Monkeys are thieves.

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Not that they stole anything from me, but man, they wanted to!

Last weekend I went to Manuel Antonio, which is the name of a beach and a national park on the Pacific side of this little country I've decided to call home for 12 weeks. The bus ride was... interesting, to say the least, because it was Halloween and they had decided to rent us fun slasher movies! Hoo-frickin-ray. On top of the fact that I had seen Blindness (Ceguera, en espanol), which was fabulous but creepy and unsettling, I was ready for rays of happiness and light. The happiness came in the form of Juno, but the light was quite nonexistent for our first hour or so at our hotel- power was off in the whole city! Power outages during thunderstorms here are quite common, so the kitchens at the hotel restaurant were all gas and still functional. Dinner mostly by candlelight with geckos crawling around the ceiling was great fun, but I went to bed pretty early. The next morning we went to the national park and played on beaches and climbed on rocks and SAW MONKEYS, and another sloth, and possibly a shark fin. (OH! I forgot. On the way, we stopped at a bridge over a river and saw CROCODILES!) MY weekend was fabulous. That afternoon, post-beach, we shopped for some souvenirs, and met up with our friend Dan, an independent student who just so happened to be in MA that weekend too. We ate dinner at a fun little bar on the beach and we all just hung out at our hotels and on the beach for the rest of the night.

The next morning, a few friends tried surfing on waves that were too big to learn on, and after a thorough beating we came back, packed up, and head home. A fun weekend, but not much actually happened.

Other fun stuff happened last week too... like THE ELECTION. Some friends and I all headed out to Stan's Irish Pub in San Jose, Costa Rica, to watch the biggest event in USA's history. It was crazy. We got to be loud, crazy Americans because the Ticos were being loud and crazy with us. For once, we were all looking in the exact same direction and it was awesome. SC still went red, but after Obama took Ohio, we were all totally sure that he had it. We stayed to watch McCain's and Obama's speeches, and went home happy. At one point another girl across the room and I both yelled "Woohoo! I can go home!"

So I'll come home December 20th.

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