PURA VIDA! en Costa Rica!

The pure life of being in Costa Rica. So I am in Costa Rica for two weeks with NYU Master's of Social Work students attending a study abroad. We are attending two Spanish classes in the morning, one Social Policy of Latin America (for NYU credit) in the afternoon, eat four meals a day (two breakfasts) and I live with a host Tica (Costa rican) family by myself- who has three dogs and the smell of dogs and humidity is never a good combination:) There is no such thing as hot shower's just freezing cold and not so cold, the later is the ones I dread to take every morning. I fall asleep in my cave of a room, for there are no lights, however there is a plastic skeleton peridactal glow in the dark hanging in sight to give me comfort (it creeped me out at first)... and I spend every evening I have in my cozy room reading and studying and every once in awhile step out to converse broken phrases of spanish with mi madre.......so how is this the pure life?

Well this drama does get better- I did get four days off for the weekend and went to the West Coast to visit my life long friend Mehgan Knauff, who is living and working at a resort there. She lives near her co-workers, fellow Canadians, so while she was at work, I had people to play with. It was great- we went to the beach, I learned how to surf- my first time ever and loved it, got up for a split second and surfed in the rain!!! How many people can say that (ps in the photo with the group of Mehgan's friend, the one with the Lava lava is Al- he's the one who taught me how to surf) went on a zip line, went dancing and even made it to church at a local branch- it was great and lifted my spirits for the next and final week!! So all in all, I am having a great time and learning a lot of Spanish, which I hope I will be able to practice with my spanish speaking friends:)

California Lovin! A "yacht" of Fun!

So after our brief Hava su pi venture my sister LeNae and I headed to stay with my family in Venice Beach, CA. We had fun spending time at the beach, drove on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, even went and did baptisms at the LA temple. I then headed down to Orange County to visit some of my friends (Kari, Monica and Charlie) from my Holyland trip. I spent a day with one of my dearest and closet's friend Monique- and caught up with my good friend Sarah Beecher from my home town LaVerkin, who is living in Pasedena while her husband is finishing up his last year of his doctorate- in like rocket science, he is a smart one!

I then met up with my good friend Sara Olds (who I met in NY) and her family at Newport beach to aboard her family's fraction Yacht. It was amazing and as my roommate Courtnie described it- ridiculos... and it was- flat screen tv's in the four bedrooms, a captain, first mate the whole nine yards- it was beautiful and fun. Her family was so generous, and welcoming. We had so much fun playing crazy games of mafia (they killed me three times in a row, I tried not to take it personal:) catch phrase, and other games. We went to Santa Barbra one day, then spent a day in the Chanel Isle's which was gorgeous, and I tried to go tubbing- but it kicked my butt, we jumped off the top of the boat for kicks, probably the funnest activity especially when my dare devil buddy was nine year old Skyler- he was a riot! We then went to Catalilna for a day, played miniature golf and returned back to Newport, the funnest was the relaxation, seeing hundreds of dolphins, a couple of blue whales, a sun fish and even a shark- it was better than the $100 I spent on Whale watching in Vancuver, and only saw them from a far- I was so grateful to the Olds hospitality and their fun company- and at the end I even got to drive the boat for a couple of minutes- Ahoy Captain Lyndee!

HAVA SU PI FALLS

So after my visit of a total of two weeks of New York, I headed west again back to my southern roots of LaVerkin, Utah to spend a short visit with my family a total of two days- got there Wednesday evening (July 23), went and saw Les Mes at Tuachan for Pioneer day then on later on Friday night around 9PM (July 25) LeNae and I headed out at for Vegas, met up with Amy at 11 PM, picked up her Asian exchange student friend- more of an acquaintance and headed out for Hava su pi, AZ, which took four to five hours, we did get off track, so we had to backtrack a bit☺ PS- I did most of the driving, arrived around 4:30AM- met a crazy drunk Native American, then took a power nap of 45 min. then headed off on the ten mile trail with my 20-30 lbs pack, WOW!!! It was a bit intense and such a workout, the weather was mostly overcast, so at least we weren’t dying of heat, but it was long and hard with a pack, we then arrived to camp- which we had to cross the river in, which got my only pair of clothes/pj’s- ya, that was a lot of fun later on. We then met up with the group tired and exhausted from the hike and lack of sleep, and we were going to do this tomorrow- we are CRAZY!! So we met up with my friends, Ange, her bro- Royal, Michelle and her friend Alan, Nate and his cute girl friend Katie Rose. We walked down to some smaller falls, then meet up with the group to Navajo falls, where we spent most of our time swimming and watching people jump off the waterfall, it was intense and cool, if I had enough energy I would consider it, but so tired to think straight. Amy and her friend then left, we went to Hava su falls, the biggest and prettiest, LeNae and I hardly even participated because we were so tired! We did jump off a little ledge, at least we had some excitement, man I was so tired, I hate it when you are just that tired. We went back to camp and I literally laid on the hammock and felt myself have no power to wake up, we then ate the great dry food packs Ange had brought, they were really good☺ we talked amongst ourselves, I was concerned to talk to Nate to make our plans for the next day, we decided we would wake up at 4AM so we could walk before it got too hot, Nate and KR were heading out earlier, so we planned to get a ride with Michelle and Alan back to Vegas, we also lucked out to get a spot to put a pack on the horse, but as we were hiking our two miles to the village, both Lenae and I so tired and sore decided we were going to opt the hike and helicopter out, because we got there at 6:30 AM we were the first one’s there, the rest of our group hiked out, we ate breakfast met some people from Mesa, AZ, one of the guys, Chris Johnson’s brother went to Cross Creek-small world, praised my dad as a saint it helped his brother a lot- love little conicidents like that. We ended up teaching them out to play scum, they all liked it, and said with beer and money it would even be better, they were a bit wild, but fun. After the first two groups of locals, we were able to copter out, I sat next to the pilot, and Michelle and Alan didn’t have to wait too long for us:) so it ended up being an intense and beautiful experience, highly reccommend it to anyone-

Summer of FUN!!!

So I have gotten a few complaints that I have not updated my blogg, I mean come on it's only been a month, last time it took me two months. In all honesty, I have been busy so much, I have not had the time to keep on it, so I am going to do a recap of what I have done since my Holy Land trip to catch my records and everyone up to speed:)
After the Holy Lands, I was in New York for a total of two weeks, it was loads of fun! But once again a quick visit (remember I actually live there, however I have been lucky to find people to stay in my spot so all of my overly expensive rent does not go to waste) while I was in NY, I spontaneously (me spontaneous?) went on a road trip to Palmyra with some friends in my ward and even stopped by Niagra Falls for a total of like 20 min- it was gorgeous and really fun. We went to the sacred grove and stayed for the pageant. After that little venture, my oldest brother Roger came to visit me in NY for a couple of days. We of course checked out the 24 hour Mac store since he is kind of a computer geek- and won lottery tickets for Young Frankenstien (I am now 2 for 2!), ate delicious Thai food at my favorite restaurant, Spice, went to the Museum of Natural History, got a bit board with walking around the enternal circle explaining the Big Bang Theory- yeah right! Then showed him my neighborhood of wall street and took my first photo of the infamous bull-