COPA airline and a brief stint in Nicaragua

We had planned to meet Stephanie at the airport at 5:30 since our flight was at 7:30 on Sunday night. Ruth and I got there a little early (like around 5ish) to make sure we were there before Stephanie so we could help her with all of our luggage. Since she took a cab to her friend's house we sent all of our luggage with her so we could walk around the city. Ruth and I got there in plenty of time. We were just messing around and taking some silly pictures when these two curbside check in guys were watching us and then saying why don't we take a picture with them? Well, what else were we to do but take a picture with them?? ha ha.

When Stephanie got there at 5:30, we went inside and paid our exit tax and got in line at the COPA ticket agents. The line was no longer than it was when we first got there, and it was only like 15 people in front of us. We were just hanging out, talking, one of Ruth's students was in line behind us, just having a good ole time. When Ruth went up to the counter to check in, she started talking to the guy,then turned around and said, hey come up here, I think there is a problem with our flight. So Steph and I went and we also got her student to come translate for us if we needed it. Well, the guy was asking us if we would wait and come home on Monday since they overbooked the flight. He told us what they would offer us and we politely said, no thanks, we have to work tomorrow. Then he went on and said, well, there are only two more seats and there are three of you, so we can't get you all on the plane. So, the three of us, along with about six other people behind us in line were not allowed on the plane because they didn't have any more space due to overselling tickets!!!! This is what we were doing while we were waiting for all of the paperwork to go through in order to get to the hotel and get all of the vouchers they needed to give us!

I think I could have gone as a carryon!!! ha

We were waiting forever in that line and at this desk!!! We were all getting a little irritated and impatient by this time!

So we ended up having to stay the night in San Jose and then we flew out in the morning to get back to Guatemala. We did have a brief layover in Nicaragua.....I had to take a few photos, since I'm not sure if this is a place I will go back to or not. Now I can say I've been to Nicaragua! ha ha. Here is the brief view of Nicaragua!

See, I really was there!!!

Always an adventure!!! We did get home the next day and had to call our bosses at the school and tell them what had happened and that we were all stuck in Costa Rica! What a great trip even with a crazy ending to it!

San Jose, Costa Rica

On Sunday, before our flight (which wasn't until 7:30 pm), we headed back to San Jose in the morning. We took like a 9:30 am bus or something to put us back into the city around noon or so. Stephanie had some friends from Boston that are living in Costa Rica now that she was going to go visit while Ruth and I were going to walk around San Jose for a few hours before heading back to the airport. The weather at the beach was really crappy on Sunday so we were happy with this decision, as it wasn't raining in the city! The city itself was pretty much similar to most other capital/big cities. It had its good and bad parts and of course the beautiful old buildings that I just love looking at. We just kind of wandered around and took it all in before finding the bus to the airport! This was an old church that was right there in the central square of the city.

Church doors.....so pretty

We did peek into this catholic church. Of course it was just as beautiful on the inside as well.

In case you didn't know, white people (from the USA) are often called gringos in Latin America. I hear hey gringa fairly often. Some people get offended, it doesn't usually bother me. Ruth and I saw this sign and thought it would be pretty appropriate to take our picture in front of it! We asked someone to take the picture (this policeman) and he kept asking like what we wanted in the picture, how close, etc. We said just the sign that says "Dos Gringos" and then this is what we ended up with. Ha ha. Not horrible but not exactly what we asked for either! :)

I try to eat McDonald's in each country I visit. I know, I know, stupid, but I like it! Well, I didn't eat here, but I at least got my picture with it!

I was pretty much enamored by about 95% of the Costa Ricans (Ticos) that I saw while on this trip. And I do love a man in uniform, so the Tico Policemen were right up my alley!!! We saw this big bus and I had to get a picture by it! I also love this little kid looking at me like what is this crazy gringa doing???

Some random street performers we saw doing all of these acrobatic things in the street. They were pretty good at what they were doing. I think they were trying to make it into this story or something but Ruth and I couldn't really pick up on the story! We just enjoyed the performance!

We figured out which public bus would take us to the airport and we had a really cheap ride to the airport! Fun times in Costa Rica! And now that I don't have Alexa to take the self portraits (since I am terrible at doing it), at least Ruth could step in for me! :)

El Avion Restaurant

While we were in Costa Rica, we wanted to go to this restaurant called "El Avion." It was recommended to us by the same friend that had told us to get a tour for the national park! It is the coolest restaurant with a great view. There was an old plane that had gotten shot down somewhere near the Nicaraguan border or something (I can never remember those historical lessons!!) and then they built this restaurant around the airplane. It was really cool! We went there for lunch one day!

This was the view behind us as we were eating!

The three amigas!
A view of the restaurant!

Inside the plane is a bar and a nightclub in the evenings!

Outside the front of the restaurant!

Manuel Antonio National Park

One day we went to Manuel Antonio National Park. With the advice from another teacher, we hired a guide to walk us through the park. It was great advice, a little pricey, but otherwise we probably wouldn't have seen any of the animals that he pointed out to us. It was 20 dollars a person, but this guy brought his own telescope and knew how to spot all the animals!! It was a fun day and we also got to spend a little time at the beach as well.

The map of the park!

This was our first animal spotting.....this little blue beetle (I think! ha ha)

Our entire tour was in Spanish, which was fun. I think we understood most of it between the three of us! Our guide, Rodrigo, told us that this plant is where citronella comes from. Since Stephanie always seems to get the brunt of the bites no matter where we are, she tried to put this natural remedy to good use!

