i swam in the pacific ocean.

Sorry that I didn't blog yesterday--I couldn't get the internet to work. Also, I had sweaty palms from the days activities that kept my fingers from remaining on the keyboard long enough to type. Yesterday we did the canopy tour through the trees and over valleys and through dangerous winds. There were 12 zip lines, one free fall and a tarzan swing. Being that I am not a fan of heights, I was proud of myself for participating in all of the zips and free fall. A couple of times I inadvertently stopped in the middle of the cord and had to pull myself across the rest of the way. One time I had to get rescued. I couldn't muster the gumption to do the tarzan swing. I swear, for a few of the zip lines, we were hundreds of feet in the air and some of the zip lines seemed to last for 300 feet. Then afterward, we did horseback riding through the mountains of Costa Rica. That was pretty amazing. It was an exhausting day. Today we transferred to Jaco Beach and swam in the Pacific Ocean. The sand is black and the beach is rocky. The water feels amazing. Before we got to the beach, we stopped at a bridge over crocodile river and saw about 20 crocs basking away in the humid tropical air. Unfortunately my camera fogged up, so my pictures stink. What can you do.

i survived the road to monte verde.

We have discovered on our travels in Costa Rica that many of our students have motion sickness--unbeknownst even to them. This problem became evident as we traversed the roads in Costa Rica, none of which goes straight in any direction for more than 50 feet. We had several vomiting issues. Today we drove for about 3 hours to a local school in Monte Verde. The roads were dirt and windy and hung over large precipices. There was an instance where our bus driver had to drive our motor coach over this 8 foot wide bridge, which is the exact width of the bus less a centimeter or two, held up by what looked like dental floss. We had to get off and walk over the bridge as he did a 100 point turn to line up the bus exactly so as to fit over the bridge. It took a good 10 minutes for him to succeed. Then when we finally go to the school, whose population of students totals 15, we got to see a typical Costa Rican folk dance done by several of the students. We joined them for some dance time afterwards, a little Macarena, Hokey Pokey, and ChaCha slide. The roof of the school had been blown off in a storm and the students were meeting in another decrepit building. Many of our students were moved to donate their personal funds to help this school. We're hoping to get more Murray and Ashley students to donate supplies to we can mail them when we get home. Our bus ended up getting some sort of transmission malfunction and we missed a rain forest walk this afternoon. Instead, we walked into town and relaxed for the afternoon. Tomorrow is our canopy walk and horseback riding. Sorry I can't upload pics right now, 11 mbps doesn't lend itself to uploading. I will try again since I have some good ones! Adios!!

Pura Vida

We are having great difficulties getting to phones and internet. The hotel we're at for the next two days doesn't even have phones and we had to walk into town to get to an internet cafe. I will have to keep this blog brief since I'm almost out of minutes. Yesterday, we drove to a biodiversity park and saw a 3-toed sloth, iguanas and caimens. Then we drove to a volcano and hiked to the cater. It was too foggy to see much. Then last night we saw an erupting volcano (from a very safe distance). The lava shows well against the pitch black sky. Being near the equator means that the sun is up at 5:30 am and it's dark by 7 pm. Today, we went kayaking in the largest man-made lake in Costa Rica and then we hiked this crazy trail to a waterfall for swimming. Tonight we will go to hot springs. Everyone seems to be having a marvelous time and there are plenty of rice and beans for us all at every meal--including breakfast.

I've changed venues

So I've changed venues. I'm in Costa Rica with some students and parents. We landed here around 2 pm East Coast time and 12 pm Costa Rican time. Needless to say, the normal travel exhaustion has set in, I'm ready to sleep on my somewhat questionable sheets. I gambled for my first time ever in Costa Rica and won 1500 colones (which amounts to about $1.50). It's pretty awesome. We ate at a local restaurant and I drank this papaya and milk drink concoction that was pretty scrumptious. As we walked to the restaurant, I noticed several interesting things: a chevorlet dealership (are they not bankrupt here?), and gutters that are about 2 feet deep to help with the monsoon, wet season. We leave tomorrow morning to see an active volcano, biodiversity theme park and some other magical things. We're off to our Costa Rican dinner and then to bed.