Busy Week&Weekend

Earthquake!
Okay, so my week wasn't that busy. Although, the 7.9 earthquake made it a little more interesting. This was my first earthquake..not technically but I count it as my first. When I was really young I remember we had an incredibly small earthquake but I pretty much slept through the whole thing, so I don't like to count it as an earthquake. Anyways, it happened on Wednesday, September 5th. I was sitting in history class when literally my entire world was shaken up. Not only was the ground shifting from side to side, it was tilting. Everyone in my class was running, screaming, and crying as I was looking to my teacher for help. It started off very smooth, so I assumed it was just a common small earthquake and would be over quickly. That was not the case! Suddenly it got harder. Once again I thought that would be the worst of it. By this time most of my class had ran out of the classroom and into the courtyard outside. Then, it got harder..and harder. Now, I knew I had to get out of the building so I ran with the rest of the class outside. Luckily I found I friend very quickly and she was one of the few generally calm about what we had just experienced. We stayed in one place to wait for the ground to completely calm down and when we were able to walk again, we went to find our other friends who were not doing as well. After calming some people down, my sisters found me and we started making our way to the house with a couple of my sister's friends. While they were still in tears and shaking uncontrollably, I was in utter shock. It is the wierdest feeling I have ever felt to have literally your entire world shaken up and to lose your ability to confidently put one foot in front of the other.

Busy Weekend
Now, when I say I had a busy weekend, I mean it! Friday night one of my host sister's took me to a discotheque with her and her friends for dia de los niños. It was incredibly fun, and I had a great time! Then, Saturday I pretty much slept and rested because I was exhausted from the discotheque and we didn't have any plans that day. Then on Sunday, we went to a soccer game, I got to skype with my parents, and my host sisters and a friend tried to teach me how to dance. I have come to realize that dancing like a Costa Rican is pretty much impossible if you didn't grow up dancing to spanish music. You may be able to learn the steps to a dance, but it will take an immense amount of practice to learn how to dance. We ended up going to bed around 10 30 sunday night, and I was woken up at 12:30 (only 2 hours later) to Ivannia and her friends chanting my name. This brings me to a whole new catagory.

Monday's Ceremony
Each year, every section that is in their last year of school does something like this to celebrate. They don't do it as a whole grade, they do it with the kids in the class. Only one person knows the night and day that it will be, and it is up to them to plan everything. Here is how the tradition goes:
You have a cattle car, and written down where everyone lives. Depending on where you are in the line up decides how much sleep you get that night. The cattle car goes to everyone's house to pick them up. When you arrive at the house, you take anything loud you can find and bang on the windows, the doors, the walls, and sing as loud as you possibly can to wake the person up. When the person wakes up, you rush them to get   their stuff, take some of their food, and get them into the cattle car. In the cattle car, everyone was screaming, chanting, and a few made the attempt to sleep..although it was a very loud and bumpy ride so I don't think that worked out very well. We made it to the center of Naranjo at about 2 :30 in the morning and waited there until 4:30 for the bus to take us to wherever we were going. We arrived in a place called Fortuna de San Ramon at about 6:30 in the morning and everyone showered(no one was looking their finest at this point), ate breakfast, and headed straight for the pool. We spent the entire day in this gorgeous residancy playing various games in the pool, playing pool, foosball, and basketball in a small room they had, singing karaoke, and dancing to spanish music. Dancing to spanish music was not a highlight for me since, as explained before, I have a lot of difficulty with it. One of the guys who is a phenominal dancer asked me to dance and I had to explain to him that I simply don't know how! It was incredibly embarresing. But, overall I had a great time and was honored that Ivannia's friends wanted me to join them on the trip! We ended up getting home around 6:30 at night, and I headed for bed at 7:00. My family didn't make me go to school today since I was so exhausted, so that is the only reason I have time for this blogpost!

Well, I believe that is it for this week and weekend. I hope everything is well with my readers and I hope you are enjoying my blog!

Tieta