Down the Rabbit Hole: Monday, February 21st: Part 2

...Continued

Once it was totally dark, we headed back to Samara from Carillo. Gerald dropped us off at Casa Esmerelda, so that he could go home and shower (he had come straight from work) while we had dinner. We immediately placed a bet against Max that our bff was not coming back due to his great disappearing act prior to today. After we ordered the fish with avocado sauce that the TEFL grads always raved about, Emma and her friend Betty showed up and sat down to eat with us! Yay!

We have to take a break to tell you about Betty. We think we told you how Emma had spent 3 weeks volunteering on an organic farm somewhere in Costa Rica before coming to Samara for TEFL. Her great new friend Betty had worked at the farm with her so they had only met a month prior. Betty is 66 years old (that is not a typo). Emma had told us all Betty her weeks ago with a huge smile on her face building her up to be quite the character and amazing woman. Well, as usual, Emma was right. Betty was incredible. Her husband had passed away unexpectedly a year ago and she decided she needed to heal and rediscover herself, her independence, and her inner-little girl, so she was traveling around doing just that. She was soft spoken but full of insight and had such a light to her. We listened to her story and shared ours. In that moment, I think we realized how much our interactions with the people that we had met were impacting us. Betty had no ego, or condescending tone; she was just as ready to learn and share with us and we were with her. This town is pretty young and we honestly had not had much interaction with anyone a bit older. It put things into perspective for us. Life is a journey, and you have to seek it out as you want when you want. Your age doesn’t really matter, which Betty re-assured us by telling us that she truly believed her best days are yet to come. Society makes our life seem like a linear timeline but Betty made it seem like a circular journey of learning and experience with no end date in sight. What a lesson to walk away from.
Ok ok, sorry for the reflective hippie moment….keep in mind who the authors of this thing are.

Back to our thrilling adventure of our last night in Samara. Oh and P.S. in case you hadn’t noticed, we never got around to packing earlier and we were scheduled to catch a bus out of Samra at 9am the following morning. We made a quick priority list which went something like this…

Priority 1: Fun
Priority 2: Friends
Priority 3: Adventures
Priority 4: Goodbyes
Priority 5: Packing and Organizing

Perfect! Now down to business to accomplish the first 4 priorities – everyone knows it doesn’t make sense to worry about the lowest priority on your list.

Max accompanied us to Aribba to meet the TEFL’s and whoever else we could drag out on a Monday for our last big hoorah. We left Emma and Betty to finish off their bottle of red, quite the feat for Emma the lightweight whose wine buzz was increasing by the sip. We walked out of Casa Esmerelda and straight into Gerald, looking clean and showered but a little tired, most likely because of the extremely long walk he took from home into town so he could get his buzz on and not have to drive, safety first. We were actually kind of surprised by this choice since Tico’s are usually such reckless drivers. Max won his bet and we went on our way.

When the four of us arrived at Arriba we saw Jessica, Amanda, Kristen, and Aryan – all a little tired and tanned from their fishing adventure that morning, well except for Aryan who didn’t go for whatever reason. We were so happy that they had managed to put some party pants on to help celebrate our last night! Glen, the young Nebraskan hippie musician and owner of Aribba was adamant that we were going to have a great last night and he pulled out a stack of cups and made sure everyone had beers before starting a huge flip cup game at the super long wooden table that seemed like it had been made just for that…and knowing Glen it probably was. If you are sitting there scratching your head and wondering what flip cup is then you are seriously missing out and maybe kind of a dudder...not necessarily though, you could have just been grounded a lot in your senior year of high school and missed the flip cup glory days…or perhaps a germaphobe that has no desire to drink out of a most likely reused plastic cup. Anyway, if this is you learn how to play immediately (click here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_cup) and start practicing every morning with a splash of OJ in a plastic cup. You will be a flip cup champion, or a “one-flip wonder” like yours truly (it’s not bragging if it’s true) in no time at all!

Raffa, the flirtatious and slightly creepy Tico bartender at Arriba let Jenny borrow his iphone to attempt to skype that boyfriend of hers (which failed because it is Costa Rica after all) and she noticed his last google search was “flip cup” so we were happy that our game could enlighten him. Betty and Emma showed up and both joined our flip cup game, along with a group of people we didn’t know. The tunes were great, the company was awesome, and the competition was pretty rowdy. We had a great time as team “sweaty messes” took on the team that was too lame to make up a name. After our night of flip cup and hanging out with everyone we decided to walk home with Max and Emma and finally get around to the last priority in our list. We said our goodbyes and all talked a lot about friending each other on facebook. So funny that we live in a world where you never have to lose touch with anyone completely. We walked home and said bye to Max, who told us we were more than welcome to come for free rafting where he works in Kentucky any time.

It was 2:30am when we got home and we may have flipped one cup too many. We had been up and moving since 7am and packing sounded pretty terrible. Thanks to Kelly’s ihome we managed some motivational theme music and we got it done before collapsing into bed for a few hours. What a phenomenal last day and night in Playa Samara. We really do lead charmed lives and we certainly are living them to the fullest.