Coffee & Volcanoes

Hola! These past few days have been fun and very busy. At my volunteer school, the kids get done with school before we get picked up by our bus, so, like the snobby American I am, I brought my iPad so I could read my book. No sooner had I pulled it out then all 20 kids playing in the yard immediately ran over to see what I had. I showed them how I was reading a book on it, but of course that was uninteresting, so I clicked over to Angry Birds. And with that little click, I discovered how to bridge cultural gaps. They loved it and caught on so quickly! I brought it back today and showed them the Garage Band app and iDoodle. I'm basically the coolest person in the school now. Although one mean boy did call me "feo" (ugly) today.... his classmates immediately stuck up for me and said I was "bonita" (pretty). This was after I took all the scissors away from him. I'm beginning to like the little kids more and more. I used to work with little kids at the YMCA all through college and in grad school, so it's not entirely new. Little kids are my kinda people: simple, fun, take daily naps, always want to play games, laugh at dumb jokes. I get it.

The countryside of Costa Rica is really beautiful, green and fertile. The city I'm in is not as pretty, kinda like every other city. Ohioans, remember when we had like 50 straight days of rain in April-May? Yeah, that's nothing compared to here. It rains everyday, without fail. It's usually the same time everyday, around noon & then in the evening. It's a little annoying. The people definitely dress like Americans. Costa Rica is more American-ized than Peru was last year. Today we went on a tour of a coffee plantation. It's one of the places where Starbucks gets its coffee from. It was really cool to see the fields and the process that beans go through. The downside is that they harvest from November-February, so there wasn't a lot in the fiels that we could see. My new obsession is chocolate-covered coffee beans though.

Living in a house with 30 other people is getting to me a little bit. It's fun to have someone to talk to and go places with all the time, but that also means that you don't get a lot of alone time. I like everyone a lot though. People who go on these sort of trips are generally really friendly, interesting, open people, and that's what I've found here.

On the way to the school today, oh ya know, we passed a volcano. Just a normal day here. This weekend, I'm going to hike up the volcano, visit hot springs, zipline, and go on a safari. What are you doing this weekend?