long time, no post (nicaragua & panama)

so i know, i had this plan to post more about my trip to nicaragua during semana santa (easter week) and now it's late april.... so i guess i'll go with the condensed version.

the absolute best part of our trip to nicaragua was that the morning we moved to this cheaper hostel (after our late arrival the night before) we hear the people running get a phone call.... the turtles are hatching. so they organize this trip late that night to see the baby sea turtles hatch at this reserve beach (la flor i believe). so we were completely into it and probably like the first people to sign up. that night we go and it's so cool. probably one of the coolest things i've seen here. not only did we see the turtles digging their way up out of the sand and heading for the ocean (bathed only in red light so as not to disturb them) but we also saw a big turtle who came to shore late lay her eggs. so. cool.


so that was weeks ago now.... and i needed to leave the country again before my trip home in july. and we had a long weekend just this past one (batalla de santa rosa - costa ricans fought against the evil american william walker) and so we went off to panama. here i am crossing the border - yes, i'm walking on a rickety old railroad track bridge. super dodgy, but this is the border between costa rica and panaman.


and this one is me doing a cartwheel off this diving board at a bar. the problem was i was overshooting my dives a little bit and slapped my legs pretty good a couple of times (and i still have the bruises to prove it. so my diving coach encouraged me to make like i was doing a cartwheel in the air off the end of the board, and doing a little flip landing feet first. scary the first time, but so much fun.


so that's what i've been up to. it's the end of the first quarter and i'm kind of swamped with trying to get all my grades together, grading papers, and blah blah blah. definitely a learning experience this past quarter.... seeing how this how grading thing is playing out, i am definitely doing some things a little different for the next quarter.

tomorrow is festival imperial, which should be pretty awesome. i'm going to see smashing pumpkins and incubus, for a mere ¢10,000 (that's $20). and i've heard the ticket includes some free beers too. after all, imperial is la cerveza de costa rica.

i never get to go anywhere...

so as promised i finally have a couple of pictures from panama. and one from puerto viejo (on the right). i actually hope to have some more from puerto viejo soon. i think i wrote about swimming out to this massive coral/rock thing, well, i'm waiting for those photos from a friend.

anyhow. these are some of the dolphins we saw (yeah, dolphins!) they were just sort of swimming around in this bay. it was pretty cool. i didn't really get many good pictures (most of them were just of water, or the tip of a fin) but this is one of the good ones. i think you can tell that they are dolphins and not sharks...


the other picture i have is of the place we had lunch at. i think bocas del toro is such a cool place. i mean, it's basically a set of islands, and everywhere has a dock, and all of the restaurants and bars and stuff have little docks and you can sit by the water... so after seeing dolphins, hanging at a beautiful island beach, and cruising around in a speed boat, we had lunch at this cool place. man, i love bocas.


not sure what my next plans are, still trying to work out work stuff... i'm hoping to get a new job next year working in a bilingual high school. of course the complication is that i need to give a "bimester" notice (that's a two month session here - it's kind of spanglish, not a real word in english) at my current job and that's by the end of next week. i've sent resumes to a few schools that i'm interested in, and i know one of them actually called my current school (which didn't go over that well with my boss - who does that? calls your current employer?) but i haven't heard anything else. the thing is, there's a high liklihood that i will get a job at another school. but it might not be until closer to the end of the school year (which is december here - they run on southern hemisphere school schedules for the most part). so do i put in my notice now so that i'm actually available for another job? or what? let's have some opinions please!!!!

back with a fresh visa

for those of you who were concerned about me going to panama... i assure you it was not a scary place. (in fact it was pretty touristy- at least where i was). and that i'm back. photos and stories to follow.