Hola Tambien!

Well, its wednesday and so far it has been pretty much non stop since the last time I wrote. Yesterday you will never believe what I was doing..As you may have guessed Monteverde is up the top of the Costa Rican mountain rainforest, its also known as the Cloud forest which basically means by the time its hits about 12pm you are in the clouds. Depending on how thick they are its impossible to see a few feet infront of you - being in the clouds means that is it constantly wet and the lightning bolds from the stroms seem much closer than I feel comfortable with!! The thunder is SO defening!! So Me, Bobby and Carolyn (both of those guys are students in the spanish school from the U S of A) went extreme ziplining up the very top of the mountains yesterday!! I was absolutley positivly petrified!!! It involved 750m (2250ft) ziplines between the mountains in the rain forest!! Before we had even started the guy was giving us our very, very important safety instructions, but you know when you are panicking so much you dont actually hear what they are saying or you forget it instantly - yup that was me! My heart was in my throat - oh yeah, and he warned us it would be much faster today as we were doing it in, you guessed it, a tropical rain storm! Now, Im sure ive been told since a very young age not to climb trees/swing along ziplines when there is lightening about? Does that not sound reasonable? Anyone? The first serious one came and because the clouds were so thick the wire disappeared into nowhere - I could only hear how long it was when the person in from of me dissapeared and zipped for about 2 loooooong minutes. The guy had to give me a push off the edge and I can honestly say, hand on heart, as I was hanging on a wire between the two mountains with miles of nothing between me and the tiny trees on the ground I have never been as scared in my ENTIRE life!! 1 down 16 more to go.. My legs were total jelly when i made it (alive!) to the other end but unfortunately there was no turning back now. I think the picture I uploaded I may have actually been smiling as it was the very last one - not sure if im smiling cos i got used to it or because I could see the car park from there!! It was an amazing experience, and I did love it but im not sure you would get me back up there!! That night we watched Motorcycle diaries in the school cinema - the school even supplied the popcorn! Great!!

The school itself it is fantastic. The guys who are running it basically take you by the hand for everything if you want, which is really good when you are doing this on your own (which most of the students here are doing) . They organise your trips, you pay them and get discounts cos is through the school, they phone taxis for you, sell you phone cards, post mail, they book your transport to anywhere - seriously they are amazing and I would recommend them to anyone. My teacher, Jakeline, is lovely, but even I can tell my clases are painful! My spanish is coming on slowely but surely but there is SO much to remember! After my 4 hours teaching in the morning my head is totally saturated! But in a good way - and I get about 2 hours worth of tareas (homework) so it is intense but exaclty what you need to learn the language - none of this once a week on a tuesday evening stuff!

And my poor long suffering family that I am living with. They deserve a medal for being so patient with me!! They must tell me the words for knife/fork/breakfast/dinner etc etc every night! Seriously! For some reason they say the word and 2 seconds later - poof! Its out my head again! How is that possible?! Breakfast is the traditional rice with black beans, sausages and tomatoes with fruit and cofe and dinner is rice with black beans, veg and salad (getting the picture?). Ive also started drinking the coffee (when in Rome...) the real reason being the first person i said I dont drink coffee to looked at me like I had 2 heads. But since this is the country of coffee it is pretty good. And the fruit is fantastic! Chicita bananas straight from the trees! Much better than Tescos!

So better get started on my Tareas - would upload more photos but this connection is so slow. Will try again another day. Thanks for all the messages! Please keem them coming! I love them!

Hasta Luego!

Caroline