Curu Wildlife Refuge, Isla Tortuga, and some comical misunderstandings.

This weekend was really, really nice. I'm sorry that I haven't been on the internet a lot. You kind of learn to resent it while you're here. Of course I want to do my best to keep in touch with everyone, but there's so much to do here and the internet is spotty at best so it's a little bit of a hassle! I added a whole bunch of facebook photos today and didn't realize that I only added a couple last time, so the ones up now are ACTUALLY the beginning, like from San Jose on. I didn't bother to select photos in particular, so some of them are definitely worthless, haha!

So anyway, we went to the Nicoya Peninsula on Saturday, and it was really fun! We got up around 8 and took a ferry at 9 to the peninsula, then took a bus a short ways and went to Curu first. We saw tonsss of wildlife there- many freshborn monkeys! There was also a deer (???) and many beautiful blue butterflies, as well as spiders and tons of other animals and plants. After the nature hike, we got snorkeling equipment and got driven out to the middle of the ocean near some big rock-islands and snorkled! I can't swim very well so I couldn't go too far down and see too much, but I did see some beautiful blue and yellow fish, and other than that just lots of people diving further down than me. It was a really cool experience, I hope to do it again! Kristin and a few others got stung by jelly fish! It's always an adventure here.

After snorkeling, we went to Isla Tortuga and hung out on a beautiful white sand beach. It was seriously paradise. Everything here is- I think people are getting sick of me being like, "Guys, HOW is this school??? How are we in school in the most beautiful place ever??", but everyone agrees that it seems way too good to be true! The ferry home was nice, and we all ate ice cream on the boat. It was pretty much a perfect day.

I have a few funny stories about miscommunications with the language, here. So it was Jennifer's birthday and my host mom asked me to go to the store and buy some "tortilletas". I thought that meant tiny tortillas, since tiny cats (gatos) are "gatitos". It just made sense to me, but I wasn't really sure what she wanted. All I knew was that I needed to be looking for something that seemed like triangular bread. I went to the store but I was having trouble remembering the right word, so I asked a cashier for help, and asked for "tortilleras", which is not the right word. For the first time, the Ticos got kind of unfriendly, and didn't really want to help me. Finally, a Tico who spoke English asked me what I needed, and he helped me find the tortilletas, which I only then learned were not tiny pieces of triangular bread, but they were chips. And only later on in the night, I realized that when I had been asking for "tortilleras", I was asking to buy some lesbians. I understand why they didn't want to help me! I doubt the supermarkets here keep lesbians in stock.

Another girl here had been eating what she thought was a weird kind of jello staight from the jar in her family's house. She took it out a couple of times and thought it tasted kind of weird, but figured it was just because it was different than she was used to eating. So she had been walking around digging her spoon in this jar of "jello" and eating it when she finally realized a few days later that she had actually just been eating strawberry jam. Her family was probably really confused as to why she was walking around eating their jam straight from the jar. Kristin and I thought that story was hilarious!

Anyway, I guess that's all for now. We'll upload some photos later! Hope all is well back home- we miss you all! <3