Last night in Alajuela.

After bungee jumping, I walked back into my house to find one of the weirdest parties ever going on. Besides the fact that Brooke (our course coordinator) was there, Pedro was there and brought his friend. Pedro worked in the cafeteria and gave us our breakfast every day. And he was drinking beer in our house.

It was our last night in our house, and we did it big.

This is only maybe 3/4 of us. But once we got almost everyone over, Janelle, Elise and I presented the paper plate awards that we had designed the night before. Elise had said it’d be a good ending to the trip, and they weren’t hard to make at all because we had gotten to know all 30 people on the trip enough so that we could make funny awards about all of them. They ended up being a huge hit, everyone was laughing and cheering and it was really a great way to end the three weeks. I thought maybe a few people would think they were lame or childish or something, but everyone seemed to really like it.

My personal favorites were Alex’s award, “Most likely to take it in the ass while wearing tropical trunks” (due to the massive hole in his suit…and his comment about the jet while we were sitting in the pool in Manuel Antonio), Jeff’s (“Most likely to participate in girls night out”) and Brittney’s (“Most likely to have a wedgie in the front and back, but still look good”).

The three of ours were all great, too. Janelle and Elise gave me “Most likely to remember the trip” because of my 2-liter water bottles and the fact I didn’t drink on the weekends because I was sick both weekends…and because of this blog. So basically I’m a total nerd. Janelle got “Most likely to be a soccer mom in nine months” and Elise was “Most likely to be the featured entertainer during boys night out,” which was pretty hilarious when we announced it. The awards just turned out to be a great idea on Elise’s part.

We finally went out to the baby bar for the last time. We were originally supposed to go to Escazu, but when the bungee jumpers came back, apparently the zoo’ers decided it was too much effort to book a bus and drive 45 minutes, so they just ordered pizza in instead of going out. I’ve learned to love the baby bar, though, so it wasn’t really a big deal that we only went there instead.

Who would have known the baby bar had cocktails? I got a pina colada, which was good because all I wanted to do there was get a fruity drink, and it was a little frothy but decent.

We ordered our french fries for the last time - I swear, I hate french fries, I really do, but these are somehow amazing. They're crisp and salty and right out of the oven and I've never had so many french fries as I have these three weeks in Costa Rica, just because of the baby bar. So of course, we had to get a picture with our french fries.

The best part about the baby bar that night was karaoke - I guess it's only on Fridays, or maybe Fridays and Saturdays, but we're never in Alajuela on the weekends.

We just hung out for awhile and then we decided to do a few songs. There were a few hardcore karaoke’ers there, and then as usual, we were just a group of obnoxious Americans that kind of ended up taking it over. There was a page’s worth of English songs, so we picked “Kokomo” by the Beach Boys first. Anita and Andrea were screaming all the words so loudly into the microphone that you couldn’t tell what the song was. I swear, whenever I hear that song now, all I’m going to hear is their frantic screaming of all the lyrics. Ray and Ahmed did “My Heart Will Go On,” which was just as hilarious as it sounds. Janelle refused to do karaoke with us, so the truly cool girls (aka me, Elise and Kristen) did “Every Breath You Take”. I love doing karaoke, even though there’s something so trashy about singing at a bar, so it was a pretty good time.

We all left a little after 2, I think. Then, Elise realized that her passport was in Lisa’s safe. Lisa was with Adam the MBA student, and Elise had to leave for the airport at 4 a.m., as in, in two hours. So we went on a hunt for Lisa and Adam. We stopped at the hard bar first and all the MBAs said the two of them had already left, so we asked a few more MBAs and they were being kind of shady as to where Adam’s house was. So we finally found Adam’s house – after passing his roommate on the street, who was acting super suspicious and somewhat refused to tell us if he knew where Adam was or not – and the house was dark. Two of Adam’s other roommates answered the door of his house and said Adam wasn’t there, but we heard talking inside his bedroom…and Lisa and Adam were in there, but neither of them would come to the door. Lisa shouted the combination to her safe through the door, and Elise and I went back to get her passport. It was quite the adventure and definitely summed up the Lisa/Adam saga that we’ve all been enjoying these past few weeks.

