Well the day has finally come when my fantasy has to come to an end! :( I will be leaving my tica house in t-minus 7 hours and going to the airport. I will be leaving the great country of Costa Rica at approximately 9:30am and hopefully all goes well! I am praying to God that we all make it safe and sound back home to our wonderful families and friends. I cannot wait to see all of you when I get back! I miss you so much! I have had an amazing past 2.5 months here in Costa Rica and I am glad I got to come. I am sad to leave my family and friends here, but it is something that has to be done. I know I will come back and visit as soon as I can! Yesterday I finished all of my finals and I think I passed all of my classes which is awesome!!! :) I am a free woman... for 17 days...then I start school again, but hey I love school so it is all good!! :) I should return home in Boise at approximately 11:58pm tomorrow night if all goes well, so let's all just pray that things go well and I make it back safely and on time! :) Good bye Costa Rica! I will miss you very much!

OMG!! As of this moment! I have 2 days 1 hour and some minutes until I arrive back in Boise! I can't believe this summer here in Costa Rica is almost over!! What an experience it has been! I have met some amazing people and had some amazing experiences! I can't even believe it! I am so glad I came here this summer, even though I miss being home a lot, this has been a wonderful experience! :) Well Monday was the last day of normal class, then at 7pm 8 of us from the group walked from San Jose to Cartago! Lizzy and I walked faster than everyone and we walked the whole way in like 4.5 or 5 hours! It was an intense walk let's just put it that way...uphill and downhill, with literally hundreds of thousands of people! It was insane, but it was really cool! When we got to the Church (Basilica) in Cartago it was all lit up and beautiful!! We were so exhausted though that we just got on a bus and came home! Lizzy and I ended up getting home at 2:30am and we were so tired! Then Tuesday we didn't have school because it was a national holiday (a day to give thanks and praise to the patron saint in the catholic church, la negrita). So Patri, Dani, and I went to have lunch and spend the afternoon at a friends house! It was pretty fun except I was so tired and had a hard time concentrating on the Spanish! haha then I had to study that night for my final that I had in Composition this morning! I did well on it so that was good! Now I just have 2 presentations left tomorrow and a dance class and then I will be done with "summer school"!!!!!!!!!!!! I am so excited if you couldn't tell! hahaha I started packing today and OMgoodness i have sooo much stuff! Tomorrow after all my stuff is done I will come home and try to finish packing, but I think that my family is having a going away party so I will have to say goodbye to everyone which will be sad! :( We shall see how the last day in Costa Rica goes! I hope it is a good one!!! :) Wish me luck on my time here and my journey home on Friday!!! :)

Well this last week went by pretty fast thankfully! It has been a long one though! I pretty much just went to classes this last week and hung out with the family and my friends. Friday Lizzy, Jessica, James and I wen to San Jose to buy some last minute souvenirs and it was actually pretty cool. We found a new store call "La Casona" and it was filled with tons of fun things. If I had lots of money I would have spent it all there. Then this weekend I just decided to stay home because we have so much homework and I wanted to spend it with mi familia tica! Yesterday mi padre tico came all the way from Guanacaste just to take me out to dinner before I left. I didn't know this till this morning when he had already left. How sweet is that!? I didn't even get to say goodbye though because he left so early! :( I feel really bad, but it was so kind of him to do this for me! Today my friend Lizzy came over for lunch. She wanted to meet my family and this was one of the only chances she was going to get. It was really nice of mi mami tica to let her come and we enjoyed a delicious lunch of meat, rice, and mashed potatoes! The rest of the day is going to be filled with homework because I have so much due really soon! This next week isn't going to be any shorter than last week. I have so much to do in the next 5 days before I come home it's crazy! Tomorrow is our last day of normal classes and after dance class at 6 the USAC group is going to walk to Cartago for Virgen de los Angeles. It's a day to celebrate Costa Rica's patron saint. There are tons of people that walk from all over Costa Rica to celebrate this event so we are going to have the experience too and walk with them. It is approximately a 4 hour walk from San Jose to Cartago so that will be fun! Then we have no classes Tuesday because that is when the actual celebration happens. Then Wednesday and Thursday are finals and Friday is when I fly back home. So pretty much there is a lot to do in the next few days so I better get crackin' and finish my stuff so I can enjoy my last few days here! :)

Nicaragua!

