It's been so long since I have updated this blog. I lost my speed as soon as October hit, and I haven't yet picked up momentum. However, with my parents endless bombarding of "Emma update your blog" I thought perhaps it was my duty to keep you all at home informed. Be warned, this will be a long post, there is a lot to update you on. I'm in a new host family now, school has began again, and I'm getting back into a routine, now that I've been here for over 6 months.
Lets begin with what I have been up to for these past 4(!) months.
In October I went to Tortugero with AFS, which was a beautiful, and very natural destination on the Caribbean coast. Basically it is located in a national park with is a system of natural rivers and canals, fast and slow moving. There is a strip of land, where the little town and hotels are, and on either sides of the strip of land are the canals and the ocean. Because of this, everything is accessed by boat, which makes the whole experience even more exciting. About 30 of us exchange students spent 3 days doing things like kayaking (and having run-ins will alligators, long story), hiking, going on boat tours, swimming, socializing (lots and lots of socializing), killing mosquitos, and dancing. But the coolest part by far was when we went to the beach at night and all slowly and quietly snuck up on turtles in the pitch black to see them lay their eggs. It was crazy, a small huddle of people from all over the world who were all rendered utterly speechless standing over these gigantic turtles burrowed in the sand. They dug huge holes into the beach, flinging salty beach sand all over us. In their utter concentration they couldn't hear us all collectively gasp when we saw them laying their eggs, it makes one respect their own life so much more when they see the effort a creature has to go through just to bring their offspring into the world. That weekend was one of the greatest of my life, bringing me so much closer with all these other exchange students and to this beautiful country.
In the months after I did a lot with my family and with my Costa Rican friends. My class and I went to the mall and saw a movie, which was really great because it helped me bond with them more. One of my biggest frustrations is that I clicked so well with the other Exchange students and not so quickly with the Ticos. I went to friends houses, took school felid trips, and has AFS activities. Due to family complications, which I will discuss later, I didn't get to do much independent travel during that time. On Halloween my friend Mariana and I went trick or treating in a neighborhood where all the Americans live, called CATIE. Trick or treating is not a normal practice here, so it was a special case. I remember it made me feel really weird to be back in my comfort zone, hearing english and seeing the big houses with yards and mail boxes. It made me really scared about going home. Mariana and I dressed up as eggplants, we found matching costumes at a thrift store for 2,000 colones (4 dollars), and came home with about a handful of candy and a caramel apple. Meanwhile things were winding down at school, we were taking exams with I put a lot of effort into (not) and I passed English with a 100 and Spanish with a 37.
And then I hit the 3 month mark.
I don't know if this is widely experienced in the exchange student world, but I crashed and burned. I think reality set in, and I got really bogged down. It wasn't homesickness, it was the realization that all the issues I tried to avoid at the beginning weren't going to go away. It was loneliness, it was fear, and it was exhaustion. I remember days and weeks blurring together. I remember putting everything into hoping that the next day would be better. I remember believing that I had no support system and thinking I would never get out of this rut. I was in a pretty deep funk. And thats the skin and bones of an exchange, thats what no one ever tells you about. It will push you so far, and you will be standing on the edge of a cliff, thinking there is no way you will survive this, and one morning you wake up and you don't feel as sad. And the next day you're laughing again. And before you know it you've made your life again. An exchange can go so badly, but it will always, ALWAYS get better. Something kept me here during that time, I can't really describe it, I don't know if I ever could.
Once I got out of that funk, I got busy again. Family trips, hanging out with my friends, sleepovers, and school. On Thanksgiving day school got out. We had to do a Christmas recital which was hectic, because I just wanted to get home and FaceTime my family as they all gathered around the table and ate the turkey and cranberry sauce that I so missed. Once school finished we spent a few weeks at home as the volcano erupted(!), and later in November we went down south near Panama to visit family and go to beaches. I got so extremely sunburned, it makes me cringe to think about it. Immaculate beaches, beautiful landscape, clean rivers, but lots of family time, which proved to be a trying task. I kept finding myself thinking how much better it could all be if I were with my real family, or with my friends. I didn't really realize something was wrong until later on. We spent every other day going to beaches and rivers, I kept falling in love with Costa Rica. All in all we spent about a month in the south, we spent christmas and the new years there. It was odd, they celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve, and on Christmas Day, we went to a beach. I missed my family, it was tough, but I expected that on the holidays. We had cookouts in the yard and made S'mores, I was always the one looking up at the stars. I didn't want to talk to anyone. I still didn't realize that something was wrong.
