Hey everyone! I'm on my way from Santa Elena to La Fortuna in a couple of hours and I'm not really keen on leaving... Santa Elena is a little (little) town close to the the cloud forest reserve of Monteverde. Four, five hours with the steaming bus on rough roads from San Jose, but so definitely worth it! The cloud forest is amazingly beautiful, I spent a few hours walking there yesterday in the morning and it was like walking in a fairytale. Thick greenery, linchens on the trees, the sun peering in through the leaves in sharp rays, misty clouds [View Full Entry]

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Hola amigos! I´m still in San José as I´ve been for a week now since we got back from Puerto Viejo. Not much is happening, I´m hanging around not doing anything in particular with Lisa most of the time. Today we strolled around in central SJ, took a cup of coffee in the Café Teatro Nacional, went to el mercado central and bought some nice earrings and other stuff I don´t really need for no money at all. We sat in La Sabana, a big nice park, for a while and had our lunch of fruit salad and a croissant under [View Full Entry]

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The sun is brilliant outside, I´m waiting for Lisa to call so we can decide where to meet. Today we´re going to el museo nacional with Jorge, her boyfriend, who has to go there for his school work. He´s studying to become an arquitect, same as Adrián at whose place I´m staying. His family has a very nice house with a beautiful outside patio and they are gracious enough to let me stay in their spare room. I´ve already been here for almost a week and I´m enjoying the sun and la pura vida - pure life. Everything is tranquilo and [View Full Entry]

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My backpack is full, not quite to the brim, but close enough. It's going to feel really good tomorrow to be off again. The cold here is really starting to get to me - I need to feel the sun on my back! I'll be flying tomorrow at 11.40 and I'll be in San Jose, Costa Rica ten at night local time. There Adrián, Lisa and Jorge will be picking me up and I'll be staying with Adrián and his family who are kind enough to house me as long as I'm in San Jose. From then on I have no [View Full Entry]

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So I'm leaving the day after tomorrow... But it's been raining ALL day today so it doesn't really feel that bad right now. I guess I'll be going from rain to COLD rain... Or snow?? I was out in the rain today - Susann and I ate lunch at Onno's (we're eating at all the favourite places for the last time) and then I went to get my hair cut and by the time we'd walked from home to Onno's we were soaking. Even with our rain jackets. And then I was freezing throughout the whole lunch until I got to [View Full Entry]

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...two weeks left and then I'm going home again. Which actually feels pretty good - there have been problems with the course so we've been recieving really bad tuition, so a lot of us are a bit worried that we won't make the exams. And also Cabarete is a bit too small for me, too many rumours running around in a place like this... But I've had a wonderful couple of months and I'm planning on enjoying my last few weeks as much as possible! About a week ago I got home from my one week vacation - I went to [View Full Entry]

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Hey everyone! Wow, they days are just flying over here. I can’t believe we’ve already been here for over a month. And I can’t believe that we barely have two left… Today we had our first week of Spanish class after our little “vacation”. We had last week off from school and it actually feels pretty good to be back. We’ve been having a different Spanish teacher than before. His name is Gustavo, he’s from here and he speaks Spanish, English and a bit of German. The good thing is that he only speaks Spanish to us and only lets us [View Full Entry]

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Hey! Today after class the other girls in Spanish 2 and I went to Puerto Plata to have a look. Cabarete is starting to get pretty small and we felt we needed a change of scenery. And to get a hold of shoes for surfing. Puerto Plata is a larger town not far from Cabarete and we got there by the local bus, which is actually a minibus with room for ten people not including the driver. But the traffic regulations are apparently not that strict in the Caribbean - we were 21 or 22 people sitting on each other with [View Full Entry]

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Hola amigos! I’m sitting here at the surf camp wondering if the internet connection will work tonight. We’ll see. And I’m also wondering if the power will go anytime tonight - you never know, but then again it doesn’t really matter… Here nothing really matters, as long as you’re smiling and happy… We’ve had our sixth day of school and things are falling more and more into place. I’m understanding a lot - as long as people speak slowly - and I’m beginning to feel the words are coming more and more natural. It’s a great fe [View Full Entry]

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Today is the fifth day we’ve been here and it already feels like a month at least. But we’ve been doing so much, we’ve seen so many new places and met so many new people. School starts tomorrow and I’m really looking forward to it. I found out today that I made it into the upper level and that feels great because I’d rather that the course is a bit too difficult than too easy. I’d rather work a bit harder because I really want to learn Spanish. I feel that I understand more and more the longer I am here [View Full Entry]

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