Monday, February 21, 2011

Playa Hermosa & un poco violencia...

This weekend started with Friday, when I went to lunch at Café Mundo, a really good restaurant in San Jose. One of my friends’ parents was here so we had a nice lunch with them -and her parents were so sweet and paid for us all.  It’s always fun to meet people’s families, I feel like it gives you a better idea about them, too.  

Friday night, we had a baking night with some girls at my house, and we made CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES and some fruit pizza concoction that was actually really good! It was kind of an invention. And I can’t describe to you how happy I was to eat a chocolate chip cookie. They don’t have them here, and the couple times I have seen them they just are not the same.  I am considering buying a whole package to make for myself  though, I secretly hate sharing my chocolate chip cookies haha J That was a fun girls night and my host parents liked having people over. 

After the girls left, my roommate and I had the BEST time with my host family.  I can’t really describe it, it’s kind of one of those ‘you had to be there moments’ but it started out with us just talking with our host family and somehow we got onto the topic of jokes.  We studied jokes in my Spanish class and it’s interesting how sometimes jokes are hard to understand in another language—because at times, you can understand all the words but there are cultural aspects which don’t make sense, so the joke isn’t funny.  My professor explained it that her husband is from the states and likes to watch Saturday Night Live.  She’s fluent in English, so she understands all the words, but it’s just not funny to her.  But anyways, my host family starting talking about jokes.  And occasionally if I don’t understand things in Spanish I kind of do the ‘nod and smile’ and just pretend I do (ok that happens a lot) but this time I was determined to understand.  We ended up talking and laughing over the same joke for probably 45 minutes because for the life of me, I could not get it! I knew I was missing something.  Eventually the light broke through and I understood ha, but we had some good laughs over it, it was great.  Like I said, you kind of have to be there, but it was one of the best times I’ve had with my host family.

The next day, I left for la playa.  Some friends and I took a couple hour bus ride to Playa Hermosa near Jaco, Costa Rica, where they had a surf championship a couple years ago…so that can tell you what the waves were like…huge! They were so powerful, I’ve never seen anything like it.  I didn’t go out very far at all into the water, and my knee is pretty scraped up from just being pushed into the sand-craziness! It was a gorgeous beach -"Playa Hermosa" definitely lives up to its name as "Beautiful Beach"- with black sand which got everywhere though, ha.  The hotel didn’t have any rooms left so we got to stay in a loft house which was cool, and cheap too! Only $20 for the hotel pp, which is just about 5 bucks more than you’d pay for a hostel, and way nicer with breakfast included. Saturday we hung out on the beach all day, ate, and swam and the pool.  The next day we kind of hung around our hotel and had a grill-out. It was fun and a beautiful beach, but I was exhausted this weekend and coming back. I’m definitely sleeping more this week!  

And funny story: I have slapped 2 boys in the face in the past 2 days.  There’s a perfectly good explanation, though, sort of…

It all starts with this game called ‘Ninja’ (which is awesome by the way, if you haven’t tried it you need to!) where you stand in a circle, assume a ninja pose, and one by one, go around the circle and get one move to try and hit someone’s hand using your hand and only one movement.  So fun!  This weekend, we played at the beach and one of the guys had his hands by his face and I couldn’t really see because he was to the side, so I was going for his hands, but WHACK! I felt so bad, but it was pretty funny.  The best part was probably a couple tica ladies watching and I saw their faces just go to a ‘oh my gosh!’ expression.  I know they were thinking “these crazy gringos…” haha. 

Then today in my Spanish class we played Ninja too (I know, great class) and similar thing happened AGAIN only to a different kid.  Oops.  I think it’s a sign that I need to stop playing Ninja…watch out! Haha.  This class gets a little violent…it’s the same one where the other day we were playing cards and I started bleeding. 

But we have fun –well, at least those of us that aren’t getting slapped in the face, haha.

1 comment:

  1. Your weekends are jam-packed with exciting fun and new experiences. Glad you're taking advantage of getting out and about. I would LOVE to see those waves--what testament to God's remarkable power the ocean is!

    Hope you're having another grand one.
    Lisa

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