Adios tortugas, hola san jose

Well, I've left Ostional and made my (long and torturous) way back to San Jose! The trip was hellish - I woke up at 4:30 for the first bus, while waiting for my bus connection in Santa Cruz I went to get out some cash and the machine ate my credit card, while dealing with the bank I missed my connection and had to wait three and a half more hours in the horrible hot bus station, and on my final leg the immigration police boarded our bus and were not pleased that I only had a copy of my passport so I had to get out and undergo questioning (angry fast questioning in Spanish by scary police with giant guns), and everyone on the bus hated me because they had to wait over half an hour in the sweltering heat until the police decided I was, in fact, legally in the country. Gahh!! But I eventually made it safely back to my host family and was surprised at how glad I was to be back; I thought that I hated San Jose but it's nice and cold here and my host family was very happy to see me. They've decided that I got too thin during my stay in Ostional (psshh) and are trying their very best to fatten me back up, so I'm being fed nearly every hour. Looking back on my stay in Ostional, I'm extremely pleased with the way that my experience turned out: despite a lack of support for the MINAE staff (they never seemed to care one single whit that I was there or had any interest whatsoever in the library), I reorganized and made a record of all of the books, got kids coming into the library for homework help, English lessons and craft projects, I more than doubled the number of Spanish novels in the library (thanks to help from Scott Drucker's donation) and I co-organized a successful read-a-thon! I don't remember how much I told you all about that - I made a bunch of signs and put them around town advertising a read-a-thon every day from 3-5 in the school, so I showed up with a bunch of books everyday and kept track of how many hours kids kids were reading over the two week span of the read-a-thon, and the three kids that logged in the most hours won skateboards! Kids were very enthusiastic, though I suspect that they came more out of hopes in winning a skateboard than a love for reading, but I was still happy - kids were reading! The read-a-thon also gave me an excellent excuse to spend a solid two hour block of time every afternoon reading; I promised myself that I'd read in Spanish to improve my language skills and tried to read an Isabel Allende's "Cuentos de eva luna" and gave up in despair after a single day, but Harry Potter proved to be much easier. Hmm, I just read over what I wrote, and it makes it sound like I was a busy worker bee (and a bit of a braggart, sorry), so I must admit that I also got to spend quite a bit of time lolling on the beach, reading in hammocks and playing with sea turtles. Doesn't get much better than that! I was sad to leave my beachside paradise and host family in Ostional, but I'm also really looking forward to everything that's coming up in the next couple of weeks. This week, I get to hear everyone else's presentation about their internship, which should be extremely interesting because everyone was doing really different stuff. Then, Charlie comes and we get to travel around here for ten days or so, and then I come home for Christmas!! Hurrrrah! I'll see lots of you in less than twenty days! Love you! The first picture is the three read-a-thon champions, the second is the classroom I held the read-a-thon in and the third is some of the new books that I was able to get with donation money.