Tearful Day a La Casa de Yuri

We have happily glided into the dry season here in Monteverde. That means that there are only intermittent rain showers throughout the day (not torrential downpours)and a refreshing, but constant mist looms in the air. I´ve learned not to leave my graham crackers out of their ziplock bags at night, because I wake up to a pile of mush by my bed. We´ve had a few heavy rains since I´ve been here, one during which I naively wore flip flops and a skirt down to town, only to end up falling down part of the hill and arriving to ¨the discoteque¨ completely covered in mud. I´m not exactly sure how people stay clean around here, but I´m not good at it. Apparently, I´m also not so great at staying on my feet, because during our hike to San Luis on Sunday, I fell into the river, bruising my arm and back. The retelling (and retelling, and retelling) of the mishap has provided endless entertainment to the boys. Speaking of walking, I´ve begun to train for La Caminata, a fundraising walk from Monteverde -- Tilaran, 100K!! One other intern and two of the employees at the school have signed up to tackle the entire walk. Other people will be forming relay teams. It´s supposed to be a great turn out. The walk is held each year to raise scholarship money for the school. It takes place in the middle of March...I´m supposed to brace myself to walk for 24 hours straight. (Send Gu).

As for yesterday. It was quite a day. Stitch, the family cat died, and Juan Pablo jabbed himself with my EpiPen, and consequently spent the majority of the evening in the local clinic. He came home teary and tired with a mound of gauze wrapped around his little hand. Today, however, he was bouncing around the house and proudly showing his injection wound. So, lethal encounter of poison to Stitch and adult dosage of Epinephrin in Pablito´s hand/arm left the house a little shaken last night. Nevertheless, the boys and I headed back to the Synthetica to watch another soccer match. Again, we walked the 30 minutes home together with our trusty flashlights and talked about things like the bandits who lurk in the woods and the gang of men who held up the bank last year. They also tried to convince me to visit the bull pasture, but I thought we had experienced enough misadventure for one day.

The school day is going well today. It´s a beautiful day in Monteverde; sunny and in the 70s. I had my first Spanish lesson on Monday and my first salsa class is next week. Looking forward to spending this weekend in Samara, a small beachtown on the Nicoya peninsula about five hours west of here. About 12 of us are renting a house there.

I´ll write more later and will try to post more pictures soon.

Chau.