the fam

Hi,

okay, so the family have arrived WOOO. basically we got ourselves a car...which proved to be difficuly seeing as the blooming rental company didn't have the car there that we had organised. we had to make do with a pickup, our luggage hanging out at the back of the car unprotected. i wanted to sit on the back as a guard but FANCY THAT, the parents said no. mwahaha....

luckily the luggage was fine. we drove to cofradia briefly to pick up my stuff and to speak to ben about the best way of driving to la ceiba, as i didn't know, i'd only ever gone by bus so i couldnt remember the turn offs etc. mum thought it was like an hour to ceiba...oh how wrong, it's like 3.5 hours ahha. so we had to drive through the night. we DID however get the most epic baleadas everrrrr from baleadaladee (baleada lady who makes da neeeeatest ones) for dinner, plus homemade mangojuice. yum.

we drove and finally arrived in ceiba after having to endure a few potholes in the road that literally came out of nowhere. we were going to go for a drive around ceiba to find some accommodation that mum had found, but decided to sack the idea cos we were all shattered. we had to sign into a pure expensive hotel for one night. was definitely a nice experience for me!

the following morning we woke pretty early to stephen telling us we were late. mad dash and we were out of the hotel, for stephen to realise he hadn't accommodated for the daylight saving time, so we were early ahaha. arrived at the galaxy wave ferry terminal, mum and stephen took the car back to the dealer in ceiba. tom and i hung around the ferry port while grandma sat inside. was nice to be able to finally talk to him, we hadn't done much chatting since their arrival.

we took the ferry over and arrived on the island, got a people carrier to our accommodation that mum had organised... an actual appartment/wooden house on the beach of sandy bay! :)

we flooded in, i was checking it out, it looked amazing. John, the man in charge, took us around the rooms. i thought we were all in 2 rooms - there were like 2 double beds in some rooms, a single and a double in others, so i thought we were sharing, but NO. turns out we were all getting our own room, grandma in one, mum and stephen in one, me in one and tom in the other! there was a lovely decking area on the elevated porch of the appartment, and our own kitchen/dining area complete with a bookshelf full of games, books, jigsaws, magazines...! they were obviously used to the realllllly boring days that the island holds. when it rains, for example, the beach isnt much fun, and the bars/clubs are closed most weekdays...so what do you do?! sit in and play monopoly with the family as was the case for me one night. just for the record, we all got totally MASHED by stephen's incredible command of the game. i guess that's what happens when you download the game for your phone and spend every waking minute on it eh? TOUCHE. blub.

so we settled into the island. i took a trip to marlin's hotel, the place i stayed at eastertime...she had let me off paying the cost of my accommodation so that i could get back to my old placement asap, so i made it my priority to shoot down there and give it to her, im sure she never expected to see it again!

aww what a wonderful greeting 'LOOK AT YOUUU, you've lost so much weight!!' guess i was pretty chuffed to hear that ;) she welcomed me with open arms and gave me a piece of her LEGENDARY sweet potato cake. it is to die for.

we chatted and caught up with each other, she was so grateful to see me, she wasn't concerned about the money at all! it was nice to be welcomed back with so much love and smiling happiness, i remembered why i loved Roatan so much... :)

i headed back to sandy bay to be with the family. it feels like a blur now... i see them there, i remember them being in the flesh, standing in the kitchen, on the dock, out at the pier... they really were actually definitely 100% HERE. jeez.

speaking of the dock, we did a fair bit of snorkelling while we were there. it was awesome, i saw some pretty amazing things there, baracudas, parrotfish, starfish, angel and butterfly fish, squirrel fish... it was amazing. saw a fair amount of dory's from finding nemo too ahah.
the snorkelling was amazing though, we got the equipment free with our accommodation, some kayaks too, so stephen and tom did that a couple of times. i snorkelled out with mum, she claimed that i talked to the fish in the water... i actually did, don't ask. we swam through the shallow coral, through tunnels, with schools (i am SURE it is a school of fish, though kevin insists its shoals. i think we're both right), around all the types of marine life. we swam deep into the coral, the water level getting shallower and shallower, until you pop over on shall piece and all of a sudden the greatest expanse of water is infront of you, too far to see more than ten metres of clear blue infront of you... caves of fish and shellfish and anenomies (sp?) and bigger fish swimming around below us, i saw a parrotfish that was literally about half my size. thats a blinking massive fish by the way. i was like WOAH.

we met John before, the guy who kinda manages/owns the place. he owns a bar too, and some other rooms. he liked to drink and was pretty hilarious on certain occassions at the bar ahaha. i THINK it was his wife, Sue, who ran the bar. she was hilarious and great. attended to our eeeevery need, whipping a new salva vida in place of the empty ones before we could even ask her, entertaining us with her funny chat. she was a character, so hard to describe. she seemed to think she knew what she was talking about a lot, but didnt REALLY know, which made her seem kinda cute. she was adorable, a really lovely person to have met on the island. she was great to chat to when you just wanted to chill and have a nice wee laugh :)then there was Angie, who i had met at christmas time up at the oasis pool bar, she spilled my beautiful cocktail all over the floor and gave me 200 lemps to cover it haha. she couldnt remember me of course, she was completely trollied on new years eve :P so she worked a couple of days at the bar, she organised a bingo night with the other people staying in their accommodation, from texas. keen divers they were.

anyhoo, thats the intro. more to come!

love Jen xxx

and THEN....

hey :)

okay so we returned from Belize, and Ian was on his what to NY where he works in a summercamp, so cool, think i might do that next summer?

and by this point laura had gone also. kev was getting ready to leave in a couple of weeks, and we realised that we needed to get some souvenirs! lets just say we were a great shopping team, got some awesome bargains and one of a kind items...was really great! we got all sorts, honduras football gear (which reminds me, we went to see the football in the city!) shirt, scarf, mugs, towels, keyrings all sorts. looking cool, kev got a bandana ahaahhahaa.

the shopping was great, i'm really excited to come back and give out a couple of presents from Honduras! :D

and then... the family were coming out. i'd been waiting for this day for sooooo long. when all the things were going wrong i'd been wishing for this day. even when things were going right i was dying for them to come out, to experience the amazing things i have the privilege of seeing. i was so excited to see my mum, to thank her for all the wonderful things she's done for me since i got here...for supporting me through EVERY single thing i came to her seeking help with... i grew to appreciate her, and to admire her. she's my MUM for goodness sake! i no longer have that 'i know everything' idea. i now know that my parents are people i need to learn from too. i know stephen's going to have a feild day everytime i come to him seeking some advice or help of one kind or another... hopefully both of them will look forward to seeing a change in my supporting and helping them... :)
i couldnt wait to see my grandma, though i was pretty worried about how she would cope with all the crap that goes on in this country...knowing all the while i'm sure she would LOVE it! i couldnt wait to see Tom again..to see the brother who has grown into such a cool guy, see how he's changed in the last 9months...so much.

the only problem was that they were late in arriving. delayed flight. shite.

but eventually i saw them walk through a space in a room far to the back of the building, through a tiny split in the mottled glass. i then stood there for about 20 minutes...as per usual.
i moved to the end of the exit for the people arriving. i waited a few minutes and then MUM'S HEAD CAME BOBBING THROUGH, looking over the crowd, mouthing the words 'where is my baby'

i quickly waved her over, and of course she started greeting, as usual haha. she looked so beautiful. so safe.

grandma came marching out, chin high and called my mum back in cos she'd managed to fail at some kind of security nonsense. the other 2 weren't out yet.
i hugged grandma, who looked a little shocked, and i felt HUGE beside, as always, my wee grandma.

mum, stephen and tom came trooping through the doors and it was wonderful to see them. tom was so much taller than me now, goodness sake...and stephen looked just the same as always, blub ;)

it was nice. what a nice introduction to my family coming on holiday to see me. it went better than i'd ever imagined!

i'll write all about our trials and tribulations travelling through Honduras soon, i promise :)

love, jen xxx

anyway

hey :)

so that was the end of the river rapids trip...

next stop was just the part where i got mugged. it seemed like such a non-event that i forgot to tell my family about it until about a week later!

i was just walking down the street, minding my own business when some guy crossed from the other side and walked right up to me, put a knife against the right side of my stomach and said 'dinero'
i threw my money into his hand and continued 'celular?' and i said 'no tengo'

he pulled the blade back and continued down the road like nothing happened.

and that was the end of it! the amount of money taken was 5Lempiras, or 15p, or 25cents.

HAHAHAHA, oh dear.

that was a couple of days before my friend laura was to leave. after the event i walked a block further and she opened the door to let me into my house in such a panic, i'd obviously sounded a little stressed by the way i'd said 'Laura, open the door please'... she looked at me, my knees and hands were shaking and i was a little panicky, and she asked me what happened....away out to the road she ran, to see what was going on but the guy was nowhere to be seen. thank goodness, i didnt really want to see him again!

a few days later we were leaving to go to belize, to renew our visas...my especially (it was over a month out of date...typical.)

