The Craziness of It All

Wow, it has been quite a while since my last update. I'm sorry to all of you who have checked my blog in the last two weeks to find nothing new. Needless to say, "crazy" has been a great way to describe my life as of late. 

Starting a new class (Tecnicas de Expresion Oral) that is 4 hours every morning, Monday through Friday, is a first for me and it's not easy. My class is basically speech class in a second language. This equates to my preparing some sort of presentation almost every night on top of all the normal work that I have from the two electives I started last month. 

However, there have been some fun moments in the midst of it all. Two weekends ago, we went to visit the Contemporary Art Museum. It was AWESOME! The architecture of the building was lovely.  

We also went to the zoo, where we were 3 of probably 10 people in the whole place. That was a little creepy, I won't lie, but it was also sort of surreal to have an entire zoo to ourselves. 

This past weekend, we went to go see "Les Miserables" in theaters. It was incredible and I definitely teared up at a few points. We also went to Volcan Poas, an extremely active volcano about 1 1/2 hours from San Jose. While there, we met a Dutchman from the Netherlands named Leonard who hung out with us most of the day. He is here for 6 months on an internship through his college researching teak wood for a company in the area.

A slightly random side-note, that will be of interest to some of you, is that I will be returning to the Wheaton from March 1st through 6th. It is definitely a last minute trip, but an internship that I applied for with the FBI requires me to return the states to take a polygraph test if I want to continue in the process. So, if you are in the Chicagoland area during that time, I will be making my best efforts to find you and say hi. 

As for this weekend, Johanna, Leonard and I intend to go to a local beach and soak up some sun. It seems fitting to me that if I am going to be heading into negative temperatures, I should take advantage of all the warmth possible while I can. 

If you think about it, prayer for the huge amount of homework that needs to be accomplished in the next week and a half and for my flight to the states and polygraph test would be much appreciated. 

Attached are a few pictures from recent shenanigans:

A sign on the front door of the Contemporary Art Museum.

The museum from the outside--told ya it was really cool looking.

A snake that really creeped me out at the zoo because it looked like it was staring at me.

A really awesome frog that posed in this position for about 5 minutes.

The monkey and I had a bit of a staring contest. I won.

This is to protect the government against lawsuits in case the active volcano decides to erupt. I'm still contemplating how much it would really help the situation.

Jo and I with Leonard (in the purple) and Jeff, Dom's boyfriend at the volcano.

Though it was cloudy most of the day, there were about 30 seconds in which one could see the crater of the volcano. Thankfully, we picked the right 30 seconds to be standing right next to it. 

A spider's web caught in the sunlight. I thought it looked really beautiful with all the water droplets reflecting the sun. 

Chau!