Adios Costa Rica

We can't believe it but this trip is finally coming to an end. We have had an absolutely amazing experience here, but we are ready to come back home.

The last week we have been here has been a busy one doing all the last minute things. Last night we had the opportunity to go to the temple in San Jose with a couple girls in our group (Kaci Crane and Alisa Porter) to perform baptisms for the dead. Words can't even describe the true joy we felt as we were there. It felt like home and made us all a little more excited to get back to our real homes. Other than a few minor things such as: the power going out right as we got there but coming back on after about an hour making the font a little chilly, the men saying the prayers and performing the baptisms at rates we didn't think were possible, and all the ordinances being in Spanish, everything else was the exact same. The temple was beautiful, our feelings were indescribable, and we are so grateful we were able to go there before we left.

Well considering the fact that we are leaving Costa Rica in two days and probably won't have internet access until we get home, we figured we better document all the things that we will miss about the country of Costa Rica.

Our Top 15:

1. The daily confidence boost of being honked at, whistled at, or told in broken English that we are "beautiful".

2. The constant thrill of feeling like we are on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride every time we are in a bus or taxi.

3. Having a breath taking view of Costa Rica from our class room.

4. Tripping every time we take our eyes off the sidewalk.

5. Waking up with at least one new bug bite every morning.

6. Eating every meal like it's our last one.

7. The great friendships that have been made here.

8. Seeing the conditions people live in here making us realize how truly blessed we are.

9. The constant aroma of stenches we never knew existed.

10. Rice and beans every day- Seriously!

11. Stiff laundry

12. Having the street be one giant garbage can.

13. Pretending we know what people are saying but we really have no idea.

14. Always going to bed before 10:00 making us get at least 8 hours of sleep a night.(It's been a good schedule to keep Helz happy)

15. Realizing there are amazing people all over the world!

Although many of these reasons have large amounts of sarcasm behind them we really will miss a lot of things about Costa Rica. The past month has been one we will never forget. We have learned so much- Not only Spanish but also life lessons that have hopefully made us better people. We can't wait to see everyone when we get home! Thanks for following us, we really do appreciate it!

As they say in Costa Rica, "PURA VIDA!"

Lez 'n Helz

A Day in San Jose

The day before today

We made a trip to San Jose.

We started out looking for souvenirs

And trying to avoid all the mirrors.

Shopping can wear one out so we took some breaks

On one, we bought a few movies, of course they were fakes.

In the middle of the day

We met our class for a field trip in San Jose.

Our professor, Olger, was our guide

Taking us to parks, stores, and restaurants, he was always by our side.

The city has a very unique beauty

Even though it’s covered with trash and we still haven’t found one cutie.

We had a great time

But now, we hardly even have a dime.

It was a great day

In the city of San Jose.

Our class at lunch.

Lez 'n Helz

We’re back! And we’ve got lots of catching up to do. We’ll start off with our trip to the Children’s Museum in San Jose last week. El Museo de los Ninos is very similar to the Treehouse Museum in Ogden but it’s about 10 times bigger and not  as nice. It was also entirely in Spanish so we just walked through and took pictures.

On Thursday we had the opportunity to go to the equivalent of the White House here in Costa Rica. It was painfully boring. But we guess it was good experience..

Friday we packed up and left our little house here near San Jose and made the five hour journey across the country to Guanacaste for our last excursion of the trip to Buena Vista Lodge. This resort in the jungle was not as nice and clean as some of the other places we’ve been on the trip, but it had infinitely more things for us to do. We arrived pretty late on Friday night, so we ate dinner, walked around, then went to bed to rest up for the big day we had ahead of us. First on the agenda for Saturday was a horseback ride to the “spa.” All 50 people in our group strapped on a helmet and hopped on a horse to trek through some Costa Rican jungle. Was it a good idea to have 50 college students on horses galloping along cliff sides with absolutely no instruction or training? Probably not. Did we get pooped on constantly because someone’s leg was almost always up another horses rear end? Definitely. Was it unbelievably fun? Absolutely!

When we arrived at the “spa” and were given instructions on how it worked. First, we went into a sauna to sweat off any fluids that may have been trapped in our bodies. Next, we completely covered ourselves in mud to exfoliate our skin, let it dry, rinsed off in freezing cold water and hopped into some hot springs to relax. Unfortunately, after about 20 minutes in the hot springs some really sick monkeys climbed into the trees over our heads and pooped making the hot springs seem a little less appealing. It was still really fun though.

We rode our horses back to the lodge for lunch and then made our way over to the quarter-mile long water slide. This was definitely one of the highlights of our trip! The first thing they had us do when we got there was grab an inner tube to help us stay inside the water slide and then put on a helmet just in case we didn’t. This slide was insane! Our professor told us that the most anyone in any of his groups had ever gone on the slide was 5 times. So naturally we took that as a challenge to beat the record, but we decided instead of just beating the record we’d completely shatter it. We went on it 12 times. Exactly three miles of out of this world water sliding- Go big or go home right? And since we can’t go home we went big!

After the water slide, we went swimming in the pool for a while before making our way over to the Sunset Bar. This is the highest point of the lodge and it had a gorgeous view of the valley below it and the ocean beyond that. It is known for great views of the sun setting (hence the name) and it didn’t disappoint.

