Finishing the Semester....

Week of June 2

This week was my last week of class! Since I had already turned in two of my papers, all I had to do this week was take two exams, turn in a paper, and do a presentation.  It sounds like a lot but surprisingly it wasn't too bad.... although the paper that I wrote for my philosophy class was 22 pages. But thankfully, after I turned that paper in on Wednesday morning, I was officially finished with my semester at La Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica.  Very proud to say that!

Wednesday was my friend Savannah's birthday so my friend Colleen and I went to her house to have lunch and cake. Then we went out that night to celebrate!

On Thursday, the whole study abroad group went to one of our director's house for a goodbye party.  We had really good food and shared some of our favorite memories from this semester.  It's making me sad thinking about leaving! But I am pretty ready to go home.

I spent the entire weekend with my "home base" or my 3 best friends here, Sarah, Colleen, and Emily. We went to both of our favorite malls, Paseo de las Flores in Heredia and Plaza Lincoln in San Jose.

We went to a Mexican restaurant and wanted some chips and queso. So from the description on the menu we thought this dish would be that......nope literally melted cheese and tortillas. AMERICA WE NEED YOU!

But it was fine, because then we got these. One of my last legal drinks for 7 more months!!

Now that I have finished all of my school work, I want nothing more than to be home.  My experience here has been absolutely incredible but also extremely difficult.  I had never been away from home for even close to this amount of time....not even when I'm away at school.  So being away for 20 weeks in a developing country was definitely not easy.  Despite the difficulty that I have faced during this semester, I am still so so happy that I came. I would not change any part of it.  But at this point I feel that I have gotten everything out it that I'm going to get out of it.  I've been here for 4 and a half months now and I've completed all of my school work. At this point all I want to do is go home.  So I decided to change my flight to just 4 days earlier, June 12. Now I'll have 4 extra days at home to see all of my friends and family and to readjust to life in the United States before I head off to Columbus for the summer the following week. I really so love it here. But as terrified as I am to actually go home and readjust, it's time....

Guanacaste

Week of May 26

This week I finally made it to the seventh and final providence of Costa Rica, Guanacaste! My goal was to make it to all seven and I barely made it.

This week I turned in two papers and made two presentations! If you told me before I came here that I would have to give a 30 minute presentation in front of the class I would have probably cried.  But now, I could do it without even thinking twice.  That's actually what I did in my Spanish class.  I wrote a 15 page paper, threw together a PowerPoint the night before, and without any preparation, gave a 30 minute presentation in class. I cannot believe how far I've come!

After this crazy week, five of my friends and I went to the beach.  We went to Playa Hermosa in Guanacaste.  The bus ride was super long, about 6 or 7 hours, but we survived!

On Saturday, Emily, Ximena, and I ran the Delta Pacific 5K. There were so many runners because the prize for winning was a plane ticket to the United States. Unfortunately none of us won, but we did have a lot of fun. A kilometer of it was on the beach! It was very difficult but sooo pretty!

It was so nice to have a relaxing weekend and escape all of the schoolwork. Although it was really sad to leave the Costa Rican beach for the last time :(

Now back to reality......I still have 2 exams, a paper, and a presentation.