Volcan Poas/Nicaragua trip

Hello dear world of blog readers (Mom and Dad and maybe Brittany), sorry it has taken me a while to write you. I have been keeping busy, hanging out in the park, eating ice cream or french fries and learning important Spanish phrases like 'Está camote" ("You're sweet potatoe" - "You're crazy") or "la gallina le canta" ("The hen sings" - "The woman calls the shots").

Well, first I'll update you on Volcán Poas: We rented a  mini-van type car (with driver) to take us to Volcán Poas for the day. It was an incredibly beautiful day to go and I enjoyed spending time with some of the students in my program.

 

Volcán Poas

 

Kate, James, Me, Elise and Shannon

The following Monday we left for Nicaragua. We stayed in Granada for the first two nights, and then San Juan Del Sur, a town by the beach. Lastly, we stayed in Buena Vista Lodge in Guanacaste. There we did a horseback ride to hot springs with a sauna and mud bath as well. Unfortunately, I don't have many pictures of my time in Guanacaste.  There was also a tremendously scary waterslide.  I beat myself up a little bit going down it. My friend Linsey and I made friends with the workers in Buena Vista and were able to practice our Spanish and learn some card games. Later in the night we had a dance party and I practiced some of the merengue I've been learning in my dance class.  Here are some pictures from my trip:

View of Granada from a church look-out

Dad- it was optional to wear the life jacket, I took this picture for you.

Volcán Masaya - Jada and I - Beautiful!!! (The crater and us)

We took a boat tour and found some dolphins! There were about 100 dolphins, amazing!

San Juan Del Sur - Beautiful and relaxing place to visit!

Campamento: Iglesia de Cristo

Last weekend, I had the awesome opportunity to join my family and their youth group in attending camp in Sarchi, Costa Rica. I had a wonderful time and was able to make friends with many Ticos (Costa Ricans). My host brothers attended the camp and my host parents helped out at it. We played similar games as we would in the states like "Capture the Flag" and various ice breaker games. The food was amazing! (My mama tica helped make it). We also had a bon fire with worship and later roasting of marshmellows. And to the end the night we watched the newest version of Karate Kid in spanish, which to my surprise, I could understand. . . save the fact that I fell asleep about 30 minutes in it. What else? I got 20 or so bug bights (I'm legitimately unsure if that's spelled right) on my leg, so I wore jeans this week like everyone else here does!

Class is going great! I have finals for my first 3 credit class of Spanish this week. It's insane how fast these classes go.  As you can tell, I don't have much to type. I am having an amazing time, but of course I miss my family and friends. 

Pura vida, Erin

Musical Chairs Name Game

Amazing camp food!

The camp, Sarchi, CR

Same leap frogish game we play at camp in Oregon

A portion of the group

Canopy, Cocodrilos y Manuel Antonio

What a weekend! I left Heredia on Saturday at 6am (4am Oregon time) and returned Sunday around 10:30pm, completely exhausted. On Saturday, USAC had a trip assigned for all of us Heredia Students to go to the Ziplines (Canopy) and then on a Crocodile tour. And here's a short summary of my trip:

The ziplines: Too much fun!  It consisted of a series of ziplines from tree to tree. I started out ziplining to one tree and then unhooking and hooking onto the next cable and continuing. . .  The workers were really friendly and I learned some 'zipline' vocabulary with them, which mostly consisted of 'Pura  Vida', 'I'm fine' and 'How great!'.

Zipline! Photo credit: Canopy Tours Photos and Shannon

The cocodrilos:  We rode around in a boat and looked at various birds and crocodiles. The finale was the most impressive where our boat captain fed Fidel Castro one of the bigger crocodiles in the river.

This was a picture taken from our boat of Fidel Castro  

Photo credits: Caleb Davis

After that, Carlitos, one of our USAC advisors, was kind enough to arrange a bus to take a portion (around 20 students) of our group to Manuel Antonio (where we were unofficially extended the rest of our trip). We witnessed the gorgeous sunset from our awesome hostel patio. Saturday night was my first hostel experience and I loved it. It is such a great and affordable way to explore Costa Rica. I look forward to many more hostel experiences. I woke up early in the morning, 6am,  to roosters crowing and cows complaining. Later on in the morning, we walked down to the beach. The beach reminded me of Maui, except maybe not as clear.  It was amazing! And I'm a little red from the sun. I went to church on the beach, which was in English and Spanish, so I could actually understand what was going on. I think I prefer the Spanish translation :).

We spent the rest of the day there. I got a hamburger and fries for dinner (which unfortunately was not as good I expected it to be, but I was hungry!) and then we took a bus back to Heredia.  We were stuck in traffic for about 3 hours. Our bus driver explained that the traffic was from all of the gringos vacationing in Costa Rica. I guess I can relate.

This concludes my post! Until later, pura vida. 

Manuel Antonio - Photo Credits: Shannon Walklet

Pura Vida, Mae. . .

Hi friends and family:

I am writing this to share with you some of my adventures here. If you didn't know, I'm studying Spanish here in Heredia, Costa Rica for four months at the National University of Costa Rica (U.N.A.) and I'm living with a wonderful family.  I'm enrolled in Spanish Grammar, Conversation, Latin American Cuisine and Latin American Dances.

Some things that I've done so far:

1) La iglesia: I went to church with my family, my host uncle gave the sermon. It was really great. All of the worship is a capella. My host uncle and host parents were nice enough to explain the sermon to me after church. The main point in the sermon was that too often we look for the approval of people rather than God.

2) La escuela: I love my classes. My teacher for Spanish is wonderful and our class only has 11 students in it, which is really condusive for the nature of the course. We only speak in Spanish and I'm learning Spanish faster than I ever have before. I also have a conversation class. Each day, every student shares their "new word of the day", and we have to explain it in Spanish. And I cannot forget to mention how much fun I have in dancing and cuisine. We made empanadas. I can't wait to learn how to make more things and receive a book with the recipes. And dancing was a work out! Super sweaty after and super soar the next day. I'm hitting up some of the dance clubs next week for practice of course. I'm really excited to go to clubs with live bands.

3) I'm playing soccer every Wednesday. I don't need to say much more about that other than - I'm pretty out of shape, but excited for the opportunity to be competitive in soccer again.

4) My family is so wonderful. I am so blessed to be placed with them. They take good care of me and feed me such great dishes. My brothers both know English and try to practice some of it on me, but I respond in Spanish. My brain is going to get better at switching back and forth. And Paula has me read her stories which also helps me with my Spanish. 

5)  I don't really know why I'm listing things. Just felt the need to be organized. I've grown tired of writing, though. I am having an awesome time and can't wait to share with you more of the adventures I encounter in the next four months. I miss you! Thank you  for
To be continued:

1) Ziplines and crocadiles
2) Manuel San Antonio
3) Campamento con mi iglesia (Camp with my church)
4) More dancing
5) More food 


Here is my family:

Adonis y Paula (mis hermanos ticos)

Joshua (mi hermano tico)

Mi cuarto

El parque central

Noris y Roberto (mis padres ticos)