La India Dormida

Hola hola hola hola! Phew.

I've pretty much been in continuous motion since I got to Quebradas on Sunday evening. It's amazing how much more I have to do than I did before, so the move from Coronado de Osa has definitely been a positive change.

Monday night I stayed in with my host family. My host sister has exams right now at the high school, so she needed to use the computer which is in my bedroom, but we ended up just playing music and dancing around the house so I'm pretty sure she didn't get any studying done. The rest of the family laughed at us for about an hour, and then the grandmother tried to join in. She's very old, uses a walker, is blind in one eye, only comes up to about my shoulder, and with her flower dresses and aprons is probably the cutest thing I've ever seen.

Yesterday morning was my first day working at FUDEBIOL, since we work from Tuesday to Saturday and get Sunday and Monday off. I woke up at 4:45 to go power walking with my host mom and two other ladies in the neighborhood. They were actually pretty hard to keep up with! We walked for about half an hour up the mountain, then I ran back down ahead of them so that I could shower and get dressed before breakfast.

At 7, Jeannette met me in front of my house and we started up to the biological center. Jacki and Katie work at the local school on Tuesdays, so it was just the two of us. Neither of us had been before and had absolutely no idea what we were in for until we had collapsed half an hour later on a steep incline that showed no signs of flattening out anytime soon. Finally, we reached a gate that looked like it was the biological reserve and excitedly ran down the driveway where we met two very nice farmers who seemed happy to see us but had absolutely no idea who we were or what we were doing there. After we explained that we were exchange volunteers from ACI, they laughed and pointed up the mountain to the REAL biological center. We climbed for about five or ten more minutes and then were finally there. We were given a tour of the central area by Don Jesus, who I think will pretty much be in charge of us, and met the four high school boys who are living and working at the center for four weeks as a project for school. We decided to pull weeds in the garden until lunchtime when it started raining. After that, we were allowed to use the computer room to go on the internet until 2 PM when we made the journey back down the hill.

After we got home (and took very long showers) Jeannette and I took the bus into San Isidro and went to the supermarket to buy ingredients for chocolate chip cookies. We got back to my host family's house only to realize that the oven was broken. They have a smaller oven as well, but only the bottom part was working, so our cookies cooked from the bottom up and we had to flip them over in order to get them fully cooked. They weren't the best we'd ever had, but I guess my host family liked them because when I got back from work today they were gone.

I overslept this morning until about 5:30 (am I really calling that oversleeping?) and missed power walking, but I'm not sure how well I would have done because once I left for work with Jeannette and Jacki I realized how sore certain parts of my body were (e.g. my butt) and by the time we finally reached FUDEBIOL Jeannette and I could barely stand up. Jacki has been doing this for about two months so she's an expert at it by now. Just for kicks, we stopped to say hello to our friends at the farm ten minutes below the center and spent some time playing with the puppies there.

Now I'm at an internet cafe only about a 5 minute walk from my house in Quebradas. In the morning, I have to go back to Coronado to pick up the rest of my things there, but Jacki has been nice enough to offer to go with me. In the evening, I'm going with her to dance class in San Isidro, which I'm really excited about!

It's been a really long time since I put up any pictures, and I really want to... I have to get back home for dinner now but I'm really hoping that I'll be able to soon!