Guatemala Day 2

            Today we were still in Guatemala. I really wanted to go on a trip to this town called Livingston, but I already had this ticket to the Amatique Bay Beach Break. Amatique Bay is this really nice beach resort in Guatemala right near San Tomas de Castilla (the port). I had written in the buy/sell notebook that I wanted to sell my Amatique Bay trip, and I had e-mailed someone who said that they wanted that trip. This one girl called me at 12AM saying that she wanted to buy my trip from me. I thought to myself, “maybe you don’t go to bed early, but I have already been asleep for 3 hours!” She also wasn’t even willing to pay me ½ of what I paid for it. I suppose if I was really desperate to get rid of the trip I would have sold it to her, but I had decided that if I couldn’t find someone to sell it to for a good price then I would just go to Amatique Bay and have a lot of fun.

            That is exactly what happened. I couldn’t find anyone to buy my ticket from me so I went to Amatique Bay. We had to take a boat to get there because it is on this island or peninsula. I honestly don’t know if there is a way to reach it by car, but either way the boat is the fastest way there. We got there and we walked all the way around the area just to see what was there. They had a little bit of everything! There was a beach, pools, horseback riding, kayaking, waterslides, ping-pong tables, beach volleyball, pool volleyball, a place for turtles and a place for iguanas. My trip was basically just for the pools, and beach ect. There was a different trip that went horseback riding and kayaking. We all met up at the beach and the pools afterwards.

            One thing that I had never seen before was a wet bar or a bar that you swim to. Everyone was ordering drinks, but again I couldn’t figure out why people wanted to start drinking at 10:30AM (especially those who didn’t eat breakfast). Someone said, “We should come to Guatemala for spring break!” so word to the wise, unless you want to be there with a bunch of drunk college students I wouldn’t go there for spring break. I basically just hung out with friends in the pool, went down the waterslide, played ping-pong, and then we ate lunch. After lunch, we went back in the pool for a little while, and then I laid out by the pool in a lounge chair. Some of my friends went to the beach, but I didn’t want to get all sandy if I could help it so I just stayed by the pool and read for a while.

            I ended up getting a little sunburned, but it was just the tops of my shoulders and I knew it wasn’t that bad. We then took the water taxi back to the ship. It was so warm out that I was really glad that I went to Amatique Bay instead of Livingston. Some of my friends didn’t even really like Livingston, they said that they were supposed to get a tour of something but instead they basically just walked around and there were a lot of shops. In that sense I am kind of glad I didn’t go because I have no room to bring anything back!

            When we got back on the boat I had to work with my group so that we could finish our group projects, which were due the next day. They were mostly done we just needed to compile our information. It was then time for the crew talent show. Most of the people who performed work in the dining hall, and the crew are the friendliest people ever. They always say hi, and some of them even know everyone’s names. Two people did a salsa, two people sang, a group of the dining hall crew all did a dance together, and then a few people did a traditional Filipino dance (over 2/3 of the crew is Filipino). That was a lot of fun even though it was only 30 minutes. I heard that the crew talent show is normally part of the regular talent show, but for some reason it wasn’t this time.

Guatemala Day 1

         Today we were in Guatemala and I went on another service visit. This one was to a special education school in the morning and to an orphanage in the afternoon. When we arrived at the special education school, we were a bit early so the lady who was in charge of our visit wasn’t there yet. This made it a bit difficult because she is fluent in both Spanish and English, but no one else was, so before she arrived we really had no idea what the people were trying to say to us. They had 9 small rooms with only 9 teachers for over 110 kids. All of the children had special needs and they were in mixed classrooms. These classrooms were very tiny, and they were really hot. Most of them did have a fan, but it didn’t really make much of a difference.