So we chilled for awhile – it was already maybe 3:30 by this point – then there was just no point in going to bed because the bus to the airport was at 5 a.m. Yesterday was just a mess of airplanes and layovers and dead tiredness. I think I was asleep for maybe 6 of the 7 hours of flight time, and the other hour, I was trying to go to bed. We had an obnoxiously long lunch at Chili’s in Dallas, the same place we ate on the way down, and got there just in time to watch the last minute of the Dallas/Detroit game. I was pumped because I thought we’d get to watch the game in Dallas, with Dallas fans, but our plane was just a little too late. I got home at 11 or so, I think, and…that was it.

I still have one, maybe two, things I’m going to put on here, even though I’m home now, so watch for those.

Bungee jumping.

Today was the best last afternoon/night that it could have probably been. What a way to finish the trip.

So I decided to go bungee jumping. There were a few major cons working against the zoo. The first one was that I hate zoos, that was a pretty big one. Bungee jumping was expensive – 65 dollars – but I know I’ll earn that back probably in my first week of work, so I didn’t want the money to factor into my decision. Basically, I just decided to go but I wasn’t too sure about it, I didn’t know if I’d want to do it. It wasn’t even the safety issue or the scared shitless issue, but more of just the fact that it didn’t sound super thrilling to me.

I said I would go at about 12:30. We were supposed to leave at 1:45, the zoo’ers left at about 12:40, but we walked to the pavilion to wait for the bus and we finally got word that it was over an hour behind schedule. I went to the pool to lay out for awhile. I knew that’d be my last time in the sun for who knows how long, since I’ll be working full time starting Monday and I’ve heard it’s not at all warm in Michigan.

Ahmed and Marc started playing Ahmed’s electric guitar in the corner of the pool area, and I recognized a few RHCP songs and walked over to sit on the cement near them. Both of them were pretty good, a lot of RHCP and some John Mayer and some Beatles. We formed a semicircle and just listened to them trade songs. It was really calming, sitting on the concrete under the hot sun listening to music – one of the little things that I’m really going to miss.

The bus finally came about 3, I think. We were told the site was about a half hour away, but for the first time, something in Costa Rica was actually close to INCAE – we got there in maybe 15. We went into a little office and signed waivers.

The whole thing looked a little shady, like, the office was more like a shack, but as soon as I signed that waiver I knew I was going to do it no matter what. I wasn’t scared or anything, we were all just really excited.

We got back on the bus and drove another 400 meters or so up a hill to the bridge. It’s supposed to be one of the five most beautiful places in the world to bungee jump – the bridge is 80 meters (240 feet) above the ground, which is a pretty significant distance to bungee jump. I saw the bridge from the bus and was still pretty neutral about it. We got off the bus at the beginning of the bridge, noted with amusement that there was a bar right there, and looked over the edge.

That’s when I was terrified.

The image of looking down off that bridge is still burned into my memory.

It was just trees, rocks and water, but it was so, so far down. I’m not scared of heights, but I get a little edgy when I have to go near a railing on a really tall building sometimes. But this bridge freaked me the hell out.

All of us kind of acted like we were punched in the gut. The boys were all walking around, saying some variation of, Oh my God. A few were just leaning over the ledge and staring down, trying to get used to the fact that we were going to jump off that bridge. I did that for awhile, too, and the drop didn’t seem so bad after I had been staring down there for a few minutes straight.

They didn’t really give us much of a safety talk, just told us that we’d have a harness around the waist and harnesses around our ankles, which was where the bungee was supposed to be attached.

We’d jump off the platform, bounce a few times, and then they’d send down another rope that we’d have to attach to our waist harness so they could pull us back up to the platform. We had to jump in the “swan” position, which basically meant our arms were out to our sides, kind of like Superman or something. We couldn’t grab onto the rope, we just had to act like we were flying. Right.

