It's been over a month since my last post. I didn't think I would be back on here, but then I remembered all the people I've met during my travels whose only contact with me is through this blog and realized that I left off in a pretty bad place. Plus, the adventure has begun again, so I guess I have something more to write about!
I managed to get on a bus to San Jose the next day, Sunday, with the help of a group of students who were staying at the hostel. It was a 10-hour trip in total, from leaving the Flutterby to getting to the San Jose hostel, partially because on a walking speed scale of bag lady to 10, I was slower than the bag lady. By the time I got there, I was completely exhausted and in a lot of pain. To make a very long story short, 24 hours later I was landing at Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. I'd had a meeting at the ACI office that morning and because of certain reasons decided to leave the program.
Being home was really, really, really weird. Everyone was speaking English. The streets were way too organized. And I kept dropping coins between my fingers because they're so much smaller. I got to see a couple friends and visit my old cheerleading team, but still, after a couple days, I was bored. One night, my mom had the idea that I should try to start college in January instead of waiting until May. I didn't think they would let me, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to, but out of curiosity I called the admissions office the next morning and asked if it would be possible. The man there asked me to wait while he checked and came back a minute later. "That's fine. We'll see you in January, Ms Bernardi." And he hung up.
The next morning I got up early and flew to Chicago to look for apartments. I only ended up seeing three, because I completely fell in love with the second one, but felt bad about canceling my last appointment for the day only half an hour ahead of time so I went. After I got back to Virginia, it was a weeklong rush of Ikea trips and a lot of packing before I left with my family to come back to Costa Rica. I only slept 3 nights that week. Which, in retrospect, was a really good idea because I was out cold for the entire plane trip and it made it seem really, really short.
I spent all of last week here with my family. We stayed the first 2 nights in Uvita at a nice hotel on a mountain with an ocean view. My dad and I drove out to San Isidro one day to get my backpack from my 2nd host family, who was very nice and said that next time I wanted to volunteer in Costa Rica I should skip the program, save $5,500 and come straight to them. I asked my host sister to come visit me in the United States. I hope she will. After that, we went up to a huge resort just north of Jaco for 4 nights, where I found a pretty solid group of people to hang out with and spent almost the entire time playing volleyball and soccer.
My parents left, and I went back down to the Flutterby House, where I'm staying now. I've been here for 3 nights and am on my 5th book. The weather has been pretty bad the last couple days so all I've done is read, but I'm hoping it gets nicer today so that I can at least go to the beach. But with all the craziness that's happened in the last few weeks it certainly feels like life has reached some sort of normal: Keith is singing reggae in the shower, Ryan rearranged the kitchen (again), and Max the dog keeps getting stuck in my treehouse. I'm going to Panama with Martin sometime in the next couple of days, who knows when and who knows for how long - we're great at planning. I go home on Christmas Eve... 23 days may seem like a lot of time to have left, but after 3 months here, I know it's going to be too short!
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