            I went into a classroom with 2 other students, and we helped them make paper frogs. They were very easy to make all you do is cut out 2 pieces of paper and glue styrofoam eyes and then you draw on the pupils. In this classroom, there was a child who was in a wheelchair, there was one child who was deaf, and he really had no way of communicating with anyone that I knew of, there was also a child who was blind, and couldn’t see. There were other children who had all different types of disabilities in the same classroom. These people who work with the special needs children only earn about $170 a month. That averages out to about 8 dollars a day.

            After we were done making the frogs, it was snack/recess time. One of the children got a hold of my camera, and took a lot of pictures. It is kind of funny because I have a lot of pictures now with fingers in them because they didn’t quite figure out that you shouldn’t put your fingers in front of the lens, and I didn’t know how to tell them not to. After recess we went for a walk. It was a really hot day, so we didn’t end up walking too far. Supposedly when they normally go for walks on Fridays they walk another mile, but because we were all looking so tired we didn’t go that far.

            One of my friends had made a friend with this one kid who was having difficulty walking. He had a cane to help him walk. We took turns carrying him on our backs, but it was hard because his legs didn’t bend the right way for him to comfortably be on our backs. At one point I just picked him up and carried him not on my back, but when we were getting really tired this one man who worked at the school picked him up and put him on his shoulders. We realized afterwards that we should have carried him like that. Around 11AM a lot of the children go home because school is only a ½ day. We didn’t really figure out if the ones who stayed were still in school, or if they just hadn’t left yet.

            After we left the school, we went to this restaurant for lunch. We had tortillas with rice, beans, and chicken. When we were done eating we basically just sat at the restaurant for a while because we were on a schedule and they weren’t expecting us at the orphanage for a while, so we couldn’t head over there too early.

            When we got to the orphanage we learned that there used to be about 23 children there when they set up this trip, but now there are only 8 children. They moved all of the other children for economic and political reasons. The funding for the orphanage ran out, but they left the children there that no one was going to adopt. There were about 4 children there who were mentally or physically disabled, there were 3 teenage boys, and there was one 11-year-old girl who was new to the facility and just hadn’t been moved yet.

            This orphanage was basically in an abandoned building; it didn’t look like they had any fans and barely any lights either. It looked like it had once been a much nicer place to be, but now it is just so run down, that there is really nothing to it anymore. It was really disheartening to see people living like this. We helped create a garden at the orphanage, but I attempted to interact with the children for some of the time, because it was really hot outside in the sun. There are 2 women who are in charge of the orphanage, but they are volunteers, or if they get paid it is barely anything considering they have to provide around the clock care for a number of children, some of whom have disabilities.

            After the trip to the orphanage we walked up to this church that was right around the corner from the orphanage. That was also really sad because this was a beautiful new church, but the children living just down the hill in the orphanage had absolutely nothing.

            We then left the church and we headed back to the ship. We were all thrilled to get back in the bus because it was a little bit cooler than outside. As soon as I got back I took a quick cold shower, and no sooner had I gotten out of the shower and someone asked me to go to dinner. I ended up going out to this restaurant in Puerto Barrios. It was right on the water, and we arrived at sunset, which meant it was beautiful. For dinner I had a tortilla with rice, beans and beef (are you noticing a theme yet?). I am pretty sure that all people eat in Honduras and Guatemala is tortillas, rice, and beans. After dinner we just came back from the ship. I think from the heat and the sun and maybe even the emotions, I am ALWAYS exhausted after a long day of FDPs. Tonight they played a double feature of Harry Potter and the deathly hallows part 1 and then Salt. I was going to watch Harry Potter, but by the time we got back it had already started and I figured since I have never seen it before I shouldn’t watch it starting in the middle.

Honduras Day 2

      Today I did the service visit to Villa nueva youth center, in Honduras. On our way there we were asked to give a donation to the youth center to cover the cost of paint because we were going to be painting a fence. When we arrived at the youth center, there was no paint! The people who were in charge had to go and buy all of the paint so we basically just stood around doing nothing for quite a while. Some people interacted with the youth, but some of the youth seemed a bit intimidated by a big bus of 40 Americans coming to the youth center, and most of us didn’t speak Spanish, so that made it very difficult to interact with the youth because they don’t know English and I don’t know Spanish so if I were to carry on a conversation it would be something to the extent of “Hi, how are you?” and that’s about it.