Laura was leaving a couple of days into our trip, so we were going to miss the last day of her time in cofradia...she'd been here for well over a year. the night before we left, Laura and i stayed up and talked and just hung out before she left. i was really sad to be losing her, she was a big part of my life here in cofradia :( so we all sprinted up to the park at about 4am, and i didnt sleep that night so i had my packing done for the time when we were leaving. a little late...perhaps, but I PROMISE i'm working on it :) we all wandered, zombiefied by sleep, to the park... Laura's house was a cutoff road, one block down from the park. she left us to go to hers...our bus arrived, and we stood there, kevin ringing her, and she yelled 'im coming' so then there was the epic arrival/farewell scenario where laura comes up to our stop and we all get to hug her and say bye and do all the crappy emotional stuff, and then our bus came, again. we squished onto the back, and waved bye to her. that was the last time i saw her in cofradia, and honestly i dont expect it to be the last time i ever see her, i intend to fly to NYC party with her, as i always did :)

anyway, laura left, and here we were on our way to belize. i think it might be important to refer, again, to the fact that my visa was out of date. we headed to the northern border of honduras with guatemala. i crossed that border undetected, and we headed out to the other side. there was a building to our left which was just CALLING my name...and we walked over. of course they noticed that it was over a month out of date...
let's just say that with a good bit of co-operative acting by Kevin, Ian and myself, i managed to squash the fine down to the lowest charge... 2,750Lempiras... 134 dollars or thereabouts. its was better than the next charge up which waas over $200!
i paid, relieved and yet again a little poor, in Guatemala. we took a boat from guatemala to punta gorda, Belize. kevin and i had a shot of driving the boat, it was awesome! our captain was super cool, he drove me to the visa office on his motorbike hahah! when i say captain, the boat could have no more than about 16 people in it at any one time... but it was cool :) super speedboat type thing.

arrived in punta gorda, where LO AND BEHOLD, ian's bank card stopped working. I couldnt check my bank balance without the internet and here i was with guatemalan Quetsalez (or something), Honduran Lempiras, but no belizian dollars. blast.

kev used the internet, i checked my balance and luckily, i managed to lift a fair amount to carry me through the trip. relieeeeffffff. we took a bus from punta gorda up to dangriga, another garifuna town. there was also a large population of chinese people which we weren't expecting! their food was awesomely good though :D

we stayed in a REALLY creepy hostel kinda place, owned by some old woman who looked like the Hunchback of notradame, only fatter. she was really weird and spoke english in a french accent. she wanted to charge us a mint, i tried to get her to lower her amount but NO, she didnt want to. so i was like pffft i dont like this place and she was like 'well go somewhere else then' and i was like aw crap. i just got owned by her! the other places were even worse! so we ended up in this room, with a triple bed, a double bed and a single bed.
we slotted the beds together and ended up with some MASSSSSSIIIIVVEEEE bed. seriously we were totally on like our own double bed within this massive bed! teach her a lesson....pah.

so we stayed there, got up the following day and headed to the dock to travel to one of the TINIEST islands ever, called tobacco quay. it was soooo small. walk for 5 minutes from shore to shore in every direction! we took the ferry to this little island, crawled off and explored. we hired a tiny little cottage hanging over the shore. it was so picture skew (picturesque...)
we hired $5 snorkelling gear and headed out. it was so beautiful, and this was the first time i had snorkelled since i was really young! and in the middle of the caribbean, i was in for such a treat! :D
saw all kinds of fish, angel fish, butterfly fish, DORY fish haha, starfish... and a barracuda which opened its toothy jawz if i got too close... :P

we headed back to shore, got showered and sat around with some bacardi, and a little of ians vodka :) we drank merrily and danced like loonies to all the songs we remember from the UK (yes, ian lived there for a while just recently, he knew allll the same song as us!) and we had such a good evening, i met a few girls from the US who were on their last night after about 3 weeks of marine biology study... so cool!

the following day, we headed back home. it was a short but sweet trip!

that night we arrived at the border crossing between guatemal and honduras...about 8 oclock...

of course, there were no buses, and taxis were RIDICULOUSLY expensive, in UK prices! we were told that there is a little town just beyond the border with a couple of cheap hotels. we watched the sky get darker and darker, so quickly as we were surrounded by mountains, and headed out into the night :)
we started walking down the cutoff road (after walking for about 20 minutes up and down the main road, we forgot to take the turnoff...) and it was literally PITCH BLACK. i couldnt see my hand infront of my face it was so bad, no moonlight whatsoever.
i spotted a little house to our right. i headed to the door, knocked and called in spanish. a man called out WHO and i replied...' ehh, jennifer?? we're afraid of the dark! hahaha...' and he called out to wait and we waited. he arrived and he offered to walk us up to the town, he was heading up there anyway. i chatted to him about hotel prices, english, whether he's scared of living where he does, how long he's been there...all that jazz..in spanish! :) very proud times in my life.
we headed to the hotel, i negotiated with the man...in his lounge/house/office. he said they had no rooms and we could sleep on the floor. it was cheap. he would bring us matresses...
i was a little on the short side for money, so i said fine. the boys said they'd see! he brought out all the stuff, i stood my ground and said i'd stay. he put the matress on the floor of the office. i still said FINE and stayed. eventually a pile of 20something honduran guys came in and filed about 6 each into the 3 rooms around me. i got up and the boys were like GET OUT ahhaha and so we all left and said sorry we didn't want to stay anymore!

we walked out and wandered through the town towards the otherr hotels we'd heard of...everyone was full :| like, EVERYONE. we were standing infront of someone's open style house/bar thing, and headed over to get some light. there were about 4 old men who were totally wasted and downing shots like noones business. (shots of guaro, its like 'alcohol' in general, and shots are like dixie cup sized! these men were taking like 3 gulps per shot. i thought i was no lightweight but seriously, this would put SCOTLAND to shame...almost) ;)
we spotted a younger guy, he started talking to us in english with an american twang, though his vocab wasnt that great, we could understand him pretty clearly. we stayed at the bar chatting to these people for about half an hour, waiting for a taxi to come and take us into the main town with more hotels. yeah, the car never came.
Michael was the boy's name. he invited us to stay at his house on the ACTUAL borderline, there was noone but him staying there. he bought us all a beer (apart from ian who was sleeping in the hammock at the bar hahaa...) and kev and i talked with him. we agreed to stay at his, and thanked him.

we traipsed up to the crossing in town, his pal came along with a truck and we sped up to the border on the back of his pickup :)
we passed the police, crossed the border and took a small turnoff to a tiny little newly built house. we walked in, there was a double bed and a single on the floor, Michael said he'd sleep on the couch. so me and ian ended up crashing on the double, kev on the floor (ian definitely doesn't fancy me. he's gay) :)
we woke up the next morning and headed out, michael was already tending some horses, and then we marched back along the border, got the bus, and arrived back home in cofradia!

that will do for now. more to come shortly :)

love yaaaaaaaazz xxx

well well well...

hey guys. my BAD. i want to keep writing this blog and im so sorry i've not been doing such a good job of it.

what's happened lately...

a) school ended
b) went to jungle river lodge
c) got mugged for 15p
d) Laura left
e) went to belize
f) souvenir shopping
g) my family came to visit
h) kevin left
i) looking out on the next month...the last month

so yeah, the school year finished...and with it, came exams!!
i prepared exams in almost all subjects for my kids: english writing, listening, speaking and writing, mathematics, art, pe...

they did them over the course of a week. there were students that i KNEW wouldn't put their all in...naughty little munchkins like Cesar, Raymundo etc. Cheeky wee boys, but so adorable. the life of the class (i feel like i have some type of relatino to these kids...anyone reminded of my school years??)

they did all of their exams...a LOT of marking for me, and a lot of filing too...getting to know how the system worked in CBS...it was an experience! nothing in comparison to the 5 months prior to my being here...

had an awesome time with the kids, doing football and sports on the last day, dancing, eating icecream and having a great time. i got a couple of videos of them, they'll go on facebook as soon as i have a good enough internet connection :)

so that was the end of the year...it was great! all the kids were so relieved! as were some of the teachers of course :)

we smooshed past the few days during the summer that we didnt have anything planned just hanging out at the rocks, the swimming pool and going through to san pedro every so often. the rocks was like our second home :) other times we would go through and visit our friend Laura, or Terry...sometimes we'd just sit with ben and william and talk nonsense. ian became a closer friend over these few weeks.

[incase we dont know... Laura (aka the smuggler) was an ex volunteer from New Jersey, part Honduran also, and she lived just near the park. i used to tutor her nephew and that was held at her house every 2nd day, so we spent a lot of time together (the boy was always late. everyone on honduran time...typical!) listening to music, talking nonsense, joking about, talking about our problems. it was amazing. i'd not really had the chance to make a real friend in Honduras since i arrived as my old towns didnt really have much in the way of english speakers, and i never thought i would have the time or ability to make a good friend in the short time i had in the country... so i really got close to Laura and i know we'll see each other again in the future. THANK YOU! :)
Terry is the man who built the rocks, and is currently building his own place just near by. he's married to Dunia who is a really lovely honduran woman. she makes awesome bread! terry used to be in the vietnam war and has a lot of stories to tell.
Ben is the owner of the rocks, and william is his 15 year old son.
Ian is a volunteer from canada, the Science teacher. he was a great friend and a really entertaining character, he always managed to make me laugh. BWEN ASSSSSS!!! (his accent while articulating Buenas...)]

one weekend we planned to do some white water rafting up in La Ceiba - The Jungle River Lodge. the party consisted of JEN KEV WILLIAM and IAN. we took the bus early morning to La Ceiba where we took a cab to Banana Republic (linked to JRL) and booked ourselves in for hostel stay at JRL and some white water rafting :)
the water rafting was amazing :) i had to dress up like a complete tube of course, but it was a good look. red is so my colour.

the course instructors were super cool too, good english, good banter! it was a good experience :) we got a couple of drinks in in the evening, and we jumped off the cliff into the water (not in that order...) so many times, it was so awesome, pure exhilarating in the dark :)

the following day we trekked all the way up a mountain to a waterfall... it was SO BEAUTIFUL. amazing, cool water (which i drank, my bad? i wasnt ill though!) but it was a pure great work out, it was amazing to see and it was such relaxation! amazing...the trek back could have been done without, i was seriously lacking agua...
but yeah, v good times!

