Kayaking and Frog Poop

Have you ever seen a toad poop before? I just have to lay that out before we get into this weeks blog. 

School is coming along great. The fourth-graders are the easiest grade so far to teach, the fifth graders consist of a lot of girls singing, dancing and always asking me questions about everything that they shouldn't be asking a teacher about. The sixth graders are gradually learning how to be more accountable, responsible and analyze things more thorough. Here, in Costa Rica, when you graduate sixth grade, it is a very big thing. Seventh grade is a much bigger deal here than in the states. 

Im thinking about doing an after school program thing with the students which would get them to be more active and outdoors. These kids play a lot of video games and watch T.V. pretty much every minute of their lives outside of school. I'm trying to toughen them up a bit, as when they even scratch themselves they begin to cry. They are great kids but they're a bunch of cry-babies. I've been pretty happy about the progress they have made this semester and I am feeling a great sense of reward for the direction my students are taking. 

All of the kids here are pretty spoiled, and are given everything. They need to kind of learn things the hard way to understand what they have. They just don't understand that they live a pretty spoiled life.

As for the weekend, you all know that I like to talk about my weekends, it was another weekend at the beach. Filled with sun, friends, and this time, huge frogs.

Friday night I stayed home. I've been feeling sick for the past week or so and the illness is still lingering. I don't have the Swine Influenza, which seems to be becoming a huge deal, I simply am possessed with the common cold crap. Anyways, I stayed home Friday night as a bunch of friends headed out to the Pacific side of the country for a swimming competition at Punta Leona. A bunch of people headed out Friday but we also had a ride set up for Saturday morning so I decided to head out then and sleep in my own bed Friday. 

We left around 7:00am and arrived around 10:00am and just chilled out on the beach that day. All of my buddies were swimming either 1,500 meters or 3,000 meter races in the ocean and I just got to kick back and read my favorite book, In Search Of Captain Zero, (I should underline the title of the book but my blog won't allow me). We then went to a beach town called Jaco, south of Punta Leona and had an awesome lunch of Quizno's.... Lame. Oh well. My buddies went surfing, but there was no way I was getting in the water at Jaco, as the hotels right on the beach have been known t flush their waste directly out into the ocean, (the beach was pretty nasty). So we chilled there for a bit and headed out at sunset. 

A friend of mine has a house around Punta Leona and it's pretty damn cool. How do I decribe it though? Ok. First, it's a two story house build on metal stilts to hold the upstairs in place. The downstairs consists of no walls, it's completely open and has a concrete floor. The living room and dinning room are all exposed to the outdoors while being covered by the upstairs bedrooms. The kitchen does have metal window covers that you can open to connect it with the living area and the stairs to the upstairs bedrooms is located in there as well. The upstairs bedroom are normal bedrooms and are enclosed from the elements. There is also a bedroom connected to the kitchen which is also enclosed, so when you're sleeping you don't have to worry about anything. When you're just hanging out, you're pretty much just chilling outside with a swimming pool in the front yard too. Pretty nice.

So the night time comes, and we're kicking back, talking and lounging and then a massive amount of bugs appear. I've never seen so many bugs. I'd be minding my own business, reading, and a big beetle bug would fly right into the side of my head. It was like someone threw a little rock and it hit me square on. Kind of gross but mostly funny. We threw on bug repellant and the bugs wouldn't bite us, but there were hundreds of them.... Thousands.

We would then have a pretty cool pool session of Marco Polo, Octopus, Red light Green light, etc. while making human pyramids and piggy back wrestling matches. Good times, then to bed. Everyone would have to swim the next day. 

Back to Punta Leona and this time the competition was from beach to beach (2.2 kilometers). I wasn't swimming so I was looking for something to do. We ended up being on the patrol team for the swimmers. We got to kayak while the race was on and we made sure that no one was going to drown. It was a nice way to kick back in the sun and make fun of people that looked like they were going to die as they would swallow gallon after gallon of sea water. Life was easy for me; after 1.5 kilometers of swimming for some people, I had it easy. I didn't have to save anyone but I think a couple kayaks behind me had to pull some people in. 

After that nice couple hour stint, we went back to Jaco. Buddies surfed, I wanted nothing to do with the poo-infested-water so I just chilled and tried to speak more spanish. It was chill and we then headed back to the house. 

Sunday night, back at the house, and my ride decided that he wanted to hangout for the night and leave the next morning around 4:00am so we wouldn't have to deal with traffic. I was kind of pissed but there was nothing I could do. The decision was made with my buddies in Spanish and I couldn't put in my opinion. I couldn't let them know until afterwards that I had to work the next morning but the decision was already made. They had to work at 8:00am also so they said I would be fine. Yeah, whatever. Here, when decisions are made in Spanish, I just kind of go with the flow. Everyone does take good care of me here, but sometimes I don't have a part in the decision making because I don't know what they are talking about. It's tough sometimes but it's really not that big of a deal.

Back to Sunday night. We're again just hanging out at the house, being swarmed by all different kinds of bugs and everyone doesn't even flinch to the thought of it. I know for a fact that some people back in the states would have freaked out about the situation, but what are you going to do? Hide in your bedroom the whole time? So, I'm sitting there, minding my own business and I feel that there's something by my leg. What could it be? The biggest frog I have ever seen in my life. It was about the size of a softball, just chilling, minding it's own business, eating bugs on the ground. I looked behind me and there's two other massive Godzilla frogs just slurping up bugs off the ground. Quite the source of entertainment. I never thought I would be hanging out on a couch watching giant frogs eat bugs the size of a snickers bite-size candy before... Interesting.  

All of the sudden, one of the frogs just bulges up and something starts coming out. Yeah, nasty, I know, but the thing pooped 1/5 of his size. He didn't loose mass but it would be about the same size of you pooping your leg. Graphic, sorry if you get grossed out easily but we thought it was funny. I mean, I have never seen such a sight before, on our living room floor of all places as well. Ha. That frog had to of felt a huge sense of relief after that one. Put a smile on it's face.

Now that that's covered, we have dinner, a bug in the salad, a bug in the beans, oh well, just pull it out, you'll live. It was quite the outdoors experience. It doesn't bother me but like I said, some people back in the states would have freaked out. The people here don't even think twice about it. 

Off to bed and the next thing I know it's 4:00am in the morning, time to head out. We wake up start the car and now there's chickens walking around in our living room. My God. Oh well, good times. I say bye to the chickens and we're back in San Jose at 6:00am and I'm back to the house at 6:20am. I shower, clean up and I'm at work at 7:30am. That was my weekend and know we have a three day weekend coming up.

3 day weekend= buddies of mine that I met in Panama that are also teaching in Costa Rica and I are heading back down to Puerto Viejo again and I'm driving. We're gonna stay at Rockin' J's Hostel and it should be real cool. The others are either leaving the next weekend or the following weekend. I'll be the only one still charging it. (You can see them in the photos from below. The ones from Panama). It should be good times so I'll let you know how that goes.

See ya.