My favorite thing in the world....tequila!!!

This weekend was kind of fun and kind of sad at the same time. I had two goodbye parties to go to for friends who were leaving Costa Rica. Firstly was Eleanor's party on Saturday night. Eleanor was here for about a month, living with us in Heredia and studying Spanish. She had to take a taxi at 5.00 am so she decided that going to sleep and resting up for the journey was just a silly idea. So me, Eleanor and Christina bought a bottle of guaro and a pinata instead (Guaro is like the local spirit made from sugar cane and pinatas are those papier mache things filled with candy that you hit with a stick..definitely a winning combination). We also went to a bar with Oscar, the mexican guy we live with, Hector, Christina's boyfriend (and our Mama Tica's grandson and therefore also her Tico nephew!!??!) Jonathon (another grandson) and his girlfriend who is lovely but I can never remember her name, and another Oscar who I'd never met before and I only have a vague recollection of. The details are sketchy but I think we all had a great night, Eleanor got her taxi ok and me and oscar finished off the guaro listening to the mexican version of Metallica!

Things weren't so great when I woke up the next day, however. Hangovers and a tropical climate dont mix well. I slept most of the day but heroically dragged myself out of bed to go to San Pedro to meet Brandy for her birthday/leaving do. (Brandy moved into Raquel's daughter's house after I moved out)She was also here to study Spanish and became my favorite tequila drinking partner. We had a nice meal at my fave restaurant, Betania Picante which turned out to be free thanks to Brandy shamelessly flirting with the waiters. Then we met a girl from Austria (who's name I cant remember... I really am going to have to start writing these things down)and we went to El Pueblo. I think I have mentioned it before but it is really a cool place full of lots of little bars and clubs that you can wander in and out of at will. We found the best bar that had two tequila's for 1000 colones and my memory gets hazy from there on... but there was lots of drinking and dancing salsa and merengue(with a cute guy called Martin, if you say it with a Spanish accent it's a lot sexier).

Monday was a holiday and I was invited to visit the countryside with my Tico family but I was too hungover to trample up any mountains so I spent the whole day in bed....ooops.

Frazzled hair...

There are lots of problems that come with living in tropical countries...every day It takes me about an hour to decide on an outfit. Does it look profesional enough? Will I be cool enough if its sunny? Will I be warm enough if it rains? And a new criteria that I discovered during one of my first classes....If it pours down with rain and I get soaked waiting at the bus stop, how see-through will my clothes be? Anyway my biggest problems, as always, is my hair. Since I discovered the joys of 'magic straightuh' in Korea my hair has been a dream. I could just wash it and let it dry naturally and it would just go straight and shiny. But it wasnt to last forever, and I ended with curly frizzy roots with straight ends...it really wasnt a good look. So I decided to visit the hairdressing school that my Mama Tica runs. This probably wasnt the best idea I've ever had. When I walked in the room was full of girls combing those doll heads with hair and chatting away...but when they saw me they all crowded around me and fought with each other to see who would get to do my hair. In the end three girls decided to share the job and it was pretty obvious they hadn't ever done this before because they kept referring to the instructions on the back of the straightening cream!!! In the end it wasnt that successful...my roots are still frizzy but at least now the ends are frizzy too as my hair is now as dry as straw. Also an alarming amount seems to be falling out in the shower...but what the heck it's only hair...i'm sure it'll grow back!

Fun at the dentists...

I had toothache a couple of weeks back and was a bit confused as to what to do about it. In Costa Rica there are about twelve orthodontist on every street but its impossible to find your ordinary, run-of-the-mill, deals-with-toothaches kind of dentist. So my co-worker 'Crazy Lou' (that's a whole other post) took me to see his high school friend who is such a dentist. I pointed to the problem area and he decided to give me a filling. To be honest, I was in so much pain I didn't really care at the time but looking back I think he may have been a bit dodgy. For a start I don't think he was into new-fangled modern technology like...for instance...hygiene or sterilization. There was no dental nurse so I had to hold my own instruments and do my own suctioning. But the most alarming thing was that he did the entire proceedure whilst chatting to his friend on the phone and at one point disappeared for 10 minutes to go and talk to some guy at the door. Now I'm pretty sure that the problem was my wisdom tooth and I probably didn't need that filling anyway but nevermind...it was another experience to add to the list!!! And the toothache didnt matter after I discovered how easy it is to get really strong painkillers from the chemist!!!

Time flies...

Sorry about the delay in posting. This 'actually working' lark is a lot harder than I thought! I'm up every morning at 5 am running around on buses (unfortunately for the people sitting next to me I cant possible wake up any earlier just to have a shower!!!) and I'm on the go all day until 7ish. Its a good job I am acually enjoying myself cos otherwise I'd die. I think I may have been a bit over ambitious with the number of classes I can teach in a week but after a month of teaching I am totally in love with all of my students and couldn't possible drop any of them... So I'm just going to have to completely change my personality from the easy going, relaxed girl you know and love, to one of those rushing around busy people who actually get things accomplished!!! Any tips???

Also teachings a little more difficult over here than in Asia. For a start, people can actually already speak English. Which is a bugger because they don't just blindly believe me when I make up my own English words and grammer rules. Although I am the first English girl most of them have met so I am writing a lot of things off as British English. I may have to buy on of those grammar books although i guess I could just ask my students...