will write more soon i promise, LOVE XXX

OH MY AY CARAMBA

ooookayyyyyy

i have no idea where to start to be perfectly honest. my life has been a complete blur of stress, isolation, fear, loneliness, opened eyes, awakening, shock, disbelief, pure joy, chaos, fun and sun.

i was having such a horrible time in san juan intibuca. it was horrible. mercedes was horrible. school was horrible and when i look at it now i KNOW why i was unhappy, i hated every minute of what my life had become, and i kept trying to find some kind of solace every single day to make me happy... someone once said 'you shouldn't be made to feel bad for doing something good' and that is SO RIGHT (thank you kevin).

so basically i hated it and i knew i wasnt happy. you saw how much i wanted to go home to scotland and that was me being calm about it! i was pulling my hair out by the roots with frustration and i really was just so depressed and concerned all the time.

so mercedes told project a whole load of bullshit about me being an alcoholic or something, and that was their grounds for sacking me from PT. so mercedes and i officially hate each other hahahaha... and our in house rep turned up at our house to take us away from her. Emma has a placement in san pedro sula, but i was in total limbo to see whether i was to remain in honduras (if i could find my own placement and look after myself) or whether i would have to return home.

our rep came to the house, collected me, keving and emma and drove us to gracias where we hung out for the weekend. the following day we drove to san pedro where i was put up in a kinda hostel place.

i took a bus from san pedro alone to a town half an hour from the city called cofradia. there are 2 bilingual schools here, i turned up here with kevin (who followed suit an hour later) and here we were sitting in some wee town park in a place in honduras where we had no idea where ANYTHING was. idiot that i was, took the bus from san pedro, the man shouted 'cofradia parque' at the bus to let us know where we were but i didnt take notice, so there was me sitting on the bus just bumping my way through the little town of cofradia, all the way along the back roads of the town, passing people and churches and stuff and for a moment i was concerned that i had no idea where i was going, but i decided to let it happen. i just sat on the bus sapping up the town and realising i loved everything about it, from the changing districts within the town, to the side streets, the little schools and churches, to the park and the little pulperias, to all the people doing their thing around the roads...

and so i got off and got on another bus on the same route coming back the way. i stayed on it and got off at the park and sat there waiting for kevin.

he arrived, we phoned our friend in gracias who had mentioned the placement at CBS, cofradia's bilingual school, and asked her what we should do, she said get a little mototaxi to the crazy gringo called ben's house. he had a pool seemingly.

so i negotiated with the taxi man until he realised the ben i was talking about (not that I EVEN KNEW who i was talking about) and we popped in the cab. we arrived at the place, walked in and realised we were in a place of pure bliss. it was a place called The Rocks, for a reason. the entire pool and whole place is created from rocks piled upon each other, the house is a big wooden house and there are places to jump into the big rock pool... you'll see some photos eventually, honest.

so we chatted to this guy ben for AGES about the school and stuff, we met a guy called martin who took us on a brief tour of the 2 volunteer houses, and i spoke to the school administrator called carla...she said that kev could help out with the huge 3rd grade class...and i could become the new 4th grade teacher of 18 kids.

i had just been given the job '4th grade TEACHER'

holy crap.

so anyway, we found ourselves in the house nearest The Rocks, and kev and i got a big room at the back of the house with 2 beds and a bathroom in it! in our house we have Garret and another Kevin, there was a girl called Jamie but she left just last night.

the other house consists of Carla, Eva, Ian and Suzie, but i will explain all the people at a later date.

just thought i would outline what i'm living in right now.

school starts at 7.15, finishes at 2.10. we get a little breakfast (either a baleada, or a taco, or a pastelito...) and we get a lunch.

i teach the 4th grade class everything, and i can divide my day into whatever lessons i want :)

the kids can be little rascals but they really are just so willing to work, and their english is AMAZING.
over the past week or so that i have been teaching them, i have successfully taught them all how to divide WITH REMAINDERS, when they have never done division in their lives. i am so proud.

there is so much more to talk about but i can't think right now, plus i want to go for a swim right now, i'm sweating like michael jackson in a nursery...

ask me questions...love y'all xxx

and for every down there is always going to be an up

hey again

right so much as i want all those things below...

i'm still going to remain here until mum comes out at least...mid june, i can SO DO THIS.

i am going to perfect my spanish (which actually isnt so bad right now to be honest, quite pround on that front).
i am going to seriously go on a proper diet and avoid tortillas and beans like the plague, which leaves me with......egg?
i'm going to enjoy teaching the kids i do have, they've already learned so much that i've taught them so that's something to be proud of too right?
i'm going to go swimming in the river today as well, when i get back, and i'm going to clean my room and listen to music and write in my diary and maybe write a decent blog to post at the weekend so you have a vague idea of what i've been doing from day to day. i just got back from roatan so i'm feeling alright from that i guess, it's amazing there.

anyway, blahblah love you xxx

every up must have it's down...

Hey crowd.

okay so last i left off kev was due to come out... we're going to bypass all the stuff at the moment that's happened, will tell you all in due time, but for now i really need to use this space to rant.

honestly, never wanted to come home so much in my life. never missed my family like i do now, never missed the people i love so much... there are so many things i want to get away from here, so many things i want to come home to.

i have to organise my university stuff, it's killing me. i'm so stressed over it.
mercedes wont give me back the $120 she owes me
project trust are SO AWFUL and i can't say that enough.
I am so alone out here and i just want a hug.

i want to get away from this place, i want my own bed in scotland, i want to walk barefoot down to the basement and sit on the green fold out couch and play the out of tune piano. i want to turn on my fairy lights by my bed, open my window and watch the world walk by my house. i want to hear the rumble of the 44 whooshing past my house every hour of the day, i want to see the black taxis with their irn bru adverts and their orange lights. i want to walk around town and remember the streets i knew like the back of my hand. i want to go into town and remember what fashion is.
i want to hop on a 62 and run into my grandma's for a cup of tea which i'll forget to drink while i play with molly who's now a cat and no longer a kitten.
i want to walk around to kirsty's house even though she wont be there just to talk to her mum and her sisters. i want to walk through the natchy as a shortcut up to jordanhill. i want to go into my old school and hug ms gallacher.
i want to walk through the college and take the back routes to anniesland cross. i want to walk up greatwestern road and turn right along my road. i want to walk up to julie's and have her mum force the nicest dinner upon me and her dad offer either a bottle of red or a bottle of rose wine. i want to sit on her couch and plan a night out that wont happen cos we're too busy talking to each other about life and boys.
i want to walk back to my house and pull out my keys with the broken mercedes keyring (irony much). i want to climb the 4 sets of stairs to my room, i want to hear the door creak as i open it and hear the slight thud as it doesnt close properly.

i want to walk around byres road, i want to take a detour through kelvingove park as i walk into town, i want to see the skaters at the park, i want to walk though it remembering the memories i had of that place. i want to walk out onto greatwestern road at cave where i used to buy alcohol underage and never got id'd for my 3l of strongbow. i want to walk to strawberry fields and see my beautiful aunty and all the people who i loved talking to just for ten minutes in my day. i want to walk out and look up the road towards shona's house and remember the memories of that house. i still have her striped cup in my house from that day i walked home with it still in my hand...
i want to go to central station and look at all the trains and remember the people i've met there, remember the trips i took with people, the places those trains have taken me. i want to get on one and enjoy the ride, watching glasgow and scotland fly by the window. i want some neds to come on with bucky and start getting loud and obnoxious and i want to smile because i'll know i'm home.

i want to hear the doors beeping 'please alight here for...' and i want to walk out. i want to be free.

i want these things and so many more. i dont want to be stuck in san juan walking past the monster cows and dogs. i dont want to be stared at and tsssssst at like some animal. i dont want to be called a gringa because i am not american. i dont want to turn up at my school and wait for the 3 children i'm going to teach to arrive and know they dont even need me cos there are too many teachers for my school.
i dont want to watch the family being greedy with their food and drink at lunch, i dont want them to ask me to buy the coke for everyone at lunch to get half a cup and no money back. i dont want to get in the bus with javier and the family as we go home for another long afternoon of awkwardness and boredom. i dont want to go to the stream and swim and be stared at by eveyone who passes. i dont want to eat another tortilla.

i dont want to sweat in the heat, i dont want to hide who i am and be a shell of jennifer hepburn because i cant be myself here. i dont want to live in the country and have nothing to do with myself. i dont want to be alone.

'i want's never get. so someone tell me how you get anything without desire?

i want to go home.

xxx

UNA and £L$

Okay so Una was going to come out to visit me, but it wasn’t definite, so we ended up finding out about her coming like 3 days before she actually did.

I told Mercedes I would have to leave school on the Thursday night so I could be in San Pedro to collect Una from the airport on Friday lunchtime.

I headed to Gracias after school on the Thursday, and went to Nena’s house again, as she’s beside the bus stop. She mentioned something about a friend of hers driving to San Pedro at 5 the following morning, so she said we could go together, she was going to go too.

We woke up, crossed the road by her house and hopped in the car and drove for an hour or so, then we stopped at a little diner place. I had egg and fricolitos (beans), then melon, pineapple and watermelon, and a cup of avena (my favourite, milk and oats and sugar, kinda like thin porridge) and then we were back on the road, and we arrived in the centre of San Pedro at 8.30am! that was amazing... on the bus with only passenger stops, I wouldn’t have arrived until about 11am! So that was a major relief...but what was I going to do with myself alone in the big city for 4 hours?

I called Jorge, the family friend who has a taxi, and he picked me up and I asked him to take me to city mall, and collect me again there at about 11am...

