Sun, Surf and Super Cool Peeps

This weekend was The BOMB! We def were "M-F Bandits" driving through the hills of Costa Rica. The 5 of us and Omaha crammed in The Pathfinder. We started off in Samara, CR at a small beach town. The ocean smelled like dead fish, but it was sweet to get away and spend a day on the beach. There we hung out, had the best dinner since we've been here, played some games and went dancing.

The greatest thing ever happened...while playing Banana-Grams, all of a sudded a nice big coconut fell from the sky! (Actually fell from the giant coconut tree hosting 50+ coconuts.) But literally, just fell! Mike showed off his manly skills and pounded the nut open, and broke it open. How more fresh could you get? We played a game and ate fresh coconut right there! It was AMAZING!

We wanted to go to Tuti Fruity as advertised in the Costa Rican guide book, but the local waiter we had at dinner suggested we skip it and go further down the beach. It was quite lame at first, but nothing is lame with Mike and Kelsey. The 5 of us started the dance party up in that joint! It was hilarious! Here we were, these 5 Gringos chillin in this local hang out just dancing our booties off. It was def super funny. Ashley of course attracted a Tico...this time really tall. Those Tico's love them some Ashley.

The next day, we woke up and bought a pot! Finally!!!! (In Costa Rica there are these clay pots being sold everywhere, and Ashley and I both love them and think it would be something super awesome to have in our homes one day.) Since it is low season here, we knew we could get a good deal on them. At full price we would have gotten them for 13,000 col. but we got both for 10,000 col. Good deal if you ask me.

We drove to Nosara, CR after our shopping experience. Nosara is a yoga-surf town, with a lot of "white" American-like people. It was weird how many non-ticos we saw this weekend. Most people we ran into spoke some English. This beach is BEAUTIFUL! We only stayed here for about 2-3 hours. Had a smoothie and peaced out of there. We saw some awesome cattle on the way! LOL

Once closer to "home" we hear from the front seat, "whoa shit!" - coming from Mike our amazing driver. Cattle were stampeding down the road! Literally there were about a dozen or so cattle just running down the road. (Running is an over statement, but most def trotting!) But since other cars were not freaking out, why would we?! LOL we just pulled over and they went on with their merry way.

Once home, after a nice hot shower and finally clean, I cleaned our bathroom and made some homemade salsa. It's so nice cooking with more stuff now that I have money for groceries!

(See Facebook for more pictures!)

Thirsty Thursday

Thursday was a blast! It didn't start off that way, but it ended that way. Mike and Kelsey found this new bar/resturant owned by this old French couple. They liked it so much, they asked us to go back with them for singing and dancing. I don't know how much I can say about the topic. There is nothing I can say that will do it justice.

We just went for a beer and a drink. Kelsey and Ashley sang a good old BSB song amazingly! Then, the ticos couldn't get enough, and decided that Mike and Kelsey should not be the only ones on the dance floor. Ashley's new husband totally air raped her on the dance floor. The best hip thrusting I have seen in my entire life! We will def. go back to Bar 2000!

Salud!

Getting into the Routine

Well, the second week of school is about half way through. The days fly by, the evenings drag. It kinda sucks being here without a car, but it forces us to walk our fat butts around! Last weekend we celebrated Ashley's "golden birthday" and that chica had a great time! Fri, Sat, Sun, Mon, Tues celebration! I wish I was that lucky on my birthday!!!!!

My students are starting to ask me more questions, and come to me some instead of just Tom. It feels good to be like a "real teacher". I'm more comfortable everyday. Lesson planning sucks, but I'll get over it.

We have like a 2-3 hour break everyday and, today at lunch Ash and I laid out for 45 min. It was funny, we ate lunch in our bathingsuits and sat in the sun. Where in the states (besides Cali and Hawaii) can you lay out on your lunch break?! It was great! I'm loving it here more and more everyday!

Happy Birthday Ashley!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ASHLEY-JEAN!

This weekend has been one of the most fun weekends ever! Tom and Caralee had a pool party to celebrate Ash's 22nd birthday here in Costa Rica! First of all, to celebrate your birthday in another country is awesome...to celebrate with these people here is even more awesome! Friday, my students sang Ashley "happy birthday" and made her a card. We both got packages from our loved ones back home, which also helped out the sparce cabinets in our apartment. We went over to Mike and Kelsey's to play a new game called "liars dice" which is a lot like "bullshit". It's really fun, and I'm sure we'll play again soon. Afterward, they took us over to Tom's house to start the party. Caralee made so much great food! (and Jello shots!). Afterward, we took a dip in the pool, even though it didn't stop raining once! It rained from after school until like 2am! Ashley, Tony and I all spent the night in the casita.

