Happy Birthday!

Costa Rican's (ticos) enjoy coffee and snack breaks. For our snack on Friday morning at school, our professor brought us an oreja (also means ear, but words have multiple purposes). Oreja is simply a very flat type of sweet bread that has honey in it. It was really good and a great start to our three-hour class!

People really like their coffee here, and I have heard from many of my classmates that it is really good here. I do not like coffee, but my host mom gives me plenty of tea. On Thursday afternoon, she arrived home and said, come drink tea! I followed her to her mom's house and other family members and two other students were there so we had cafécita. Cafécita is basically a coffee break which is common around 10 am, and 5 pm here. We all had a small snack, coffee or tea, while we visited with family members. 

My host brother enjoying some cake

My delicious cake!

Later my mom was making supper, but wouldn´t really let me help so I went to watch a movie with my host sister.  All the family that lives in our compound started arriving at our house. Pretty soon nearly everyone was there and the four of us students who live here was trying to figure out what was happening. It is really hard to keep up when there are so many people all rapid firing Spanish around you. The three other students stated that their families just told them, "Come on, let's go eat." We soon learned they planned by birthday for the night before since we were leaving early in the morning for the coast. I was so surprised as I had not said a word about it, and neither had my family. We had hamburgers, chocolate cake, and I got sung to in Spanish and English. It was pretty special.

On Friday morning a group of 19 students set out to Puerto Viejo, Limon. It is on the Carribean Sea, and about a 5-hour bus ride from San Jose. It was a longer bus ride though because there was construction and we were stopped for almost an hour, but I was able to talk to a few interesting people around me when I was not sleeping. Finally, I caught my first ever glimpse of the ocean that was not from a plane window and I knew it was going to be better than I ever imagined. The bus dropped us off in a small little town where we had to wait in line for 30 minutes to buy our return tickets. We were sweating profusely, the sun was beating down on us, and the humidity was high. Finally, we had our tickets and walked a mile or two to our hostel. By this time I was drenched with sweat and wondering if I could make it to the ocean. We checked in and were given a hammock and a locker, so we dropped our things off, put on our bathing suits, and made a beeline for the beach. The view was breathtaking. As soon as we arrived at the ocean it was immediately cooler, and the water was absolutely amazing. I tried to walk out into the waves but encountered reef and sea urchins. So I gave up and sat close to shore, but even that could not dampen my awe at being at the ocean. We spent hours just walking along the beach and sitting in the water near the shore. I enjoyed taking everything in and marveled at how great my God is.

 After dinner, Lorin and I returned to the ocean at night when the tide was high, and I was blown away even more by the wonder of it all. I will never forget this day, it is forever etched in my heart and mind.