Lessons Learned

Some things I have learned in my travels thus far:

Roosters (gallos) that crow between the hours of 8 pm and 5 am should be turned into pollo (cooked chicken)!!

Weed whackers should be used only for their title purpose, not for mowing one´s lawn.

Having a gas station in town is not always a good thing.  The easier it is to get gasoline for your cars, motorcycles, dirt bikes, ATV´s and the like, the more they are used and the louder the town is.

Costa Rica may be beautiful, but it is expensive and the food in a restaurant isn´t that good. ( My host Mom´s cooking was amazing though.)

When crossing the boarder into Nicaragua you have to pay the taxes in two different currencies.  $10 (in dollars) and about $2 in cordobas (the local currency).

When you buy a ticket for a public bus, you are not garaunteed a place to sit.  A one hour bus ride seems VERY long when standing.

Making friends while traveling is easy, you just have to start the conversation with "so where are you from?".  New friends can make traveling an even more rewarding experience.

Having three different types of currency in your wallet is confusing.

Key boards in Latin America are frustrating.  The punctuation marks are in all the wrong spots!  Instead of an apostraphe, I get a {.  Instead of the @ symbol, I get ".  Instead of a semi-colon, I get ñ.

Jose doesn´t sweat unless dancing enthusiatically.  I think I hate him a little for that.

I really should just memorize my passport number.

Family is one of the most important things that a person can have.  I love my family, the true and the chosen members.

¡Los quiero todos!

Is it really only Thursday?

 Yesterday was SO long but it was full of fun and adventure!  Our flight was ok, but on this airline, being in the emergency exit row means you get more leg room, but your seats do not recline.  Neither of us got much sleep.  We spend several hours wandering around San Jose, finding stores, watching the different people walk by and changing our monies at the bank (the exchange rate at the airport was HORRIBLE but we needed some money for the bus into San Jose (the airport is in Alejuela...you don´t want to walk it) since a taxi would have been 25 dollars where the bus cost us a little more than a dollar.

The bus up the mountain was as I remember it.  Long, sometimes hot, sometimes cold, a little crowded and the last hour is very bumpy.  We both slept on and off for the first couple of hours and then made fun conversation with the people around us on the bus.

Once in Monteverde (it was dark but it still felt familiar) we checked out a couple different hostels, chose one and went to find our new friends.  We couldn´t find them but I ran into my two host sisters!  Johanna (the younger) barely recognized me, but we didn´t spend much time together anyway.  She told us that my other host sister, Milady, bought a restaurant and so we went to check it out.  Walking in she saw me before I saw her.  She hugged me, welcomed me and made the rediculously long day worth it!  She took us to her restaurant, gave us food and when we told her where we were staying she said "what?  why there?  you sure you want to stay there?"  We made our argument about why we chose the hostel and she offered to put us up in a friend´s place, for free.  Private bathroom, balcony, quieter...I almost cried.  She wanted to give to me.  It was almost overwhelming, there were almost tears.

We ate pizza, talked for about an hour and I got caught up on some of the things that have happened since I was last here.  Other than Milady buying the business, she has bought a house,  Andres (my host brother) lives with her, my host mom, Melene; lives in an apartment off of Johanna´s house and Andres is going to Washington next year for his 12th grade year in school!  Andres stopped by and was also happy to see me.  He´s all grown up!!!   It was fantastic to catch up but soon my lack of sleep caught up with me and I needed to sleep.  Today we are going to move to the different room, go zip-lining and hopefully I will get to see Melene.