In early January I finally got permission to leave and independently travel alone. I took a bus to Becca's house in Buenas Aries (Not Argentina) and we spent 2 days together at her house, where I weighed myself for the first time in 5 months... I don't want to talk about it. Later we went to San Jose together, and ended up spending 3 night at Pierre's house, who is from France, along with Jonas from Iceland, Lili from Hungary, Olivia from America, and Emile from French Canada. I can safely say that those 5 days were the best of my life. We made crepes and danced and stayed up until 4, we all tried to sit in one hammock and we talked about afterlife, we went into the city and went to going away parities for the people who just went home, we bonded. I have never felt to so close to anyone before. On the second day at Pierre's house we got up at 3am to go to the airport and say goodbye to the people who only came for a semester. It felt so extremely odd knowing that that would be us in 6 months. I cried, Becca cried, we all cried. We camped out at the airport for 5 hours and ate crappy doughnuts, we didn't really talk. We were so numb. We are the old ones now, the new exchange students have just arrived, and now we are the ones who supposedly know what is going on.
The past month has been a blur of Host Family switching and preparing for School to start. I started school last Monday, and now they all know I can speak Spanish so I have no excuse not to work now. The Host family switching is a very complicated story, and I could not possibly fit it into this same blog post, so I think soon I will write an blog post just about the switch.
Thank you all for being so patient (not you Mom, you never stopped bugging me), I promise I will try to be more attentive now. I think I'm going to switch to do more themed blog posts, and I will also do update posts. I know you want photos! I keep trying to post them but they wont upload, so I think I will just link to my Facebook gallery.
Until next time, dear readers.
Emma, the Wanderlustful.
Lets begin with what I have been up to for these past 4(!) months.
In October I went to Tortugero with AFS, which was a beautiful, and very natural destination on the Caribbean coast. Basically it is located in a national park with is a system of natural rivers and canals, fast and slow moving. There is a strip of land, where the little town and hotels are, and on either sides of the strip of land are the canals and the ocean. Because of this, everything is accessed by boat, which makes the whole experience even more exciting. About 30 of us exchange students spent 3 days doing things like kayaking (and having run-ins will alligators, long story), hiking, going on boat tours, swimming, socializing (lots and lots of socializing), killing mosquitos, and dancing. But the coolest part by far was when we went to the beach at night and all slowly and quietly snuck up on turtles in the pitch black to see them lay their eggs. It was crazy, a small huddle of people from all over the world who were all rendered utterly speechless standing over these gigantic turtles burrowed in the sand. They dug huge holes into the beach, flinging salty beach sand all over us. In their utter concentration they couldn't hear us all collectively gasp when we saw them laying their eggs, it makes one respect their own life so much more when they see the effort a creature has to go through just to bring their offspring into the world. That weekend was one of the greatest of my life, bringing me so much closer with all these other exchange students and to this beautiful country.
In the months after I did a lot with my family and with my Costa Rican friends. My class and I went to the mall and saw a movie, which was really great because it helped me bond with them more. One of my biggest frustrations is that I clicked so well with the other Exchange students and not so quickly with the Ticos. I went to friends houses, took school felid trips, and has AFS activities. Due to family complications, which I will discuss later, I didn't get to do much independent travel during that time. On Halloween my friend Mariana and I went trick or treating in a neighborhood where all the Americans live, called CATIE. Trick or treating is not a normal practice here, so it was a special case. I remember it made me feel really weird to be back in my comfort zone, hearing english and seeing the big houses with yards and mail boxes. It made me really scared about going home. Mariana and I dressed up as eggplants, we found matching costumes at a thrift store for 2,000 colones (4 dollars), and came home with about a handful of candy and a caramel apple. Meanwhile things were winding down at school, we were taking exams with I put a lot of effort into (not) and I passed English with a 100 and Spanish with a 37.
