I have vistors!

I'm sooo excited that my family is coming to visit me. Mom, Dadd, and Mac are flying in on Wednesday and we're going to do a little sightseeing while they're here. Luckily, the smoke has cleared a bit and the temperature has gone down about 10degrees. That should make the experience a little more enjoyable. I'll post pics and details later.

Costa Rica!

To celebrate Kyle's sister's graduation (Masters), their parents arranged for a week for family and friends in Costa Rica!!!



We stayed at a house on the Playa del Coco beach that belonged to the parents of Kyle's cousin's husband. Follow that? : ) We also had another house a few doors down the beach for the rest of the gang. I think there were 15 of us altogether.


Armed with sunblock, bugspray, and our bathing suits, we enjoyed a fabulous week of sun, great food, and a few cervezas here and there!



Enjoy the pictures! I sure have.

This was the kitchen area of the house we stayed at. Notice the vibrant colors--I loved it! Kyle's cousin, Angie, and the maid, Doris, spent a ton of time in there cooking up some typical Costa Rican cuisine. One staple of every meal is Gallo pinto. It's just simply rice and black beans mixed together. I had it with every meal--yes, even for breakfast. Yummm..... I looked up the recipe and plan on making a big pot of it here in Cali!

This is a view from the house, into the backyard, and to the beach. We couldn't be any closer!

Another view from the backyard,...to the left. The plants there were gorgeous.

...and this is a view to the right. The tide was in pretty far when I took this picture. It goes down a lot farther in the morning.

Costa Rica is home to a lot of stray dogs that wander the streets and the beach. You see in the picture that this dog is all skin and bones. They all were.... It was sad to see the state they were in, but like I heard, "Hell, they live on the beach, lay in the sun, and swim in the ocean every day. How hard a life do you think they have?" This dog 'belonged' to the house's caretaker (I'm not sure what belong means...but...) and was around the house a lot.

I mentioned the maid earlier and the caretaker just now. If you make a decent living in Costa Rica, the first thing you do is get a maid. They are fairly cheap, I guess. The maid in our house would come there every day and make the beds, empty the trash cans, sweep and mop the floors, and cook if we wanted her to.

The caretaker lives in a very small house (one bedroom place) in the front of the house they take care of and watches over the place at all times. They open the gate whenever you come and go, take care of any alarms that go off, and do the outside yard and house maintenance...among other things.

One morning, we set out to see the active Arenal volcano and the surrounding Arenal lake. We all piled in a 15 passenger van and rode for almost 5 hours until we reached our gorgeous accomodations!

This is a view of the front...

...and this is a view from our sliding glass door that leads to the porch. Lovely, huh? The view was incredible!

We got this clear view at 6am one morning as we set out to go zip-lining. Riding as much as 600 meters above the jungle floor, we 'zipped' through the trees. It was a thrilling ride!

...and, my favorite picture of the week....

This was the sunset on the first night we were there at the house. Needless to say, I was very impressed! We had a few more great sunsets throughout the week, but this was the best.

After being around the spanish language for only a week, I truly fell in love with it. Right now, I have a true passion to throw myself into it and learn it fluently. It's hard to explain, but its filled me so seriously that I'm ready to enroll myself in some two-week, all-intensive course... : )

Thank you Kyle, Laura, and Dick for inviting me to spend time with you and your family and friends. I had such an amazing time relaxing, eating, drinking, and just hanging out!

Here is a link to Laura's pictures--she has a more comprehensive overview of the trip with little comments that go quite nicely: http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AaNmjJizaOGL2A&emid=sharview&linkid=link5

Here is a link to the pictures that Kyle and I took: http://www2.snapfish.com/share/p=646111215841565601/l=402634185/g=29565321/cobrandOid=1000281/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB