Cahuita, Kolbi and wasabi peas

I'm back! After about a month of stingy internet usage I sit here eating stale, not spicy wasabi peas I thought would be delicious, writing on my unlimited internet! I finally bit the bullet and signed up for an internet plan. Kolbi (a branch of ICE, Costa Rica's biggest internet/phone/electric/everything supplier) rose their prices about 500%. Before, I was spending approximately $6 a month for basically unlimited internet. Then one rainy day they rose the prices and all of a sudden I had $0 left on my account. The prices went from 20 colones (about 4 cents) an hour to charging for everything you downloaded. For instance, a 15 minute Skype call is now about $1=500 Colones (expensive for us peace corps volunteers). 4 colones an hour to 500 for 15 minutes. Too expensive for this girl. So now, I'm on a month by month contract and loving it. So I'm back for skyping, blogging and watching netflix :)

This month has been full of exciting things, the best being Tyson's visit. We had a fantastic time in his 12 days here, we visited Fila Tigre, so he could meet Gabby and see my host family and we went to Limon, the Carribean side of Costa Rica. In Limon we swam, relaxed, swam and relaxed some more. We did make it to Puerto Viejo, about 30 minutes south, to go to a Jaguar Rescue Center. This rescue center does not actually have jaguars but it is a place for hurt animals to go to be healed and hopefully released into the wild when they are able. My favorite part of this place was getting to play with the monkeys. Before you go in you have to take off ANYTHING the monkeys can steal, they are notorious thefts and will grab and break those sunglasses right off of your head. We got to feed them fruit, pet them and if we were lucky enough, have them crawl on us. After the monkeys we got up close and personal with the sloths, toucans  parrots, baby racoons, a crocodile, owls, a leopard and another wildcat. This was an amazing place and I highly recommend it for anyone thinking of coming to Costa Rica. We stayed in cabinas called Jenny's Cabinas in Cahuita where we had a private bathroom, nice beds and our own personal ocean facing balcony where the waves were so loud hitting the shore we had trouble going to sleep at times. It was the perfect place for our getaway (the $35/night rate also helped a lot). After 12 days of relaxation, feeling normal and being incredibly happy...the goodbye came as it always does. After two years of this goodbye thing, I am not going to miss this part.

Things in Fila Tigre are also going well. Gabby is a little terror, acting up only when I leave for a few days so my poor host family has to deal with it, and then being perfectly (almost) behaved when I'm home when I could actually help. Dogs are dogs, I'm excited to have her back in the states to have a consistent place for her to sleep and so she can learn that not the whole world is her digging heaven and toilet.

I should be finding out if my community will receive funds to build the school's bio digester soon and I am going to be starting a 6 week course on health and nutrition. It is amazing how there is little to no knowledge on what is good for you, what portion sizes are and what a balanced meal is. After observing the meals of spaghetti with rice, I feel I can help my community a little in that aspect. I am going to teach what carbs, fat and sugar are, show what portion sizes are, how much sugar is in that coke they drink every day and how they can prevent all of the diabetes and high cholesterol that runs rampant in Costa Rica by being aware of what and how much you eat. I am really hoping I get good (at least 6 people!) attendance to the classes, I think this could really help some people looking to get healthy.

Other than that I am just living day by day hoping and trying to make projects successful and get as much as I can out of this experience. I am also going to start studying for the GRE, I have a big nice book from Tyson and an online study plan so I'm going for it and hopefully doing great on the test! 

Well, this was fun! I will talk to some of you soon and I hope all is well :) I will update this as soon as I can!