So there I was, standing outside city mall at 8.45am, waiting for the doors to open at 9. The shops then opened at 10, so I decided to walk around the whole mall deciding what shops to go into when they opened an hour later :)

I went to a kinda homeware store called Lady Lee’s where I bought a glass candle smelling of cherries for my room, to make it smell a little different from Honduras. I still remember coming off the plane and thinking ew...the general smell was pretty musty, and immune though I am to it now, I still want to freshen up my room thank you very much. I also bought a little orange smelling candle for Emma :)

I didn’t want to waste my money, so I just kept wandering, and I spotted a mannequin in a shop window wearing a pair of multicoloured pants, and I was just immediately drawn to them, impulse buying style... so I went into the shop and asked the woman how much they were and if they had my size (XXL) ...but they only had a XS, a S, and the model was wearing M ... so I thought why not, use it as inspiration! I really liked these pants, so I bought the M, and have set myself the target of fitting my fat ass into them by the time I come home. I tried them on when I got home and heard a few thread stretching noises and immediately threw them off as a lost cause though, just going to have to keep ploughing on with the diet in the hope my butt shrinks enough to put them on! (Brief insight into the working of Jen’s mind...)

Jorge then picked me up and drove me to the airport, where I waited for an hour or so for Una’s possible arrival. It wasn’t for certain she would arrive, it all depended on whether she could get the connecting flight from Houston on the Friday morning.

So I was standing at the gate, waiting for the Houston passengers to arrive, and I had a kind of flashforward...of standing at the gate waiting for Kevin to arrive (one of my best friends is coming out in couple of weeks for two months, but I’ll tell more about that later on), and then for my family arriving in June...it was surreal, and I was totally excited and I could picture their anxious faces as they scanned the crowd to see me waiting for them... and all of a sudden a red head was bobbing around in the crowd, I could see the person mouthing the words ‘where is Jennifer, where is Jennifer...?’ and then Una saw me, and I saw her, and she walked around the barricade and we hugged, tears in my eyes...

:)

So after our meeting, we headed to the car rental places and bargained with them most efficiently to get a car for Una’s trip...they tried to diddle us on several occasions, but we were both too quick for them ;) I remember after checking the entire car to make sure there were no mishaps they didn’t write down, and we drove around the car park once, for me to point at the dashboard and say ‘why is the petrol tank only 2/3 full?!’ and I ran across the car park to grab the guy who vetted the car, because he wrote that the tank was one notch away from being full, and I was like naw change it, so he changed it on our sheet and went to walk away and I was like aaaye right, nice try, fix it on the original sheet too mate, and so we walked in and I stood over them while they changed it, and then came back to the car...Una said she wouldn’t even have thought about fixing the original, so I felt quite chuffed with my achievement for the day :)

So we drove out of the airport, and headed to Baleada Express, where I got 2 baleadas stuffed with stuff, and Una had a taste but she wasn’t hungry so she never experienced the true baleada culture of Honduras! :(

Then we drove around the city a little more, and we spotted a wholesale fruit market, where we bought 30 oranges and 14 bananas and 2 melons, that place was amazing but it smelt pretty awful... the banana woman tried to diddle us as well, I was watching her counting the bananas and just skipping a number, she was trying to give us 11 instead of 14 and I was like ‘NAW’ and she was giving it all ‘oh im sorry, pardon, pardon...’ and I was like damn straight.

We then drove around the city more, because I wasn’t entirely sure how to get out of it and back on the road to Gracias, as there are about 4 really crap road signs in the entire city... so we called Jorge who came and drove in front of us, out of the city :)

I spent the entire journey having a heart attack over the number of potholes that Una would have missed if I hadn’t pointed them out, much as she didn’t like it and claimed she noticed them all... so i just sat back and didn’t look out the car and the number of potholes we nearly lost a tyre in was ridiculous... but we eventually arrived in Gracias, after dark, and we checked into Guancascos.

Our room was up at the top of the hill that the hotel is on, so we had a classic view over the whole of the town, it was beautiful. There was a hammock outside our room too, which was relaxing!

We just went to sleep that evening, we were both really tired, I’d been up since 4.45am!

The following day, we just hung out around Guancascos and Gracias, Holly, Lena and Emma came over in the evening to hang out with us...we went to the Chinese restaurant, then back to the house. We had Smirnoff vodka and orange juice and coke, and I bought a bottle of Flor de Cana, so we were pretty well sorted for the night :) we talked about PT farces, and the like, Una didn’t like how we work in a private establishment... we talked about that for ages, then Lena and I went out to cafe Kandil for a little while, where we met Liam and the other Americans... we ended up staying there for a bit, then we walked to another open air bar called Bohio, which unfortunately was closed, so we trekked back, but the Guancascos was closed, so I had to sneak into Holly and Lena’s for the night!

The next day, we spent out and about in Gracias, and decided to head back to San Juan in the evening. The journey went so fast in the car, much better than the bus! Emma had a bout of that horrible sickness thing I had before, the acid thing...so she wasn’t feeling too good, but we got back to San Juan in one piece. That night, we had a couple of pupusas, tortillas with some cheese in the middle, but Una didn’t really want to eat them, she thought she’d rather wait for dinner... little did she know that tortillas ARE dinner! So she was kinda confused about that, didn’t like the lack of nutrition (I agree...) but before dinner we sat and had an aperitif which was lovely, some red wine and banana chips (tajaditas) in my room in secret which was nice!

The next morning we all had to get up super early for school, I left with Emma to get on with the day, Una popped along for a little while and took a couple of photos of us, then about lunchtime she, Mercedes and Sergio all drove back to San Pedro so that Una could make it in time for her flight the following day, and that was the end of Una’s trip!

Because my charger had broken, I gave Mercedes my visa card to lift money and buy me a new one in the city (I know what you’re all thinking, and in a sense, YOU’RE ALL RIGHT). I knew I had enough money in my account to take care of one charger, but not that much more. Mercedes called me the following day to say she’d found one, but it wasn’t the right one and she was going to get the right one, I was like okay... go for it.

The next day she come back to tell me she’d emptied my account in order to get the second one...i was like ‘but why didn’t you just return the first one and use that money?’ and she just sort of shrugged it off as she always does when she doesn’t know what to say...

So I thought okay, I’ll just wait til she can get the money for the first one back to me.

A few weeks later I was in Gracias, and mum called me to say that I was OVERDRAWN AND HAD BEEN FOR A WHILE...and had fines of about £80... so that was a complete DOWNER, and I was so stressed by it.

I came back and told Mercedes what had happened and would she perhaps reimburse me at all for it...and she was like ‘no I didn’t know that would happen, you didn’t tell me how much you had in your account, so I just took it all out and didn’t know you would get charged’ and I was like ‘but I knew I had enough for one charger, why would I expect you to take it all out, surely common sense would have been to return the first one and use the money from that?!’ and she was not in the mood for that argument and was just like ‘I am not paying you any money, it was your fault and I will never do you another favour again’ and now I am completely hated in the house by her family for even bringing it up, she obviously translated it to her family in a way that made me out to be the bad guy...so that’s a bit of a shit situation at the moment.

The one thing that really really annoyed me about it, was when I told her it was around £80, she put that in the calculator and said ‘so that comes to about 2,400 Lempiras...the cost of your charger. Is that what you want from me? You want me to buy your charger for you?’ and I literally saw red and had to stop myself from throwing something. I was sooooooo angry, I hadn’t felt that frustrated in 5 months... but I just walked away. I said ‘that never entered my head and it is just a coincidence it comes to that amount, I’m sorry you think that of me’ and just left.

So that really hurt.

But for now, I’m sitting in Gracias in the sun, drinking a cup of homemade lemonade, letting time pass and the stress float into the air...

You sometimes have to deal with things that you really don’t want to, that you wish had never happened, but it all makes you stronger in the end. That’s a learning process that will last your whole life, but at least I’m taking the steps to learn it now :)

Will update you again soon... Kevin comes out in a week for 2 months. I really cannot wait...lots of good things are happening soon, but I’ll tell you those plans next time!

Love, Jen xxx

Life after Costa Rica

Hey

So after we arrived in Gracias, we did the usual, get a Chinese, sit on the internet in Guancascos, hang out with Holly and Lena. The following morning Mercedes wanted us back super early to paint the ‘new’ school. Yeah, we’d moved building again to another school, a REAL school this time. We now had a few of the rooms from the public school in San Juan, we painted them up (using my paint, Mercedes owes me money for that, I was going to return it and I am now skint...again) and decorated them with school related stuff... and now they look really good!! It was a lot of effort, I lost my only pair of jeans to DIY damage in the process, but it was worth it :)

I also returned to a letter from my cousin Tricia (HAPPY BIRTHDAY BY THE WAY 17 you big babe! (belated now, I apologise, the internet has not been kind to me of late...) and THE SAME TO STEPHY (though I can’t say you’re 17...) but happy birthday anyway, I’m sorry I couldn’t be with you, I wish I could have been, but I hope you had a really great day, both of you, regardless of the dark EMPTY feeling you felt knowing I wasn’t there ;) teehee. Happy birthdays!)...

...and a package from mum! Just a little one though, it had a new sleeping bag liner in it (it got stolen before Christmas when we were living in the hotel in San Juan...) and A MEMORY STICK full of TV programmes, a couple of movies, and some photographs. The photos were really lovely, there were some from my fundraising ceilidh (all the way back in March, almost a year ago now!), some from the sponsored walk up Conic Hill (thanks guys...and apologies again for my mashed up ankle at the time that stopped me from getting right to the top) and some other classics from the past few years...

