From the Caribbean to the Pacific...

OK, real quick... we,re back in San Jose after a few days in Puerto Viejo and a day hiking around Chauita. Saw a sloth and a bunch of howler monkeys in the rainforest near Chauita. And crabs and lizards... Awesome! It,s SOOO beautiful here! HOT... HUMID.... AND BEAUTIFUL! Puerto Viejo is an awesome little town on the Caribbean coast. Lots of Jamacians that have immigrated over to the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, so there,s lots of Rastas and lots of live Reggae music. The language on the Caribbean coast is a mix of Jamacian, English, and Spanish... in the same sentence!! Crazy history on that! The beaches there are SO BEAUTIFUL! We all swam in the ocean... EVEN DAWN! (with her fear of sharks and all!) Rented bikes and rode around town, which only takes a couple minutes to ride from end to end. We met lots of really cool people there, including folks from Oregon, California, Alabama, and Belgium. Yesterday took the bus back up to San Jose and stayed at the Tranquillo Backpackers hostel last night.. and today we,re taking a LONG (8-10 hours) bus ride down to Puerto Jiminez, which is a cool town on the Oso Peninsula (on the Pacific coast), near Corcovado National Park (the most biologically diverse place on the planet, according to National Geographic). We,re about to do some hiking in the Rainforest there for a couple days... pretty remote! We,ll be staying in Puerto Jiminez, and mabye Carate... and we might make it to the La Sirena ranger station in the Corcovado Nat,l Park. I have a feeling that Corcovado just might be the highlight of our trip! We,re so excited. After that we,re going to fly back to San Jose and catch another bus to the Nicoya Peninsula for 4 nights. Pretty touristy there and expensive. We will post another update when we can... gotta go... breakfast is SERVED! Miss you all and Love you all!

Into the Great Wide Open

Well , as BrittB said, today is our ultimo dia aqui, and we are off to run rampant in the jungle, wrestling with alligators, jaguars, and the occasional coconut for its succulent juices. Well, just you guys know, learning Spanish has made me stupider in English. I constantly forget words and especially how to spell them there words. In our morning class, we go thru vocab and our teacher will explain what a spanish word means while talking in Spanish of course, and its like a game of Jeopardy, trying to guess what the flippin words means. This morning , I actually said *to be incajutes* with, you know like the mafia and stuff, or know someone important, who the heck made up the word incajutes and how the hizneckel do you spell it? Okay, well my superhubby arrived today, so I am off to learn Spanish, the language of love. Adios, and love ya all.

Kevin here, can't seem to put text in the post (ancient browser won't let me) so see my comments on Britt's post below...

NNNnnnnnnnnnhhhh!!

Today is our last day of spanish school! Kevin´s comin in today and tomorrow we´re off to the caribbean coast(Puerto Viejo). We´re gonna go party it up with the surfers and rastas. I´m really hoping for some good music. I got suuuuper sad yesterday that I was done with school, and have to leave in a week. I had to console myself by promising myself that I´m going to travel much much more in the future. Don´t misunderstand me though, I miss everybody and love them. But being here feels so right. I was right by always having traveling on the forefont of my goals in life. Well, saying that does make me think of that one Shakespeare play with the guy who traveled his whole life and at the end has plenty of knowledge, but no home, no family(ok, that was vague, does anyone know which one I´m talking about?). So I plan to stay away from doing that. Oh! Our Tica Mama totally has the squeezing thing down. Yesterday she was holding her niece(or something, I didn´t quite understand how she was related, with the language gap and all) and toooootally was squeezing her. She sqeezes her little rat dogs too. Weston could take a note or two from her. Um, if you´re not in my family, you´re probably terribly confused. I can´t explain the art of the squeeze in print though. My sympathies. So, I´m not sure If we´ll be able to post next week(did I already say that?) because we´ll have to hunt down an internet cafe and shell out precious colones for it. But if we really love you, maybe we can make that sacrifice. All for now then. Peace, Love and Lots of Fruit Juice, B

