hope all is well in the U.S. Miss you guys!

Pura vida,
Amelia

Back to "Work"

So my long vacation week is now over and it's back to my weekly schedule of school and music. That's basically the extent of my days Monday through Thursday, lol. I do a whole lot of nothing most of the time. I think I'm going to go into shock when I get back to the States and have to do actual homework, lol. Nevertheless, the daily wear and tear of Costa Rica is starting to get to me. My parents came to visit me over the past weekend, I loved seeing them, and it made me realize just how great my parents are, lol. I've definitely missed them and will continue to miss them over the next 3 months. I think I did a pretty good job of playing tour guide for them. There were a few logistical problems because of the holiday weekend, the whole country of Costa Rica shuts down on Good Friday, but we still were able to enjoy ourselves. They stayed in a hotel with beautiful gardens so we spent lots of time there. All weekend long there were processions showing the life and death of Jesus and we got to see one of them on Friday morning. It was very moving and beautiful. On Saturday I took them on a canopy tour which they loved! The canopy tour is always a hit, lol. We also toured a coffee plantation at some point during their visit which was pretty cool. We learned all about the process of growing, roasting, and selling coffee. The coffee was pretty good, too! I think my mom bought enough to last her for the rest of the year, lol.

All in all, I think my parents' visit went well and they got a little taste of Costa Rica and the town I've been living in for the past 2 months. 2 months?!! Can you believe that I've been living in Costa Rica for 2 months?! Some days it just kind of hits me and I'm just like, "Are you crazy?!" lol. I'm enjoying myself, but I definitely have days where it would be great to be in the the U.S.

So...plan for the week: go to school and play some guitar, lol. Plan for this weekend: Have a super awesome slumber party with some of my girlfriends here. We're going to order a pizza from Pizza Hut and watch movies all night. It's going to be great! I'm looking forward to it!!

I hope everything is going well in the U.S. Leave me some comments and let me know how all of you guys are doing!!

Paz,
Amelia

Montezuma and Pura Vida

I have returned from a fabulous weekend at the beach and I finally have a slight tan, lol! Brittney, Renee' and I left Heredia Friday morning in search of a relaxing, beautiful weekend, and we definitely found it. We first headed to the airport to take our plane and upon seeing it, immediately questioned why we chose to fly, lol. Little planes are a little scary...but, we arrived in Tambor after 25 minutes instead of 6 hours by bus, so we were pretty ecstatic. From the "airport" in Tambor, it was really just an airstrip but the locals seemed to think it was a pretty big deal, we headed to Paquera and our tour of Isla Tortuga. We hung out on the beach at the tour place for a while until our tour guide, Juan, took us out in the boat. The water was blue and clear, and we had an absolute blast snorkeling! I felt a little nervous at first, but after the first few minutes I had it down and we were swimming with the fishies! We did that for about an hour and then we headed to the main island. It turns out that Isla Tortuga isn't just one island. It's a bunch of islands that make up the shape of a turtle! It was amazing. Juan chopped up some pineapple, coconut, and watermelon for us and left us to explore for a few hours or so. We definitely enjoyed it even if we did have to pee behind a tree, lol...they were charging a dollar to use the port-o-potty!! We were on a budget so the tree worked just fine, lol. After a while, Juan came to pick us up and somewhere during this whole trip he found out that we were headed to Montezuma which he called Montefuma...fumar means to smoke in spanish and monte apparently means weed...more on this later...lol.

Well, after we got back, we had to go catch our bus to Montezuma. Juan told us that the bus left at 5:20...at 6:15, we were headed to Montezuma, lol. Needless to say, Juan was not on our good list after that. Standing on the side of the road in Costa Rica for an hour and a half with no bathrooms or a bench to sit on was not exactly our idea of fun, but we finally caught a bus and we were headed to Montezuma. Let me just say that it's probably the prettiest beach I've ever been to! We had planned on only staying there for one night and then heading to Mal Pais, but instead, we decided to just stay for the whole weekend! The town itself had 2 streets with lots of really great souvenir shops, restaurants, and...yes, weed, lol. The whole town appears to be caught in a time warp of hippies and happiness. Very chill, the epitome of the Costa Rican motto: Pura Vida. There were lots of tourists there from America, France, Canada...you name it, they were there. We spent two days basking in the sunshine on the beach. The water was crystal clear and blue and there were beautiful, but dangerous, rocks and boulders everywhere. Our hotel was only a 1/4 of a mile from the beach and we actually had A/C, which I definitely took for granted, lol!! Last night we ate at a restaurant called El Sano Banano(the Healthy Banana), and we got to watch a movie for free. Every night they show a different movie and last night it was Hairspray, very cute! It was a great ending to a great weekend. We absolutely loved Montezuma, and I hope we have a chance to go back. We were pretty sad to leave it this morning, and we wanted to prolong our weekend vacation as long as possible, so we hit up Burger King after we got back to Heredia, lol. I just never realized I could miss greasy hamburgers that are terrible for you, lol!

Wednesday my folks are heading down and I'm really excited to show them around! Costa Rica is celebrating Semana Santa right now so there are tons of religious processions going on all week. Hopefully we'll get a chance to catch some of them! Oh, and if anyone wants to check out some pics I took this weekend, here's the link:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2045165&l=562fa&id=52702346

Enjoy! I wish I could bring everyone down here to experience this with me! Hope all is well in the States!

Mucho amor,
Amelia

Two Days 'till Freedom...

