!adios nicoya!

welp, today was officially my last day in nicoya. tomorrow afternoon i am off to san jose to meet up with jherson and the conexión familia. lets be honest: from day one, i was more excited about the last 4 days of my adventure here than the entire student teaching process. i have learned so much about what it is like to teach english abroad, about school systems, and so much more, but my ultimate desire is to see what ministry is like. i have a heart and passion to build relationships with people, and i found that being more of what i was doing than teaching. its just how i was created to be. even keeping in contact with my students at watauga, i totally saw the younglife leader side of me when talking to them.

ok, moving on along. the last few days of being here have been rainy and not too exciting. we had to cancel our last beach day due to the rain, but thats ok, because we got a head start on packing and such. christy and i have just been taking things slow and soaking in a lot of lasts together.

today was an incredible last real morning here. at 530, ricardo came and picked christy and i up for a morning hike. i always knew there was a mountain that people climbed when they came here with a cross as the top, and i had been wanting to climb it the WHOLE time i was here. welp, last morning calls for drastic measures. we called ricardo last night and he said we could tag along. funny how those adventures work out. welp, for starters i guess i learned i shouldnt eat gallo pinto before hiking, but i thought i should eat something. its not as good coming back up. too much information? sorry, just sharing my experience. 2 miles straight uphill as soon as i woke up. not the best. oh well. the view was incredible at the top!

but tomorrow, christy karla and i will go our separate ways. i want to write more, but i literally cant put into words how this experience with them has been for me. absolutely incredible. love karlita and love christy.

but for now, im going to enjoy my last night in the little house, and hopefully the next post will be all about SONRISAS! ahh be praying for me friends :) IM SO EXCITEDDDD!!!!

festival of lights.

saturday in san jose was christy and i's adventure for the weekend, and we were far from disappointed. now this may sound wrong but, here in nicoya, people "hype up" all the wrong things. they tell us, ohh this festival will be awesome, and we see people chopping wood for an hour. oh this place is incredible and so beautiful, and well...you get the point. people make a big deal out of things. but they failed on this one. saturday in san jose was the festival de la luz (aka the festival of lights). no one told us anything about this event, christy just really wanted to go to the city for a day. so i tagged along, because one cannot travel alone for starters, and two we heard there was some festival going on.

we caught a ridiculously early bus saturday morning...another one of those 430 mornings. and well, we didnt exactly have seats on the bus, so on the floor we went for the first two hours. costa ricans are some crazy bus travelers. we started to arrive in the city and literally saw the streets roped off at 9am and people were taking their spots. we thought they were crazy, but yall, this festival was probably the macy's thanksgiving day parade this country. its HUGE!

we did our shopping for the fam and such in the morning and late afternoon. i was surprised i slightly knew my way around this city still since its been two years since i was here last. and lunch/dinner was glorious. subway! we do love a good sub sometimes, and 5 weeks without one, makes subway taste incredible. anywho. we checked into our hostel before we went to the parade festivities. only the polar opposite side of town from where we were after our market shopping. 40 block walk on a crowded street for exercise: check.

the hostel was a low key place, but it was good just to talk to other americans for a little bit. christy loved it, because she literally hasnt spoken to but 5 people her whole time in costa rica. language barriers are hard for her. after checking in, we lightened the loads of our backpacks and headed back on the street to try and find a place. oh man, we got SO lucky. nad by lucky, i do mean we got a front row spot on the most disgusting curb in san jose, but it was a place to sit and wait/ watch the parade. there were lights and floats and santa came too! there had to be at least 1 million people lined on the streets, and the whole thing was broadcasted all over the country. i was rather pleased with our weekend trip this week :)

this morning, we took a slow morning and drank our coffee at the hostel and such. fact: at the greenway house i have a favorite purple mug, kaity knows all about it. and here, at this same hostel, there was a matching blue twin. i loved it. made my coffee experience just that much more joyful this morning. and did i mention our hostel had a bar? well it did. so i did my quiet time with my cup of coffee at the bar this morning. i just thought that was a funny side note.

but now, we are safely back in nicoya, after another crazy bus ride back...we at least hate seats this go round, but peoples butts were standing in christy's face, for a good 2 hours. we just kept singing some bubba sparks to ourselves and were cracking up. i love giggle moods. speaking of, im in one now, because im just exhausted. not much sleep this weekend, and my bed is calling my name. sending some amor and abrazos your way!