At the school, we met a little girl from Miami, and her brother (Jessica [8] and Tony [10]) who were hilarious, and like little white versions of ALBERT from Roatan...their accents just made me laugh soooo much haha... and they were typical little American kids...obsessed with TV programmes and cringeworthy phrases such as ‘awww COME ON!?’. I have mixed feelings towards them, as is clear...

That weekend, we went to Gracias again, did the usual, and on Saturday, we planned to head up the mountain to some of the American teacher’s house, near the school that Holly and Lena work in. The girls went early because I had some stuff to do on the internet, and I went up the mountain a little later by moto-taxi, to the school. The guy told me I had to get off there because the wheels were getting damaged by the ground... and naive little Jen forgot that 8 minutes in a car was about half an hour walking... and got out. I then realised I had a half hour walk from the school to the girls’ house ahead of me in the dark, armed with a laptop bag, and a plastic bag full of crisps, cookies, snickers and leftover Chinese...

I stumbled around in the dark on my way up the terrible rocky ground of the mountain, panic slowly growing...as I’d already phoned Holly who was giving it all ‘just WALLLLKKK’ and I was like ‘NO I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHERE I AM GOINNNNGGG AND I CAN’T SEE A THINGGGG...’ and eventually I persuaded her to send Emma and one of the teachers, Sarah, to my rescue in another little moto-taxi. It was so dark I could barely see my hand in front of my face, so there was hardly going to be a chance of me seeing the massive rocks at my feet without my contacts in, and I ended up BOOTING one so hard I cut my toe and broke my big toe nail (all have to ‘awww’ in sympathy of poor Jen).

EVENTUALLY they arrived, and I jumped in, soooo tense and sad and we got to their house. I was greeted by homemade pizza fresh out the oven, which really helped me feel a bit better :) I put on the rice to heat and we talked about music for ages. Our original plan had been to watch the 3 Bourne movies in succession, but that fell through to the cause of new music mwahahaha...

Jackie made brownies for us (and maaaaan they were good) which vanished fast, and we decided to made another DOUBLE batch to satisfy extra sugar cravings! We had camomile tea and talked about the Villa Verde scandals (the school they all work in) which i reckon would bore you so I’m not going to share them...

The next day we got up and had pancakes and fruit salad! We took a little stroll to a nearby stream just 3 minutes walk from the girls’ house, it was so tranquil and picturesque (PICTURE SKEW). We returned to the house where LAURA COLLINS (The partner of Laura and Renske from La Union) just appeared at the house (La Union is about 3 hours from Gracias) with her dad! They only hung about for long enough for her dad to get a photo of us all together, and then they were away up the mountain :)

We headed back to San Juan, as it was a Sunday, to a house full of dirty dishes, which Emma and I take turns with every night. Nobody else in the family washes their dishes so we have to wash for 7 people every meal time... :(

That night there appeared to be no dinner on the go, so I had to spend my dwindling funds on pasta...The only food available was simply refried beans...and nothing else. So I watched Emma shovelling that down and realised I would never be able to stomach it if SHE could hardly do that...so I resorted to buying some pasta. I also had to donate my bed to Nena’s family and her children, as they were too late to get back to Gracias that night. I always feel truly happy and content to return to our home here in San Juan after such a terribly boring and hostile weekend in Gracias (PFFTTTT).

...And we were up the next morning at 6.30 for ‘school’.

The only way to put the last week of school was ‘a farce’.

No need to go into the ins and outs, but basically it was the most disorganised, boring, unfulfilling, de-motivating and pointless institutions ever known to man. We had 3 students between the 2 of us, and we had no resources... I don’t even want to talk about it, but every day I returned in a HORRIBLE mood and tried so hard to stop myself crying all the way through ‘class’.

I left at 11am with Emma one day, to go and get lunch for everyone and cook it... I got pork, and there was some rice in the house, so we were going to eat that. I thought that I had messed up the rice so spectacularly, so I called Andrea to let her know to pick up more if that was what they wanted, cos I was going to resort to pasta again, for me and Emma to eat with our pork.

To cut a long story short, they thought I was going to buy enough pasta for 7 people and cook it in anticipation of their return...which I didn’t do, because that wasn’t how I thought it had been agreed. They returned to some AWESOME fried pork (seriously good, not even kidding) but no pasta, and Mercedes had a fit. She screamed at Emma and basically we thought that it was make or break at that point...we planned our escape route from this placement in San Juan, should we have felt it necessary... and went to sleep.

Thursday 4th February, we had informed Project Trust of how bad we felt the situation was becoming, and after a lot of deliberation, said that we would stay here until the official start of school the following Monday, to see if it would improve at all, if not, we were going to Gracias to try and get a placement in one of the other bilingual schools located there.

By Friday we were supposed to have received our allowances...overdue for 3 months, and GUESS WHAT!!! We didn’t get them.

Holly and Lena, for the first time, were coming to see our home in San Juan. We didn’t know if we would go through with this, what with all our tension...but Saturday came, and the girls arrived. Mercedes stopped us from doing the dishes that day (even if just for appearances sake, it was still nice), and the 4 of us went a big walk up to the beautiful stream we found one day when we were handing out leaflets for the school last month. We sat by the stream, and we walked up through the coffee plantations, and talked for hours about what we were going through and what the girls thought of it. They, like me, agreed that we shouldn’t be dealing with it, and thought it was time to take action. The plan was set, we would wait and see how the following week of school panned out, after being informed we would be getting a schedule and resource books...this was the final straw, and we agreed on it.

Aside from our San Juan struggles, we had a really nice lunch that day, pork, rice, boiled potatoes and beans, it was delicious! We had our walk around San Juan, and we returned home that evening, full of resolution to lose weight in this tortilla forsaken country...and the girls told me about ‘tribal dancing’ ...basically put on some music with a really strong beat, good bass and sort of tribal style (MIA for example) and then just dance like a loony for an hour and you work up such a sweat and like stretch and tone and stuff and it reeeeeeally worked! It’s kinda my evening ritual, it also helps us waste an hour of the afternoon in San Juan when there is nothing else to do!

On Sunday we all decided to walk up the man road leading to the near town (hour car drive)to La Esperanza. On the road there is a gate leading to natural pools, and Mercedes told us it was about a 15 minute walk towards Esperanza and we would come to it.

But no, it turned out to be about an hour and a half walk to the frigging pools... it was a case of “it’s okay, it’ll be around this corner....or the next one...no, no, it’ll definitely be around the next corner...wait, I think I can see it! Oh maybe not, that’s just someone’s house...” and by the time we finally got there, we didn’t even believe it was the right place! ...but it was :)

We went down to the pools and it was just the 4 of us, but some Honduran guys were there too, they had brought rice and chicken and tortillas and coke, so they gave us some lunch which was nice! Then we left the pools for the hour and a half trek back to the house. I wanted to hitch but the girls wanted to hang out in the sun...so that’s what we did, I was so burnt when I got back, it was like walking through the desert in the midday sun, just one really long road through the mountains!

The girls left and we braced ourselves for school the following day...the first real day of real school in a real project...

....

Okay so to explain the past few weeks of school...

We now have timetables. I teach grammar or maths first period to grade 5, I was supposed to teach English to one student but she left, so I now have a free period 2, then I teach spelling to grade 1 and 2, then it’s snack...i take the babies for half an hour, then get my snack after that, then I teach grammar to grade 1 and 2, and then spelling to grade 5. Then it’s lunch time. I have a free after lunch and then I teach maths to grade 5.

We start school at about 7.15, whereas for the first week it started at 7, so I was up at half 5 every morning so we could leave the house in time to be there at 6.45... luckily Mercedes changed that to a bit later so now I get up at 6am :)

In kinder there are 5 kids...Magdalena, Scarleth, Karen, Brayan and Milton. They’re a nightmare, but pretty cute all the same J

In grade 1 we have Jeffry.

In grade 2 we have Milton, who is taught at the same time as Jeffry.

In grade 5 we have Lizbeth...and occasionally Ernesto (Mercedes son) if he feels generous enough to grace us with his presence...pffft.

So yeah, 9 pupils, and like 5 teachers? A bit ridiculous. I can deal with it, we had almost double the number of pupils at the start, but suddenly some rumours started being spread around San Juan, so now the campisinos have left the school. (campisinos are the Honduran ruffians)

These rumours are along the lines of...

1) Mercedes was previously renting a different building to house the school, and the landlord claims that Mercedes wont pay her rent, and threatened to kill her. Mercedes then told us ‘If I was going to kill her, I wouldn’t have told her, would I?’

2) When Emma and I lived in the hotel, there was some creep who constantly annoyed us, so we politely told him to get stuffed and leave us alone, and about 2 months later he now claims to be about to shut down the school because he doesn’t like us.

3) The woman who owns the paint shop in San Juan has been spreading the rumour that Emma and I are stealing the local children and sending them to America with us. WE DONT EVEN COME FROM AMERICA YOU RACIST.

But anyway, that’s what we’re at right now... I’m just trying to blank it out to be honest, there is no need for me to get all caught up in it, Mercedes doesn’t care too much so I’m not going to either. It’s just so frustrating, it feels like the locals don’t want us in their community, and that is a really horrible feeling...it feels racist.

We’ll take a break for now

Love, Jen xxx

Costa Bombbbbaa Part 2

Hey again.

Okay so I’d just purchased probably the best $9 Subway I’d ever eaten, and we began our walk back to the hostel. When we arrived, I met two older women from London (I mean around late 50s), the elder one called Elsie, with a chubby red cheeked face :)

At this point I was trying to negotiate with Sean using the free internet where we were going to meet him, as he was currently in San Jose also, but planning was getting difficult, as neither of us had working phones in Costa Rica.

