is it possible for the world to look this way forever?

This week has been ridiculous, mainly because of last night.

Classes are finishing up, I had a literature final today, and I'll be honest- my grade will suffer, a lot. Sorry, mom! I'm just hoping to pass... eeep! This is a weird feeling for me because I have never been nervous about passing a class before. I definitely took way too many classes this semester, and if I had taken less, I would have done much better, but what can ya do? The good news is, I should be less over-loaded come fall semester, and I will probably get the grades I usually do and all will be well. The bad part is, if I actually don't pass the class, then I will once again be taking way too many classes, and the process will continue. I hate grades and I am ready to graduate and move on!

But we had our dance final last night, and my literature teacher was there, dancing with the San Ramon kids, and I wasn't going to let her stay out later than me- no one wants to be out-danced by a 50 year old profesora... except she did out-dance me, and I went to bed at 3am, and woke up at 7am to study, and it's not fair because SHE didn't need to study for the exam like we did. Cruel joke, I tell you! Very cruel!

However, the dance final was a blast. Lidiette made me a salsa dress in one single day. I bought the fabric and thread which cost about 6$ and then she made it for free for me- she is so sweet! I still have glitter all over the place though... it probably won't go away for quite a while.

I also dabbled in "international modeling" last night, which is hilarious, considering my inherent lack of model personality/grace in general. Ivan, our dance teacher, asked some of the students to be in a fashion show for his friend's store that was opening up, so we did. Little did we know that by "modeling clothes", they actually meant "modeling scanty bathing suits", and they advertised it on posters as having "international models" (which I guess is half true?), and the fashion show was AT THE DANCE FINAL. In front of all of our peers. And a lot of ticos. I'm on a quest to make sure all of those pictures are burned. At least it's something to laugh about?!

Also this week, I went to Alajuela and saw a movie based on a novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez en espanol! I didn't understand a lot of it, the language was old and religious, but the parts I understood were exciting. I saw Titanic on TV in Spanish the other day and understood pretty much all of that, so that's exciting too! I feel like I'm making a little bit of progress. However, I also still feel like for all of the Spanish I've spoken and heard, I'm still not as good as I should be, and I can't figure out why that is, and it bothers me. At least I have one more year to practice before I get my Spanish degree. Oh also, Alajuela is home of the best cakes ever. And it is a really cute, colonial-looking city, and Hotel Alajuela is amazing, and if I ever feel sad in my life, I am going to go back, because it's one of those places that makes you feel good just by being there.

The rainy season is here. We get monsoon-like downpours and it's actually really nice, and really beautiful to be around. Trees are blooming with flowers, which I didn't even know was possible. I thought everything looked good during dry season, but I guess it's only going to get prettier!

MegaVenture commences in less than a week. I am freaking out. It's going to be so amazing, but it's also going to be so sad to leave. Lidette has already made sure to tell me that I must come back and visit her whenever I return... and get married in Montezuma and invite her, but we won't talk about that, because if I hear anything else about weddings I'm going to jump off the muelle! Everyone's getting married, and I don't understand! I'm 20 and the last thing on my mind is binding the rest of my life to someone else's. Costa Ricans date people for years before they marry them, and they wait until much later in life, like until their late 20's. I feel like that makes way more sense than just being like, oh hey there, we just met, we're young, LET'S WED.

Other good news!: I got summer work study! That hopefully makes me one giant step closer to having a summer job, which will also hopefully make me one step closer to keeping busy this summer, and being able to travel around in August.

This weekend, I am not traveling, due to rapidly dwindling funds, and a mountain of exams and projects and portfolios to do. I like learning, but I really hate finals. They're so stressful that I forget to actually learn. I'm looking forward to the weekend other than that, though- mostly everyone will be in town. :)

Que Verguenza!

Some fun things that have been happening lately:

1) THERE IS HERSHEY'S CHOCOLATE IN THE STORE AROUND THE CORNER FROM USAC. I repeat, HERSHEY'S CHOCOLATE!! I mean normally with supporting Fair Trade and all, I'm not really into this kind of thing but WOW it is amazing to get some good chocolate in my blood! The stuff here just isn't as flavorful usually, and I had just been talking to Danger the other night about how I wish we had really good chocolate... and then Costa Rica made it magically appear. This country is fantastic and magical! I ask for fireworks, I get fireworks, I ask for thunderstorms, I get them, and I ask for chocolate, and it LIVES NEXT DOOR. For cheap, too! Sigh!

