Cold

For the first time in more than six months I'm starting to get a cold. I don't want it. If someone else does I can happily give it to you, I just don't want to waste my time here being sick.

So, no zumba today. Beach? Maybe?

How often do you do this in Sweden?

- slice a melon in two halves and eat one part with a spoon?
- take the pickup to the beach with your 12 cousins?
- visit volcanoes? (I've seen four here!)
- go on a bananaboat?
- take walks in the rainforest?
- share room with geckos?
- see horses and cows walking alone pass you on the street?
- go to dances where the saloon is full of people and everybody is dancing salsa, merengue, bachata and bolero?
- get monkeypoop thrown at you?
- go out to a tree in the garden to get lemon, lime, mango or guanabana?
- start or end a conversation with "Pura vida"?
- go to beaches with a quad?
- have fiestas for an entire week in your village? (the 14th starts the fiestas in Brasilito)
- go to fruitmarkets with 1km of just fruit and nothing else?
- run to the beach?
- drive, walk, run and bike through small rivers on normal streets?
- do canopy?

How often do you do these things in Sweden? (go to Costa Rica!)

Miss

The strangest thing about helping out with the gymnasticclasses here; being called miss Frida, no one ever said that to me before.

Don't go on a bananaboat with Pri

Sentada en una banana con todos mis primos

Yo: Estoy resbalando, estoy resbalando!
Pri: Frida? Estas cayendo! *empujandome al agua*
Yo (en el agua): Pri que mierda fue esto?

Sitting on a bananaboat with all of my cousins;
Me: I'm slipping, I'm slipping!
Pri: Frida? You're falling! *Pushing me into the water*

Hahaha lovely.

Costa Rican food

"In costa rica you have three completely different meals a day.
 For breakfast you have rice and beans together- gallo pinto.
 The lunch is all different, then you have rice and beans, but separate - casada.
 And for dinner you have rice and beans, but you have made a soup of the black beans and you put the rice in it.
 All different!"
 -A rafting guide that should be on Sesame street.

The food in Costa Rica really is different from the food in Sweden. You have rice and beans for every meal, and if you didn't have it, it doesn't count as a meal. It might sound strange, but it's wonderful. I love the food here. Atleast where I live we also eat a lot of seafood. This week I think I've been eating fish, lobster (actually first time ever I've had that) or shrimps every single day. We also have "fresco" to every meal. Fresco is like a softdrink, but it's made at home by fresh fruits, water and sugar. You can make fresco of all kinds of fruits.

Sausages, home-made tortillas, platanos, sourcream, and salty cheeses are everyday food too. It's different, but delicious!

Great week :)

Great week with lots and lots  of people (all of my ticocousins were here) and great birthday with beach, cake, ceviche, a fire in the dryforest 200 meters away, a dog hit by a car, and a cozy evening with 10 cousins on my bed at the same time. :)

Hahaha, I don't even know how many they were, but we did have a lot of fun. And they really made me a part of their big family so it was cool. Today they all went home, so now the house feels kind of empty, you easily get customized to being with a lot of people all of the time.

The rest of my vacations I'm going to go to the beach, see my friends, and train gymnastics. I actually found gymnasticclasses here so I will go there to help out as much as I can. I was there yesterday and I realized how much I've missed gymnastics.

So life is good. Great actually.

Home sweet home

Just had to put up a picture of my schooluniform because I realized I still haven't done that.

Went to Conchal with Laura today.

Most of the tourists have gone home so now there are not that much people on the beach anymore.

Always the same problem. Wet bikini. Dry clothes.

 Since I missed the bus on Monday I went home yesterday instead. It was a loooong busride of 7 hours when it usually takes around 3 or 4 with car. Terrible. On top of that in the aisle next to my seat there was this drunk guy who screamed in my ears a couple of times and who hid his liquor in his pants. In the end the driver threw him off, but those 20 minutes with him by my side weren't my best. Later the busdriver didn't close the door properly so a lot of bags flew off and we had to go back to pick them up.  And when I was almost home the busdriver became a postman and started dropping off letters...

Coming home to Brasilito and to the beach I felt just as happy and content as I felt before the busride and before I left Heredia. This has been a great week and it's always so sad to say goodbye, but it's still so nice to come home. In this teeny tiny country me and Vali live so far away from eachother that it's really not the easiest thing to meet up. I mean you don't go on a bus for seven hours every day.

So now I'm home again and I'm going to try to update my blog, atleast a little bit more. There are so many things to say that I don't even know where to start, and, I almost never put on my computer. I think when school starts in February and I don't have as much time to go to the beach it might be easier. But until then I'm just going to enjoy the rest of my two months of vacations.  

P.S Since I got home from heredia yesterday I've recieved like 4 merry christmas letters. Just like one month late, haha. I wonder if my christmas letters have reached Sweden yet...

Tired after an amazing day

So, to get to the volcano we took three different buses (two would have been enough but we met up with Henry at walmart first). Then when we got there and were going to pay entrance we really didn't want to pay 5000 colones (10 dolars) so we just explained that we were not tourists but students and so we only had to pay 1000 instead (2 dolars). Love it. As the weather was great we got a perfect view over first the crater, and then later the lagoon. As we hadn't seen any map and wanted to swim in the lagoon we started running along a trail we thought would lead us there. Well, it didn't. All of a sudden we were just back at the trail between the parking lot and the crater. Sad about not being able to swim but so much more than happy about everything else (the volcano was simply amazing) we sat down looking at the crater and talked for a couple of hours until the bus took us back home.

In Heredia we then took a short trip to walmart to buy some neccesary things before we went to a caribbean soda that had amazing and quite cheap food. Rice and beans just like they always eat in Costa Rica (arroz y frijoles for breakfast, lunch and dinner) but with so much more flavour.

Now we are back in the house and will probably have a short swim in the pool before putting on some nice movie.

(should have been posted yesterday)

¡Volcan Poas!

I'm right now in Heredia visiting Vali! Yesterday we went to San José to see mercado central and just happened to run into some friends, and today we are making a spontaneous trip with them to a volcano. I love my exchange life <3

Om jag rekommenderar Costa Rica?

Det vanligaste är ju att åka till ett annat land, typ USA eller England för att lära sig engelska, men jag kände att det var mycket coolare att lära sig ett annat språk. Innan jag såg att EF hade ett program för Costa Rica visste jag inte ens att detta land existerade så hela beslutet att åka hit var nog baserat på att jag ville plugga spanska och att de pratar spanska här (och att Spanien är alldeles för nära Sverige, haha). Sen när jag hörde om Costa Ricas natur (helt ärligt talat blir man förvånad varje gång man går utanför dörren, det är SÅ vackert) och "Pura vida" så var jag säker på att det var hit jag ville åka, och det har jag inte ångrat en enda sekund.

Allt här är så annorlunda från Sverige, men det är väl för att uppleva något nytt man gör ett utbytesår? I början var det lite tufft, men nu så bara flyger tiden förbi. Jag har rest runt mycket, träffat massvis med människor, upplevt många olika sidor av kulturen, fått vänner för livet, en extra familj och lärt mig ett nytt språk som jag kan använda mig av i många länder i världen (plus att jag bättrat på mon engelska en hel del). Och jag har fortfarande halva min tid kvar!

Fast egentligen spelar det ingen roll vart du åker, det kommer ändå bli det bästa året av ditt liv!

"It's not a year in life, it's a life in a year."