When we woke up, we all piled into the car and went surfing. (Well Ashley and Tony tried to surf, I stayed on baby duty with Ellie.) We spent a few hours at the beach, then the rest of the afternoon at the pool. A whole day of sun! It really felt great since it rains all the time here! Once Brody and Brooklyn came home from their friends house, we went to watch the sunset at Playa Flamingo with the Hauns (director and his wife). Everyone piling in a 5 seater suv is so much fun! hahahaha It's legal to ride in the trunk here. Today, we're going to go to church with Sarah then to the beach again! Whoo hoo!!! Oh crap...then I have to write plans for this week's math lessons! BOO!

This pool party was a definate awesome way to end the first week of school. The only bummer is that the 2nd week of school means MORE WORK to do!

New Day, New Meal

Well the first week of school is coming to an end. It feels like we've been here longer than 2 weeks, it's weird. These people here we work with are awesome, and it feels like we've known them much longer than 2 weeks!

Ashley and I are adapting to being super poor, and living off of the food we have in our small cubbard. Yesterday we made some rice and beans...but it was not too good. Today we were like "throw this in it!" Ashley decided to throw the rest of the cheese, salsa, and hot dogs in it, which def added flavor! It turned out to be a bit soupy, but hey it was GOOD! And now we have our own "chili con Costa Rica"!
(It looks like puke with eyeballs, but it's great!)

First Day of School and the Day Before

So Sunday was a blast. One of the most fun days I think we've had here in Costa Rica. First we went to church with the Haun family. It was really a great service with a wonderful message about the Lord's Prayer. Afterward we had lunch and chilled at the classrooms with our teachers to finish up classrooms.

Around 7:00pm our ride came to pick us up to go to dinner. Tom had these 4 guys staying with him from Utah visiting and they picked us three up to go to dinner while Tom and Caralee got their kids to bed. Afterward we had a few drinks around their pool. Good times. We're getting excited for the pool party Caralee and Tom are having for Ashley's birthday next weekend!

Today was the first day of school! It was a little boring, just getting to know you stuff and policy procedure stuff. LAME! With only 7-8 kids in our class it's pretty easy to know everyone's names. At lunch I went home to eat lunch. It rocks having a 2 hour break! (I do only live 3 min. from my classroom). About halfway between my classroom and my apt. there was this LIVING tarantula. That's a check on the list! But, I got a lot of stuff done, but have yet to write a lesson plan!

Power went out after school, so Tony went out in search for the Monkies! He did find them at last, and we got some pictures, but not too good. Ashley and I took a nap to pass the time. When we awoke it was time to eat, but yet NO power. Jeff (the director) invited us to go eat with him, so of course we jumped on the free ride. It gets dark so early here, so you can't really walk to get dinner. When we got back, POWER WAS ON! I painted my toes and uploaded some photos.

Maybe tomorrow I'll get my spelling lessons written...doubt it if we're going to the beach with Willy and his dorm kids.

Pre Planning

Well, it has been a few days since I blogged last. Once I got to the school I was not feeling my best. Willie did some stuff to my hand and arm and determined that it was something I ate. Which I figured that much, but after staff were talking about this disease that misquotes carry. BUT I'm all good. Just a tinge of a headache still, but ready to start working.

I'm really excited to begin the year, I'll be helping out in the 5th grade classroom with Tom. He's a 2nd year teacher, who seems super cool. We'll have a hole 7 kids in our class, so I shouldn't have to worry about 1-on-1 time with my students. I'll be helping out after school with clubs and such if needed, as well as perfoming duties like all the other staff.

So, another wonderful tip we learned today was to bang the bed before you get in it. Why you ask? Oh that's because SCORPIANS tend to find them selves in your covers and/or clothes. So along with the lovely butterflies, monkies, white squirrels we have here, we have to keep an eye out for scorpians, taranchulas, snakes, centipeids, and many other creatures that find themselves into our home sweet home!

Hotel Flamingo

Hola!
We arrived a little later than we wanted yesterday at Hotel Flamingo. We were greeted with cool towels and a pinapple smoothie. LOVELY Welcome!

This morning I awoke shortly after 6am (which again is OK because the sun rises around 5am!)
I woke up, walked out of my room to go check out the beach. Ashley joined me, and we met this lovely woman walking her three dogs. She was actually from America, GEORGIA even! She has lived here for 10 years now. Her and her husband started this church just down the road from our school, so we will be hittin that up on Sundays! She was telling us all about our school and how beautiful the property is. I really do believe people are brought into your life for a reason, and this was a prime example of God's work.