2) We finally had a rainy day in our sunny little land. It was strange. Smelling the rain here is an incredible experience, especially when you haven't smelled a good summer rain in so long. That scent of earth right before it comes is the best thing in the world. It was so weird, we even got a little the other weekend on the way to Dominical and we all stopped talking and looked confused, and then rejoiced because we had no idea what that scent was, but when it came to us after a few minutes, it was so exciting. Lidiette waters her garden outside late at night sometimes and me and Peligro just wait for the moment that it hits our noses. It's really a treat.

3) We performed a skit in Spanish for our Ticos in their English class on Thursday. The assignment was to make a skit about anything, so of course we prepared a series of twisted, bizarre skits that all ended in "que verguenza!" which mas o menos means "what shame" or "how embarassing". Michelle, Hunter, and I prepared it all in their cooking class with only 2 hours to go, but it somehow all worked out and the Ticos actually laughed a lot, which is great considering we were exoecting some serious awkward silence. We weren't sure how well creepiness would translate from Spanish to English, but I guess it was all fine!

4) Apretados- I am one step closer to making them. I made an ice cream sandwich apretado and it was so delicious. Apretados are delicious ice cream mixtures in bags sold for 50 cents out of a woman's house. I've also been discovering all kinds of delicious foods. Over the course of the semester, the best have been: Trits, Recreo, Cremas, Apretados, Granizados con leche, Ollitos (SIGH a new mega-favorite), and horchata. There's more, but these are the most frequent to enjoy.

5) MegaVenture is totally happening! I got my plane ticket home from Cancun- May 29th, direct flight to Boston. I'm hoping that we'll get the bus pass this week. Traveling with Michelle and Zak and Peligro will be such a blast. I can't wait at alllll at all at all! :) I've been dreaming of this since last summer, and it's actually real now, and with the best company ever! Dang, I couldn't have asked for a better semester.

6) Spanish is the coolest.

Our weekend/Only having 2 weekends to go...

This weekend was really refreshing! It was also really interesting, and full of things I've never done/haven't done in forever... good and bad! The first night we went to Isla Cedros, a very small and deserted island in the Nicoya Peninsula, and camped out on the beach. It was fun, we brought an inflatable mattress and avoided crabs the best we could. Zak brought a yoga mat to sleep on and claimed that he woke up once to a crab looking at him, while this Swedish guy Tony said that crabs were attacking him all night. I experienced no bad crab times, and actually slept surprisingly well! There was a fun group of USACers and some Ticos, but that was pretty much it. We built a bon fire and looked up to see palm trees and an amazing heat lightning storm, and even saw glowing water on the way over because of something about algae- I won't pretend to understand science, but it was still really cool. It was a pretty relaxing night/Saturday morning, aside from the fact that there's a stomach bug going around and some of us threw up on the beach at one point or another... but the good news is, we mostly feel kind of better now!
On Saturday, we left for Malpais/Santa Teresa (we're still not really exactly sure where we were...) again. Me, Zak, Michelle, and Peligro stayed in the same hostel that we stayed in before, but this time with a SWEET trundle bed! ...and a really cool green lamp. We spent the afternoon on the beach which is really really amazing and had enormous waves, and then got some delicious smoothies and such. Zak bought a compilation of Leonardo DiCaprio movies for 2 mil which is only 4 dollars (common price of a good pirated movie down here, or in this case, 3!), and we watched one of them before we all fell asleep. Today we went to the most amazing bakery ever and then the beach again, which is seriously gorgeous. The Nicoya in general is really wonderful and relaxing, and filled with delicious food and fun hostels. We were all agreement that we could spend a lot of time there and thoroughly enjoy it. Where else can you spend an entire weekend without footware and not have anyone care? (We went through The Great Sandal Famine of 2010 this weekend... 3 of us lost sandals in various ways, and I opted not to buy a new pair yet, and it wasn't a problem at all).

So, now we only have 2 weekends left. It is unbelievable. We feel so at home here, definitely more so than we feel in the States at this point. It is such a bizarre feeling to know that it's ending soon, and it's extremely hard to put into words. I still feel like I'm just getting started here, like I just got here. I just keep thinking of all the small details about returning home that are so foreign to me now, and I can't get my mind around them. At first, this all just felt like an incredible vacation. Everything seemed new and strange and amazing, and the amazingness never really faded, but now what seems strange to me is thinking about going home and being in my living room and taking Tigey for drives to the store (who drives?!). The strange things have become the every day things I did in NH, the simple things, and I can't even picture what it's like doing them anymore.

