Day 2:

Despite the previous day being a long one of traveling, we didn’t take any down time, but rather woke up early, ate a quick breakfast and were picked up by a rafting company for our trip down the Pacuare River. The ride to the drop off point took about an hour, including picking up 6 more rafters, our guide, a photographer and a kayaker. Upon arrival, we piled out of the van, pulled the raft off the roof and got suited up in our helmets and life jackets. We looked a little dorky, but as is the case with many dangerous sports, it was worth it :]

We spent about 4 hours rafting down class III and IV rapids. The scenery was magnificent with millions of waterfalls, primary forest, and birds flying overhead! Our guide was the only Olympic contender from Costa Rica for kayaking, so he was really good at helping us make it through without dying. No one fell out (although we did jump off purposely at points) and overall it was a great trip. Half way through we stopped for lunch, which was delicious. I guess a couple of these smaller outfits team up and decide to launch about the same time, then meet up with shared supplies for lunch at a appointed spot along the river. The guide of our raft, and the guide of another pulled the barrels of food up a giant hill and quickly set out a giant buffet of sandwich and burrito makings, fruit, veggies and other delightful fare.

The lunch was quite unexpected given the fact that we were on this amazing “wilderness adventure” in the middle of Central America, but tourism is quite a booming industry in Costa Rica, so they know how to keep a crowd happy. This is one of those weird things that crept up a couple times in our trip – we wanted to do awesome, exciting, really hardcore things, but everywhere, even the most remote places that we went to, had some sort of tourist-y things set up. We were doing something really awesome, dangerous and hardcore, but yet we were served a posh lunch in the middle of it. It certainly was not a trip that you’d take kids on, but it wasn’t a real survival, lost in the woods, completely secluded from civilization either.

We hopped back into our raft after lunch and finished the last half our trip. It started raining (as happens every afternoon in C.A.), but it didn’t matter because we were completely soaked anyway. We made it back safely to the pickup point and were given a slideshow of pictures that the photographer in a kayak took of us (again, not hardcore, but sort of neat anyway). We made friends with another couple in the raft, and we decided to split the cost and just make a copy of the CD upon our return to town :]

The trip was a full day adventure (8am to 4pm), so by the time we got back we were sore and a little bruised (those rapids can be rough!), but very happy. We spent the remainder of the evening sitting in our hot tub in the hotel (I told you, S. spoils me!), trekking out for pizza (soooo Central American :p), and eating tres leches cake from a 24 hour bakery. yum yum!

Okay, I know this is long overdue, but it is such a monumental task that I’m having a hard time getting started. I’m going to try to put out a day-by-day recap of what happened, so today I’m going to start with the first few days of the trip as I best remember it. Some of this will be a re-worked version of our emails back to parents, and I will try to insert details as I best remember them. I want it to be as detailed as possible so that way 30 years from now I can remember it, but not so detailed that you get bored. Inevitably this will bring really long posts interspersed  with days of nothing from me. My apologies.

Day One:

After a day of lease signing, frantically finishing packing for the trip and repacking all of my belongings for my move, I fell into bed around 9pm Saturday night to try to get a few hours of sleep before my trip. By the time my alarm buzzed at 3am, I had spent a great deal of time staring at the ceiling with excited anticipation, and not a lot of time sleeping. But I was totally ready to go! I took a quick shower, removed my expensive jewelry, locked my hangbag and laptop bag in the car and waited for my cab to arrive. The ride was super quick and I actually made it to the airport in 15 minutes, instead of the hour it sometimes takes. Since the ride was so easy, I was at the airport before the check in gates even opened, which was sort of nice too – but sort of a bummer because it was the start of a long day of waiting. My flight was originally set to depart at 6am and arrive in Atlanta at 8:30am, which seemed like plenty of time to make a 12:30 flight to San Jose, right? But my flight was missing personnel, so it couldn’t take off on time. Since S. had already been down there for 2 weeks, communication had been a bit difficult, with the plan being that he’d be at the airport to pick me up. No back up plan was in place. We had a full day of travel planned upon my arrival, and it was imparative that I make my flight. As 6 turned into 7, and 7 turned into 8, I started getting a bit worried about my connection.