Hello to everyone! Hope everything is going well in the U.S. Things are still swell here! I had a pretty relaxing weekend just chilling with some of my buddies here. We saw a movie on Friday night, No Country for Old Men or Sin Lugar para los Debiles en espanol. It was pretty good, won a lot of Oscars so we thought we'd give it a try. It reminded us of home a little bit because all of the characters had very southern accents. Best line of the whole movie said with a southern accent, "Well, I guess I've seen 'bout everythin'. I work at Wal-Mart." We were the only people in the entire theater laughing, lol. I guess some things just don't translate, lol.

On Saturday, we all decided to dye our hair! I ended up dying mine black which isn't hugely different because my hair is almost black anyway. I had some red highlights back in the States that looked really cool, but when I got down here, they changed to orange from the sun so my head looked like Halloween, lol. So, I thought it was time to fix that, lol. We all had a great time with it, though. My friend Brittney did all of ours for us because she had done it before, and she did a great job, lol.

Sunday night, my friends Amanda and Renee' came over so we could work on a project about the Tango. Needless to say, we were up very late because we had procrastinated all weekend...but, around 12 in the morning it was finally finished and we gave it yesterday morning so I'm pretty much done stressing for a while about school work. We have 2 more days of classes and then we're free!!! We get a whole week off for Semana Santa here, or the Holy Week before Easter. The whole country basically just shuts down to celebrate, lol.

This weekend, Brittney, Renee' and I are going to celebrate by going to the beach! Yay! We're so excited to have a little vacation. On Friday we're going to take a little airplane to a place called Tambor on the Nicoya Peninsula. It takes about 40 min by air as opposed to 6 hours by bus so we're excited to not be taking the bus, lol. We're going to spend Friday snorkeling at a little Island called Tortuga(turtle). From the pictures it looks gorgeous, so we're pumped! After that we're going to spend the night at la playa(beach) Montezuma and then the next 2 nights we're going to spend at la playa Mal Pais. It should be a very relaxing 4 days or so. I'm sure I will have plenty to blog about!! On Wednesday my parents are coming to visit so I'm really excited about that as well!! I love having visitors! :-)

Thanks for reading! :-)

Pura vida,
Amelia

Time flies

Well, my brother is back safe and sound in the good ole U.S.A. This week has definitely gone by quickly. After we did the canopy tour we ended up going to a futbol game. It was great!! The fans down here are slightly crazy, but it made for great entertainment. We were rooting for a team called Saprissa, a professional team here in Costa Rica, and they won! We bought jerseys and tickets for like $16 each, super cheap compared to the U.S.! On Wednesday, Amanda, Frank, and I went to a place called INBio Park. It was pretty cool, kind of half museum and half zoo. We saw spiders, snakes, frogs, caimans, and tons of iguanas! They were everywhere! There was a little pond right in the middle of the park and these iguanas were just chilling out next to it. It was pretty neat. Wednesday night, we went to Amanda's house to hang out. We've decided that her host mom is the coolest out of all of ours. I took my guitar and we all sang songs together in English and Spanish. She made us some amazing hot chocolate as well! It was a great end to a great week. Brittney and I took him to the airport yesterday, and I was sad to see him go. It was really nice to have someone from home visiting me. My parents should be here in 2 weeks so I'm pretty excited to see them, too.

Other than all of that, things are pretty relaxed right now. I have a huge presentation due on Monday, so I guess I'll work on that today or something, lol. I'm such a procrastinator...lol. I played my newest song the other night at Amanda's house and everyone really liked it. I think I like it, too. It has a real bluesy sound to it which is what I've been trying to go for.

So, homework this weekend...beach next weekend? Man, I love living in Costa Rica, lol...nothing's set in stone, and no one stresses out about anything. Everything is just so pura vida...

Paz,
Amelia

Playing tour guide!!

So, it's Day 2 of my brother's visit, and it's very cool to have someone from home come visit me! I picked him up at the airport yesterday, and it's been a whirlwind since then, lol. We showed him around Heredia, the town I live in, yesterday and went to church last night. Today, he went to class with me this morning, which was a trip, lol, and we headed to San Jose to the Artesania Market. It's basically a long strip of market stalls with souvenirs and such, but it's neat nonetheless. Tomorrow, we're going on a canopy tour, which I'm hoping he'll love, and then Wednesday we're going to a place called INBioparque. I've heard it's kind of like a zoo/museum, but my host mom says it's cool, so it should be fun. He leaves on Thursday, unfortunately he won't get a chance to see the beach, but I think he's having fun being in a warm climate and away from school, lol.

Last weekend, before my brother got here, a bunch of us went to see the Arenal Volcano. It was absolutely gorgeous!! We lucked out and had clear skies, so we saw the volcano perfectly. We went on a night tour and saw lava coming down the sides, amazing, and then we spent about 2 hours at the hot springs really close to the volcano. There were swim-up bars where the drinks were $10 a piece!! Of course, we all ordered one...just to say we had ordered a drink from a swim-up bar, lol. All in all, it was an amazing trip! We met a few more people from a different exchange group, one from Nashville, one from Connecticut, and one from Russia, and we had a blast with them, so yay for new friends!

When we got back on Saturday, we went to this club called La Rumba that's really close to Heredia. It was so cool to see people actually DANCING, not the bumping and grinding stuff you see in the States. All of the Ticos and Ticas (Costa Ricans) can dance so well! I wish we had all been brought up learning how to dance in America, lol.

Whew...it's been a busy few days, and it looks like it's going to be jammed packed for the next couple of days as well, lol. Hope all is well for everyone in the States! I miss you guys!

Pura vida,
Amelia