And then I hit the 3 month mark.
I don't know if this is widely experienced in the exchange student world, but I crashed and burned. I think reality set in, and I got really bogged down. It wasn't homesickness, it was the realization that all the issues I tried to avoid at the beginning weren't going to go away. It was loneliness, it was fear, and it was exhaustion. I remember days and weeks blurring together. I remember putting everything into hoping that the next day would be better. I remember believing that I had no support system and thinking I would never get out of this rut. I was in a pretty deep funk. And thats the skin and bones of an exchange, thats what no one ever tells you about. It will push you so far, and you will be standing on the edge of a cliff, thinking there is no way you will survive this, and one morning you wake up and you don't feel as sad. And the next day you're laughing again. And before you know it you've made your life again. An exchange can go so badly, but it will always, ALWAYS get better. Something kept me here during that time, I can't really describe it, I don't know if I ever could.
Once I got out of that funk, I got busy again. Family trips, hanging out with my friends, sleepovers, and school. On Thanksgiving day school got out. We had to do a Christmas recital which was hectic, because I just wanted to get home and FaceTime my family as they all gathered around the table and ate the turkey and cranberry sauce that I so missed. Once school finished we spent a few weeks at home as the volcano erupted(!), and later in November we went down south near Panama to visit family and go to beaches. I got so extremely sunburned, it makes me cringe to think about it. Immaculate beaches, beautiful landscape, clean rivers, but lots of family time, which proved to be a trying task. I kept finding myself thinking how much better it could all be if I were with my real family, or with my friends. I didn't really realize something was wrong until later on. We spent every other day going to beaches and rivers, I kept falling in love with Costa Rica. All in all we spent about a month in the south, we spent christmas and the new years there. It was odd, they celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve, and on Christmas Day, we went to a beach. I missed my family, it was tough, but I expected that on the holidays. We had cookouts in the yard and made S'mores, I was always the one looking up at the stars. I didn't want to talk to anyone. I still didn't realize that something was wrong.
In early January I finally got permission to leave and independently travel alone. I took a bus to Becca's house in Buenas Aries (Not Argentina) and we spent 2 days together at her house, where I weighed myself for the first time in 5 months... I don't want to talk about it. Later we went to San Jose together, and ended up spending 3 night at Pierre's house, who is from France, along with Jonas from Iceland, Lili from Hungary, Olivia from America, and Emile from French Canada. I can safely say that those 5 days were the best of my life. We made crepes and danced and stayed up until 4, we all tried to sit in one hammock and we talked about afterlife, we went into the city and went to going away parities for the people who just went home, we bonded. I have never felt to so close to anyone before. On the second day at Pierre's house we got up at 3am to go to the airport and say goodbye to the people who only came for a semester. It felt so extremely odd knowing that that would be us in 6 months. I cried, Becca cried, we all cried. We camped out at the airport for 5 hours and ate crappy doughnuts, we didn't really talk. We were so numb. We are the old ones now, the new exchange students have just arrived, and now we are the ones who supposedly know what is going on.
The past month has been a blur of Host Family switching and preparing for School to start. I started school last Monday, and now they all know I can speak Spanish so I have no excuse not to work now. The Host family switching is a very complicated story, and I could not possibly fit it into this same blog post, so I think soon I will write an blog post just about the switch.
Thank you all for being so patient (not you Mom, you never stopped bugging me), I promise I will try to be more attentive now. I think I'm going to switch to do more themed blog posts, and I will also do update posts. I know you want photos! I keep trying to post them but they wont upload, so I think I will just link to my Facebook gallery.
Until next time, dear readers.
Emma, the Wanderlustful.