Well this past weekend was quite the experience! First of all my friends Lizzy and Jessica went with me to Nicaragua because we had a long weekend! We left Friday morning at 9am from San Jose on the TransNica bus! It was a very nice bus compared to other buses we have traveled on here in the country. We had air conditioning and everything! :) It took about 8 ish hours for us to get there, crossing the boarder and everything. That was interesting! After getting stamped out of Costa Rica we had to wait for like an hour before we got our passports back saying we were stamped into Nicaragua. On our trip we stayed with a friend of Lizzy's named Anna! She and her family were so sweet to us and it made the whole trip so much better!!! :) Friday night we just hung out and we ate Pupusas. They were pretty much some type of a tortilla with beans and cheese in the middle. They were sure delicious! Saturday we went to the beach called San Juan del Sur which was like 30 minutes away in a taxi. We spent the day there eating, playing in the ocean, talking, and walking around the city of San Juan del Sur. It was very touristy but it was also very beautiful. Then we went to Anna's grandpa's house to hang out there and check out the lake that he lived by....yes there was an ocean on one side and a lake on the other...it was crazy but cool! Her grandpa lives in a legit 3rd world house....Brick/cement walls with dirt floors and sheets used as doors. plus it was just plain old school looking. Oh the shower was just a square brick walled structure and a pipe just barely tall enough for me to stand under and it was outside...so cold! Her grandpa is a tailor so he had an old school peddler sewing machine. It was really cool! After we hung out there for awhile we had to go back and do homework :/ boo, but since we didn't do our homework before we had to do it Saturday night. Anna's mom made Nicaraguan tamales and they were absolutely delicious! Sunday we went to the city of Granada which is very touristy also, but it was a nice city to look at. It is the old capitol of Central America so it was very historical. Then we went to Masaya to the huge market there and we spent tons of time and money there on some really awesome things! I very much so enjoyed this part of the trip since it was obviously the part I looked forward to the most! ;) hahaha but it was a great experience! The bus ride there and back was a whole other story in general. I'm pretty sure they have never seen white, blonde girls in their lives because 99% of them stared at me! I was slightly uncomfortable, but I couldn't really do anything about it so yeah! We just hung out on Sunday night because we were exhausted from all the traveling and shopping from that day. Then today we had to catch the bus at 9am to come back to Costa Rica. Praise God that we made it through the boarder and back okay and we made it home safely! It was a 9 hour bus ride back to Barva today so I was so bus sick and tired when I got back! When I got home I had to shower so I was less disgusting from sitting on a hot sweaty bus all day and I had to finish my homework so I can pass my class! It was an amazing trip and I am so glad I got to experience it, but honestly I am glad I live with the host family I do here in Barva! Nicaragua was really nice, but it is definitely 3rd world and they don't see too many white blonde tall girls! As of right now I only have 11 days...or 10 days starting tomorrow until I leave Costa Rica! I have a lot to do and little time to do it in so I guess I better make the most of it!! :)

Well thankfully this week has gone by really fast! :) Yesterday I had quite the experience! I had to go to the doctor for a swollen bug bite thing on my face and that was interesting. It was actually really good! The doctor spoke English so that made it better... and there is nothing wrong with me except she gave me a cream to keep it from getting and infection and to help the swelling and today it is a thousand times better!! :) Tomorrow Jessica, Lizzy, and I are going to make a grand adventure across the border to Nicaragua! We were going to stay in hostels and I was slightly scared, but Lizzy talked to one of her Nica friends and she said we could stay with her so that makes the trip a lot safer! We are skipping class (which is totally fine because everyone else is skipping too hahaha) and leaving Heredia at 7am and leaving San Jose at 9am. I am very excited and I hope that it is an amazing experience, but I guess we shall see! We will be there till Monday because we have no school Monday...it's some kind of a religious holiday so that is awesome! :) I am soo excited! So our long weekend will hopefully be amazing! Starting tomorrow we only have 2 weeks left here in Costa Rica, which is only 14 days!!! OMG I am getting sooo excited I can barely stand it! Well I need to pack and do homework before I leave tomorrow! Lots to do!

Well today is kind of a memorable day...actually no not really. Anyway 2 months ago from today I was on a plane flying here to Costa Rica and 17 days from now I will be on a plane back home to Idaho! I am soooo ready to be home! I mean I love being in Costa Rica and I am having the time of my life, but I miss everyone back home! I have a lot planned out to do until I get home so that will make the time fly right by! This week is going well so far, but I have a ton of homework for my class every day which is no bueno! but when we have tons of homework during the week we don't have homework on the weekends, which is awesome!!! :) The only bad thing about this week is that there have been a ton of sick people so that is poopy! and an American girl I met 5 weeks ago (and is in a different program) is leaving on Friday so that is sad, but I'm glad I met her! I have a lot to do and a lot of Spanish to practice in the next 17 days so I better get crackin!!! ;) hahaha

Well thankfully this week has gone by sort of fast! Classes have been going okay, I just have a lot of busy work and a lot writing that I have to do, but for the most part it is good! There are some interesting people in this new group and that is all I am going to say about them for now at least! It is only week 2 of this second 5 weeks and we already have a midterm tomorrow and it isn't supposed to be until next week, but oh well I guess. I can't change the teacher's plans so I'll just go with it! I am supposed to be studying right now, but unfortunately I am not! :/ Today was a good and bad day! It was just a normal day, except it's Daddy's birthday and it's the little girl I baby sit, Paisley's birthday today! I am very sad that I didn't get to celebrate with either of them! :( I called Paisley to wish her happy birthday and it's the first time I have heard her voice in almost 8 weeks and I almost started crying! I miss that little bugger so much! :( I am supposed to skype Daddy later after they get back home so that will be nice to see him and wish him happy Birthday! I just wish I was there to celebrate!

So we only have 3 actual weekends left! This weekend some of the group is going to Jaco and Manuel Antonio. I decided that I am running low on money and don't need to spend it on a trip I don't really want to go on so I am going to hang out here for the weekend! My host sister, Dani, comes back on Saturday anyway so I figure I should probably hang out with her a little since she has been gone for two weeks and I will be gone the next two weekends. So I will just be a house bum or something, but a break will be nice! :)