Coffee Talk (with a little Hallucinogen)

yeah, I did the cheesecloth and coffee, a Grecian dude showed me how to do the honorable coffemaking cheesecloth. And, um yeah, he spoke Greek. I only know this because I asked him what language he spoke. Doh!! And his name was Chris but he pronounced it Greese. No, I didn't think he was from Greece, spoke Greek and his name was Greece. Ok, fine, crap, I did. But now I am smarter than the next dumb*** who will ask what language they speak in Greece. And oh, yeah, the coffe rocked. You slowly pour hot water over it (and a little Baileys didn't hurt either). The Grecian dude was nice, but really into bombs? ( And psychadellic rave parties) It was the first thing he asked us. We were in Orosi, about 3 hours outside of San Jose, and he wanted us all to get a taxi for a physcodellic rave party in San Jose. And, you can tell by my spelling I am not from the sixties, but my folks were, hence the crap spelling of phycodellic. But you get the idea. And , James, Peace Out. Love Forever.

The Passion of Language

Brittney is right.... Learning, thinking, eating, breathing a different language is delicious and at times overwhelming. I continantly forget words in English, forget how to spell, etc. Unfortunately , the conclusion we have reached is and I quote Brittney "Learning Spanish makes me swear in English"
She however , promises to stop when we get home. Also for me, swearing in Spanish doesn't count. YES, that will be me kneeling at the cross in church when I get home. Adios.

Ultima Semana en Escuela

We saw the sun!!! And I swam in a warm ocean for the first time! Overall the weekend was enjoyable, but I felt like a tourist for the first time. That sucked. Quepos is a popular tourist place, so everyone speaks to you in english, the food was expensive, and when we went out everyone wanted to sell us something! But both me and Dawn saw our first monkey and sloth in the wild while in Manuel Antonio National Park. Oh yes, and we almost slept with a gecko! It was on our wall for a while(trying to sell us car insurance, of course) but then he hopped in our bed and I had to show him out. Nonetheless, he was pretty cute. Everyone should be proud of Dawn too, though she almost crapped her pants when I told her to bring the gecko outside, she did swim in ocean, which was an amazing feat for her (with her obscene fear of sharks and all). On the way home we planned our our 12 day trip and its looking pretty good! I looking forwardf to getting out of school; though I have learned alot while here. Dawn apologizes for not posting, but she is making reservations and speaking with her husband at he moment. We keep pretty busy. and I have to apologize for using the D* word in the last post, but I find that because Im not able to fully express myself in spanish, Im super emotional while speaking in english, which has resulted in more than one swear word. Perdon. I hope you still love me.
-B
I almost forgot my favorite part!! Saturday night it started raining(a warm rain, of course) while me and Dawn were swimming in the pool. Soooo fun.

Half Way Through....

Im not sure if Im gonna be able to come home! Its so exciting to be so unsure of what the heck youre doing all the time! We went to see All the Kings Men last night. It was in English with spanish subtitles, but I was so preoccupied with reading the subtitles and thinking of all the grammar that I think I missed alot of the movie. So weŕe at the end of our second week of school! Weŕe leaving tomorrow morning for the town of Quepos, which is on the pacific coast, next to Manuel Antonio National Park. Hopefully we can go to the beach and get some sun! We still look like pale americans! I was just telling Dawn last night how its such a cool experience to be a foreigner. To be the one that looks different than everyone. Its very humbling to have to ask for help and look like a dumbass most of the time. I just cant believe I didnt do this earlier. Ok, I totally miss fresh vegetables though! The food from our host mom is just really unhealthy, and kinda boring. I think the only food idea Ill take away from this is more fresh fruit juice. Ah, well. Despite how much I love this place, I miss you all very much! Much love from the fabulous country of Costa Rica, B

www.picasaweb.google.com/brittb

Heres my picture site in case you miss me. No picture from here up yet, havent found a way to do it, but if I do, theyll be here!

A Lucy squeeze

(Redux)

OK, this blog is ready to go! :)

(This original blog was having technical difficulties due to a bug in Blogger Beta (try saying that out loud!)... but after much ado, it's up and running now!)

So let's hear all about your adventures in the beautiful land of Costa Rica! :)