After that, Joan, Aron, Emma and I sat for a while discussing near death experiences, animal attacks and that type of thing, which was very interesting when Joan had been a surf instructor for a very long time...and Aron trained horses!

Then the two of them went to bed, they had early plans for the morning. Emma and I were going to follow suit, we chatted for a bit and were literally about to walk out when a guy came to our table and was like ‘can I sit here?’ and started up a conversation. This man turned out to be called John, and he was very confident and definitely the creator of the ‘not so early’ night which soon followed! Another bunch of Americans came to our table, some guy called David from Minnesota and 3 guys from Milwaukee – Dustin, Kent and Kevan.

Outside on the balcony, we were soon to discover, was ‘THE PARTY TABLE’. This consisted of Alice the birthday girl, a bunch of random people and 2 particularly camp guys. I commented on Nick, one of the camp guys, to Dustin, who continued to misuse my phrase...by saying ‘camp as the Queen’s tent’. Bless...

Elsie and Nick came to join our table (the NEW AND IMPROVED party table) to play a game which John suggested, called Preferences... it was HILARIOUS with Elsie involved...that woman was definitely not shy!! She was the source of the most laughter for the night, and in the end, we ended up getting chucked out the bar for being too noisy!

We moved down to the pool area for a while and chatted in a group of about 20...eventually the groups separated to different areas and I hung out with Alice the birthday girl, Kevan, Nick the Queen’s tenter, and some random German bloke. We played truth or dare using an app on Nick’s iPhone, the best of which involved me wearing a hat made out of toilet paper, having to jump in the pool fully clothed, and some bloke had to make his underwear solely from toilet roll! The party soon ended as I was practically dying from hypothermia from jumping in the pool fully clothed (luckily I wasn’t the only one who had to do that though haha...) so we headed to bed.

The following day, we met up with Kent, Kevan and Dustin to move over to the Costa Rica Backpackers Hostel about 20 minutes away. They intended to go up a volcano at some point over the next few days so we decided to tag along, it’s all about saving the money, taxis are a lot cheaper in a group!

We walked to the new hostel which looked pretty blissful also, but was a bit big, making it harder to meet new people. After my negotiations with Sean the other night, we concluded that he would meet us at this particular hostel at some point that day. Meanwhile, we dropped off our stuff, and decided to head back to the market, then the supermarket. The hostel had a communal kitchen, so Kevan and I were crowned chefs for the evening and decided to feed our group! We bought pasta, chicken, tomato sauce and other such ingredients...and we cooked the most awesome chicken and tomato pasta ever known to man. I say ‘we’, I mean ‘kevan cut the chicken and I did everything else’, it was awesome. We added tabasco to the frying pan of chicken which was definitely a GOOD MOVE.

Kent had brought a load of disposable cameras with him, so he took a few photographs (we’ve got his facebook so I’m going to steal his photos haha...) of the pasta! There was a little pasta left over (no sauce) so we left that on the counter in a big pot for Sean to get when he arrived, and I turned round in my seat at one point to see SOME MAN EATING MY PASTA WITH BARBEQUE SAUCE, WITHOUT ASKING!!!! Let’s say I was a very angry person and we’ll leave it at that.

We decided to resort to the classic game of Kings again while we waited for Sean, and when he arrived he joined in with us :) we had to go to the shop again to stock up which was hilarious, us all trotting down the main road in San Jose to the AM-PM shop. Good times.

Me and Kevan were sitting on one of the 2 man hammocks and Sean came and sat on it with us...that is until it broke! Hahaha...

We all moved to some seats on the grass near the others, and listened to our new dorm mates telling us stories. They were two guys from Israel, and they had some really interesting stories. Ignorance, I know, but I found out that they go straight from school into the army in Israel, where they stay for 3 years, then they get a year out to travel and THEN they head to further education! I had no idea! We talked a lot about politics and modern war and so on...really fascinating stuff. And then we all went to sleep.

The following day, Sean decided he didn’t want to go up the volcano with us and instead wanted to travel on to Panama...so Emma, Kevan, Kent, Dustin, Sean and I left the hostel and walked to the bus stop. We left Sean part way there, and reached the bus station. We took a bus from San Jose to Alejuela, and unfortunately missed the rare bus to Poas from there, so we took a taxi to the town the volcano was in. There were 5 of us in a 4 seater taxi and I was the one to lie across everyone on the back seat. Emma is smaller than me for goodness sake but it was still a good laugh!

We drove for about half an hour to Poas, then a little bit up the mountain to a small bar/mountain shack place called Lo Que Tu Quieres. We had previously purchase long French loaves, salami, cheese, sandwich spread, starfruits, carrots and beverages of course, so we dragged our stash to an area of open grass in front of the mountain shack. The boys decided to set up their tents there, Emma and I, however, went for the better option of a room, with a REAL BED, real covers, real pillows and a real door. The expert camping option I would say. It was a good decision, I wanted a good night’s sleep before clambering up the volcano the next day...

So that evening, we spotted a few HUGE moths, about the span of my hand (and I have big hands)! Jose, the man who owned the place, gave us a huge discount on the camping land and the room, gave us free shots and ice cream and banana and hot chocolate! He helped us gather wood for the best campfire in the world, and Kent had a great time with the machete!

We spent the evening around the campfire, relighting and rebuilding it as it grew old...we could see every single star in the sky, and I saw some unbelievably amazing shooting stars, one of which lasted about 5 seconds and had a huge tail across the sky. We watched the stars rotating around our heads, we played preferences IN SPANISH with jose, which was a good laugh too, and we heard about the tiger cub that lived on the mountain near the shack. We talked more about religion, we talked about our take on the creation of the earth and universe, we talked about what we think happens when we die, and we talked about life on other planets....Kevan was ‘a jerk of all trades’ as he called himself, and reminded me a lot of Stephen (no offence intended there mate haha). He knew a lot about science and astronomy and it was really interesting listening to some theories which had NEVER entered my head! The fire grew old and turned into golden orange embers burning on the grass, and we decided it was time to retire :)

The next day, we got up early and packed our stuff to get ready to walk up the volcano! Jose said we could leave our stuff in Emma and my room while we went up and we could collect it on the way down. We made the last sandwich and got ourselves organised for the 5km walk from the hostel to the entrance of the volcano grounds.

We began our trek, staring out over what looked like the whole of Costa Rica...and got pretty exhausted after about 20 minutes of walking uphill! I spotted a white people carrier bus coming up behind us and hailed it, though the guy wanted $2 each to take us to the gate, even though he was already going there with his empty bus! We decided to reject that idea and he drove off...only to remain hidden around the next corner waiting for us! We hopped in and agreed to the $1 each fee. He offered to take us IN to the volcano, instead of paying the $7 each entry fee, as long as we gave him a donation and hid under the seats of his van. We obliged, and paid him $4 total, so $1 transport and $3 entry fee! SAAAVEEEE!

So yeah, there we were, the 5 fully grown adults hiding under the seats of a minivan. Thank goodness the thing was clean...!

We squeezed out from under the seats ( I recall my exit from that location was the most graceful thing anyone had ever seen, like a Bambi on ice...) and started our walk to the crater!

We, for some reason, decided to take this ‘walk’ at full speed and I thought my lungs were going to either explode or cave in...My throat was definitely seizing up, but it was a HEALTHY kind of pain...it felt fulfilling! We reached the Laguna of Volcano Poas, and were a mixture of impressed and irritated. It was an incredible sight, a natural wonder, but it was SO FAR AWAY! The volcano park was really tourist focussed, and it was so built up and manufactured... I wanted natural, I wanted to BE ON THE EDGE of the Laguna, not looking at it through some frigging binoculars :/ ...but that still couldn’t take away from how truly stunning it was...

We continued our full speed march to the crater and were disappointed for a long time...and then amazed for 5 seconds, and then disappointed again. The top was completely clouded over, and for a VERY BRIEF 5 seconds, the clouds shifted, so we took a few snapshots, and then the cover was back...but yet again I am just so impressed and humbled by the beauty and existence of such an incredible thing that I don’t mind seeing it for such a short time, the image of the smoking crater will not be erased from my memory!

We began our descent from the volcano, and instead of taking the 5km winding road back to the mountain shack, we decided to take a vertical path straight through the fields...that was fun! We got back and had beans, egg and corn tortillas, and grabbed the bus back to Poas town, and I slept on the journey. I also slept on the journey to Alejuela too!

We arrived back in San Jose and the boys decided they were going to begin their travels to Nicaragua that night, so we said our farewells and headed back to Hostel Pangea for our final night of luxury!

We arrived, exhausted, and realised we had to do a LOT of planning to make sure we had enough funds to bring us back to Honduras...considering my debit card hadn’t been working the entire time we were in Costa Rica, I had to borrow money from Emma...luckily she had enough, until now... we were really scrimping and saving to make sure we had enough (our dorm mate for the night gave us a packet of stale cornflakes which we took most gratefully...saved us having to spend ANY money on food for our travels back. We made our money plans, and the internet had stopped working in Pangea so we decided to get our first and only early night! (After an absolutely FREEZING shower...)

We woke up the following morning at 6.30am, and went to reception where the man told us that SEAN had stayed the night. we were pretty gutted to have missed him, I had an email waiting from him that I couldn’t read the night before, when the internet had broken down, so that was probably what he was going to say! We were just about to leave when Sean appeared out of the corridor beside us (at 6.30am) wearing a pair of swimming trunks and a shirt.

He then proceeded to tell us that he had been watching some street dancers downtown in San Jose before heading for the Panama bus, when some guy grabbed his backpack from leaning against his leg and ran! Sean followed but 2 guys came out of nowhere after he caught the guy, so he decided to let it go... so the reason he had just a pair of swimming trunks, a shirt, his passport and a debit card are because they are the only things he had on his person at the time!