Then we had to divide up into two groups, people who were over and under 150 pounds. The “over” group went first, since the groups had to use different harnesses because of the weight difference and the guides didn’t want to have to switch between harnesses. These girls who had traveled over 3 hours to get to the site went first. The first girl was strapped in and she was helped to the platform. It was a little yellow platform, made of the metal that has mesh-like holes in it, maybe a foot and a half wide. If people still walked the plank, that’s what the plank would look like. The girl stepped up on the platform, the guide counted down from 5, and she didn’t move. She stood there for what felt like 20 minutes but was probably only about 5, just staring there, frozen, and ended up not jumping. Obviously, that freaked all of us out. The second person who went up was a redheaded guy who said he had rappelled before, and he ran and jumped before the guide could even start counting down. Seeing someone fly off that platform with arms outstretched was equally the coolest and most scary thing I’ve ever seen. We just watched him rocket toward the trees and water, then watched him bounce around for awhile and finally finish the jump. That was a lot easier, once we saw someone actually do it without fear.

8 or 9 other people (who we didn’t know) jumped before we started. Aaron was the first one of us to jump.

He was flipping out before the jump, saying he was too scared, and we just all told him not to puss out. He kept saying, I can’t do this, I can’t do this. But he finally jumped with little prodding. He came back up with his eyes a little red and just glowing, talking nonstop about how great it was. That definitely helped. Marc went next. He was also scared beforehand, even before we had gotten to the bridge, but he said it was awesome, too.

It was my turn after him. Honestly, I’m getting a little shaky even writing about it. The guide harnessed me in, I told him to make my ankle harnesses as tight as he could because there was no way I wanted those loose. We jumped with bare feet, and as soon as I took my shoes and socks off (right before Marc jumped), I started getting really nervous. When I was sitting on the ledge of the bridge getting my harnesses on, I don’t even remember thinking coherently, I was that scared. The guide told me to stand up and step onto the yellow platform, and that’s when I froze. I stood up, barefoot, with huge, heavy harnesses attached to my ankles, and I was so terrified that I clutched onto the yellow beams that held the beginning of the platform to the bridge. Everyone was yelling at me, telling me I could do it, I’m guessing because I looked a ton more scared than Aaron or Marc. I took a baby step forward, still holding onto the beam. It was really far down. The guys were still yelling, a little more desperate now. I thought, There is no way I’m going to be like that first girl. I took another step and couldn’t hold onto the beams anymore. I was just standing on the platform with 240 feet of water and trees and rocks below me and safe ground so far away, because even one baby step felt like a mile up there. The guide urged me again to get my toes to the edge of the platform so I could jump and let go of my bungees. I took another step and I was at the edge, looking straight down, and I dropped the cords so they were hanging in front of the platform. I panicked a little since the clip caught on the edge as I dropped them, but he said that was normal, that was fine.

And there I was. That split second before I jumped was the most petrifying moment of my entire life.

I don’t know how to explain it. When you’re that frightened, there’s no way to. It was just this hot, searing rush of pure terror.

Aaron had told me before I jumped that all you had to do was just say, Fuck it, and jump. And that’s what I did. I just turned off my brain. I felt like I was seeing myself from the eyes of someone else, someone who wasn’t afraid and who was just watching someone jump, no big deal.

And I was hurtling toward the river and rocks and trees faster than I’ve ever moved in my life. I remember holding onto the rope briefly when I first jumped and then I spread both my arms out, freefalling into this gorgeous nothingness. I screamed until I couldn’t breathe. I felt the rope pull on my ankles a little and I was going back up, then back down, then up and down and up and down and then I started spinning and everything was just going around in these terrible, awesome circles. I had my first recognizable thought in about five minutes. This feels like the merry-go-round thing at Parkview, I thought, where I was twirling around and around until I got off and I was so dizzy I couldn’t stand up, I was just this woozy fourth grader who was watching the playground as it spiraled around me. And then I thought, this is worse than bed spins. I feel drunk.

