I’m posting this on Tuesday because we got back from Puerto Viejo a day early. We loved it there, but we realized three things: we wanted to spend more time with our families before we left, we could be eating for free, and we could be sleeping in our own comfortable beds instead of a tent. In case nobody understood the title of my post from last week – since I never explained it – it is a quote from Lacy from our hike up to Poas Volcano. She breathed weird while she was laughing and started coughing, and she said “I’m so high on life right now that I just literally choked on laughter.” I shortened it for literary purposes. It was really funny and seemed appropriate.
This week has been quite the emotional tidal wave; I have felt anxious, nervous, sad, excited, guilty, and most of all confused (because of all of these emotions of course). I couldn’t decide how I felt about leaving, and then, after talking to one of our new Pi Theta pledges, it hit me. All the anxiousness and nervousness derived from my guilt. The realization of the guilt was new for me. I hadn’t put a name to it before. I felt guilty, above all other emotions, for not wanting to go home, for even entertaining the idea of choosing this place over my friends and family. After giving a name to what I was feeling – and some talks with my sorority sisters and other friends – I was able to emotionally prepare myself for coming home.
In order to help myself make sense of the emotions, I had to make myself a list of the reasons why I need to come home:
1. Jazzy would have wanted me to come home.
2. I have tons of wonderful family and friends who want me back.
3. I have an awesome new internship waiting for me.
4. I miss my Pi Theta sisters.
5. I have to write my theses (not that this is really that big of a motivator).
6. I am sick of watching Brewers games online.
7. My parents just adopted two new beautiful kittens, Bosco and Ellie.
8. I need to start making some money again instead of just spending it.
9. I'm going to be a SENIOR IN COLLEGE.
10. I miss my job at Carthage.
So yeah, that is what I came up with. Obviously, there are many more reasons why I have to go home (and should want to go home), but those are just the first ten that pop into my mind. I think it is a pretty good list, but that is just me. The last week has just been hard because everything that we do is the last. We had our last week of classes and volunteering – which was incredibly depressing, by the way. Saying goodbye to our fifth- and sixth-graders was probably the saddest goodbye that we have had so far. Thursday morning before my last marketing class, I almost started crying outside of my marketing classroom because it hit me, like a crazily-driven Tico bus, that I was in single-digit days, at that point 9 (right now, 4, which is even harder to stomach). But, I’ve emotionally stabilized since then. I think we are all getting hit in waves. I’ve only almost cried twice since Thursday. I think that is pretty good. I’m really not much of a crier.
Plus, I found out last Tuesday that Anna and I have the same flight from San Jose to Houston, so that is wonderful! We will be able to cling to each other and sob like children for three hours (which is unrealistic for me, but Anna is kind of a crier, so I wouldn’t put it past her, haha). It will be nice being on the same flight with her; we can support each other through it and sort of figure out all of the outward flight process. Not to mention, since she is flying into O’Hare and I am going to Milwaukee, we will probably be in gates close to each other for our second flights, which leave five minutes apart. We are hoping to change our seats on the flight so that we can sit next to each other. If we get there early enough, it shouldn’t be too big of a problem, I think.
Last weekend on Sunday I went to my Abuela Tica's surprise party (so my host mom's mom). She turned 80 years old. It was a lot of fun. We danced and had a full four course meal and there was a chocolate fondue fountain. I had a chance to meet my extended tico family. After the party, we went to one of their houses for a bit and just chatted.
Wednesday we went to San Jose to buy bus tickets for Puerto Viejo and to stop at the one souvenir shop there that we liked a last time. Anna, Lacy, and I bought friendship rings – I know, I know, you don’t need to say it, I know it’s a bit silly but we like them so yeah – and I also bought a Heredia bracelet instead of a t-shirt. I think I’ll wear it more, so it is a better purchase than a shirt. That night Catie and I got dinner together and La’Antica Roma once again. It was delicious, and we had a wonderfully slow and drawn out dinner, speaking a random mix of Spanish and English. It was a lovely night, and it makes me sad to know I am leaving her, and it makes me happy that she lives in the Midwest region.
We – we being Catie, Lacy, Jose, Tanny (our friend from Peru), and I - spent our final weekend in Puerto Viejo, which is on the Caribbean side in the Limon province. It is gorgeous and very traditionally Caribbean, with brightly painted buildings and coral reefs and beautiful national parks. The hostel we stayed in is called Rockin’ J’s, and it was very different from all the other places we have stayed. It was a good place to go for our last weekend, but I don’t know if any of us would have wanted to be there for a long period of time simply because it was a bit loud. There were parties every night at the bar connected to the hostel, and they were fun while you were there, but a bit of a nuisance when you went to bed.