We had to depart pretty quickly after hearing this in order to catch our bus, but it was still a massive shame, he had everything in that backpack, almost nothing had been left in his house on Roatan, so he really lost a lot that day :(

We said a quick farewell and headed for the bus stop...the ride to Nicaragua was pretty long. We arrived in Managua and checked into a different, horrible, much cheaper hostel where we met Eric and Chris, two guys from America who were also travelling around Central America. We went for a bit to eat at the same eatery as we had on our journey TO Costa Rica, and then sat watching a documentary about elephantitis and discussing our future plans. Eric was a wild firefighter (forest firefighter) and aspired to be a librarian upon his return to the states. Chris had studied creative writing and was a waiter (yes waiter, not a typo) until he decided to go travelling to surf!

The next morning he was on his way to El Salvador with Tica bus so we got up early and walked to the station with him. We got on our respective buses, ours was stuck in a million traffic jams between Tegucigalpa and San Pedro...so it took us ages to get home! We got to Damaris’s house again, and briefly met Mercedes’ mother and father...and then had egg and bean tortillas again (staple diet). We went to sleep.

The following day, on mercedes’ advice, we went to the immigration office, to find out WE DIDNT NEED TO GO THERE at all... I spoke to fraudsquad, my card was sorted out, and we lifted money at the ATM in the bus terminal...major weight lifted from us there!

We got a direct bus to Gracias...which BROKE DOWN midway between Santa Rosa and Gracias (the last hour of the 5 hour drive...). The bus spluttered a bit and then rolled to a stop! We hung about outside the bus for about an hour at least, just chatting to people and rolling our eyes at the unreliable Honduran bus service (aren’t all bus services unreliable in their own way? *cough* the 44 *cough*). Emma thought I looked like a ‘Russian immigrant’ with my scarf around my head in the rain...mwahaha.

Standing outside it, I met some guy off the bus who spoke English and lived in the city...he had an eyebrow piercing (very rare to have any rebellious piercings in Honduras...) and, unprompted, he confirmed my suspicions of his homosexuality, another MASSIVE shock to my system – homosexuality is not only frowned upon, but can be punished too! He thought Emma and I were together...as in TOGETHER TOGETHER. Hahahahahahaha. He gave us some tajaditas (banana chips fried into crisps) and we just chatted for ages. I sat reading the paper in the bus driver’s seat HAHA.

Another bus eventually passed us so we hopped onto that, and finally arrived in Gracias...and this is where our Costa Rican Visa Renewal Trip comes to an end!

Love, Jen xxx

Costa Bombbbbaa Part 1

Well HELLO again!

It’s been a while, sorry... I just keep thinking that there is nothing major to update and then all of a sudden there is SO MUCH. I’ll try and keep them shorter and more regular AFTER this one :)

Okay, so we had just returned from Roatan to the new house...and we were still in spare beds, not in our designated rooms. Luckily, Mercedes travelled to Lepaera to collect all the stuff from the old house and bring it to this new one, so we ended up unpacking the lorry and moving our stuff into our new rooms :) I ended up with a WONDERFUL queen bed, and a kinda metal frame style shelf and rail for my clothes! So now Emma and I have our own rooms, which is so awesome, it’s nice to finally have somewhere to call MINE instead of living out of a suitcase...

So there were no pupils at the school the last time I wrote, and it kinda remained that way... one of the pupils (also called Emma) turned up each day, but nobody else did, so it was kind of a lost cause... Mercedes ended up cancelling school until the 1^st February. Her reason for no children coming any more was that all the fathers drink away the money. Sure Mercedes, EVERY father was doing the same thing, which is why NOBODY came to school... uh-huh.

So school was cancelled til February, which was good with us, seeing as nobody was coming anyway. I used the time to paint my room, two walls red and two walls cream, and to dedicate myself to go on a diet! Emma decorated her room with pictures and so on too, they both look really awesome now :)

Still during our time off, we went to Gracias (our staple weekend escape...which is becoming a much more common way of escape...) and hung out with Holly. Laura and Renske came from La Union also because Lena, the newest PT volunteer (and Holly’s partner) was finally arriving! She had chosen the 8 month Particip8 course rather than the full year, hence her arrival at the beginning of January. As usual I spent the weekend on the internet in Guancascos (they have WIRELESS!), we all went for Chinese at the restaurant which really delicious, our favourite meal out location! They serve portion sizes big enough for 4 people, so you can imagine the mistake we made the first time we went... at least you can take stuff home with you!

Wednesday 13^th January, I got a package from Grandma! It contained (definitely past tense) Haribo sweets, Percy Pigs, and Wham Bars! I also got a magazine and a few puzzle books to contain my boredom in San Juan...she’ll never know how grateful I am for those! Unfortunately still haven’t received the big package from Mum, cos the big things take ages to arrive.

As I said, we were not teaching until February, but Mercedes asked us to walk around the whole of San Juan handing out leaflets for the school...uuuft. Emma and I traipsed around the ENTIRE town and surrounding suburbs handing little bits of paper out to every man and their dog, and sticking signs up in every pulperia on every corner...tiring work, but it had to be done! The main issue I had with that was not actually the walking, it was more the fact that walking through the dirt roads to people’s houses poses ‘natural’ issues...stray dogs, violent dogs, aggressive dogs, and dogs in general...mothering cows and their calves, aggressive bulls (one chased me right into someone’s house), marshy bog land after rain can always be a good laugh too, in flip flops.

Saturday 15^th, we were ready and packed for our COSTA RICA VISA RENEWAL TRIP! We took the bus to Gracias where we spent Saturday on the internet and relaxing, to get the bus to San Pedro Sula on Sunday. Mercedes had asked us to take a ‘box’ to her daughter Andrea in the city, so we obliged, as she described it...’is not so heavy’. Oh how wrong... we dragged this thing off the people carrier into Holly’s house in Gracias, then had to haul it to the bus station the following day, that was a good laugh.

We took the bus on Sunday lunchtime to San Pedro from Gracias, and ended up having to convert to a different bus at Santa Rosa, and almost forgot ‘the box’. This new bus had many a smashed window and bucket seat and ended up jam packed full of people, but by this time we’re used to that kind of thing. We arrived in the city and a friend of the family came to collect us in his taxi, after driving around the whole Bus Terminal ignoring our frantically waving arms (when they weren’t on the box) for about 20 minutes. The man took us to Damaris’s house (remember them? Mercedes sister, the family we stayed with the DAY we arrived in Honduras?!) and we managed to shift the box onto his responsibility to take to Andrea at Lourdes’s house.

It was really amazing seeing the family again, Damaris, Javier, Javier, Fernando, Damaris and Debora (they like repeated names in this country). They had all changed SO much, as had our perception of their home... I remembered looking at the shower, totally horrified, on arrival, the floor was of poor quality, and it just looked impoverished by my standards... OH HOW THAT HAS CHANGED. Their home is lovely! It was warm and inviting, it was clean (by Honduran standards) and it was NOT impoverished! Not to mention the change in the family, Fernando has grown a lot, Javier jr has lost weight and Debora looks like a right young woman :) they had all lost weight significantly because of their HERBALIFE diet, which apparently we may end up following in the near future...

We arrived at their home to a warm welcome of Javier making baleadas with his mum, and we got hugs and kisses from the whole family :) We had to attempt to get dollars that evening before we left for Costa Rica, so Emma, Javier sr, Fernando and I took a taxi to the city mall. We passed a synagogue which was truly stunning (yes, a Jewish place of worship, here?! I couldn’t believe it!) and eventually arrived at the mall. I literally, metaphorically, had a heart attack. I felt completely lost and awestruck by how URBAN it was! There was an ESCALATOR! This mall was full of bright lights, colourful shops selling millions of shoes, food malls, clothes shops, gadget shops... there was a model in the centre of the walkway containing a Wii and Guitar Hero! There was a Lacoste shop, a Zara... let’s just say it was NOT what I expected, and not what I was used to either! I felt so tiny because we’d been stuck in San Juan for so long, I’d forgotten what it was like to be amongst fashion and money and beauty...

We traipsed around the slippery, shiny mall floor looking for a cash machine that actually contained dollars, but to no avail. We headed over the road about five minutes away to another city mall, passing a McDonald’s, and even better, a SUBWAY (the food store, they don’t do trains or underground in these countries). Javier and I had a nice little joke about Italian BMTs with all the salad and Chipotle Southwest sauce...i promised myself I would get one in San Jose! Unfortunately there was no cash machine with dollars here either, so we had to make our way back...after passing a Guess shop too :P

We returned to the nicest baleadas I’d had in a long time (and I eat them A LOT – remember what they are? Large flour tortilla with refried beans, scrambled eggs, liquid butter and sometimes hard cheese. I added some chilli sauce too, for good measure). We were really exhausted that night and knew that Monday morning would start at 3.45am, so we hit the sack pretty soon after bed.

Our taxi (another family friend) was due to arrive at 4am, so there we were, all settled on the couches, barely keeping our eyes open, waiting for the taxi. We had to be 45 minutes early for the bus leaving at 5am to check in...and 4.15am came and went...eventually, at 4.30am the taxi pulled up, and then we had to make the JOURNEY to the bus station, so we didn’t arrive there until about 4.45am! We scrambled to the Tica Bus terminal, after I lifted a few Lempiras at the station cash machine. We should really have known, by Honduran time we were still early at quarter to 5 haha...

