nellie and alexis adventure time

Today is Tuesday. Tomorrow is Wednesday. At three in the morning on Thursday, we leave for Costa Rica. Since I reported last, the weekend happened. The weekend… was good.

Saturday morning, three other girls and I had to do this horrible outreach. I don’t even want to talk about it. In brief, it involved fertilizing little hidden trees with poop on the side of a major highway with no shoulder in a ditch filled with 5 foot tall grass and fire ants for two hours. BUT once that was over, Nellie and I set out on a little adventure.
We were off to Orosi, a little town in the central valley that I discovered in a travel book. The original intention was to go see a volcano (Volcan Irazu, one of the most famous in CR) but it ended up taking about 4 hours to get there by bus so getting to the Volcano would have been out of the way and too much traveling for us. So we miraculously found our way from our school to Atenas, on a bus to San Jose, from the central market in San Jose twelve blocks to the bus stop to Cartago, from one bus stop in Cartago to another, on a bus to Orosi, and from the bus stop to this little tucked away hostel in the small mountain town. Phew! It was an awesome adventure.
After we got a little double room in the hostel (20 bucks! woop woop) we walked to a restaurant and had dinner. Originally, I was intending on taking this trip alone, but it was nice having a little date night with my good pal Nell bell.
Then we got ice cream and a box of wine and went back to the hostel to kick back a little bit. As we were reading German glamour and sipping on a $4 box of Wino Blanco, one of the hostel’s other customers walked in and introduced himself. Meet Judah.
Judah is a student in his fifth year at Harvard Medical School. Currently, he is practicing medicine in the San Jose Children’s Hospital. He is 27 years old and from Sisters, Oregon. He went to the University of Portland for his undergrad, and will graduate from Harvard in December. After that, he wants to go to Tacoma to study at a University of Washington residency for baby delivering (I forget the technical term). And Judah is a beautiful human being and is going to deliver my children.

That explanation was more for the benefit of my memory, as opposed to being interesting. Judah was just one of those people that you meet at a hostel when you’re traveling, and you’re so grateful that you met them. For whatever reason. He just had the most endearing way of conversing with us and explaining why he was doing what he’s doing with his life. We spoke with Judah for maybe twenty minutes, but I’m confident in saying that he is a really amazing person who inhabits this Earth and thank goodness that he’s here. We love Judah.

After Judah retired to his quarters, Nellie and I went out to get a beer at a bar. We found this little place and unintentionally ordered the “5 beers for 3,000 colones” deal and then drank five beers and had a hearty, drunken talk about our values and our love for the environment.
We stumbled home, I read my book out loud to Nellie, she fell asleep in her clothes, and then we both got a good night’s sleep.
The next morning, Nellie wasn’t feelin too good, but we got breakfast and set out for an adventure.
We were going to find some hot springs that the hostel had directions for. We walked about thirty minutes to the river that runs through the valley. We walked off the road into this coffee plantation toward the river.
This was one of those moments where we both looked at each other and said, Holy shit… This is our life right now… We are hiking through acres of coffee plants in Costa Rica in the middle of nowhere. It was crazy. Ah and we veered off the trail down a path to a river access and it was so perfect. The entire time, I couldn’t stop thinking: this is exactly what I needed! This is exactly where I want to be right now.
Then we got lost. We couldn’t find the hot springs, so we walked back out and asked a guy at the bar if he knew where they were and then he walked us there. This was a long walk. This was also a very cute boy. Who spoke very broken English. When we got there though, it was so cool to see this natural hot tub in the middle of the river. The water was in the 90s… like, legit. And just inches away from this flowing river… it was spectacular. But it was too hot to go in them, so we just swam in the river for a bit. I love rivers. I can’t even explain how much I love rivers, but I love them.
After this adventure, Nellie and I bussed back to the hostel, got our stuff, got lunch (SUCH CHEAP AND DELICIOUS FOOD HERE. I love it.) and hopped on a bus back home. Well, to Cartago. And then another bus to San Jose. And then you know what we decided to do in San Jose???? SEE A MOVIE. In a movie theater! This was a great idea. We decided to see Inglourious Basterds. We were there about thirty minutes before the movie started, so we figured we’d be able to just sit in the movie theater and get good seats and chill out for a little. Alas, did you know that people line up outside the movie theater starting… well, thirty minutes prior to the movie starting, there was a line of about 20 people, so starting very early, and then they just wait. Until the minute of the movie time when they open the door and then everyone rushes in. So we were stoked to see this movie and after watching about 20 minutes of previews for horror movies (they LOVE horror movies! They just love them. 7 out of the ten movies that were playing were horror movies) the movie started. Ha… did you know that 2/3 of this movie is just not in English? It’s in German and French. Well. We did not know this. Did you know that in Costa Rica, they use Spanish subtitles? I did know this. The combination of the two made it really difficult to understand the movie. The worst part was when it was in German and I kept switching back between trying to listen to the German and understand it, and read the Spanish and understand it. Actually, surprisingly, I pretty much got the gist of the whole movie. My understanding of written Spanish isn’t too awful! Plus, the movie was just so visually stimulating, you didn’t even need to understand what was going on. Just listen to the sounds of the words and enjoy the graphic killing.

Cabbed home and then back to reality. Class, housework, center life. The grind.

Today we got our midterms back. I got 85% on every single one. These are not bad grades. But I’m still really disappointed in myself. One thing I have not learned how to do is be okay with bad grades. The first time I got a B in high school (in Leadership, nonetheless) I just cried. And cried and cried and cried. For hours. And right now all I want to do to is crawl into my bed and cry. I know, I know it’s just a grade. (Well, three.) And they will never really make a difference in terms of anything ever again, but this is still one fight that my rationality cannot win. I like being smart and I want it to come so easily to me that I never have to feel this, but it’s just not that simple. It never really was. And now I am being punished for all those nights I lied on my reading logs and was just playing video games instead.

And I actually STUDIED, remember? Really hard. I felt pretty confident going into them. Okay, time to move on and do better next time.

Ah, I am happy. But today I just feel like crying. I feel a little lost. We are not even halfway through with this semester and I genuinely have no conception of anything that’s going on in any other world than my own. The internet never works, the mail never gets here, and even still I have little time for correspondence. I am just here.

I miss my sophie and mom the most and I wish our lives could just be a little closer to each other.