That's not what I meant to say...Mishaps in translation.

I can not deny that coming to Costa Rica I did not know nearly enough Spanish to get by on my own. I knew the basics, like "where is the bathroom?"  "I'm hungry" and "there's a snake in the bathroom!" 

(That last one I learned from a web series I used to watch called Spookhouse Dave, about this kid who lived in a castle with a bunch of monsters. The werewolf spoke Spanish, and sometimes there was a short where the werewolf, Umberto, would teach you a few words and one phrase that always involved something to do with the bathroom. Probably because he was a werewolf..and dogs sometimes drink from the toilet? I'm not really sure of the thought process behind it, but "there's a snake in the bathroom" was one of the phrases I knew. I hoped I'd never have to use it). 

Because of my meager vocabulary, which admittedly improved greatly during my time there, there were still some mishaps in translation.

One day I was talking to my host mom, Natalia, after seeing the crocodiles. I showed her the pictures, and she asked me "where did you see the crocodiles?" but all I happened to hear was "something about crocodiles" So I told her "crocodiles, I LOVE crocodiles!" and grinned like an idiot.

Annie, who was listening nearby, kindly told me she was trying to ask WHERE I saw them.

This was not the end of my Spanish mishaps. I found in Spanish class that a lot of words were very similar to each other. (The Spanish class was taught in all Spanish, and they also grouped the complete beginners (me) and the students who could actually speak Spanish all in one class, because there were only 4 of us taking the class)

Some of these words were beer and cherries. Because of this mistake, I told the teacher I like beer in my fruit salad.

Beer: Las Cervezas (Sir-vay-zahs)
Cherries:  Las Cerezas (Sir-ray-zahs)

I often got onion and horse confused too, but luckily I never told anyone that I rode my first onion in Drake Bay, or that my host mom fed me horse for dinner.

Onion: La Cebolla (Sa-boy-ya)
Horse: El Caballo (Cah-buy-yo)

Another Spanish mishap I made was on a test. The question was to write down "Mi apellido" which means "my last name." But, I didn't know that one, so I wrote "naranjas" which means "oranges."

There was one other mistake we made, and this just goes to show you should be wary of what you listen to on the internet. We were sitting in my room watching youtube on my laptop, and meanwhile my host mom Natalia had an unusually large number of guests over. Her little granddaughters were running around, her sons were there, and so on.

We looked on youtube "funny Spanish" because we thought it might be a fun way to learn new phrases. It went well for a while. We found a video called ridiculously funny Spanish class, which for the first part talked about time, and how minutes are masculine, seconds are masculine, but hours are feminine  etc. It mentions how "wives" is the same word as "handcuffs" funny huh?

Then out of nowhere, the guy asks "at what hour do you masturbate?" In Spanish. I lept off the bed and dived at my laptop to turn the volume down, shooting panicked looks at my doorway, hoping none of Natalia's Spanish speaking family heard that bit.

After a moment of silence when we realized none of them heard, we all burst out laughing and decided to go find something better to do with our time.

When the work load got high, and homesickness kicked in, Manda and I finally decided to go search for a bar. There was one next to Manda's home stay, maybe a two minute walk if you're stumbling.

The bar, Bocaditos, was a favorite of USAC students, probably because of location and friendly staff.
Manda had never drank before, and I have to admit I was a novice. I had never had much interest, and most of what I'd tried I didn't like the taste of.

However, earlier that week I had tried my first Margarita and had liked it, so I thought it wouldn't hurt to try something new.

A side note, for a little while Natalia had another girl staying with us named Menka. She had studied abroad here last year and her and Natalia had really hit it off. She had talked to Claudia (a USAC staff member here in San Ramon who was amazing at her job) and Claudia had set her up with an internship for the summer working with sea turtles.

On Menka's last night, we went to a small restaurant just outside of town owned by one of Natalia's daughters. While Natalia ordered Taquillas (her favorite) I tried the Margarita, and the glass they gave me was bigger than my head!

So with that experience under my belt, Manda and I met up with another USAC student at Bocaditos, and we started off with a fruity drink. Unfortunately for Manda, it was a strawberry daiquiri, and she hates the taste of strawberries!

We tried a rum and coke next, which I liked but Manda couldn't finish. Eventually, after a few more visits to Bocaditos, we finally found a drink we liked, (Amaretto sour) and Annie even eventually joined us on one of our visits there.

 Every Friday in town there is La Feraria, where there is table after table of fresh picked fruits, vegetables and breads. We decided since we finally had a Friday free of field trips, we would dress up and go to La Feraria. We bought the most delicious juicy strawberries I had EVER had, star fruit, lychees, and mangoes.

Fruit here is cheap and so delicious. For instance, the star fruit I bought was for about a quarter each.

After the fruit fair, we went to our favorite pizza place, Pizzeria Grace.

After we went to the bank, we made the 20 minute walk to the edge of town to the mall, where the only theater in town was. We went to go see the new Spiderman movie, and we even got a free poster!

I later mused that the outcome of the movie would have been very different if the bad guy was working with a starfishes' regenerative powers rather than a lizard's.

When we weren't on field trips or at the library or in class, we explored more of town, and took pictures of the amazing graffiti.

Nearly all of the graffiti we saw was by this guy. 

Before we left for Costa Rica, we each got a water resistant watch in our favorite color. Mine is orange, Annie's is green, Manda's is purple.

On campus, the stray dogs often slept wherever they wanted. I had to step over this dog to get to the girl's bathroom on more than one occasion

The view from the library

The view of town from the soccer field

Just outside the campus were these flowers, and I spent five minutes at least every day trying to get pictures of all of the insects that inhabited them.

I had a hard time getting a photo of this guy. It took me a few weeks of blurry photos before I got the next two shots.

We watched this insect ambush its prey. It waited for a bee to come to the flower for pollin, then is tackled the bee and killed it.

One day on campus we saw the famous Blue Morpho butterfly. We couldn't get a photo, but I got a video of us chasing it.

On the walk to school today, I passed by this wall that often had small lizards sunning themselves on it. Here are two that I managed to get a picture of.

The first day I arrived, my host mom walked me to school, and pointed out a few things on the way. One of the things she pointed out was this small stream, and she told me that there's a crocodile in there. I never saw it, but every day I looked.

A Mott Mott bird on campus

Annie and I demonstrate the practicality of all of the bars on the houses if there was ever a zombie a apocalypse. 

The park in the center of town. To the left is the direction of the ice cream place, behind us is the church, to the right is where we would go to get to the bank and grocery store, both next to the church. 

This is the corner I would sometimes wait for Manda and Annie. The blue steeple is the blue church I used for reference to help find my way back home.

 This is the same corner, but looking the other way, towards where Manda and Annie's home stay.

This is the same corner, but facing my home stay as well as the way to school. At the end of the road we would take a left.

School thus far had been a lot of fun, and one night walking back from a yoga class we saw a barn owl fly overhead. This was really exciting, as I'd never seen one before.

Time was really flying here, and we were preparing for final projects and the last field trips in our classes. I already knew that going back to school in Maine was going to be difficult after taking classes in Costa Rica.