            They finally arrived with the paint and we learned that we weren’t actually painting a fence. We ended up painting the cement brick wall that goes all the way around the building. We only did 1 long side and ½ of the short sides because there was enough paint. They added turpentine to the paint so that the paint would stretch farther. We started painting and then as soon as we started paint was getting EVERYWHERE!! I got paint all over me. I don’t think there was any part of me that didn’t get painted including my backpack.

            We managed to finish painting by about 11:30. This surprised us all because we had planned on it taking all day. After we were done painting, we tried to get the paint off of ourselves using turpentine, but this wasn’t terribly effective. Consequently we all continued to get paint everywhere and all over everything. We then waited for people to deliver lunch to us. It was these tortilla things with beans, rice, chicken, and avocado. This dish had a special name but I kind of forgot it. Either way it was delicious.

            Since we were all done long before we were planning on leaving, we ended up leaving to go back to the ship around 1300. We stopped at this market thing in San Pedro Sula on our way back to the ship. There were about 4 of us on that trip who had all gone on the FDP with me the day before. We were all terrified that it was going to be the same place we had gone the day before on our other FDP. It wasn’t so as soon as we saw it we were all relieved. Inside people were selling all sorts of Honduras souvenirs. Most of what people were selling was similar, so you could look around until you found the best deal on what ever you were trying to find.

            We then were getting pretty thirsty and there was one stand that was selling Pepsi. We heard that the Pepsi was 18 lempira or about 1 dollar. When the woman pulled the Pepsi out of the fridge we realized that it was 1 dollar for 1.5 liters! This is a lot cheaper than when we are at home, where you pay over 1 dollar for a 20 oz bottle.

            After 45 minutes in the marketplace, it was time to go back to the ship. We managed to get back to the ship around 1500, we didn’t do anything too exciting that night once we got back. I hung out with some friends, but that was about it.

Honduras Day 1

Today was my second FDP with my crazy professor in Honduras. The day didn’t even start out that great. We all knew it was going to be a disaster from the very beginning. My class was supposed to meet at the bus at 9:45, but customs seemed to take forever to clear the boat so we weren’t allowed to leave until 10:30, which meant that we were already 1 hour behind schedule. We then arrived at FINCA, which is a microcredit institution. Here is how microcredit works: a person needs a loan so that they can expand/start a small business, they then have to pay back the loans on time, a person is in a group with other people and they are basically like a support system. If one person is late in their payment the entire group can lose their “status” which means that they would no longer receive benefits such as lower interest rates, a return at the end of the year, and even health insurance.

            There were already quite a few women waiting for us. I guess there was some miscommunication because these women were waiting for us since 9AM! We were going to interview them and see how FINCA has impacted their life. We first had a presentation by the COO (Chief Operating Officer) who told us all about FINCA. Our professor had said that it was going to be a 5 minute presentation but it ended up being about 15-20 minutes L

            After the presentation we broke up into what my professor called focus groups. I decided to be in my professor’s focus group mainly because I knew that she was going to be able to do a good job translating, where as the other groups were being translated by students who didn’t necessarily know too much Spanish. This one girl from Mexico led another group so obviously she knew Spanish really well. While we were ½ way through the interviews everyone was getting really hungry. At this point it was 1PM and we had all eaten breakfast at 7:30, so it had been a while.

            The interview continued and then we finally finished around 2PM and our professor said that she wanted to get more information about how the microfinance worked or something like that. She asked who wanted to stay, but most of us just wanted to get back on the bus. She also told us it was going to be another 5 minutes, but it took 45 minutes. It was already 3PM by the time we went to get lunch. We went to the city mall to get lunch at the food court. There were mostly American chains for places to eat: Wendy’s, Pizza Hut, Quiznos, Subway, Burger King, Church’s Chicken, and there were a few places that I had never heard of but sounded like Central American Chains.