My flight finally took off at 9:30am, making our ETA 12:15. There was no way in hell I was going to make my flight. I admit, I panicked a little. I made friends with a girl who was making the same connection, and I felt a little better knowing that I wasn’t going to be the only one stranded in Atlanta. On the plane we took bets on which terminal we were landing in (ATL has terminals A-E, with a tram running between them), and how fast we’d be able to run through the airport. When our flight landed, the two of us took off running down the ramp. She had checked her bag, but I was carrying all that I had packed for the month long excursion on my back, and it wasn’t conducive to running. We made it to the tram out of breathe, but determined. Our flight was taking off from the gate furthest from the tram stop, so we knew we’d have to book it. And we did. We arrived just seconds after the gate had closed. After a bit of begging, they reopened the doors for us and we managed to get on our flight. We got lucky – there were another 5 or 6 people who didn’t make it. I wasn’t even out of the country and I already felt like a participant on The Amazing Race.

S. had made it in and out of the airport in Nicaragua in about 10 minutes, so I was expecting the same in S.J, but I wasn’t that lucky. After an hour or a half in lines for customs and immigration, I finally made it out and located S.. I want to write about my first impressions of the country, but thinking back I was so tired, so excited to see S., so determined to make our next bus connection, that I don’t think I had time for first impressions!

We left the airport and quickly walked to a bus stop. The airport is a little bit outside of the main city, so we had to take a bus into the city, then find a different station for our bus out to Turrialba. The first bus came pretty quickly, so we were optimistic about making the only bus out that afternoon. That optimism waned pretty quickly as our bus pulled over to the side of the road and died. Again, we got lucky and another bus came to rescue us pretty promptly. However, instead of walking through San Jose to try to find our second bus terminal (a city which isn’t known for being the safest), we hopped in a cab. We found our bus, and settled in for the 3 or 4 hour ride. This part of the trip was beautiful. The road weaved in and out of mountains, climbed a couple, then finally descended into the valley city of Turrialba. The reason we (okay, S.) had chosen this destination, was that it was one of the jump off points for white water rafting the Pacuare river, one of the top 5 rivers in the world!

We got off the bus and wandered around the city in search of our hotel for the night. In Costa Rica, there are no street signs, because the streets don’t have names. Directions are given relative to landmarks: “Six meters south of the blue church.” Our accommodations were much, much nicer than I ever expected for Costa Rica – S. had poked around on TripAdvisor and found a highly rated place for us to start our adventure – the Turrialba Hotel B&B.  It was a lovely place owed by Americans that was once used for tour groups, but has since turned into a B&B. We were pretty tired after all of that travelling, so we had traditional Costa Rican fare of rice and beans at a cute place a few blocks from our hotel, then crawled into bed to rest before the next day’s adventures – White Water Rafting!

Hello!

It has been a while [understatement] since I’ve written. Central America was amazing, and I have great plans to write many entries all about it, but now is not that moment.

I have started my new job, which is cool, but crazy. The first few [8] weeks I’m “training,” which means I get to hang out in classrooms at meet all of the kids in my school (about 300 kids), but basically doing the job of a teaching assistant while doing all my training. It’s good, but it’s not what I want to be doing. I want to have my kids and start doing therapy and selfishly enough, I want to stupid prestige that goes along with my job (my position is one of the most respected in the school). I am trying to be patient and do my current job of learning everything and everyone, but it’s a lot harder than I expected to be because there are people constantly watching everything that I’m doing and asking me if I’m “doing okay.” They all are trying to help me, but I’m a pretty fiercely independent worker. I’ll ask for help when I need it. For the meantime, leave me alone! I just can’t wait for these 8 weeks to be over. It will be stressful still, but it will be a different sort of stress. I admit that these last two weeks have been way more stressful than I thought they would be. It has been a tough couple of weeks.

My coworkers are nice, there’s one girl who I am carpooling with for this training period and she is very sweet, but a little overbearing. Example, I already know all about both her and her boyfriend’s pooping habits from our delightful car rides. Ugh.

The return from Central America has also been tough. I was in paradise for a month and now I’ve had to return to the grind. Rough.

I also have a new apartment, and new roommates, and that transition has also been a bit nuts. I have been living alone for the last 3 years, and this major violation of personal space by people I don’t even know has been rough on me as well. It’s one of those things where even if they’re not here, I feel like I’m violating their space and I don’t feel alone. And when they are here, I have to do things like have “roomie time.” They are super nice girls, but it’s still an awkward transition. I can’t walk around naked, all of my kitchen stuff has been put in the basement, and nothing is really mine. I keep trying to tell myself it’s only temporary, but I think this arrangement may drive me insane. Between my carpool friend and my roommates, I am overwhelmed by nice, but overwhelming people. I am far too antisocial for these arrangements. I truely like all involved parties, don’t get me wrong at all, but I seriously value alone time and personal space.

I will start arranging some C.A. entries, but no promises on a time line. I have a full intense month of awesomeness to get together. It may take me a while!

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