To celebrate, we had a 6 am bird watching session. PARTAE! During our bird watch, Scott found a snake and decided it would be fun to have all of us turn around while he placed the snake near our ankles then had us turn back around to try and find it. I found it. Go me. No one got bit. Go us. Good thing, too, because we would have no First Aid to deal with that.
At breakfast, Fabricio said, "You guys must be really excited to not have a jackass for a president anymore." Palabra.
We got round 2 of panqueques and huevos this morning. Good, but slightly weak to repeat breakfasts. And they were doing so well..
Sadly, we bid adieu to our rustic lifestyle shortly after breakfast. It was on to Santa Rosa for us boot campers. Apparently we exhausted all trails in the area and needed to broaden our horizons to keep our intensity level high. So chadios Rincon de la Vieja, chadios cold showers, and chadios Oscars.
Our hour and a half drive took about an hour and a half. WHAT? We made 2 stops, but that is just not up to boot camp standards. The fantastic four is slacking. Big time.
We got to Santa Rosa just in time for a delicious lunch of fish, rice, beans, and freaking awesome salad. This place looks promising. Oh and fat plates of delicious rice pudding. Promising, indeed. The juice is pretty weird, though. Today's was like a lemonade but with mounds of slimy fish egg-looking things that settled at the bottom. And apparently the water is questionable here, so fish egg juice it is!
We have 2 rooms between the 12 of us and one co-ed bathroom for all to share. I can hardly stand the anticipation of the awkward moments to come. I only wish I could firsthand experience the wildly awkward dynamic of the professors' room: a married couple, the K/Carlas speaking espanol, Fabricio who generally prefers to be on his own, and Scott the hermit not yet used to this strange world outside his closet home. What a crew.
All of our clothes have started to smell from the constant dampness and traveling in plastic baggies, so the combined scent of all six of our wardrobes in one room make for quite the aroma. Nothing holds a candle to Abby's pink shirt, though. Dear Lord. An animal must have barfed all over it, then died on it. It's terrible. Then again Tia's white shirt is legit competition for most pungent item of clothing.. Unfortunately I could go on like this for days. All I know for sure is that it is going to be awesome laying in bed trying to get to sleep and soaking up our combined stench. I can't wait.
After we got settled in, we had an orientation talk planned with a park staff member. Park staff member's name was Christian. We were herded into a dark, warm room with a powerpoint set up--red flag. Everything about this orientation talk just screamed nap time. I mean, it was right after lunch of goodness sake! And they were squishy chairs! You can't just sit a girl in a squishy chair in a warm, dark room right after a big lunch and expect her to stay awake. You just can't. And Christian was just the cherry on top--he was all broken English and mumbles. Every sentence uttered ended in a fade-away so that you couldn't even hear what he was saying if you tried (which I did for the first 30 seconds or so). I turned to Cayman a few slides into the single worst powerpoint presentation I have ever experienced and asked if this was a joke. It wasn't. It went on for a half hour--that's 30 minutes of fluttering eyelids and jerking neck movements brought to you by Love Lust and Cannibus. We're great.
When we were finally released, it was only for an "orientation walk," which basically consists of walking no more than a mile over the course of about three hours. I timed how much time we spent walking in between stops. We averaged at about a minute and a half, but our best was 22 seconds. We are becoming freakishly good at insect and plant identification. It's frightening, really. Our orientation walk took us to a historical tico battle sight, where Karla gave us the run-down on the battle and its significance for Costa Rica. She is beyond adorable. I love the K/Carlas. We also went up to this gorgeous vista that happens to be home to every bug in the Santa Rosa National Park. Conveniently, they all had a craving for blood of Sarah. I slapped at my legs and grumbled until Carla took pity on me and handed me her bottle of pure, unadulterated Deet. I didn't care about Deet's ability to melt plastic in that moment, and lathered it on until I was practically wearing Deet pants. The damage had already been done, though. My legs and feet (I was wearing Chacos) are covered in black fly bites and a few swollen nasty-looking bites that itch like crazy, but Scott assured me they weren't a big deal. Whatever. The bites only add to this new image I'm going for with my feet full of blisters.
After our walk we had 45 minutes of free time. Woo! Go crazy. We spent our 45 minutes doing what we do best: snacking in a state of delirium. Oh yes. Snacking in preparation for dinner. We are ridiculous.
For dinner we had rice, beans, delicious salad again, veggies, and this weird tico Shepherd's pie. Not too shabby. However, the meal did earn 2 strikes: the juice moved beyond weird to straight-up nasty and there was no dessert. What? Rice pudding at lunch was such a tease! Luckily they sell goodies at this comedor so I bought me some Chikys and a Fresca. Oh how I miss Fresca.
Turns out I said chadios to cold showers too soon. Our new abode comes well-stocked with cold showers that require "10 cranks of might" to function, according to Cayman. They also lack hooks. There are two unfavorable qualities in showers in the eyes of Love Lust and Cannibus. We are not impressed.
After showers and post-dinner snacking, Scott came and got us to go play with a black light. The name of the game was name that insect. Seriously, we are too good at this game. To a point beyond socially acceptable. I can't wait til the first time I throw out the word "orthoptera" in ordinary conversation outside the confines of our nerd bubble. It's going to be great.
Scott thinks I have ADD.
After black light fun, we got ready for bed--sharing sinks with our professors. I love study abroad.
Our beds are entirely too couch-like for my liking. They are like rocks. And the pillows are growing mold. Seriously?
peace love and like barack obama said yeah it's time for a change
