long lost blog post

ok, so i'm totally still alive. I have been having such a nice time with my sweetheart that I haven't really been thinking about blogging. I will try to do better this week ok?

So here are just a few random updates.

• the vacation was great. After the hotel in Liberia, the sweetheart and I rented a car and went to Tamarindo - a cool touristy beach town. We ate awesome sushi and stayed in a really cool villa that unfortunately had a broken air conditioner (thank ghod for fans).


• after Tamarindo, we went to Playa Grande. I wanted to go there because apparently leatherback sea turtles nest there. Sadly, it was the wrong time of year to see them on the beach. The hotel there was great though. We had an awesome dinner (ahi tuna ftw!), and sat in a hammock under the stars for hours. Sooo nice.


• the day after Playa Grande we came back to Santa Rosa. I showed my sweetheart the forest, and the monument, and the little museum. He also got to see tonns of frogs, bugs, deer, coatis, and CAPUCHINS! LV happened to be hangin out by the casona when we went for a walk there. I got to introduce him to my favorite little Chutney (who is about to have her baby any day now), Mostaza, Cayenne, and all the others.


• Now I am back at work. On Monday, I took the sweetheart out to monkeyschool with me. We were following the group BH. It was a rough day. They didn't stop to rest the whole time and we lost them a couple times too. They also made us run up and down hills all morning. By 6am we were both dead tired. It was a good day for him to see what it is we do here, but it was not a good day to watch monkeys and see them up close. Hopefully when I spend the day with LV he will come and they will be a little kinder to us.


• the rainy season is supposed to start at the end of May, but it appears to have come early. The past 3 days in a row there have been crazy thunderstorms with tonns of water. I really like storms so I have been enjoying them. There are frogs EVERYWHERE! I could see how it could get old after a while though. Everything is damp and the bugs are starting to come out. I am thankful that I am going to be returning to Canada in a month because by then I will definitely be ready to go.


• The sweetheart was supposed to go home today, but we are having such a nice time he decided to extend his ticket for 1 more week. I am super happy that I don't have to say goodbye yet (cause that's going to SUCK). I will try to blog every day but you will have to forgive me if I miss a couple posts here and there. I want to spend every last possible second with him. I do have a few pics to post from the vacation.. so I promise i'll get to that sooon.

Anyway, I hope everybody is good!
xoxoxox
Day

vacation baby!

So its day one of the awesomest vacation ever! Right now I am sitting on the giant bed in my air conditioned hotel room using the free wireless. Below is a photo of the view off my balcony.


In a few minutes, im going to walk across the street and get some sushi for lunch. Then i'm going to look in the stores, and then i'm going to come back and sit in the sun near that pool all day. Hopefully I can get some colour on my legs (and not burn them again) so that my arms and legs don't look like they belong to two different people. When it gets dark, i'm going to walk around and find someplace good to eat dinner. Then i'm going to come back and talk to my internet sweetheart until it is time for him to get ready to leave to see me. I am sooo excited - there are butterflies in my stomach.

I will take more photos of this hotel in a little while. Right now there's some sushi that needs to be nommed.

happy happy happy
Dayna

Update: There is a mango and a banana tree beside the pool, and a lazy cat that hangs out in the yard! I love it.

custard apple?

YAY! So I am officially on vacation! I am really happy for a bunch of reasons. One: I was getting pretty burnt out from the long hours combined with the humid weather. It will be nice to have a few days where I don't have to work. Two: I am going to go stay in Liberia at a hotel tomorrow. I plan to eat a lot, lie by the pool all day, and sleep in an air conditioned room with a bed that has a real mattress. Three (and most importantly): on Thursday, my internet sweetheart is coming to visit me!! I cannot wait to see him. I'm sooo excited! We are going to travel around for a few days, and then (if I can manage to wake his ass up at 4am) he will be attending monkeyschool with me. Its gonna be awesome.

I will try to blog as much as I can while on vacation... but if I can't get online every day, i'll post like crazy when I get back to Santa Rosa.

In other news, here's a little bit of WTF for you. Here is a photo of one of the walls in the kitchen area. You can see the fruit poster on the wall (there's one with veggies on the other side of the door). Today after coming back from the field, I was looking at this poster while drinking some pop and noticed something strange.

So can somebody please tell me wtf a custard apple is? I have never in my life heard of one. I think it looks like a rotten cauliflower, don't you? Its kind of odd - of all the different fruits to put on a spanish/english fruit poster, custard apple made the cut. Anyway, if somebody knows - please tell me! I am dying to know. Also, does it taste like custard? Cause that might actually be good. NOM!

Anyway, im gonna go count down the hours till my sweetheart arrives. I'll blog again soon!

xoxox
Dayna

nom nom nom. ticks!

Yesterday I spent the day with the Guanacaste monkeys. It was again really hot and humid and the monkeys were lazy. They spent the entire day resting; sometimes too high in the trees for me to see them, and sometimes down on the ground with me. While they were down on the ground, I was hangin' out with the juveniles. One of them came right up to me and perched on a vine that was hanging near my shoulder. I looked over at him and he reached over to touch me. I stayed very still so I wouldn't scare him and he slowly put his hand on my shoulder, picked off a tick that was crawling on me (that I didn't notice), and ate it. I'm pretty sure this means I am one of the family now.

<3 Day

P.S. Tomorrow is the start of my vacation! I can't even explain how excited I am.

ssssssnakes!

So yesterday was another retardo-long day. I had to get up at 3:50am, and didn't make it home until 6:30pm. The air was really humid, i was soaked in sweat, and the monkeys didn't stop to rest for more than a few minutes all day. I was utterly exhausted when I got home. I am starting to feel a little burnt-out from these crazy long hours... I don't even have time to unwind when I get back to the dorms before its time to eat and then go to sleep. I am really happy that today is my day off, and that I only have 1 more long day before my holiday (i will post more about the awesomeness of my holiday soon. i am sooo excited.)

Anyway, yesterday while I was working I did see 2 cool things. Snakes! The first snake a large ratsnake. I was sitting on a rock and watching a monkey in the tree. The snake slithered up right beside me before it noticed I was there. IT WAS REALLY BIG! Like at least 6 feet long. When it saw me, it quickly went inside a hole before I could get a photo of it. After a while, it must have gotten bored because it came back out and was moving around on the ground. It even went up into the monkey tree and sat there for a bit. Normally, I would have been a little nervous around such a large snake that was so close to me, but the monkeys didn't seem to be too concerned by it so I decided it must not be too dangerous. (If they see a boa or a poisonous snake they will all alarm and cause a huge ruckus). Eventually, I managed to get some good photos of it and a video so you can see how big it is!


The second snake was a little brown vine snake. This one just slithered on past me while I was having my lunch and then climbed into a bush to chill out. Vinesnakes aren't dangerous either so I got in nice and close and took a good pic. It didn't seem to mind at all.


Anyway, hope you enjoy the pics and the video. I still need to see an anteater before I leave for home. Hopefully I can catch one on film for you.

Back to work. sigh
<3 Day