day 7: week 1 is over

last day of school and then the weekend. i have to admit this was a long week although it did pick up some at the end. i'm glad to have my first and most difficult week behind me. next week my friend mike from school gets here and it'll be nice to have someone to hang out with on a regular basis.

1. each day at school we have a 20 minute break at 10am where we eat, drink coffee, hang out etc. a funny thing i noticed at break today was that our language school has its own pecking order not unsimilar to that of a high school cafeteria. you have 4 main groups:
- your hardcore wanna be latinos aka "mesa de espanol" - they refuse to speak english even at break
- your hardcore party-ers, the ones that go out everynight and our in costa rica to party for 6 weeks straight
- your smokers - they seem to have a contest each day to see who can smoke the most cigs in 20 mins
- your over 40 crowd which is fairly self-explanatory
well obviously i'm under 40, haven't been to a bar yet, don't smoke and use my 20 minutes to speak english so i'm not all too certain which group i belong to but it's interesting to watch nonetheless.

2. i knew i was visiting monteverde during the raining season but i had no idea what i was getting myself into. it has rained for nearly 4 straight days and since i've been here i have experienced no more than 3 hours without rain. the walk to school today was horrendous, we were walking into rain with the wind blowing at least 35mph. all i could do was close my eyes, lower my head and pray i didn't get hit by a motorcycle [more on costa rican drivers another time]

3. around 7 ricardo (my costa rican brother) asked me if i wanted to go to the serpentario with him and we walked around for about 15 minutes. i'm not a huge fan of snakes, i actually hate them, so i was ready to get out of there. he then challenged me in a game of uno, one of my favorite childhood games. i was excited about finally getting to hang out with some of the students outside of a school setting so we headed to dos amigos and la taberna (the 2 local bars), i'll talk mnore about those later. if the weather cooperates tomorrow i'll be heading to a zip line tour throughout the rainforest reserve. hope everyone is doing well and trust me, i'm trying to get pics out asap but the internet here is incredibly slow, you have no idea. later.