Great times with new friends

During my time at language school, I was able to stay with a Costa Rican family- Freddy and Samia, and their two kids Jamina (9yrs) and Pablo (7yrs). I instantly felt like I was apart of their family. Communicating was a little difficult at first, but then as I started going to the language school and we were able to really develop a friendship. The night before we left, Samia made some amazing pizzas from scratch for all of us interns. It was a great time of fellowship and many intense games of Uno. Needless to say it was hard to say goodbye.
(The top picture is of Jamina and Pablo, the second is of Samia and I making some pizzas :)

Before leaving Tuis, us interns snuck in a few fun excursions. We hiked up one of the rivers flowing through Tuis, climbing/jumping from rock to rock. The river was surrounded by beautiful lush trees, many huge vines hanging down (yeah kind of like Tarzan), and there were three waterfalls flowing into the river (waterfall translates to “catarata” in Spanish, it’s a really fun word to say really fast). At the last waterfall, the pool of water beneath it looked rather deep, so Ali and I (thinking that its overrated to stay dry in this situation) decided to jump in fully clothed. Sidenote: which out did the three men we were with because they were too pansy to jump in. Great times!

The day before we left, we got to go on a white water rafting tour in the huge Pachuare river. This was practically my first experience rafting, and I loved every minute of it! Our guide pretty much got us all in the raft and gave a few quick instructions, then we were off in a rapid. So lets just say some think practice is overrated. The river was so beautiful, surrounded by many trees and huge hills. There were some pretty exotic birds, some of the people saw toucans on a tree, but with my bad eye sight I definitely missed them. Ha!

Anyhow its been a fun adventure so far!