Days 17 & 18 - July 24 & 25

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Kasondra is playing hookey from school today and is instead rafting down the Pacuare River with Olivia. It is a stage 3 & 4 level river which is pretty tough. They have some good guides so I am not too worried. The rest of us attend school but we get out at 11am because they are celebrating Guanacaste Day which is actually on Friday. It is the day that Guanacaste choose to become part of Costa Rica in 1824. It is a national holiday but the businesses will observe it this coming Monday. Banks will be closed and so forth. Our school is having a fiesta with dancing and music and typical Costa Rican food. The food is good. Their food is not spicy and is fairly bland so it is perfect for me. We enjoyed watching the dancing and eating the food. Each student also had to participate. Elise and I had to tell about Guanacaste Day and the history...first in Spanish and then in English. Kasondra and Jenna had to recite a bomba which is a Costa Rican poem. We had lunch at school with all the great food.

After lunch, we walked with Sonia and Gabbey to a house near the school because Sonia said there was a really big snake in the front of the house (in a cage). It was really big and is a python which was born in Chicago. We walked to Soda la U and then took a taxi to the Explornature office so I could ask them to drop Kasondra off at the office after her rafting trip. She could then just walk home from there.

Kasondra arrived home about 5:45pm. She was bruised and tired. She had hit her knee on some of the rocks and lost one of her water shoes when the entire raft tipped over. They raft with safety kayakers so that if anyone does fall out of the raft someone is always there to help. Everything was fine except she lost her shoe.

We were all very tired so we choose not to go to dancing classes this week. It isn't all the much fun anyway.

Friday, July 25, 2008

Today, Kasondra, Jenna and I do not have school due to the holiday. Abbey and Quinten still have school and they are going to have a party to celebrate Guanacaste day and Iann's birthday (a Tico boy in their class). We are going to Arenal this weekend to see the volcano and are scheduled to leave at 12:30pm. Abbey and Quinten will get home about 11:30am. I spend the morning packing and preparing for the trip.

Quinten and Abbey get home and we leave promptly and 12:30pm. The trip is supposed to take about 4.5 hours. We drove about 1.5 hours and stopped at a Church's Chicken for lunch where they had a play area. Jenna got a hamburger from Burger King instead. Our guide for this trip is Giovanni and our driver is Jose. They are both very nice. We are staying at the Hotel Mountain Paradise. Giovanni is staying there too but Jose lives in Fortuna so he will stay at home. We arrive at the hotel about 5:30 or 6pm and check out the room. The room has a waterfall shower and a regular shower. It also has a jacuzzi on the front patio (really it is a bath tub pretending to be a jacuzzi, but oh well!) The kids immediately want to go to the pool but we need to eat first. We eat at the hotel and then go directly to the pool. It is nice but we are all tired so we cut it short and go to bed. We have a busy weekend ahead!