I just kept spinning around faster than I’ve ever spun, and I couldn’t even see the river because the trees were whirling around so quickly that they just all melded into one mess of green. I was hanging upside down, trying to convince myself the spinning wasn’t making me nauseous, when I saw the lift cord dangling next to me. I somehow grabbed it – I’m not sure how, it feels impossible to grab anything when you’re suspended in the air upside down – and attached it to my harness. It took awhile to get back up to the platform, since they were cranking the cord up, and I grabbed onto the cord with both hands and pulled myself into a sitting position. For the first time, I could look around and appreciate the gorge. It was breathtaking. I looked up at the bridge, where everyone was leaning over – I could only see their heads – and I waved to let them know I was okay. They were laughing and cheering a little, and that’s when I finally started smiling.

That was the most baller thing I’ve ever done, I kept saying. It was the only way to describe it.

My head hurt a little from the rushes of blood to the head, but everyone was complaining about that. Even now, hours later, it still hurts if I tilt my head down. It’s just a headache-y, full feeling. But other than that, I felt damn good. I went to the bar and got an Imperial. It was one of the best things I’ve tasted this trip. I don’t even like Imperial. We watched everyone else go, drinking our Imperials, and we headed back just as it was getting dark.

And we still had the whole night ahead of us. I’ll write about it later tonight, since I’ll be in the airport all day today, but it was the perfect ending. It was so perfect that it’s 4 a.m. right now, I have to catch my bus to the airport at 5 a.m., and I have yet to go to bed because after going out so late, there was no point in sleeping.

Exam aftermath.

We just got out of our exam. It’s cloudy outside and all I want to do is lay out for one last day, but we’re sitting in the cafeteria right now until lunchtime and then I’ll go back and pack. Elise and I just went to the tiendita and celebrated by getting Dos Pinos ice cream (mine is vainilla, fresa y limon) and platanos, so I’ll probably feel pretty sick in like an hour or so, but oh well, it’s good food.

The exam was pretty hard. Just the multiple choice, anyway. I’m so bad at multiple choice exams. That’s why I suck in the bschool. And our exam was switched to half multiple choice at the last second…which means I blew it. I rocked the essays, though. One of my questions from my question set was used as an essay question, which was awesome – an automatic 20 points. I just can’t stand multiple choice, though – it’s so subjective.

We have a pretty good afternoon planned. I guess we’re going to Escazu for a nice dinner and then we’ll hit all the bars. We haven’t been there yet, so it’ll be a great last night here. We might also go to the zoo down the street for the afternoon. I’m not so much an animal person – and it’s not like we need to really go to the zoo anyway, there are enough animals in the wild here – but the walk will probably be nice. Some people are going bungee jumping, but I really might just want to spend my afternoon around here since it’s our last day. Honestly, I really want to go bungee jumping. I just wish they would have gone earlier in the week instead of today. So we’ve divided up into two groups: the tame group (the zoo) and the daring group (bungee jumping).

Okay, so as I’m writing this, people from both camps are coming up to persuade us to do one thing or the other. I really don’t know what to do. Oh, choices. I guess I’ll figure it out and write about it later.

Last night at the baby bar and a chill Thursday.

We went to the baby bar last night for maybe the last time – we might go Friday afternoon after the exam, too, I guess, but it was really our last night there. Everyone came to our house first. We've become the party house lately. We originally made it a girls night out, since Aaron and Corey were talking about how they were doing a boys night, but they ended up joining us like usual.

Just for clarification, the baby bar is the walking distance bar, but Alex dubbed it the baby bar at the beginning of our trip since most of the bartenders are pregnant. I guess the nickname has finally stuck. It’s always empty when we’re there, and they must think we’re obnoxious, but they seem to like us.

As always, we played pool and foosball. It’s just so chill there and we make the party. Jeff and I dominated Aaron and Alex after we were down 5 balls to 1. That's who I'm thumbs-downing...Aaron thought he was such a badass. And I had pretty much the sweetest pool shot of my life when I bet Jeff a beer that I could make a ball, and somehow, the cue ball skipped over one of the striped balls and knocked the solid one right in. I pretty much flipped out with excitement. And I got my Imperial, so it was a great night. We were winning the next game against Corey and Eric 4 or 5 balls to 1 and we lost, so that sucked, but at least we pulled the first one out.

