I’ve gotten in the habit of calling
this trip my “fake life” because we spend more time traveling and having fun
than sitting in the classroom, I don’t do chores, everything just feels so
relaxed from compared to life at Linfield. Last week we had vacation from our
fake lives and my mama and brother came to visit!
They arrived on Friday afternoon
after a long and scary flight full of turbulence and got to meet my wonderful
host family. We didn’t get to spend too much time since it was starting to get
dark, but of course my host mom made them a huge meal and my real mom got to
give out all her homemade presents. I was surprised at how well Kristin and I
translated back and forth, there were even some things I chose to cut out and
no one noticed J
Then we were off to La Fortuna! Poor Clinton had to drive on this tiny windy
road and couldn’t see a thing because of all the fog, but we finally made it
and we stayed there for two days. We mostly just explored in the car, but we
also took a hike to a viewpoint of the volcano which was really fun, and
beautiful! On our way out we decided to take the scenic route and drove around
the volcano, it was relaxing and pretty which was a nice change from our first
night of driving. We randomly ran into this restaurant that had beer tasting
and as we drove up the hill we saw a sign that said “Skate park. Seriously.
Check it out.” We spent some of the afternoon there as beer and skating are two
of Clinton’s favorite things!
After driving on the most awful
road we made it to Playa Tambor at a beautiful boutique hotel. I didn’t want to
leave the hotel once we got there! We spent most of the week exploring and one
day we spent on the beach at Montezuma, which was really nice! We tried driving
to Mal Pais and Santa Teresa but the roads were so awful we had to turn around.
Our car was leaking and we were all stressing out, but it turns out nothing was
wrong. I was super thankful because that would have changed how our entire week
would have gone. The day before we left we did a zip lining tour, I had so much
fun watching my mom and Clinton do it for the first time. The tour included a
ton of uphill walking, which we weren’t expecting but at least we got to work
off some of the delicious food we ate at our hotel.
On Tuesday or Wednesday night I
heard crying outside our door so I went to see what it was and it was the
cutest, tiniest, most adorablest happy little puppy I’ve ever seen (besides
Buddy of course ;) ) but he was so sickly looking from being underfed. My mom
immediately took out our leftovers from the fridge and we fed him, which was
the right thing to do but the puppy, or Harley as I renamed him, didn’t leave
our doorstep after that. My mom and I were trying to figure out how to help
him, and kept resorting to taking him home with us but he would need to be
healthier for his shots before we could take him home L Thankfully the hotel managers
took him into a shelter to help make Harley healthy and find a good home for
him. I’m still sad we couldn’t take him home though, it was love at first
sight! (Clinton if you’re reading this,
stop laughing at me!)
On our last night we all just
relaxed in the room and played cards, and the next morning we got up early and
headed back for San Ramon. I am so thankful to have two great families and I’m
so lucky they got to meet each other!
I spent Saturday with my host
family in Heredia visiting family, and Sunday our group of students threw a
Christmas party for all of our families. It is definitely one of my favorite
memories I’ll have of this trip. 80 people came including all of the students,
we have so many people here in Costa Rica supporting us! We played games and
ate yummy food, and got to know each family. Although I’m excited to be home,
I’m not ready to say goodbye to my family here yet.
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