            We only had about 45 minutes for lunch because we were supposed to go back to FINCA and then we were going to walk to 3 businesses from the FINCA office and we walked down some pretty sketchy streets. Even where the businesses were didn’t seem too nice either. People had set up stalls in this old warehouse and they were really small. It was also really hot and stuffy in there too. We were all a little bit nervous about walking around because earlier a group of us were just walking around and we had only gotten about 1 minute down the street when our bus driver had told us to turn around and get back on the bus. They hadn’t told us when we were walking around that the FINCA representatives were well respected and no one was going to hurt us or even bother us because we were with FINCA. I think if they had given us that piece of information we all would have felt a little more secure.

            We visited one man who was selling home remedies for basically everything; he said he had herbal remedies that could even cure cancer. We then visited a woman who was selling shoes, she imported shoes from different places and then sold them to people. The last person we visited was a man who had a wholesale leather business. He makes the different parts of shoes and then the parts get sent somewhere to be assembled and then they get sold. They were really interesting businesses to see, but they were in a sketchy area. After we were done visiting these businesses we were all really hot and tired, so we headed back towards the ship. When we got back it was time for dinner, and then we played a game, and settled in early because we were all exhausted.

June 5, 2011

        Today we were at sea again. During sociology we had the interport lecturer come and talk to us about the history of Honduras. It was really interesting, but I am not a huge fan of history so I got a little bored. He was also talking in Spanish so our professor was translating for us, but she would react to what he was saying in Spanish and then tell us what he had said. After sociology we went to lunch and then it was picture time. We were to take a picture with our seas and then we took an entire ship community picture. The one of just my sea took all of 2 minutes and we were done by 12:25 which is when they said the picture was going to be so some people missed their chance to be in the picture. The one of the entire community though seemed to take forever. They had to figure out how to fit everyone into the photo on the deck.
        After pictures I basically didn’t too much all afternoon. It was kind of rainy so I couldn’t really go out on the deck to read or anything. Tonight we had preport for Guatemala and Honduras. This is when we learn all about the ports that we are going to and where we are allowed to go or not go. We all thought this meant it was going to last about 3 hours or so because so far preport hasn’t been shorter than 1.5 hours and this time it was 2 countries instead of 1, but we actually finished in about 1 hour so we were all thrilled by that.

June 4, 2011

     Today we were at sea. I have officially decided that I like port days better because they are a lot more interesting. The highlight of today was that it was the talent show at 2100. It went pretty late, but it was really good. We had this competition where whichever sea (hall or floor) had the best chant they get to disembark the ship first when we arrive back in Nassau. Our team won the sea chant competition! This was really exciting. We did a remake of the Party in USA by Miley Cyrus, but we changed it to Party at Semester at Sea! It was a lot of fun to do. We weren’t sure that we were going to win because some of the other sea chants were really good too, but we won so that is all that matters! In a way though I didn’t necessarily want to win because my flight isn’t until 4:30PM on the day I leave, and I wouldn’t have anywhere to go besides the airport with all of my stuff.
        All of the acts were really good at the talent show. One of the professors played the violin and she has been playing for about 50 years or so, one lifelong learner who has been singing her whole life, she was really good but has more of an operatic voice or classical style voice, she did a good job, but not really my type of music, and then a bunch of people just played and sang songs. One girl even did Irish step dancing, and one of the librarians read poetry. It was a well balanced show that was well done.