I had to include this picture of Janelle and Steph chugging water after we got back last night. It was definitely one of the funniest moments of last night, and the picture just says it all.

Today. We had our last class with the same professor as yesterday. We talked about landfills for three hours, and different ways to extract methane from the landfills to use as an energy source. As you can probably tell, it was thrilling. It was great to be done with class, though. Now all we have to worry about is the exam tomorrow morning. I can’t tell if it’ll be hard or not, since our course coordinator keeps giving us these mixed signals and she doesn’t really know what’s going on a lot of the time, anyway, so I don’t really know what to expect anymore.

And since we had the whole afternoon free until the review session/farewell dinner, we decided to finally play volleyball. Janelle played in high school and so did Andrea, and Brittney and Elise were respectable, so it was fun. We were really low-key, but Janelle was like insanely competitive. (And she just laughed when I read that sentence out loud.) It ended up being shirts vs. skins, with me, Janelle and Elise in our sports bras/bathing suits and Andrea, Brittney and Anita in like, long pants. It was boiling hot outside and we were playing on a concrete court, so I jumped in the pool halfway through our game because I was so overheated. It was so much fun.

I finally got to wear my awesome sundress, the one I’ve been wanting to wear for the past three weeks, for the farewell dinner.

We had a “review session” beforehand, which really wasn’t a review session at all but just closing remarks and evaluations. Our farewell dinner was decent, not very eventful.

Janelle, Elise and I came back to the house after dinner and we’ve been having a slumber party for the past few hours. We made paper plate awards for everyone…and they’re hilarious. I’ll share them probably tomorrow, but considering half of the people I’m on the trip with read this, that would suck to spoil the surprise tomorrow. Okay, I know it’s dorky but they were so fun to think of and make. So we just did that all evening (instead of studying for our exam) and…so we’re going into the exam tomorrow without really studying. I feel pretty good about it, though, since it’s open note and I took a ton of notes. This afternoon/night was just so chill, it was a great time.

I’m starting to get really sad about leaving here. I can’t believe we have one day left, it’s unreal. This has seriously become home, in a sort of tropical paradise kind of way. I can’t believe I have to start my internship Monday and that I’ll be flying home in two days…it’s just too depressing to think about that right now.

Shopping in San Jose.

We have a little bit of time right now before our farewell dinner, so I figured I should probably blog. I feel really behind lately because I haven’t been able to blog during class, since I’m supposed to be paying attention or something since we have an exam tomorrow morning.

The exam is part multiple choice, part essay. It’s all open note and open binder. I took a ton of notes, so I’ll probably be fine. The thing is that the exam, like everything else here, was changed at the last minute. We were supposed to have an exam that integrated our question sets, but the course coordinator changed that today, apparently, to include multiple choice. I hate multiple choice. It’s the reason why I suck at bschool classes, because I can definitely do well on essay tests but if you ask me to choose one of four possible answers, I overthink it and then I’m crashing and burning.

Yesterday. We only had one class in the morning with the intense professor, so I had to listen. It was about global trade for local benefit, and it wasn’t hard to follow, but it just proved that I really don’t care about economics and I feel really out of place in the bschool, like usual. Some of the stuff we’ve learned these past few weeks has been interesting – most of it, in fact – but the fact is, it’s still a bschool class and I really don’t care much about the nitty-gritty, mathematical-type concepts they talk about. I like the culture aspect a lot, and even the foreign direct investment stuff is a little interesting, and I really like learning about ecotourism. I know Michigan has a sustainable development division in the bschool, and I think it’d be cool to take a class there about it, maybe. I guess that’s what I’ve gotten out of this the most, I’ve realized there might be something in the bschool that I like and that isn’t totally based around number crunching.

We were finished with class at 11:45 a.m. because we had a CEO lunch. We ate with the CEO of Café Britt, where we went for our first company tour two weeks ago, and a CEO from an agriculture-type company in Costa Rica. The Café Britt CEO was definitely an ex-hippie. He was a Michigan alum (go figure) and escaped Ann Arbor during the Vietnam War to go study coffee in Costa Rica. He had pretty interesting stories, especially about how he got to where he was. The other CEO had to break away from his family business, so he had a lot of stories about how to balance family with work. The lunch was better than usual and the talks were interesting, but it’s just so hard to focus in Costa Rica – all I want to do is go play in the sun.

The lunch was done at 1:30, so we had the rest of the day and night to do what we wanted. I still needed to get some presents for people since I didn’t have time last weekend, so Elise, Janelle and I decided to go to Moravia, a district in San Jose. We were told it had a couple blocks of shops, but it was the closest shopping area to INCAE. Too bad it was over an hour away. We took a cab there with the most insane driver we’ve had yet. He was this older guy with a huge mustache and he was super impatient. A semi had lost its cargo on the highway, which meant it was backed up for miles, and he was trying to go on the shoulder and around cars, constantly switching lanes and honking his horn.

We almost got hit by a semi truck and he almost hit a pedestrian – like, missed the guy by a few inches. He took us to downtown San Jose and then pulled over and started talking to us in rapid-fire Spanish. It took a few minutes to understand, since we were confused as to why he was pulling over in addition to listening to him talk in Spanish, but he said he couldn’t drive us anymore because it was past the end of his shift. We weren’t at our destination yet, and he just pulled over and said we had to get out. It was ridiculous. So we got another cab and finally made it to Moravia, over an hour after we left. It’s only maybe 15 miles away.

The shops were pretty standard, and all of us knew pretty much what we wanted, so we went in and bought our gifts and wandered around the streets for awhile. Like always, we were stared at like crazy. Three girls in sundresses wandering around the city probably wasn’t the smartest scenario.

All of us were broke, and all I have left here is traveler’s checks, so we found a bank but the ATM was broken. I couldn’t cash my traveler’s checks. Anywhere. Nobody in Costa Rica takes traveler’s checks. I was so upset – I officially had no money and we had traveled over an hour to get presents and I shouldn’t have brought traveler’s checks to begin with, they’re way too much of a hassle. I was semi-yelling at the guy at the bank because he wouldn’t let me cash them, I didn’t have enough ID on me. I speak pretty good fast Spanish when I’m upset, I’ve learned. So Janelle bought all of my presents for me and I owe her a bunch of money. (I finally cashed them all today at INCAE, but I had to pay a commission. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. The bank here sucks.)

It was getting late and we had most of our presents, so after wandering around and buying things for awhile, we wanted a taxi back home. We were in the middle of the city and all by ourselves, so it was definitely intimidating. We hailed a taxi and…the most badass car ever rolled up to the side of the road. It had a spoiler, a sick sound system (the same brand as the one in my Mountaineer but a little better of a model), multi-colored leather seats, custom headrests and racing stripes. And it was our taxi. It’s safe to say that it was a much better ride home than it was there.

Elise took a picture during the cab ride home, probably just to prove we were still alive after the afternoon. We all look a little flustered, but it was a good day.

Whitewater rafting.

I don’t have any pictures from whitewater rafting - we weren’t allowed to take our cameras on the river - so I’m going to describe it the best I can without photos.

Basically, it was a great last field trip day. We had to wake up at 5 and catch the bus at 5:45 a.m. to drive three hours to the Rio Pacuare. The whole river is a little more than 100 kilometers. We rafted 18 miles and we were only 25 miles from the ocean when we were done.


This is the website of the tour company that took us:
http://www.costasolrafting.com/

And this is what they said about our tour:

Pacuare is considered the most beautiful river in Costa Rica, and worldwide one of the best whitewater rafting rivers due to the scenic beauty, waterfalls, hiking trails and diversity of flora and fauna, among which participants will observe blue morpho butterflies, sloths, tucans, red frogs and great variety of birds. Thus, nature is present throughout the route.

