'Life is improvisation'

Well, my first weekend in Tres Ríos is in the books! Friday night we ended up at a little restaurant called Café Artista. It was a really interesting place and I had the BEST mango margarita ever! It honestly tasted like I took a bite out of a mango. So the four of us, Meghan, Kelly, Linsey and I just sat and listened to music while chatting and eating a bruschetta type of bread and having a drink! Emilia told us we could not get drunk because we are teachers =) I think we all already knew this, but it was nice to get out of the house for a bit and just enjoy some time in Tres Ríos.
It is also very nice because Emilia has a friend that drives taxi, so we have his cell phone number and he said he can pick us up at night whenever we need him! It's a comfort to know we have someone that Emilia trusts (I know my mother will like that =) ahah) Anywho, after that we all came home and went to bed because we were going to go to the Irazú Volcano in Cartago on Saturday morning... little did we know we were going to have to do some improvising! =)

We woke up the next morning and Emilia made my FAVORITE breakfast so far! Eggs with tons of tomatoes in them, strawberries, watermelon, toast (which they put cream cheese on! and this pineapple jam stuff) and our juice was freshly made with oranges and carrots.. Emilia is pretty great in the kitchen!
Then we walked to the bus stop in the center of Tres Ríos to get on a bus to go to Cartago (a town about 10 miles away from us and it was actually the capital of Costa Rica at one point). When we got to Cartago, we had to get on a different bus to take us to the volcano, which is about 20 minutes outside of the town. After asking a couple different people, we found out that there is only 1 bus that goes to the volcano and leaves at 8:30 in the morning (at this point it was about 12:30). So we were kind of asking around and found out that a taxi drive there would be about 30 US dollars and that if we wanted to return it would be another 30 US dollars. The bus does come back from the volcano, but apparently around 3:00 PM. So by the time we would have gotten there it would have been 1ish and we would not have much time. We decided against the volcano and went to eat lunch. Kelly had written down a couple of things that were good to see in the area and we wanted to go to these orchid gardens. We decided we would go to the Basilica (very famous catholic church in Cartago) and then make our way to the gardens. During lunch it started to downpour, of course, because it seems as if around 1:00 every day is when the rain starts.. whether it ends up being an hour or 4 hours is never known! When the rain stopped, we started walking.. but it started to downpour so we headed into a little pastry shop! This is where I got the best doughnut ever! It was just a little round one with chocolate icing, but to my surprise there was some sort of caramel substance in the middle, so delicious! (we went back to the same shop today when we were in Cartago!) Then we continued onto the Basilica, it was huge! There was actually a wedding going on when we went inside to look at it. I can say I wouldn't want to have my wedding there because so many people just wander in at any time to look at the inside! Which, by the way, is huuuge and very pretty.. I tried taking a picture, but my camera doesn't take very good inside pictures.. I will put it up anyway =) This is actually where the Mother's Day festival took place today as well. There was a famous Mexican band that played and TONS of people. There were many vendors around and people just walking, dancing, and sitting everywhere.. pretty cool to see actually!



So after we left the Basilica yesterday in search of the gardens, we had to improvise once again. We got a taxi driver and asked him how much it would cost to get to the gardens (I can't remember the name right now) He told us that it would be about 30 US dollars to get there but we could take a bus back, we decided that would be alright since there were 4 of us to split the cost! We start driving, and realizing we are going up into the mountain! So of course we are being all touristy and sticking our cameras out of the window trying to take pictures. Our taxi driver was great and pulled over for us to take pictures! The views here are just absolutely breathtaking and pictures just don't do it justice!
We ended up in a little valley called Orosi (which is where we thought the gardens were, but the taxi driver was unsure of which gardens we were talking.. soo he dropped us off at this really old church that a lot of "tourists" go to. It was pretty cool, but not too much to see. We ended up just walking around the town (which was beautiful) and we found a huge river! It was so great! At first I was super bummed that we couldn't make it to the volcano because I had heard so many great things about it, but then I realized that I shouldn't be bummed about anything here because Costa Rica has soo many hidden gems and the country is just absolutely beautiful basically everywhere!

So that ended our crazy our journey and we got on a bus back to Tres Ríos where we all got home and went to bed! It's exhausting here =)
And then today was more or less a lazy day hanging out by the band, it was very fun! And now since its almost 9, it's practically my bed time! (waking up at 5:30 is rough! haha) I have to do some reflecting on my teaching for the first couple of days and email them to my supervisor. Tomorrow begins the first full week of teaching!, well I guess more or less still doing some observing.

If you want to see more pictures, I posted an album on facebook! Otherwise you can email me at

samikels8337@winona.edu

or

sarah_mikels@yahoo.com

and I will email you back with some more of my pictures! =) I will definitely have over 1000 by the time I leave this place haha


OOOH also, there are TONS of parrots here, and they are gorgeous, here's a bunch! The only bad thing is.. they squak ALL the time, kind of annoying actually haha.. but they are so pretty, so it makes up for it!

Miss you all! =)