June 3, 2011

        Today I did the Off-Road Adventure. I think I actually did more off-roading the day before when we were going through the forest to get to the tubing place. It was still a lot of fun because we were able to go up into the mountains to this place where a tourbus wouldn’t be able to go. The vehicle that we used was a 6 wheel drive vehicle. It used to be a US military vehicle. Costa Rica hasn’t had an army for over 60 years so they didn’t have any military vehicles that could be bought and used. The people that started this company first started with a Russian Missle Launcher, which they bought from this collector of old vehicles. We met at the bus around 7:15AM but it was more like 7:45 by the time we actually left. That’s okay though. We then went up into the mountains and while we were up there we got out of the truck. We walked down the hill a little ways to see what wildlife we could find, and then we got back in the truck. While we were walking around we saw quite a few poisonous dart frogs, and some cool spiders, but nothing larger.
        After we got back in the truck we went to a banana plantation. The plantation wasn’t operating today because they only operate on days that ships come in, and there wasn’t a ship today. We had a “picnic” around 10AM, which consisted of pineapple, watermelon, these chip things, and some sauce (I don’t remember what they were called), soft drinks, and some people had cocktails!! I thought “way to start early!” Most of the people on this trip were still hung over from the night before so I don’t really know how they could keep drinking. This was very puzzling to me.
        Once we picked up our stuff from the “picnic” we got back in the truck and were going to head back to the ship. Our guide asked us if we wanted to stop at the river on our way back to the ship, so we did. It was disappointing though because they hadn’t told us to bring our bathing suits, and I wasn’t about to go in the water with all of my clothes on. I put my feet in and the water was really warm. It was really clear and blue too. Our tour guide said that sometimes the water is so clean that you can actually drink it, but it was rainy so it was a bit dirty from all of the runoff.
        After stopping at the river, we got back in the bus and headed towards the ship. At this point it was still only 12PM so I had time to get lunch on the ship. After lunch I tried to find people to go out into the town with, but everyone was either headed to the beach or people had just come back from the town, and since there wasn’t too much there they didn’t want to go back there. So I braved the city and decided to venture out by myself. It was broad daylight, and there were a lot of people around and I knew I would find people that I knew. The city also felt pretty safe compared to where we were in Panama especially.
        I decided to go the internet café that was about 2 blocks from the port. It was really nice to have high speed internet again. While we are on the boat we are limited in our internet use, and when we do go on the internet it is SOOO slow. They said that it is about ½ the speed of dialup internet. This means that we aren’t allowed to video chat or even instant message because it would use up all of our internet time very quickly. While I was at the internet café I was able to skype with my dad and my (not so) little cousins, and through google voice I was able to call my mom too. This was really nice being able to talk to my parents. I was also able to check my facebook for once.
        After the internet café I was headed back to the ship and then I found some of my friends, and they were headed to the park to eat fresh mangoes that they had bought. We then walked to the park and had the mangoes. They were almost a little too ripe. They were really sweet. After we had eaten 2 of the mangoes, we found worms in one of the mangoes. This was very reassuring because we had already eaten some of them. At least of we did eat them, it was just a little extra protein.
        I then came back to the ship relatively early and then didn’t do anything too exciting. I played a game with a friend, and then later we had conversation circles where some people get together and just talk about their time in port. Those are really interesting just to hear what people have to say about what they did in port.