Today contained a lot of sunshine and pool/beach time which was much needed. When the clouds rolled in Ashley and I got a couples massage to complete our relationship as friends. Especially when we got into the hot tub sans bathingsuits! hahaha we were the only ones in the spa so it was all good!

Her and I went looking for Tony, but he was no where in sight. Later did we find out that he was battling the huge waves of this beautiful ocean! I can't believe this will be our "home" for the next few months. This is amazing!

Country Day School in the morning! This week will consist of a lot of meetings and getting our classes set up for students to arrive Aug. 16th.

Check out Facebook for more photos!

Day 2 - Day of Rest

Hola!
Today was our day to rest and gather ourselves from our rough couple of days. We slept in (if you want to call it that, the sun rises about 5:00am!) So I was up about 6:30, but fell back asleep until 7:45am. Had a great Costa Rican breakfast. Fresh fruit, coffee, eggs and beans and rice. Yum!

It was sunny out for once, so we laid out by the pool for a little bit. The pool was freezing so only Tony went in. Afterward, showers and the walk to lunch. The same little place we walked to yesterday, but today we were equipted with the Spanish dictonary! Prepared we were, except we got lost, and had to go back and get the map to get there. HAHA

Took a nap after our commute back. The kids were getting off school so traffic was bad. We dodged a good amount of cars, but made it back and took a nap and talked to family.

I miss you all and can't wait to get to the beach tomorrow!

Costa Rica Day 1

How many signs does God have to give us to prove to us that we shouldn't have come to San Jose!? Well shit...one too many! Geeze! So what started off as a good morning, meeting some funny guys in the airport, and a fun, easy flight over here, we thought we were going to have a good day. Oh boy did we think wrong. Poor Ashley almost doesn't get let into the country because she didn't have an exit flight out of the country. (Which we later found out that it is because Europeans are at large down here, and they are trying to cut down on them flying over here and staying.) We were seperated for nearly an hour, and I prayed that Tony was still waiting for us. You don't realize how much we take for granted our means of quick communication in the States.

Then, we forget to exchange our money, we had to go back in a NO EXIT door and exchange it finally. Then to take an expensive taxi ride to our Hotel. The hotel is nice though. We walked to a nice little place to eat in the pouring rain, and then hung out at the hotel. Adri came and took us to dinner, Which was so nice of her. BUT of course our bad luck had to follow us. Her car and a "moto" (dirt bike type motorcycle) collided. NOT GOOD. Nothing major, but possibly a broken leg. They drive sooooo crazy here, it's insaine!

Thankfully, Adri knew someone at the accident, and her boyfriend's aunt took us to our hotel, which was oddly right down the road from her house! She was soooo nice and gave us some pointers. Thank God for nice people...that speak perfect English. But, we are safe and sound in our Hotel, and we're not planning on going anywhere tomorrow! We just want to sleep and catch up on rest and eat a good breakfast. I just want to go to Guanacaste and sit on the beach!

Day 1 of Our Travels

Well, so today was the first day that Ashley and I traveled together. Our flight was scheduled to take off from ATL at 7:00am. Yea, we got to the airport at 6:05am! It was a bit tight, but then slow ass grandpa working the check in counter checking our 3 bags took another 20-30 minutes! So, thank God that there was not back up at security. We were the last ones on our plane. When we got up to the counter they were like "are you Jillian and Ashley?" YES! Got on the plane, but apparently our luggage didn't move as fast as we did through that damn terminal ... when we got to Orlando, we went bathroom and went down to get our bags, but no bags were on the belt.

PANIC! Not really, since we were late, most likely they were going to be on the next flight. So, Brandon my lovely friend picked us up, we went out to breakfast and paid his speeding ticket. After our out-and-abouts, we got the call that indeed our baggage was waiting for us! Brandon being bold as he is, asked if there was anything they could do since we paid all this money and had to go out of our way for our bags, and they did end up giving us $50 Airtran credit. (Brandon rocks, since I don't have the balls to do that unless I'm fuming!)

So now we're chillin at Brandon's apartment watching Beauty and the Beast, waiting until we can go check into the lovely WDW Saratoga Springs resort Scott booked us tonight. Probably going to take a nap (since we're running on NO sleep) then showering and going to dinner and then Ashley can enjoy come nice Disney fireworks!

THEN... Costa Rica in the AM! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH