There is sand in my bed, there is salt water staining my notebooks, my cheeks are rosy with a sunburn, and my heart is happy.  Sand in a bed may not sound like a great adventure, but what it means to me is that I have spent time outside romping in the waves and walking in the hot sand and then when I come home at the end of the day exhausted I bring little memories back with me to cover my floor, the inside of my backpack and yes my bed.

A great many things have happened since my last blog.  The relationships I have created thus far are stronger than I could imagine.  To talk with someone who doesn’t speak your natural language and you only haltingly can speak there’s is often superficial at best.  However, when those people are your host family and they show how much they care in the way that they cook breakfast and ask how your day is, that wall separating the two worlds is chipped down bit by bit.  On top of my host family and the many Ticos and Ticas that I have met, my new American friends feel even more like family.  We are all here sharing similar experiences.  We talk about our highs and our lows.  The frustrations we experience with not being able to find the post office and the excitation that we feel when we are able to communicate a joke to the waiters that we have befriended.  With some people I am even able to get past this, to share experiences of anguish or endearment from earlier years in my life.  I have had conversations about loved ones who have passed, about riding cows, even about Australian norms.  I cannot believe how much I have learned about the United States and about Australia since I have been living in Central America.

Back to my adventures, we have now gone on two surfing weekends.  Surfing I imagine is the closest I will get to flying and I can already feel an addiction for the sport.  It doesn’t matter if I get absolutely destroyed by fifteen waves in a row because if I catch that sixteenth wave for even a mere few seconds it is all worth it.  I owe all that I have done to my incredible surf instructor Randy, without his patience and his laughter I wouldn’t be having nearly the experience that I am fortunate enough to be having.

There are many more adventures that were so fantastic that they deserve their own blog post so those will have to wait for the future.

Pura Vida