la vida in cartago

so when i'm not going on vacation with a billion other americans, my days here in cartago are incredibly packed. 

since we wake up so absurdly early, our days are very long.  each day we also have a few optional activies planned during the afternoon.  on mondays we have latin dance classes with fabian.  today it was held at TEC, a technoligical university in Costa Rica, apparently one of the best in Latin America.  fabian is hilarious, and more than half of the moves he shows us involve us shaking our butts, which he is of course much better at than any of us.  after dance class today, me and a few other girls played soccer in one of the fields on the university.  like everywhere in cartago, there is a beautiful view of the mountains from the field.   we got some little kids to play with us, and the little boy totally schooled me, confirming my belief that playing against kids my age would just be humiliating. 

tuesday we have cooking lessons, and on wednesdays we normally have a field trip.  last week we visited a volcano (very cloudy and not as exciting as i hoped) and this wednesday we are visiting the rainforest. 

our house here in cartago is nice, and always packed with the other 40 or so volunteers.  we live in bunk beds and are all divided up into different rooms.  the girls in my room are amazing. we all love to eat, speak spanglish, and have the most absurd conversations.

great example is today, we all got back from our placements early and we decided to get ice cream before lunch (even though lunch was only in an hour). we take the 2 minute walk to helados grenados, this small little family owned ice cream place where they make homemade ice cream.  there for about 50 cents you can get gigantic square shaped ice creams on a stick.  think of it as a popsicle but bigger. coconut is hands down the best flavor, but their others ones like strawberry and blackberry are delicious too.  we obviously go there frequently. 

i've been taking a bunch of pictures of cartago, manuel antonio, ice cream etc, but since i didn't bring my computer, uploading them is tricky.  don't worry though dad, you will definitely see them all when i get home!

okay thats all for now!
Wendy