Sunday morning we started off the day with an amazing zip line adventure through the luscious trees of the jungle. It was beautiful to see Costa Rica from this point of view.

After zip lining we had a couple of hours to rest before we packed up and took the 5 hour bus ride back home. Overall it was an amazing weekend that we thoroughly enjoyed!

Lez would like to take a minute to give a shout out to her Father:

Happy Birthday Dad!!! 50 years old- I can’t believe it! You are getting old! I wish I could be there to celebrate it with you! I hope it’s great! I love and miss you!

Love,

 Lizzy-Izzy-Fizzy Wig.

Thanks to everyone who has been reading our blog. This is our last week here in Costa Rica. We can’t believe how fast the time has flown! We plan to take advantage of every minute we’ve got left here and do our best to keep you updated!

Ps, our internet is still being sucky so we figured we'd post what we've got right now and then add more pictures when we get time.

Technical Difficulties

Well we've been having a few technical difficulties here in Costa Rica. Once upon a time we found out we had internet access in our house even though our Tica Mama said we didn't. It was a great find and made blogging very convenient. Now we are unable to connect to the internet for reasons far beyond our comprehension making blogging much more difficult. We are sorry for the lack of updates (Grandmother) but we hope to get back on the band wagon next week after we return from our excursion to Guanacaste. Be excited for good pictures and hopefully a few good stories. All is well here in Costa Rica- Only a week left, we can't believe it! Thanks for following us- More to come next week!

Oh and we'd like to give a shout out to our good friend (Best Friend) London- She turned 20 yesterday! Happy Birthday Len! We love and miss you!!!

Lez 'n Helz

Proud to Be Americans

Happy 4th of July!!!

Celebrating our country's Independence Day in another country just isn't the same- No parades, no family, and no fireworks. But we still managed to show our American pride here in Costa Rica. We wore matching Old Navy flag shirts, listened to patriotic music, and had a "Kiddie Kandid" photo shoot in our room before school.. We even convinced our teacher to let us have a 4th of July "BBQ" at the first of class- It was a BYOAF (Bring your own American food). The "BBQ" was a definite success and was even topped off with fireworks..... Drawn on the whiteboard. Desperate times call for desperate measures. However, considering the circumstances it was a very happy 4th of July and we hope your's was too! We are so blessed to live in a free country where dreams can become realities.

The "BBQ"

We love America!

Happy Independence Day!

Lez 'n Helz

Volcanoes, Prayers, and Bridges... Oh my!

This weekend was chuck full of adventure. We started it out on Friday celebrating our friend Mike's 23rd birthday- We went to a really good Mexican restaurant called Antojitos followed by some ice cream at Costa Rica's wanna be Farr's Fresh. It was good but it didn't quite measure up. But it still made us happy!

Then bright and early on Saturday morning we loaded up on a charter bus and made the 4 hour trip to Arenal Volcano. We made a few stops on the way. First stop was to the largest ox cart in the world. Ya it pretty much changed our lives and we now feel we can leave Costa Rica at any time and feel it was a successful trip.

Then we stopped at a tourist's heaven- A huge souvenir shop! It was quite the place and we were even greeted with ladies who put stickers on us to welcome us. The souvenir shop met all of our expectations and was full of nothing but over priced junk.

Now for the good part- The volcano. Arenal is Costa Rica's most active volcano, and one of the ten most active volcanoes in the world. We were able to spend the day at Tabacon Resort in the hot springs. They are 97% rain-based and 3% magma-based. The water enters the earth through fissures on the surface and is then heated by magma in the earth's core.Once the water is heated it rises to the surface bringing minerals found in the earth's rocky stratus. Anyways, words don't do this place justice so we'll let the pictures do the talking.

The pictures are pretty but they still don't do even scratch the surface of the beauty of this place. You may just have to go see it yourself!

Today was the only free day we had while being here in Costa Rica. All the other days we either have school or excursions planned. We started out the day with church and boy was it a great start to the day. Latin Americans are so inviting and welcoming and instantly made us feel at home. We didn't understand everything that was said but we still felt the spirit. It's amazing that no matter where you are the gospel is the same- One thing we can always count on.

The real reason we went to church was so we could not feel so guilty about breaking the Sabbath after. NOT! No but we did do some justifying and decided to go bungee jumping today and it was worth it! It was so fun! Here are the videos of our jumps (they are kind of long so don't feel obligated to watch all of them)  and some pictures to go along with it!

 Showing our true feelings about having to wait 32 minutes in the pouring rain for driver to come pick us up. It was worth the wait though!

                  

All of the bungee crew with our Certificates of Courage.

Jealous? Well you should be because it was a ton of fun AND we got a free t-shirt from it. Well it was one of the following: a free t-shirt and a $65 jump, a free jump and a $65 t-shirt, or a free t-shirt and jump and then $65 for an hour long drive. But no matter which one it was, it was great! And worth every penny! 

Lez 'n Helz

A Picture is Worth $4

Today we had the wonderful opportunity to visit El Museo Nacional (if you really can't figure out the translation of that by yourself it's The National Museum). But we're not really the number one fans of museums so we just paid $4 to walk around a tiny little building and take pictures of ourselves. We didn't mind though because it gave us some great material for our blog. Enjoy!

Lez is the spitting image of that native behind her.

Helz practicing her Vanna White pose.

Lez n' Helz