Romeo himself - please note his lasso
Luanna our neighbor!
Today we woke up and had some mellow time around the apartment. Actually mellow is a pretty good word to describe our entire day. It was muggy and overcast and the whole town of Samara seemed to be pretty dozy. We wandered into town, found internet, and talked to our families about travel arrangements for a while. Kelly browsed around the local shopping area (2 very small boutiques) while Jenny did some skypeing (no surprise there!) More wandering around until we decided we were starving and we stopped at our new favorite beach spot, La Vella, for the most delicious chicken wraps. Our expectation for hating the food here was totally incorrect and as a result we find ourselves eating like cows far more often than is desirable. Next, more wandering, browsing the handmade jewelry and hammocks that street vendors were selling. We found our way to The Dragonfly, the art museum here….or so it calls itself. The Dragonfly is a hand painted building surrounded by artistic structures made of wood, metal, beads, shells….anything really. After walking through the shell curtain that serves as the door, we found ourselves in the ultimate artsy little shop which sold everything from carved wooden frogs to handcrafted jewelry to large ornaments made of fossils and rocks. The shirtless Tico who owned the art showed us a book of henna tattoos and said we could go upstairs to look through it. Upstairs we presume was where he lived. It was totally full of random paintings and art supplies with every inch of wall space covered in paint and drawing. This was the ultimate artists den, so beautiful in its random strangeness. If we hadn’t fallen all the way down the rabbit hole yet, we certainly just had. Next, more wandering out of town and to our apartment for a much-needed siesta. We ran into Jessica, Sara and her mom, and Emma. Planned with both Jessica and Emma to meet them around 7:30 at Tabunuco for Valentines 2 for 1 cocktails, what a way to celebrate! We arrived back to our neck of the woods greeted by a pack of the neighborhood boys on bikes swinging their homemade lasso’s over their heads and shouting “hoollaa chiccaas, gringasss gringas!” at us. The most charming of the bunch, an adorable little boy sporting a backwards red cap, took this opportunity to wow us with his Ingles. He looked over with a raised eyebrow and said "hellooo." What a little charmer! These kids clearly knew how to have a good time and they came over to show-off their best lasso and dance moves – one hell of a spastic combination. We met a little girl who was watching them play, Luana, who talked to us on-and-on in rapid Spanish about the tiny filthy doll she was holding. She was a total sweetie-pie and someone we could definitely spend some quality porch time with, so we did. Siesta delayed, play time took precedence. Played out after a while we headed in for nap time and then got ready to go out for 2 for 1 cocktails at Tabunuco. We met Jessica, Aryan, Amanda, Tim and the other TEFL graduates there and sipped a v-day mojito. It was surprisingly dead so we headed to Sol y Mar to check out karaoke, which turned out to be 3 Ticos taking turns belting sad slow-moving Spanish songs into the mic. Before walking all the way in we decided that this was not the place for us so we all called it a night and headed home. Upon arriving home we realized Jenny is having super cell phone seperation anxiety and Kelly is experiencing movie separation anxiety. Kelly won when she turned on the TV to find Bridget Jones Diary starting at the very beginning in English. Jenny lost as she wandered around the dirt road outside waving her cell phone in every direction for 45 minutes with no luck, ggrrrr. Time to rest up for surf lessons tomorrow!
P.S. you may be wondering what happened to school at Intercultura – classes were full for this week so school is out and fun is in. We agree that this is probably better for our travel budget in the long run but a definite bummer in the short term, especially when we are trying to understand the neighborhood kids.
pps-- Happy Valentines Day to all our loved ones. Thanks for all your love and support and know you are heavy on our hearts throughout this adventure! <3 onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoHoofhLwMYl25YKGRd6NxHjyg1HOs0JvA1kh8JmRe_n4Zzt2llE4PyBvgQhKWld1LInu3npvnVVHjNuihc-Da-qldkhUJOI-agysbcnYb-EGvDthC30GmcNdTnEsTdskHh8YO8ccI6Tk/s1600/JENS+CR+PICS+112.JPG">
Valentines :)
With the TEFL grads!
No comments:
Post a Comment