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:)