for narrrniaaaa!

happy thursday friends! i am back from the cloud forest and ohhh boy i am in for such a rude awakening when i get back to the states. we went to monteverde for a few days and its basically a scary bus ride up the mountain and into the clouds. it was so so so cold to me. but then again, all i had were a few tshirts, shorts, 1 pair of leggings and my chacos. christy and i were super grimmy americans on this trip because we didnt want to tote too much in our backpacks.

anywho, we got their monday afternoon and explored the town, and after about an hour we realized we had booked our hotel for far too many days. but we decided to make the most of it. we checked in at this little hotel that had an incredible view of the gulf of nicoya in the distance (so across the water was nicoya...quite a few km away). a father and son run the business and they were the greatest most helpful people! the dad moved to costa rica, from germany, when he was about 5 years old, so he was expressing to me his curiosity with my name. he saw jaime, which is a spanish guys name, and then saw meier, which he knew was german. and then this crazy american girl walks in, and his face was priceless when i told him who i was checking in. needless to say, a lot of people think im strange for my name. i guess it would be like if i was in the states and introduced myself as george or bill. anywho, the hotel guys were super helpful and free breakfast was SO great!

our first full day there we did a zip line tour above all the trees and clouds. it was great to be around other americans for a while and hear all sorts of older people share their vacations stories of being in costa rica. and they were all jealous that we had 6 weeks here. zipping along is really fun. i was glad we did the one about the trees, where as yesterday we did one more inside, which christy liked a lot more. anywho, we did a night walk and saw lots of bugs, and snakes, a tarantula! and a sloth. the last two were all i wanted to see. i was a happy camper.

the next day we woke up and went on a tour of a coffee plantation. i loved this. loved it. did you know that coffee comes from a red berry? neither did i. and did you know my friend victor from the plantation has been making coffee for almost 50 years. hes an all star. and he invited us to his house for coffee and i loved sitting and talking with him. he just laughed at me. what else is new? and outside he had this old toyota truck that he loved, and of course i took a picture of the front of it for you pops, because it looked really similar to the fj.

yesterday afternoon we went on zip line number two. now as you can tell, we booked a lot of things, because we didnt realize monteverde was so small. could have done it in a day, like i said, but we made the most of it. youre only in costa rica once! wellll, maybe twice...anywho. this second zip line was a lot smaller of a company, and christy and i were the only ones with them. the guides were rather funny. i love being hit on by every guide. not. but during this tour, they were filming and taking pictures for company promotions and i do believe i will be on an advertisement. i mean they stopped me on some of the zip lines to pose me for pictures. i was cracking up. which i guess makes me look like im having fun, and more business for them. the guy said he would email me some of the best pictures, so im excited for that. and another guide took nigel for me and documented our trip. it was a grand ole time.

and this morning, we woke up at 3:15 AM to catch the bus out of narnia and then catch another one to nicoya. christy and i have been reading the chronicles of narnia, because they are the english books karla has, and every 5 seconds in monteverde we would yell "for narrrniaaa!" just because we felt like we were there. and any scary thing, we just said it was the white witch catching up to us. dont judge our imaginations. its been great.

but for now, i cant believe im down to under two weeks. actually about 11 days left in costa rica. im excited to say that christy and i had some incredible conversations this week on our trip, and i love getting to talk about jesus with her. she will flat out ask things, like what is it that you do in the mornings when youre up early, i know its religious, but what do you do, how do you know what to read, who's this paul that you talk about? i have shared a lot about my heart with her, and im just being vulnerable. its so funny though, because shes just really superstitious, so im trying to be really respectful towards her, but at the same time, show her that its just not necessary. nothing bad will happen for leaving my shoes turned over, face down. so, yall, just be praying for more open conversations.

ive been learning a lot about mission related things, and have been so confirmed with my time here, that its what im supposed to do with my life. the lord has been such an incredible provider for words and timing to speak. read matthew 10 in the message if you get a chance :) and whats also cool, is this little project of praying for the nations ive been doing. if i know im supposed to be living in another country, but dont know where, i should be praying for them all. so thats what ive been doing. i wrote down every country in central and south america and pray for one each day. and oh my heart has been pulled to a few places. but ill just keep praying through those.

anywho, im going to quite typing all this in here, because i could type for days. misssssing you all, but loving costa rica! le amo y pura vida maes!