Rodrigo, our guide, finding something cool for us to look at!

We saw these cute colorful blue and red crabs!!!

Some howler monkeys!

This plant is related to the coffee bean.

This was a huge bamboo plant that we thought was pretty for a picture!

The beautiful beach that we discovered close to the end of our walk through the park! It had a lot of different places where you could park and it wasn't crowded at all! So nice!

The beach!

One of the sloths that we saw.....in Spanish their name is "El Perizoso" which literally translates to "The Lazy." ha ha. These were three toed sloths. We learned there are also five toed sloths!

I was leaning down taking a picture of something and this iguana ran out from where it was hiding and I jumped up and screamed and ran away. I thought this iguana was going to bite my butt or something!!!! I am not a big animal lover! ha ha. For this reason exactly!

Costa Rican Thanksgiving

Over Thanksgiving break, I went to Costa Rica with my friends Stephanie and Ruth. We had a great trip, relaxed a lot, and tried to spend as much time in the sun as we could. It did end up raining every day while we were there but we worked our schedule around that. We flew out early on Thursday morning, almost missing our initial flight! The taxi driver that we had arranged to pick us up didn't show, then the taxi that was coming that we called didn't make it. The next taxi that they sent couldn't get into our neighborhood, later to be found out that the guards were sleeping at the guardhouse. Nice! We made it with about five minutes to spare at the gate! After an easy, short flight to San Jose, we caught a ride with two other teachers that were there that had rented a car. It was nice to have a ride and to get to stop and see a few other places as well. Here are some of our first views of Costa Rica. It was beautiful and I loved seeing all of the green everywhere!!!!

We stopped along the road at this one bridge across a river and there were a bunch of crocodiles (maybe alligators.....I can't remember!!!) just chilling out down there. What a sight! It was so cool! There were seriously about 30-40 of them!!!

They were BIG!!!

This was where we stopped to view the crocodiles/gators. It is obviously a big tourist stopping point, so they were of course selling things at this area!

I just love all the colors!!!

Palm trees everywhere!!!!

Our friend was telling us that they have palm tree farms where they harvest the palm nuts and palm oil and stuff.

With the national beer of Costa Rica....Imperial! It was pretty good. This was our Thanksgiving dinner! I had arroz con pollo, a traditional Costa Rican dish, chicken and rice.

Stephanie with her Thanksgiving dinner of fish (I think!)

The pool at our hotel, the view from our room!

It was so nice to be able to take the public buses in Costa Rica. This is one "luxury" I really miss from Korea. The safety issues in Guatemala keep us from riding the public buses around. I miss easy and cheap public transportation!!

We found this little open air market near our hotel in the town we were staying in. It was really cute and they had all kinds of fresh fruits and vegetables that you can imagine. It was fun to walk around and see what we could/would buy if we lived in Costa Rica!

Our hotel was connected to a casino. One of our rainy evenings we took our ten dollars and messed around in the casino for a little bit. I think you can see from the picture who was the big winner and who lost all her money!!!!

Everywhere we turned in Costa Rica was a sign for pollo frito (fried chicken) at these little hole in the wall establishments. Stephanie and I decided to try a few of them out. Wow, were they good!!! We miss our pollo frito!

This was the view from our hotel where we ate breakfast every morning. Although it was right in front of the beach, we didn't hang out on this beach much. We took the bus to another area and went to the beach.

One day when we were taking the bus home it was very very crowded, so the bus driver let me sit on the metal part right there where the money is kept. He started asking me if I spoke Spanish and we were trying to have a conversation. I just thought he was pretty much the cutest thing ever, so of course I wanted a picture with him!!! ha ha. There were a lot of cute Costa Ricans (Ticos.....that's what they are called!)

While we were there, I even caught part of the Kansas/Missouri footbal game!!! Can you believe it, it was on air in Costa Rica!!!! And of course look who is winning!

Surprise!!!

I gave my mom a little surprise this morning. Hallmark has this online thing called Smilebox where you can put pictures into all of these different templates and send them out. They are really cute and my mom LOVES them. She always sends me pictures of my niece and nephews so I can't complain about her Smileboxes. They are really nice to get to see pictures of my family and see the things that they are doing. Well, I sent my mom a Smilebox of her own last night!!! My friend Stephanie always gets to see the Smileboxes that my mom sends me so we were waiting for a taxi at the mall the other day and we saw this sign: Futura Mama. These signs always crack me up written in Spanish, I just think they are so cute, so I went to take a picture of it. Stephanie and I decided it would be fun to have a photo shoot by the sign and send the pictures to my mom in a Smilebox. Here it is:

Make a Smilebox slideshow

I got a phone call at 7:50 am this morning just making sure it wasn't for real!!!! ha ha. I thought it was kind of funny. I guess this Smilebox didn't make my mom smile too much! :)

Oh, and PS: The picture with that guy is just some random guy who was outside on his smoke break. Stephanie went over and asked him if he had a minute and if he could help us for a minute. He was like sure, and thought something was wrong that we needed help with. Then we told him that we needed a picture with him for a joke for my mom! (Un chiste para mi mama!!)

Oh and also: the cigar picture, that was another first for me! I had tried to smoke one before but couldn't do it. Stephanie had bought some cigars for some friends and we tried to smoke the leftovers one night but we didn't know how. We tried to look it up online but couldn't figure it out, so when our friend Andy brought us home the other night we asked him if he could teach us to smoke the cigar! So the three of us shared one!