Well, again, we didn’t see any wildlife. We saw a pretty purple butterfly (maybe that’s what they were talking about), and a few indigenous people and some of their houses, but that was about it. Our river guide told us a lot about the indigenous people, how they don’t have TV or electricity and they live in straw huts along the river. We rafted under a basket that was suspended in the rainforest with cords, and apparently the people use the basket to transport goods. When the Costa Ricans want to interact with the indigenous people, they pay in goods – like coffee or sugar – instead of cash, since the people would have no way to spend it. Amanda was really pumped to see an indigenous person – I just wanted to see a monkey. She got her wish, I didn’t. I guess that means I went three weeks in a monkey-filled country without even seeing one.

The waterfall description was accurate, though. They were absolutely gorgeous, these natural waterfalls spilling over the rocks and spraying water into the river. We rafted under a few of them and it was really cold but great. Even at 10 in the morning, when we got there, it was already probably 90 degrees and the sun was intense – so it felt good to get in the water.

Anyway, we took nearly the same bus route that we did on the way to Puerto Viejo, going through Alajuela first, then San Jose, and then winding through the mountains (nauseating but beautiful, again). We stopped a few hours later for breakfast, and Paulo, our guide, let us know that was our last stop for food and a bathroom before the river. That’s when we realized that we wouldn’t be able to wear our flip flops in the water – so over half the kids ran to the store attached to the restaurant to buy water shoes, but I just decided to wear my tennis shoes in the river. We tried to sleep for the rest of the way, but Paulo kept telling us all these stories about how he became a rafting guide and he kept us pretty entertained for awhile. He told us jokes the whole way home later that afternoon, and a few of them were pretty hilarious – he was definitely a great dramatic storyteller, so it made the bus ride feel a little shorter.

We finally got to the starting point of the tour after a 3-kilometer stretch where we descended 1000 kilometers – it was pretty insane. I feel like my ears are just constantly popping here. The river is in the middle of the rainforest, and there were about 50 rapids we were supposed to go over in 18 miles. Only a few of them were really intense, where we had to “get down” and take cover in the raft so it wouldn’t capsize.

Our raft was six girls: me, Janelle, Elise, Natalie, Kristen and Amanda. We were the last group claimed by a river guide. I really don’t think any of them wanted an all-girl group. Janelle and I took the front of the raft and did maybe 80 percent of the rowing. I ended up in the middle and back of the raft eventually, and it was a whole lot easier than leading the way. We had to learn how to row and get the safety talk before we could start. A lot of the time, I was too busy watching Janelle and making sure we were rowing at the same time to look around and see the scenery, but the rapids were really pretty – I haven’t really seen a rough river before, and the water cascaded over the rocks like something I’ve seen in maybe a spring water commercial. I already talked about the indigenous houses, but it was mainly water and rainforest, occasionally with a scattered hotel or bar in between. There were just so few signs of human life. We could hear the cicadas really loudly the whole time. I kept thinking they were monkeys, but I was sorely disappointed. Anyway, the six of us definitely held our own during the trip. We were usually fourth out of six, sometimes third, and we even went into first once when everyone else decided to dive in the water and we kept rowing. Not like we were racing or anything.