June 2, 2011

        Today I went tubing. We left early in the morning and then we travelled to this place where we were going to go tubing. On the way we saw 2 banana trains. These were mules pulling bananas on a track system through the banana plantation. Imagine a rope tow being pulled by a mule. That was pretty much what it was except the track stayed in place and the bananas moved instead of the other way around.
        We finally got off the bus somewhere at an undisclosed location, just kidding, but I really have no idea where it was, we got on this cart that was pulled by a tractor. It was just this set of benches on a trailer being pulled by a tractor. There came a point when we were going up the hill that I wasn’t sure we were going to make it, but it was like the little engine that could “I think I can, I think I can!” We had to cross streams, rivers, mud puddles, climb hills, go down hills, and a little bit of everything. There came a point when we crossed a river that was probably about 18 inches deep, and it looked like the water was going to come onto the trailer, but it didn’t. We had to dodge trees too, and if we weren’t careful we were going to get hit in the face with the trees.
        We then made it to this lodge area where we all left our dry clothes, and took a bathroom break. Our tour guide called them Shakespeare stops, “To pee or not to pee, that is the question” We then got back on the tractor and ventured to where we were going to go tubing. Part of the adventure was merely getting to the tubing place. Once we got there we were all given helmets and life jackets. We were given a safety briefing and then we were to get into our tubes. We got into our tubes and we had the oars, and we tried to avoid rocks, but it was inevitable. There were SO many rocks that it felt like no matter what we did we always got stuck on a rock. Sometimes we would be going pretty well for a while and then just hit a rough patch. Other times we would hit the rocks and just bounce off of them because we had enough momentum.
        Whenever we got close to the edge we just kind of let the tube take us wherever it wanted to go. We tried to maneuver it, but it was pretty much impossible (at least for us). When we were in between rapids we got out of the boat and swam. It was too hot to just stay in the boat so we would get out and put our heads in because it felt really good, and the current would still send you in the right directions. Some parts of it were less than 2 feet deep, but at other times I couldn’t touch the bottom. It really depended on where you were in the water and how close you were to shore. Once we got most of the way down the river there was this “calm” part where we all put our tubes on the rocks and went swimming. This was pretty hard because there was a strong current so if you weren’t careful you were going to float away and next thing you know you are much further down stream than any of the boats.
        After we went tubing we went back to change and then we ventured back to the bus on the little engine that could. We then went to the village where the people that owned the tubing company lived, and they had prepared lunch for us. Lunch consisted of rice, beans, chicken, plantains, and for dessert rice pudding. I learned that rice, beans and chicken are pretty much a staple of Costa Rican food, but every time they are cooked really differently so even though it is the same food, it doesn’t all taste the same.
        Once we were done eating, the woman guide from tubing showed us some of their traditional dances. They were really cool to watch, and then they asked some people to participate. I just watched, but I had fun taking pictures of people! We then headed back to the boat. By the time we got back it was about 1600, and we were told that we were going to get back at 1400. I don’t think they should have made the trip any shorter, but I think they should have adjusted the time that we were going to get back.
        After I was back I walked around Puerto Limon with some friends just to see what there was in the town. We did find an internet café, but we didn’t go into it because we didn’t want to be gone too long because it was almost dinner time. We also found a few souvenir shops and a grocery store. While we were walking around a woman came up to us and asked us how to get back to the ship. At first we couldn’t figure out why she wanted to go to the ship, but then we realized that she was crew for the ship, and she had been walking around, but had become disoriented, and you can’t see the boat from the city, so we pointed her in the right direction. It is weird seeing crew when they aren’t in their crew uniforms. We then came back to the ship because it was dinnertime, and guess what was for dinner? Pasta, potatoes, salad, fish, pork, and vegetables. Surprise!! Just kidding. That is what we have every night, except some nights it is chicken or beef instead of pork. After dinner I came back to my room for a little while, but I was going to explore the town later with some friends. I started doing things, but then I became really tired, so I took a nap and then we went out again to see what was around. We didn’t stay out very long, so I still went to bed pretty early because I knew that I had to get up early again the next morning.

