Sorry Mom! I'm a busy man!

I don't really even know where to start, except that I haven't posted since last Tuesday. So I guess I'll start at Wednesday.

WEDNESDAY

After class we hopped on a bus to go to Palmares, the huge festival an hour away. I bought a fifth of guaro, the national drink made from sugar cane. It's 70 proof, and can best be described as a mix of rum and vodka. I mixed it with ginger ale. Not bad, but I had a lot more ginger ale than Cacique (the brand of choice). Anyway Wednesday wasn't a busy day, but they did have a rodeo and a running of the bulls thing going on. Yes, I participated, along with most of the other guys, and it was scary as hell a few times. We all got yellow t-shirts, which the bulls don't like (as opposed to red) and after a matador got trampled and another one succeeded, we and about 75 Ticos ran like hell. They'd bring one bull out at a time, each one successively larger, and would let us harass it for about 10 minutes. Then the caballeros would round it up and bring out the next one. Don't worry--in Costa Rica they don't torture or kill any of them. The other cool thing was "horse dancing." It was horses "dancing" to salsa and charanga music, which I personally thought was hilarious. More heavy drinking and some carnival rides, then we headed home around midnight. Also talked with a couple locals about their performance sports cars they had on display for an hour. My Spanish is coming around.

THURSDAY

I was hungover. I remember that. I also remember taking a nap from about 430 to 630, and missed my workout with Eric. I ended up not getting my 2250 word essay done and spent some time studying for my unreasonably large exam that's tomorrow morning (Friday). Bed around 11. I also went to the ATM to get a bunch of cash before a weekend in Montezuma and the week in Playa Sa'mara, where ATMs are scarce.

FRIDAY

I was right. My test was absolutely ridiculous. 16 pages in all, and it took me just under three hours to finish. Good news is I got another 91%, the same grade as my first one. I think it was luck and some good guessing for the most part. I had to walk (and I mean power-walk, like 5 minute mile pace) back to my house which takes 15 minutes if I haul balls. I packed very quickly, cleaned my room, and ended up having to take a taxi back to school ($1 only) to hop on the bus after lunch at the market with Morgan C. The bus was the same small one as last time, but only 15 of us went on the trip so we had some space this time around. It was a few hours to the ferrie at Puntarenas, an hour on the ferrie, and another hour or so south to Montezuma from a puny town called Paquera. The roads were horrible. There were also random speed bumps that were (obviously) unmarked. Once we hit one going 45 and I swear to God I thought we were going to flip. No worries though. We made it.

Thanks to you Mom, Emily and I had called to make hotel reservations the day before via telephone, while everybody else in the group did it over the internet. When we went to check in, they didn't have any of the internet "reservations" which consisted of them mailing their credit card information via email to a place claiming to be El Tajalin, the hotel we we're all planning to stay at. I almost started laughing, because not a single one of them got a confirmation. They all assumed if you send an email with you CC info you get a room. Even more surprising is the fact that none of them called their CC companies to see if they emailed to a fake email address. Oh well. Not my problem. I had dinner on a private balcony with Emily that overlooked the beach. It was perfect. I had Mahi-mahi, can't remember what she had. We called it an early night at 10 after making reservations to Turtle Island for the next morning.

More to come later, but I'm here in Samara and I have surfing lessons in 20 minutes. It's about 85 and sunny here, and life is good. Mom and Dad, I'll call you soon.