We bumped into a couple of English girls in the queue as we checked in, and smushed our way onto the bus. I was knocked out for 5 hours til we arrived in Tegucigalpa (Honduran capital city...if you could call it that. It’s the equivalent, we all know Glasgow is better than Edinburgh [yeah Kirsty] yet it’s not the capital...the same with San Pedro Sula hehe...). We had a 15 minute stop here where they were selling bogging baleadas and microwave reheated pizza, which I DID buy, and then we were back on the bus, with slightly protesting tummies. The journey to the border was rather uneventful, apart from some TERRIBLE movie called FIREPROOF (don’t even think about watching it unless you can’t get to sleep or want to vent your anger on the TV set, it was atrocious). We watched Fast and Furious (I think) and then Nacho Libre which was actually pretty entertaining in a mindless sort of way.

We arrived at the border and we both got ripped off for dollars, we ended up paying an extra 3 Lempiras per dollar cos Emma didn’t understand what the man was doing. Oh well, what’s done is done. We drove for a further 3 minutes until we reached the Nicaraguan side of the border HAHA (funny to me cos I was like, a minute and a half drive over the border of 2 countries) where we all filed out again. I got an orange (they’re amazing by the way, a woman sits with a massive plastic bucket full of oranges and a knife, and peels them, then cuts through it about a third of the way from the top and hands it to you... they’re so delicious, and mega cheap) and chatted to the English girls again, a woman called Libby who lives on Utila (one of the Bay Islands) and is a dive master for some place called Old Morgan’s or something like that. Was a good chat :)

We got back on the bus and nothing happened and we arrived in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua (I feel it’s my duty to inform you nothing happened because you may think I’m keeping something from you. Seriously, I tell you everything in this, as you can tell). The Tica Bus station was in the middle of a clearly bad neighbourhood...haha. So we walked out of the station and turned right, walked for 2 minutes to the end of that block and arrived at our hostel, after sorting out someone’s major organisation fail by putting Emma and I on different buses the following morning...

Our hostel was called Casa Vanegas, and it was decent enough, it had a low hammock in the wee tiny driveway, and a few different rooms, one computer with internet and some pretty cool backpackers! We got a twin room with a shower, fan and TV for $8 each. We met a guy called Harrison, from Austin, Texas, and we walked up to the pulperia to the left (in the Tica Bus direction... Harrison came from a different bus and arrived at the hostel coming from the RIGHT...and some guy in a car pulled up and was like ‘get the **** out of here, you wanna get shot?!” and all this kinda stuff in Spanish, and then we realised the hostel had a little sign on the counter that said ‘please leave the hostel and turn LEFT...’ which I think explains everything...).

So we went to the little shop and bought a few cans of beer and sat in a little food place and I had an enchilada! It was rice and cut up pork and vegetable in a thick pastry packet and deep fried ;) heaven.

So Emma, Harrison and I sat in the little cafe and chatted for a bit, then wandered home drinking our beers. We stood outside to finish them (not allowed beers or drugs of any kind in the hostel...HA) and then some guy who was helping Harrison and his mate find their way around Nicaragua came out of the hostel and was like ‘welcome to the tropics guys!’ and we got all happy and excited about setting out on our travels, bless us.

We sat on the patio area outside Harrison’s room and I met his mate Bobby who he was travelling with. We talked til 11.30pm about all kinds of stuff, especially religion. I’ve come to accept that it is a BRILLIANT topic of discussion to have with other travellers, and it always seems to come up... you get such an insight from the massive variety of minds and opinions and beliefs that travel the world. I love having those discussions and honestly I keep feeling better and better about my own opinion the more I talk, and the thoughts I have seem to make the believers happy too, they like questioning their faith or something. I don’t really know how to explain but the talks I’ve had with people about religion and deep stuff are often the best. This one was a particularly good one...though I won’t go into it, we’d be here forever as you can imagine (though by the looks of the size of this essay we’ll be here for even longer...) We talked about other things too, the vast size of Texas, how it is as big as France seemingly, and other interesting stuff.

The next day I was up at 5am for the 6am bus to Costa Rica. The journey to the border was uneventful, though the 2 border stops were really long, about an hour on each side... I saw some girl with mango and asked her where she got it, and she just gave me it. It was all lovely and cut up in a plastic bag, and after I’d finished hers I went and got more cos it was super cheap! The rest of the journey was pretty uneventful, and then we arrived in SAN JOSEEEEEE!

We got a taxi from the bus terminal to one hostel that was meant to be amazing, but it was fully booked. We met some other girls who were going to try and book in there too, so we all took a walk to the second place on the Lonely Planet list that appealed to us, a place called Hostel Pangea...we got kinda lost wandering around downtown San Jose in the dark, and ended up being directed to the hostel, which was behind a massive metal wall and a little door with a hole in it...

Oh my goodness this place is AMAZING. You walk in, and as soon as the doorman shut the metal door behind us, we were in pure bliss. This place was stunning, modern, and so welcoming. The walls had all been painted in amazing patterns that let your mind go mad, there was a big pool area, and lots of dorms, 5 computers down the stairs, and another 10 up the stairs. There were 2 bar areas (one with wooden tables and benches for food, and the other with cream couches almost exactly the same as ours at home) and a huge balcony overlooking almost all of San Jose. We could see lights up in the mountains from that balcony...

So we all checked in and got settled. In our dorm were 3 girls from Argentina, who were the epitome of beauty. We met some guys from Australia in the bar areas and ended up chatting to them for a while about their time in Cuba with their broken down rental car...

May I just add right now, I was up at 3.45 am on Monday morning, and 5am the following morning...Didn’t stop me going out this night though DID IT?!

We hung out with the Australians, only 2 of whom made any real impact, Martin was hilllaaarious and reminded me completely or Martin Hislop from home. And then Liam, because Emma gravitated towards him a little :p (she’ll hate me for writing this...) anyway, they were the only 2 names I can really remember. They were talking about ‘smug’ alot.

Smug:

Person 1: “I’m going scuba diving tomorrow” (has massive smile on ones face, bearing NO TEETH)
Person 2: “you SMUG pig.”

Person 1: “What are your plans for tomorrow?”
Person 2: “Oh, I’m going surfing” (sweeps hair back in Loreal advert style, radiates smugness)

Person 1: “So, Jen, what are you doing around these parts then?”
(after a lot of instruction and teaching of how to pull off smug)
Jen: “Oh, I teach English to underprivileged children in Honduras...”
Person 1: stares awestruck and impressed at Jen’s smugness.

ANYWAY, we all decided to head out to El Pueblo, the club/pub/bar complex nearby, which turned out to be entirely empty of anyone but the staff at the bars, and us... We got some tequila at the bar while the American girls did air skipping rope dancing. Liam, Martin and I headed round to ANY other bar considering this one was expensive and only consisted of the group that came with us. We found a really cheap bar where the boys decided they wanted to do ‘tequila suicides’. For those who don’t know what they are...

Tequila Suicides
1. Sniff salt up nostril.
2. Down shot of tequila
3. Squeeze lime in eye
4. Kick person opposite’s shins.

I filmed this for them (yeah they offered for me to participate, I just took the shot haha, but they asked me to film them performing this idiotic ritual...) which was absolutely hilarious to watch, but I learned from their experience and will definitely not be doing it. Ouchhh!

I ended up getting some pizza cos this stuff looked amazing, and that is one thing I really really miss, a goooooood pizza! (Apparently we’re going to make homemade ones with Mercedes or something, great)

By this time everyone was thoroughly bored and ready for bed, especially us what with the amount of travelling we’d been doing, so we headed back to Hostel Pangea and off to bed :)

The following day, I had to check out, then check back in (pointless) but I met a girl called Joan from the Netherlands who was a good laugh, she worked as a surf master and had been around the world working for different hostels, she offered us a summer placement in a surf hostel in Spain whenever we want, which would be awesome in the coming years when I’m a poor student...

She introduced us to a friend of hers called Aron (just one ‘a’) and he knew of a local market in San Jose, so we all took a little trek up the bustling city streets to the market, which was indeed, pretty cute! I decided to be as efficient a buyer as possible and hunted for the best things, compared prices, then walked the entire length of the market back the way, bargaining with the best ones. In the end I got a really beautiful scarf for $11, managed to get Emma in on the scarf scene too, so she got one as well, and then Emma and I both got a pair of earings made from coconut shells...i love them!

We headed to a nearby bakery, the smell radiated up the central avenue, and Emma was immediately drawn in, with Aron and Joan following quickly behind. They each got a HUGE doughnut with toffee icing stuff INSIDE it (it had a hole in the centre too...this was a good looking piece of baking) and chocolate and sprinkles and stuff on top. I didn’t get one, I just drooled over theirs!

Then, I decided I’d saved my appetite enough and after questioning Aron on the nearest Subway, thought it was definitely time to be a tourist...and so we headed there for a footlong Italian BMT on Italian cheese and herb bread, with lettuce, olives, green peppers, onions, chipotle southwest sauce on one half and barbeque on the other, cheese and toasted ...with a fanta to share with Emma and a cookie. It cost the equivalent of $9, which I didn’t realise until I’d purchased it. I am not kidding when I say I DID NOT REGRET IT.

However, for the moment we shall take a brief pause (for a few days) and I will write more of this blog and post it soon. Bet you’re all relieved, eh?

Love, Jen xxx

klickkk

i thought it was about time to add some photographs...holly's ride ;)
holly flying through the AIR
camilo, holly and THE PARTY CAR
emma, on our water taxi ride to west bay
casey, adam, guish (that's how you spell it actually), albert and holly
albert, holly sean, adam, casey and meeeeee
sean carter and myself having megaaa chats.
laura, renske's face through a gap, and casey russel-cantyyyy
renske strutting her stuff on the bar
holly's ride