J's is a unique hostel, made up of rentable tents and hammocks, and a few individual cabins. We rented two three-person tents, and it was only six dollars a night per person. Those six dollars included the tent, a mattress, a pillow, a sheet, and a large locker to keep your stuff in. To me, the price was reasonable, if not really good. There is a restaurant bar (with AMAZING food) connected to the hostel, and the whole complex is located on beach front property. The entire hostel is decorated with artwork done by people who have stayed there, and it gives a very hipster, youthful, frat-house vibe to the whole place.
Like I said, it was wonderful for 3 nights, but I don’t think anyone could stay there for a length of time. It would just get too loud. However, we were lucky enough to meet some really cool people during our stay, which is the best part of staying in a hostel. I think that staying in a true hostel is an important experience for every traveler to have, because it is so distinctive from a normal hotel. We made new friends from Canada, Sweden, Germany, and Argentina during our stay.
When we arrived on Friday, we all just explored the hostel and the town of Puerto Viejo in order to compare restaurant prizes and find out where things sort of were located. That night we ate at the restaurant connected to J’s and I have to say, although the service was terrible, the food was amazing, and since you aren’t really in a hurry to eat, it is worth the wait (I had the coconut-breaded chicken, with salad and rice). We enjoyed the Rockin’ J’s party until about 10:30 because we were all so exhausted from a day of traveling. That was the second time I almost cried (remember, I said I’ve almost cried three times, once on Thursday, and then on Friday at J’s, so we have one more instance).
Saturday, Catie and I woke up for the sunrise, and then we spent all day at the beach behind J’s. We even buried Jose and decorated him like a merman. It was a lot of fun. We used shells and leaves from the beach to make his tail look scaly and we found a really cool branch from him to have as a trident. The beach behind Rockin’ J’s is very different from the other beaches we have visited during the semester. It wasn’t very wide, but the tide was never really much of an issue. There were a lot of rocks and small coral reefs, which formed tide pools and areas where you could stand and watch the tropical fish swim right by shore. Crabs constantly popped out of the sand and the rocks, so you had to watch where you laid your towel or stepped when walking on the rocks when you moved from pool to pool. We all went to bed really early that night, around 9:30, because of the sun-exhaustion. But, before that we had a nice dinner at a restaurant in town (a chicken burger and some of the best blackberry smoothies I have ever had) and wandered a bit to find an ATM.
On Sunday, Catie, Tanny and I went snorkeling n Cahuita National Park. It was gorgeous, even though it was rainy and cloudy all day. Lacy and Jose stayed at the hostel and relaxed all day because they were going to leave that night on the 4 p.m. bus. The family that brought us out (it was a company owned by a husband and wife, and they brought their young children with us) did a wonderful job. You can find them on Facebook. They let me take their underwater camera with me while I dived so that I could take pictures with it, and I put them up in the photographs page in my album for this week. It was so much fun getting right up close to the sea urchins, tropical fish, and different corals systems.
We got back around 3 p.m., and Jose and Lacy were just getting ready to leave. We saw them off and then relaxed a bit for the rest of the day before having dinner at J’s (wonderful fish tacos). That night, Catie, Tanny and I spent time with our new friends from Sweden who had been on the snorkeling trip with us and who were also staying at J’s, and some girls we had met from Canada and the UK who were staying at J’s for the weekend but are currently volunteering at orphanages in San Jose. Other people filtered in and out from our tables all night, and it was a group of misfit travelers, but we all enjoyed each other’s company and had a lot of fun getting to know one another.
Catie, Tanny, and I decided that we wanted to leave on Monday instead of Tuesday, so on Monday we all woke up to go to this bakery that was on the way into town and, quite possibly, had the best bakery I have ever had. Then we walked into town to buy our bus tickets before spending the rest of a beautiful sunny afternoon on the beach. We had one last meal at J’s (a delicious piece of red snapper with salad and rice) and then headed out. Catie and I listened to my Zune on the way back, and when the song “At the Beginning” from the Anastasia soundtrack came on, we both almost cried (that is the third time that I have almost cried, just in case you couldn’t put it together yourself). Our Canadian and United Kingdom friends and their friend from Argentina were on the bus with us, so it was nice to have a bigger group to chat with, and we ended up sharing our taxi-bus with them even though they didn’t really live near us. We ended up getting back to our houses around 10:30 p.m., which was fine. I just went to bed. And slept. Deeply. It was delightful.
Today I unpacked from the weekend and wrote this and was all-around lazy. Tomorrow we have our group despedida (which I think you can remember means goodbye party). Catie’s host mom put together a great day at a country club for us, so we will have all day to sit by the pools, play volleyball and tennis, and just hang out. It will be heartbreaking and perfect all at once. Then Thursday and Friday I will be packing. Anna and I have to be at the airport around 4 on Saturday morning for our flight.
So the next time I talk to you all, I’ll be back in Wisconsin. Just two posts left.
Until then,
Pura Vida.
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