And, the hotel.

Well the hotel was just awesome. I don't think I have ever stayed at a place so fancy and full of fun things to do right there. The first picture I have here is a bit of a panorama of the view from my hotel room. While staying at the place I got to see crocodiles, a butterfly farm, and many gorgeous flowers, all directly located in the hotel premises. Also included, was a giant pool section. I would say there were around 4-5 pools total, maybe more and all of them had something awesome about them. Three had slides and one of the slides was crazy ferocious and I thought I was going to fly off the sides from speed and curves. Also, there was a heated pool, by hot spring maybe but I'm not for sure, that had a wet bar. So after zipping down a water slide you could swim right up to a bar while in the water and sip on any drink of your liking. Pretty cool if you ask me.

At the top of these steps is a shallow pool with a mimick of a volcano that you stoop into with water drizzling over you, with the actual volcano Arenal in the background.





A croc.
Right behind this sign are about 5 of them.
At the butterfly farm.
Josh coming down one of the slides.

Brady coming down.

Yup, horses too.

We all hung out at night. And yes, that is in fact my tea cup you see.

And of course, flowers and plants

I figured I'd just put these all on the same post.

On a path through the hotel.

One of the flowers in the Butterfly sanctuary at the hotel.

Butterfly sanctuary.

In the sanctuary.

By my room.

While on the hike around the volcano.

On the road up to our hotel room.

While hiking.

I think they called this Monkey Tail. This was also while hiking.

This little guy was growing on volcanic rock.

And this one was at the hedge garden.

To the city!

Today my host father Carlos took Nicole and I to see some of the city we had not been to. The first building here is the post office, where I will be sending most of my letters.

I love these trees.

This flower picture didn't turn out so well, but I loved it none the less.

El Museo Nacionalidad in San Jose

At the park

San Jose is surrounded by mountains, so it doesn't matter what direction you look they will be there.

The inside of a pavilian at at La Parque Nacionalidad.

The president of Costa Rica.

MMmmmm....

The food here is delicious, but of course very different. The lemons my host mom has me use as salad dressing are orange inside rather than green. Muy estrano, pero delicioso.
This is a chicken combination wrapped in cabbage and topped with a very mild but flavorful salsa. It's super stange getting all of my meals prepared for me. Going from ramen to having more food than I can belly that I didn't even have to fix is awsome though. I don't know what I'm going to do when I come home. I suppose I'll just have to catch me a servant. But in a very non-offensive way ofcourse though.

Palmadres es loco

Evan Billingsley I have a job for you, and I will explain later. So I suppose I had my first semi-crazy night last night. Most of us study abroad students went to a huge fiesta called Palmares. I do believe Palmares is also a town, but maybe is only known for its parties. When we first got there my initial thought was, is this a fair? But no, it was only similar to one on the outside. As we walked we noticed loud music coming from one specific direction, and so of course we headed towards it. It turned out to be three huge structures that were concealed to the public except for its dancing balconies and large entrance with scanty girls dancing seductively. We of course entered to find a huge dance floor just waiting to be used. The place we entered was only one of the three possible structures, and ours wasn't even the largest. It was early when we got there but very soon the crowd made its way in and the dancing began. Right after I started dancing myself I looked up on stage to find two young ladies dancing Costa Rican salsa-ish style on stage. This is a new one for me, being from Arkansas, and so I suppose I just stared in humor for a while. As the night progressed more dancers appeared, all wearing interesting costumes. But the highlight of the night’s stage performance for me was when the silver and fire statue man appeared. I looked up on stage and out of nowhere came Evan Billingsley's twin. I have never seen anyone dance so similarly to Evan in my entire life and the best part was that he was covered from head to toe in some sort of silver body paint, and was holding a disco ball with fire protruding from his hands. He came out on stage in a position similar to the statue of the thinking man, and then slowly began to disperse from his form and dance....just like evan but more slowly and suavely perhaps. But after the silver man it was time to go so we all met outside and shuffled onto the bus. Unfortunately while doing a role call to make sure no one was left behind with a couple thousand aroused Latinos and a man covered in silver spitting fire, someone was missing. So we ended up spending over an hour searching for a lost girl in crowds of thousands. We were all pretty worried though because of the warnings we had gotten about robbery and other crimes. When we finally found her we made the trek back to San Jose and ended getting there around 4:30 or 5 in the morning. Not exactly a safe picture because we all had to wait on a street corner to hail down a cab to get back to our host homes at kind of a bad time at night to be doing so. Oh well, we made it home safely, and the cab fare was only about a dollar. I also swear though that I heard a monkey outside of our house last night early in the morning. It was most likely just a bird, but I've never heard an animal make such noises and the only thing I could connect them to was perhaps a monkey. Alrighty well I'm going to go ahead and stop here for now.

Two of the dancers.
The structures.

Don't worry, I hadn't had anything to drink and no I don't have pink eye here.

Meg and Nicole.

These are the lights that were outside.

The man of fire. Oh by the way he was wearing angel wings too.

It's Evan!

Safety first

Costa Ricans are no exception when it comes to countries that keep robbers out with lots and lots of barbed wire and bars.