15 May (Saturday)

So, another week over, and I’ve made some more friends. More iguana friends that is.

Watch out they don’t bite you while you’re in the hammock. Here’s a nice view from the outside classroom at the school. The second photo is zoomed in so you can see the beach.

Here’s Tomas graduating in a typical graduation (yesterday), and another iguana because I needed a second photo to make it look nice.

Yesterday we had plans to go to an italian restaurant, but at 2:30 we had a usual dose of torrential rain so it looked like our plans were in jeopardy. It was the start of a 3 hour wait at the school for the rain to stop because I didn’t want to get wet and I didn’t want to go home first to get a change of clothes. But, at about 5:45, there was a break in the rain just long enough to get to the restaurant before the rain started again!

The first photo is sitting at the school waiting for the rain to stop. The second photo is Claudia, Anabel and Tomas outside the restaurant having a drink first.

I tried to get a photo of how heavy the rain is. I cheated a bit and used water pouring off the corrugated iron roof for a nice effect, but I think it gives you some idea.

We went in for dinner at 6:00pm, and didn’t make it out of the restaurant until 10:00pm! I couldn’t believe it. Because by now everybody knows everybody else in the town, and a lot of the people we see at night work in the restaurant we were at, we had to say a long goodbye to every single person that we saw in the restaurant, that included every member of staff. Call me rude but it got a bit tedious!

Eventually I excused myself because I wanted to get to Pablito’s bar because I told other people I would meet them there, but when I went past it had closed… gutted. So instead I went to the phone box and called my Dad and talked for 15 minutes or so. While I was on the phone for 15 minutes I must have seen about 50 crabs walking around. Luckily they seem to mind their own business and not come after you. I took a photo of two crabs with awesome colours. Although they look better when they are surrounded by contrasting colours so you can see their bright colours better.

Anyway that talk was all about Friday. Saturday (today) I actually did very little. I spent a couple of hours downloading the last 3 episodes of Season 16 of The Amazing Race, and then I spent two and a half hours watching them. I won’t tell you who won because either you watched it, in which case you already know, or you are watching it and therefore don’t want to know, or you don’t watch it in which case you don’t care!

16 May (Sunday)

This morning my host family spent a lot of time pointing out how comical it is that I’m such a slow eater. Hey, I can’t help it! My host mum then went on to tell her daughter how I’m more healthy because I chew my food more. Interesting.

Anyway, after that I went along to church with my host family. It was certainly interesting! The church wasn’t in Samara, it was out in the jungle somewhere and was very quaint. I really must ask my host mum where it was. Here’s what it looked like:

I didn’t take a photo inside the church. Everyone was very friendly there, everyone made sure they shook hands with everyone else and there was talking and singing and it was really nice. And they passed around a collection which I’ve only ever seen happen before now on the Simpsons. I gave 1000 colones (£1.50). Aren’t I generous? I’m going to heaven for sure.

The rest of the day was pretty quiet. When I got up in the middle of the night to go to the toilet, I turned the light on, and there was a cockroach on the floor. I jumped trying to avoid it, but it ran towards me, so I jumped again, and it took off in an unpredictable direction, so I jumped up on the bed like a girl. I decided I’m never going to walk around in the dark more than I have to, and when turning lights on, always check for cockroaches!

17 May (Monday)

Oh no, we were supposed to have Nelsy as our teacher this week but now we have Carmen for the second week in a row. I liked Nelsy because she was strict and corrected every mistake. Although this time we have five students in the class and the class seemed to flow a bit better. We’re learning about direct objects (in English, that’s replacing a noun with the words “it” or “them”) and indirect objects (“to you”, “to him”, “to her”, etc). Of course in Spanish it’s complicated for no obvious reason – but easier than what we were doing last week.

Tonight we had the usual Monday night get-together at Arriba bar for the existing students and the new students to meet each other. It was really good tonight because Julian, one of the existing students, had his 20th birthday. Oh that, and I won 1 game out of 2 at darts. Oh also because I only took 4000 colones to the bar which meant that I stopped after 4 drinks – a good idea I think.

Claudia took some good photos of tonight and when I get them off her I’ll post them here.

18 May (Tuesday)

After last night, one student in our class didn’t show up at all, and Claudia stayed for half the class and then went home because she wasn’t feeling well! There was a lot of drinking last night, I went home at 1am but I hear people were out until 3:30. My decision to limit myself to 4 drinks by only taking that much money felt like a good one.

I went to Nicoya today after classes to try and find somewhere to get photos printed from my memory card. Here’s the bus turning up 30 minutes late as usual:

About halfway into the journey I heard “BANG! Hissssssssssssssss” directly underneath where I was sitting. Oh great, flat tyre I thought, we’re going to be sitting on the side of the road for an hour. But no, in true “tico” fashion the driver had a quick look at the tyre and kept on going. Perhaps bus tyres are designed that way, but I was a bit worried. Actually, I could see when we got off that the tyre wasn’t flat, perhaps only slightly disfigured.

Although, given a choice between going on a bus with that tyre and taking the taxi with no front bumper and a slightly mangled radiator, I think I’ll take the bus. I like to think the bus driver has some training on flat tyres.

I walked for quite a while before I found a place that printed photos. The two photos I had taken of me with the host family I got printed and I’m going to give them to my host family along with some salsa and chocolates when I leave.

On the way home I saw a red squirrel for the first time. I didn’t quite get my camera out in time to get a good photo, but I did get one action shot and one shot which seems to suggest “ha ha, you missed me”.

Tomorrow I want to get up early and go for a run, so I can say I did at least one run while I was here. Let’s see how that goes – I’m not getting my hopes up for getting up early. And I have to do it early because it’s the only time the temperature is anything approaching normal.