My favorite part of the whole trip was the canyon. We had been rafting for maybe 2 and a half hours, I’m not sure because obviously we had no concept of time, but I was getting kind of tired and definitely hot. We didn’t get overheated because especially being in the front, Janelle and I were getting splashed pretty much nonstop from either other boats or the rapids, but I was ready to take a break from rowing. The canyon was this semi-covered, cooler section of the river that had high rocks on either side, and we all took a break there for awhile. Our guide wanted us to play the “Viagra game,” which meant we all went on one side and he tried to push the raft up in the air as high as it could go (and keep it up there the longest, beating the other rafts) but we had very little interest in it and we all fell in the water maybe within 10 seconds, so we just floated in the water in our life vests. I went to a huge rock and did a cannonball off it. It was probably a 3-meter jump, it was pretty high and a little scary once I was up there, but the water was really deep and the life vest obviously meant I wasn’t under water for very long. I was doing flips off the front of the raft, too, which was surprisingly tons easier than the diving board. I’m guessing the bright yellow helmet and the life vest helped me be a little more confident than in the pool. We sat on top of the raft while it was flipped upside down…and then everyone else started getting back in their rafts and rowing away. Natalie and Kristen were floating a little downstream, just waiting for us to pick them up, but the four of us couldn’t flip the raft over and so the other rafts had already disappeared from view by the time we finally managed to get back in the raft and rescue the other two girls. Like I said, I’m pretty sure our guide couldn’t stand us. We were a little all over the place.

We did the Macarena a few times in the boat, standing up, which was pretty fun and definitely beat “Row Row Row Your Boat” in terms of coolness (which was what a few of the other boats were doing). Our river guide nicknamed us the Mamacitas about halfway through the trip and it became our “team name,” which was great because let’s face it, mamacita is an awesome word to say.

Monday night at the casino.

This professor is pretty intense, so it’s hard to blog during class like I usually do. We went whitewater rafting yesterday, which was awesome, but we couldn’t take our cameras on the river and so I have no pictures. I guess the BBA director bought the professional picture pack and is going to put the pictures on a website. But until then, we don’t have anything from the trip.

Our course coordinator docked a bunch of us participation points during Monday’s class because only three or four people “ran the discussion,” but the BBA director was here to observe the new study abroad program and he was thoroughly unimpressed by our class participation. So now a bunch of us have check-minuses for participation even if we had been participating during the whole two weeks before that. Lame. Yeah, I’m griping.

We went out to the Fiesta Casino Monday night again, after going there the first Tuesday we were here.

Monday is ladies’ night – which means free drinks for all ladies between 8 and 11 p.m. The results were insane. The bar/casino was packed for a Monday night. A lot of the men there weren’t drinking, or they were sipping Red Bulls or Smirnoff Ices, which we found hilarious. We had to get up at 5 a.m. Tuesday to go whitewater rafting, so we agreed we’d be in bed by midnight and go to the bar at 8. It’s definitely the earliest I’ve gone out in awhile, even including Saturday’s early bar night adventure. The bar was a lot of fun, though. We danced, the girls got the boys a lot of free drinks (until they got yelled at, because the free drinks were in different cups). I won 300 colones on the slot machines (that’s 60 cents). I spent 200 and won 500. Big payday for me. Aaron won 55 dollars, I think he was playing blackjack. I’m really going to miss walking into bars and getting big, fruity, frozen drinks. It’s expensive but so amazing.

There was a live band there, so we danced a little but mostly just sat and chilled.

Four of us girls took a cab there because there was no way I was going to try and organize another 30-person bus after what happened last time, but mostly everyone ended up showing up in cabs anyway. We had 25 of the 30 of us there, I think. Funny how that works.

Elise, Jeff, Shunji and I went to the adjoining Denny’s for dinner. We’re eating increasingly American here. I’ll still refuse to go to a McDonald’s, I don’t even go to those in the U.S., but I’ve been sick all weekend and I was finally craving Coney Island-type food. I would never go to a Denny’s in the U.S., either, but my egg white omelette and hash browns were absolutely amazing. The only thing was that everything was over twice the price it is in the United States. My omelette, hash browns and toast was $11.50 U.S. Elise’s grilled cheese was $7.50. That’s insane. Our meal was so good, though, and at least I feel a little better lately.

I’ll write about whitewater rafting soon. We only have one class this morning, then we have lunch with a few CEOs, then I’m going into the city to shop with a few of the girls for the afternoon since we have a free day. I think we’re bungee jumping Thursday. I still haven’t decided if I can afford it, though, after spending so much money during the past 2 weeks. I’ll probably be too terrified to move, I know it’s a crazy idea, but I still want to do it.