What did I even do when I didn't have any plans? I honestly can't remember! I didn't take a 2 minute walk to the beach and lay around in the sun, that's for sure. And I HATE THE COINS, I hate them so much! They are SO SMALL and useless and I just never want to see a dime again! Am I going to be bored when I go back? I feel like I'm going to be so restless and aching for adventure and it's going to be so hard to just go back to life there. I'm not really sure if I can do it. My plane ticket says I can, but I'm not so sure that my heart will board with the rest of my body. Ughhhh, I can't do it at all!

My life is so changed, and it sounds crazy because it's only been 4 months, but I think it's because it took us hardly any time at all to adjust and make lives here, and we've had so, so many incredible and fulfilling experiences here already. We've gotten to know and explore an entire country, and learn the language, and see so many absolutely stunning places. We've all gotten used to traveling and spending insane amounts of time just looking out the window of buses and being in love with where we are.

And as amazing as it has been to live on a tropical beach and see all of Costa Rica, the hardest part won't even be leaving the place, but the people that I've met here. We all live so far away from each other- my best friends here are from Missouri, Alaska, South Carolina.. opposite ends of the country. And the entire USAC community is like a big family. There's always, always something to do or someone to hang out with, and everyone always has a smile and an interesting story about their travels to tell. I haven't been bored once since I've gotten here thanks to the amazing community of people, and it's so sad because even coming back to visit Puntarenas will never be the same without all of the familiar faces I know and love.
This has truly been something to treasure- easily the best 4 months of my life to this point, and has solidified my yearning to travel forever. I knew I wanted to travel lots in my life, but now I can't picture doing anything EXCEPT traveling, and living in amazing places, and meeting more amazing people. It really is exceptionally difficult to picture anything ever being any better than this, but you never know what's out there until you go explore it, so I hereby declare myself forever in search of perfect experiences in more incredible places. I can't picture a better way to spend my life.

So now I'm just left with this bizarre mezcla of feelings- being completely in love with where I am and who I'm with, but at the same time so nervous to leave, and so nervous about what will change... being impossibly happy, and not at ALL ready to change that. I'm so incredibly enamored with everything here, and it's seriously breaking my heart to think about the nights on the pier with apretados and my best friends that I won't have, and the late nights in Lidiette's living room descansing, and the runs along the beach, and the pull-ups I still can't do, and the crazy weekends of epic journeys and ridiculous experiences, and the salsa dancing at Happy Days on Thursday nights, and my host family, and host town, and just everything here that makes it so perfect- even the terrible, moldy perros all over the fricking streets. I love this place, and I love these people, and I love feeling this full of life, and it's going to really tear me apart to leave, but I guess that's how you know you enjoyed it the best that you could, and had no regrets, and made everything so so so worthwhile.

Siiiiigh sigh sigh. If you have any advice on how to be less neurotic about this, please let me know. I don't even really know what to be telling myself and this point. Also, if you live in NH, we're eating curry puffs and cookie cake the moment I get home, and we're all gonna like it.

Semana Santa real quick

Semana Santa was fun, illnesses aside! Panama was an interesting adventure- the border was relatively quick and easy compared to Nicaragua, and you had to walk over a really cool bridge to get to it. Bocas was a really interesting little cluster of islands- I wish I had gotten to experience them more, but alas, I was pretty much holed up asleep in a hostel bed for 3 days. Chris and Michelle and Zak and Cito and everyone had a lot of neat adventures, though! The downside was that the trip was pretty expensive, and Panama is hard to get around transportation-wise. We had a 14 hour epic journey back to Puntarenas one day, but it wasn't so bad!

It was also awesome to hang out with Chris! We went to Montezuma after Panama, which was beautiful! We hung out on the beach and at the waterfalls, and of course the geodesic dome. I definitely plan on spending more time there before the semester ends. Unfortunately, Chris had to leave yesterday- the trip flew by! Beware: If you bring beans in a bag home, put them in your checked luggage! Sorry about your loss, Chris. I will make sure to replace them, and of course, eat some in your honor.

There isn't really anything new to report, but there is a Marine Bio trip to Manuel Antonio this weekend. We get to snorkel and hang out in the National Park, so it should be really nice.