Playas, perezosos, y papaya... Oh my!

I had a very wonderful weekend at Manuel Antonio! For those of you who don't know, my mother is a Spanish teacher & has brought down several of her Spanish students to Costa Rica as part of an exchange program (the Costa Ricans were up in the US back in January). Anyways, my family is down here as part of that trip, so I was able to spend the weekend with them! It was nice for several reasons: 1) nice to see family; 2) great to see familiar faces after not being around ANY for a solid month (which is harder than you might imagine); and 3) I saved a lot of money because my nice parents bought me food and paid for my living arrangements (which included AIR-CONDITIONING!).

Anyways, it was really great to see them and we had a very nice time. Unfortunately, I didn't go into the National Park part of Manuel Antonio, but the beaches were very nice.

Hermanas y la playa

Not feeling quite as adventurous as I have been the past few weeks, I decided not to go parasailing with my sisters. To reference an earlier post, I'm not a super huge fan of deep, dark water, so flying over it attached to a parachute didn't really sound appealing to me. I happily watched from the shore. 

After spending some time at the beach on Saturday, we showered up and took a bus into Quepos, a town near Manuel Antonio. We stopped for dinner at a GLORIOUS Italian restaurant. Back home, a majority of my favorite foods are Italian, so being deprived of that this summer has made my stomach sad. Stopping at this restaurant was AWESOME. I ordered pizza, a Snapple green iced tea, and some lemon gelato. Ahhhhhh so good!

A girl needs her pizza, okay? Especially when said girl really doesn't feel satisfied by eating beans, eggs, and rice all the time... 

We shopped a bit downtown before heading to mass. How strange it was to go to mass with people after doing it alone for the past 4 weeks! At any rate, it was really nice to have company. I'm still not understanding a lot of the mass, but it is just nice to go. Really the only consistent thing in my very inconsistent lifestyle here in Costa Rica. Yes, I consider my lifestyle here inconsistent, compared to the nice, comfortable scheduled life back home. Every day I'm thrown a different curveball... Literally every day. But it is good for character building! Anyways, before I get too off topic...

This church was one of my favorites that I have been to so far here. It was really pretty! Also, as you can kind of tell, the church doesn't have windows. Really, every building in Costa Rica is really open. Even at the big mall, there aren't doors to go in. The lack of doors/windows here is fascinating. It does make for some HOT HOT HOT masses, though. 

Closer....

I really liked the red and yellow. This altar was very beautiful.

Hola, Mary. 

Mass was really great, and it was even better to be able to share it with my family! After mass, we took a bus back down into Manuel Antonio. We were pretty tired, but we stayed up and played cards together! Fun family game night. :) If I'm not mistaken, I creamed everyone, but I may be mistaken... ;)

We had a pretty lazy day on Sunday, which was symbolically represented IN MY FIRST WILD SLOTH SIGHTING!!! It was right outside our hotel, which was really cool! 

Hello, Mr. Sloth! You can see its little head poking out from the side of its body. And, yes, I know what you are thinking... National Geographic has already contacted me about the high quality of my nature photography, and I'm giving up Xavier to go work for them. 

Just kidding.

Fun fact: sloth in Spanish is "perezoso," which also means lazy! Phil taught me that!

On Sunday, I stayed in bed until 8:30--the absolute latest I have stayed in bed since coming to Costa Rica! Ah, so relaxing. After we packed up, we walked down the beach to the center of town and had possibly the best breakfast EVER. So good. 

 Truly, a work of art: a platter of fruit (PAPAYA, pineapple, watermelon, bananas, starfruit, and some cross between a grapefruit and an orange) and some gallo pinto (which I enjoy, despite it being a combination of rice and beans, two things to don't really like all that much), eggs, and plantain!

Alongside the papaya in this breakfast, I had fresh papaya fruit juice Friday at dinner. YUM I LOVE PAPAYA! 

After breakfast, we checked out of our hotel & headed back into Quepos to catch buses to our respective towns (San Jose for me and Esparza/Puntarenas for my family). We parted ways, but I will see them this weekend, too! 

Ladies of the family (12yo Lainey, mom, me, and 19yo Andrea) with the church in the background. Photo credit: Dad

All in all, solid weekend! As for work today, it went well. We did zumba, which is getting increasingly more difficult. Alas, I have resigned to the fact that I probably will not come back from Costa Rica super tan and in the best shape of my life. But doing zumba twice a week (and running here and there, but I really don't like running) prevents me from being a total potato while I'm here in San Jose. 

I've been stressing a lot about the internship (what's new?) lately, but I really am trying the best I can, so that offers me a bit of solace. I really want to do well at this job! I am learning so much and growing so much as a person, and I want to be able to help this company as much as I can. My research now is turning more towards healthcare capital investment in China. It is really interesting because it is just another important facet of a healthcare system--one that I know very little about. There is so much to learn!! :O Hopefully I can learn it all in the next five weeks... 

Until next time!

amdg.