I can't believe it is already November. This trip is going by really fast, but I am enjoying it. I will be ready to come home in December, however, to see my family and friends. I miss everyone.

On a happy note, I had a good weekend. Friday we celebrated All Hallows Eve. The Costa Ricans don't celebrate Halloween, so the kids from Puntarenas and Heredia came to San Ramon for the fiesta. There were about 90 of us gringos, and our professors, but it was fun. We discovered that the Puntarenas kids really like to party (hence I'm glad I chose San Ramon because I wouldn't have fit in with that group). Mostly everyone had a costume, and I was a scarecrow. It was a fun evening.



A group of my friends and I then went to Monteverde. We were there Saturday and Sunday morning. We stayed in a little hostel and cooked a family style spaghetti dinner on Saturday night, which was really fun. Monteverde was beautiful, but it reminded me more of a place in the US (Cannon Beach, Oregon, in particular). It was very touristy (fancy hotels, Italian restaurants and art galleries and souvenir shops everywhere), everyone spoke English, and the activities were all very expensive (it even cost money to hike, which was annoying. We were lucky on Saturday to find a trail that no one was guarding, so we didn't have to pay. We found a little waterfall, and saw some monkeys. We also visited the cheese factory. I'm glad I went, but it was definitely a different experience.