Jungle Chicks

Hey!

hope you are all well, congratulations Leanne!!! and happy birthday Jo!!! we´ve moved to volunteer now and we´re in the back of beyond,watched the england game tho on tues with a load of portsmouth fans strangely enough!it´s much hotter and humid than samara as we are closer to the rainforest and further along the coast, the nearest town is montezuma and its got internet so we´re taking the opportunity to update now before we travel back to our rainforest village in a bit! took absolutely ages to travel here last sunday from samara along the worst roads we´ve ever seen-montezuma is really just along the coast from samara but the roads are that bad it took 4.5 hrs!! when we got here, we´d literally just stepped off the bus with all our gear and were about to board for cabuya (where we are based) when vic well and truely made an entrance and fell flat on her face with all her baggage in the middle of montezuma!! luckily she wasnt too hurt and escaped with a few grazes;good way to meet the locals anyhow!!so far everyone´s been very friendly tho-on the way there we had locals guiding us to the cabinas and more importantly where to get off the actual bus-cabuya´s not really that obvious considering there´s basically nothing there save a restaurant and a lot of dogs!!

its very well...how do you put it...basic where we live!! school is just along the road from us and we have two classrooms with one male teacher and one female teacher, it´s got no resources and we teach in the unfinished shell of their new hall-the first day we literally had to set up our classroom-we have a victorian blackboard and 12 tiny wooden desks-the first day the kids tipped one over and a scorpian ran out!! we are only here for this week and tho then we´re off to punteranus in the mountains.

the actual place here tho is very beautiful,its on the pacific coast with waves crashing everywhere and loads of hippies in montezuma so sure you´d all like it! right next to us just off the pebble beach we´ve got an island that we are looking forward to exploring. it´s very safe here, the kind of place where you say hello to everyone you meet along the road. we live in a...shack....in a wood next to a pebble beach. Its baaasic-claire´s lucky as she has an ensuite:well a toilet plus a "shower" which is basically a cold water pipe!!! when we arrived we realised it was actually rooms rather than a homestay but we are practising our spanish with the kids non the less!Rosaura our landlady was turning down claire´s room when we first got here and a bat was roosting there and flew out! it´s new roost is above victoria´s door in the corridor! walls are open to the elements at the top also so alot of companions come to visit!! first night a huge cockroach crawled onto claire´s back and she about screamed the place down!we´ve made friends with the cat now tho and last night we let her hunt in our bedrooms before bed and she caught it! also the german girls who were staying there the first week with us have very kindly left us their roach spray so we are now prepared! not as many mossies as in samara tho thankgod, just alot of fire flies instead which are way cooler as they light the whole place up! we can see monkey´s from the house balcony and today at breakfast a gecko ran up claire´s leg!

kids are very cute, we are teaching them loads of vocab, yesterday we went to the local nature reserve at cabo blanco-in the back of the warden´s pickup truck(!!) and looked for animal tracks with the kids and helped them make plaster moulds of them-we ended up with one good deer one and about twelve other squashy messes!

food is good tho-we are cooked for morning and night and can have as much rice beans and meat as we like tico stylee and there´s a local man there who goes around making monkey sounds all the time which adds to the entertainment!!-both missing the choice (and fruit) that we had in Samara (yeah we def were completely spoilt there!) but there´s some excellent coffee/icecream down in montezuma instead! By the way our last night in Samara was absolutely amazing-it had rained the last few days but that night was the clearest ever and it was all lit up with the brightest stars so we all went out onto the beach to get a better look and realised we were looking at the milkyway, then as we watched, Sarah our friend from switzerland and us all saw the same shooting star literally drop out of the sky-was a very special last night.

we have rented bikes now too so that´s cool, they are amazing trekking bikes with suspension thank god! although its only 4 miles to montezuma from cabuja where we are based the bus only comes every two hours and that´s on costa rican time!! its ok tho..all experience hey, we all need challenges right?!!

with love fron Victoria and Claire XXX

PS;

has anyone seen the latest OC?! oh my god!! if anyone saw it please comment-we randomly saw an episode in samara and couldnt believe what happened!!

PPS what´s happening in Lost? (from vic!)

PPPS; added to our total of 4 card games that we know this week by learning to play shithead - does anyone know if you can put a ten down whenever?!..even if a 7 has been put down before?!..it´s been causing issues over the dinner table card games!!

PPPPS; any questions/comments from you lot please forward!!!!