Taking a break from studying and decided I might as well fill you all in on my activities as of late... Last Friday my class had a fieldtrip to a couple old churches in the city of Cartago, close to San Jose, and then as a nice "cultural activity" we went and hung out at a mountain lodge for a couple of hours. Went out that night with Marcina, her friend visiting from the States, and some other students to club Vertigo and then on to Retrovisor. Saturday I had a fieldtrip with my photography class so we went to Volcan Irazu, which is an old crater with a bright green lake in the center, and then went to an old restaurant on the side of a hill, decorated from wall to wall with business cards, old drivers licenses and money for lunch. Unfortunately as the rainy season of Costa Rica is ending, the earthquake season is beginning, and while in this restaurant held up by stilts complete with cracks in the floorboards, I experienced my first Costa Rican earthquake. Most of the other students were very excited and wished for another one, which they got 3 hours later, and then another this morning at 6:30am. After lunch we continued on to an old abondoned Taburculosis hospital / juvenile detention center / orphanage to take more pictures. There is really no way to describe this place, so you will have to wait for the pictures, but it was interesting / beautiful / creepy if that gives you any hints...

Sunday I went with my friends Melanie and Leah to Cafe Britt, which is one of the largest coffee producers in Costa Rica, for a tour and lunch, and about 20 "samples" of coffee in a short period of time, leaving me more cracked out on caffein than I have ever been before. The next couple of days are going to be extremely busy seeing as how I have to learn about 20 different tenses of verbs before our final test for Advanced I on Thursday afternoon. However, after that we are having a big Thanksgiving party and then Friday I am going down to Panama for a couple of days to relax on some Carribean islands. I hear that before you become fluent in a language you seem to think you can't speak it or your native language, so at the moment I'm really hopeing that is true, seeing as how I have been speaking both English and Spanish progressively worse... That is all for now. Happy Thanksgiving if I don't hear from you all before that! Love.