What a great weekend!!!

FRIDAY

• No class on Friday!!!! I slept in till 8:30 or so, got up, and had breakfast and lots of coffee!!!! I spent a while catching up on some e-mails and some online window shopping. By online window shopping, I mean just looking around online with no intentions of purchasing anything.
• I showered and got ready, and by that time lunch was ready. We ate lunch together as a family and then AM (the daughter) and I decided to go to the mall because I wanted to look for a couple of things and get some other things from the store.
• It was cloudy all day and then just around lunch time it started pouring rain. It continued all day and all afternoon and made for a dreary day! The trip to the mall did bring a little sunshine in though!!
• By mall here, I don't mean mall probably like you think. The mall has a food court that it probably just as big as the rest of the mall. There were only 10 stores, if I'm guessing correctly, including a big supermarket tacked onto the mall. I had to get some shampoo and things so I bought those there.
• I also found a pair of adorable pink peep toe shoes that have a slight wedge-like heel. They were less than $20!!!! They had a LOT of cute shoes at the mall, so I'll probably be back soon to buy some heels since that is all that the girls down here wear after dark!
• I also found 2 pair of skinny jeans that I am just in love with. One pair is a lighter wash and has small holes in it. I normally don't go for holey jeans, but these just caught my eye immediately and they look really stylish. The other pair is SUPER dark, with a little bit of dark sequin detailing lining the pockets. I had been looking for a pair of ultra dark skinny jeans before I came here but couldn't find any that I liked that fit well, and I am so glad that I found these!!!
• On a sadder note....on Thursday night just before I was heading out for the night, I broke my bottle of Lilly Pulitzer perfume. I had set it on the edge of my desk and somehow the cords for my desk lamp and computer got tangled with the perfume, and it just fell to the ground and shattered into pieces, spilling perfume everywhere. The smell gave me an immediate headache, and it still has not dissipated at all from the room, 2 days later. Anyway, at the mall I came upon some good-smelling Victoria's Secret perfume in a store (legit VS, imported from the US, it's not a knock off), and it was fairly priced so I purchased it as a temporary replacement for my perfume.
• AM and I were waiting outside of the mall for mi madre to come pick us up when 4 gringos walked by into the mall. One came back out to stand outside and asked me where I was from (is it THAT obvious that I'm not from Costa Rica??). I told him I was from the US, and I found out that he and his friends are from Amsterdam. They are traveling around the country, visiting beaches and seeing the sites, and had stopped in San Ramon on their way to Arenal Volcano. (What do you call people from Amsterdam??? Amsterdamians?)
• We went back home and I had some coffee, and then just spent the afternoon being very lazy. The rain made me not want to do anything, so I just read a little bit and enjoyed the restful time I had listening to the rain. I took a shower and got ready late that afternoon. My family had invited me to go with them to something at the kids' school. It was like a big fiesta with lots of typical Costa Rican food, music, and tables all over the gyms where people could sit and talk. It was very crowded, so we bought some food to take home since it was too crowded to eat there. We brought it home and ate it, and I finished getting ready so that I could go and meet up with my amigos.
• I went to KL's house first to watch a movie with her, 2 other girls, and her host brother. We left around 9 to go meet up with some of our other friends out somewhere. The streets were totally deserted, and KL's brother told is that it was because it was raining - people usually don't go out if it's been raining all day, even if it has stopped - even though it was Friday night!
• We all hung out together for a few hours, and had some ice cream too! The guy at the ice cream shop was from the gringo-tico friend meeting that we'd been to on Thursday, and he was very nice! We all went home pretty early and decided to go to the waterfalls nearby the next day.

SATURDAY

• I slept till 8:30 or 9, very late, and got up and had breakfast and got dressed quickly. We all decided to meet at the green church at 10. I headed there just after breakfast to meet up with the others. Some people were going to meet up with us at school, so we all walked to school to meet up together. We didn't end up leaving until 11 or so by my best estimate, and we took a taxi van up the hill to Las Musas.
• Las Musas is an ecotouristy thing that has some natural waterfalls, hiking trails, and swimming pools. A few of us hiked the entire trail all the way around the mountain and saw some incredible views, pretty butterflies, and we had a lot of fun!!! After hiking, we went down the huge waterslide at the pool and swam around for a bit, then went swimming around the waterfall. It was kind of cloudy most of the day, but the water felt nice and cool.
• We hung out until three or so and then called a taxi to come get us. Some of us went back with KL and her host brother and got a DELICIOUS pizza at a place near her house. We took it to her house and devoured it!!!! We then watched Crank, which I can't say I'm a fan of. Afterwards, SC, MSG, and I walked home. I took a shower and got ready and Skyped with the parentals for a bit.
• I met up with MSG and SC at the green church to walk to Kelsey's house. We walked to her house and then walked to Night Fever near the mall! Girls were allowed in at no charge so we all went in together! We ran into our other friends, so it was a big group of us gringos all there together!!! And what great fun it was!!!
• We danced for hours and hours. We all had this big silly dance circle going on with some ticos, and it was pretty amusing, all of us watching each other dance. At some point in the night the DJ gave a shout out to the Americans there (aka US). I did get to salsa, thankfully, although the tico obviously knew a different salsa than I knew. Anyway, my legs were sore from dancing by the end of the night, but we all had a good time and made a lot of new friends!!!

SUNDAY

• I slept until 9 or so and then got up and had breakfast, gallo pinto and scrambled eggs, with mucho cafe on the side!!! I spent most of the morning updating/changing my blog and catching up on some e-mails and doing some research for my paper due Monday.
• My host mother invited me to go a baby shower with her and AM, so of course I said YES (I really did want to go to see what it was like, but I also wanted to procrastinate just a bit longer on my assignment!).
• The shower started at 3, so being on tico time, we went at 3:30. The shower, which also was apparently on tico time, began at 4 with a prayer and a toast. They then served us all KIND of food throughout the ENTIRE thing. It was AWESOME, except I was full from lunch. We played all kinds of games. One that we played involved 2 circles - one inner, one outer - each going opposite directions, and then you had to find your partner and sit down, without being the last to sit. Mi prima y yo WON!!!!! I got a cool gift - a little candle decoration thing that I get to put in my room! How exciting!!!!
• All the people were so nice. And we had so much to eat. We were there for a good 3 hours though, and they were still going strong. We were ready to go, because AM had to study for a test Monday and I had to do my assignment.
• We stopped by my host dad's family's house because something happened with his mom and they wanted to check on her. I met his parents...nice of course.
• We went back to the hizzouse and I completed my assignment, slowly but surely, in between Skype and Facebook conversations.
• I finished early and went to bed around 10:45 pm.

I think that brings everything up to speed. Not much will be going on today, and I have a lot of things I want to post about, other than trip details!!!