Gone by too fast

This week has gone by way to fast!  I cannot believe it is already Friday!

On Monday, May 28th, we got to have a relaxing late morning.  I enjoyed time with the girls and started souvenir shopping for my family.  I found a lot of great items so it is going to be hard finding a place for everything in my bags.  In Spanish class today, we got a new teacher for the week.  Our chaperon Joe, told us he liked to sing and play his guitar so the first thing we asked him to do in class was sing us a song.  He taught us "You are my sunshine" in Spanish, so it was a great introduction to our class for the week and a new and interesting way to learn some more Spanish. 

On Tuesday, May 29th, we started our day touring the Monteverde Cloud Forest School.  This school is absolutely amazing!  The children look so free and everyone was extremely nice.  Our tour was guided by a 7th grade boy, who knew a lot about the school and how it started.  The school just turned 20 years old this year, so it is very new!  They mostly teach in English and a majority of their teachers are international (mostly Americans) so they have a high teacher turn over rate.  If I ever decided to come back and live in Costa Rica, I would love to teach at this school and teach with the freedom the teachers had here.  In Spanish class, our teacher taught us another song.  He has an amazing voice and I love that he uses music as a form of teaching in his class!

On Wednesday, May 30th, we went to Life Monteverde Coffee Plantation.  Here we learned more about coffee and we got to meet on of the incredible owners and founders of the plantation.  This man is so knowledgeable of his country and the environment, so it was great to hear from another expert of Costa Rica.  At the coffee plantation, we got to help fertilize many of the coffee plants with compost and we got to plant trees on the plantation.  This was a great experience and I thoroughly enjoyed this service project!  After the coffee plantation, we came back to have Spanish class then went home to spend more time with our families.

On Thursday, May 31st, we started our morning off at Sky Trek doing a canopy tour (ziplining).  I have been on 2 small ziplines before, but they were nothing compared to this experience.  We did 10 ziplines in all and they all provided us with amazing views of the cloud forest, not to mention a great adrenaline rush for the morning.  On the next to last zipline, I went with one of the instructors and got to go backwards and hang upside down!  Although I was nervous at first about this whole experience, I am so glad we got to have it and do something really extreme on this trip.  After the canopy tour, we came back to CPI for our last Spanish class.  Dr. Crawford and Mrs. Bramley wanted to let our last day be a free day, so they decided to not have Spanish class on Friday.  I was really sad that it was our last day because all of my teachers had been amazing!  Since I could tell this teacher loved music so much, I interviewed him for my inquiry project on pop culture through music and television in Costa Rica.  He helped me translate my questions and answered the questions for me so I was very thankful for that!

I cannot believe this week has gone by so fast!! I am absolutely in love with this country and I cannot believe we are about to go home!! I cannot wait to come back and visit this place!

Pura Vida!