June 1, 2011

        Today we arrived in Puerto Limon, Costa Rica. I had an FDP (Field trip) for my class today. We visited Earth University, and then we went and saw a village where Earth University has played a major role. At Earth University we first toured the organic farm, then we saw where they raise the pigs, and then we kept walking around and we saw many other things too. While we there our guide told us how the university is trying to become completely sustainable in terms of food and agriculture. The majority of the food that they eat in the cafeteria has come from the farm. While we were walking around the farm, our guide used a machete and chopped a pineapple out of the pineapple patch. That was really cool. I guess I had never realized how pineapples grew. After we walked around the farm a while we went to this other area where there was sustainable agriculture. A different guide was telling us how a person could grow plants using any type of “soil”. They had plants there that were growing in cacao fibers and charcoal. The plants can grow as long as they have 5 things: water, air, nutrients, heat, and support. This was an interesting experience because our professor almost took me out with an umbrella! She was walking and then I was standing next to her but she didn’t notice where her umbrella was and then it hit me. Fortunately I am a bit taller than her because otherwise I would have lost an eye. Our professor was also trying to ask our tour guide some questions and he had no idea what the answer to the question was, but she kept asking until she got some sort of answer that she liked, at that point we all just wanted food though, and thought we should move on because she clearly wasn’t going to get her question answered. Oh well! It was an adventure to say the least.
        After we learned about the farm we then went to lunch at the cafeteria. Our lunch consisted of rice, beans, chicken, plantains and pineapple plus I had fresh milk! The whole lunch was delicious and most of it was made right at the university. After lunch we went to this local village that has been helped greatly by Earth University and surprisingly enough by Hewlett Packard (HP). This village has only had electricity for 5 ½ months, and they still don’t have potable water. HP we learned has to do a social service project so the people of this village applied for a grant from them. HP helped them build a futbol (soccer) field, a community meeting place, which consisted of a tin roof over some tables and benches, and they built a playground. There are certain committees within this village and I guess HP gives the special events committee $10,000 a year to put on special events.
        After we learned a little bit about the community, it was time to start interviewing the community members. Coincidentally it started to rain at that exact moment, and we were under a tin roof. It wasn’t just drizzling, the rain was coming down in sheets. If you stepped out from under the overhang in less than 1 minute you would be COMPLETELY drenched! Since it was raining so hard we couldn’t do the interviews the way we were planning on doing them. The only people that actually got to do the interviewing were the people who spoke Spanish because it was so loud that if too many people were gathered around no one would be able to hear. Considering I speak absolutely no Spanish, there were quite a few of us who basically just sat around and did nothing for about 1 hour. This got pretty boring after awhile. Around 4PM we were still at the village and we knew it was about time to go back to the ship, so someone asked our professor if we should head back. She said, “Yes, yes, we need to go!” After that a group of us ran to the bus so that we would try not to get drenched, but that was inevitable. After we got back to the bus, the bus decided that it would venture down the rocky road to pick up everyone else right from where they were. The bus backed up the whole way so they wouldn’t have to turn the bus around later on.
        Once the other people were going to get on the bus, our professor was trying to get on the bus with her umbrella still. The umbrella didn’t fit through the door and flew back and landed on my friend Julia. Julia then dumped the water out of it (it had filled up quickly), and folded up the umbrella to hand it back to our professor. Meanwhile, the professor is looking around like “Where did it go?” and blocking the doorway to the bus, so everyone else got pretty soaked too even though they didn’t have to run to the bus. We learned after the rest of the people got on the bus, that after I had already left to run back to the bus, the community members gave everyone snacks. Some people wanted to get off the bus just to get the snacks, but at that point we were already late, and we just wanted to get back.
        After we got back, I went and played a game with some friends, we played clue. I then went to bed because I was exhausted after a long day.

May 31, 2011

        Today we were at sea. As of 12PM we have travelled 1 nautical mile from Colon. This is pretty funny because we left Colon at 9PM last night. We travelled 1 nautical mile, and then we anchored. With the boat anchored it moved a lot back and forth. It was pretty intense. I actually almost started to feel sick as the day went on because of all of the rocking. We then had preport for Costa Rica. That was interesting. Preport always seems to take forever, but oh well. We learn some pretty important stuff. I learned that 2/3 of my trips leave at 7:30AM which means that I will have to be at the bus by 7:15! That’s pretty early! Oh well. I will have a lot of fun. I also learned that whenever you travel anywhere in Costa Rica you always have to leave at least an extra hour for who knows what reasons.