Pura vida.

          As I sit here, red bean bun in hand (gyaahhhh dim sum) after a morning of errands in foggy downtown San Francisco, I have no -idea- where to begin. San Jose to Guatemala to San Salvador: a day of travelling, looking at the 2000+ pictures and hour of videos Moncho gave us when we left, and mentally preparing for both the United States and for functioning without the 27 people (plus Kathy, 28) that I've come to know and love so wildly over the last three months and twelve days. How I'm back already is...absolutely beyond my scope of understanding. Temperate, cool, fogged city---paved roads, traffic-light-obeying drivers...and the hills of Marin County I came to know so well this past summer. It's both weird that I'm back and weird that this is...home. This gorgeous city. 

Summary: Everything is currently disorientingly familiar. 

Like my car, Priscilla, in the driveway: or Wootsie on the bed I slept in last night, waiting for me.
I struggled a bit with my phone. Texting and power buttons and the sheer WEIGHT of the thing. So weird.

Dryers and the dishwashers: soap that doesn't smell like jasmine or come in a pasty blue cylinder. 

And...of course. Having to throw toilet paper in the toilet. I've been tricked every time there's a trash can nearby. Jeff: I know you feel me. 

.......

I'M GOING IN REVERSE.

 Let's go back to the last few days and recap the end of the best 3.5 months of my life.  

For Janessa's 21st birthday on Thursday, we had a body paint extravaganza in the upper classroom. 

...After a barbecue with our professors on the front porch. Cake, steak, and beer. We were nuts. 

And Janessa was genuis. 

Swallow-tailed kites. 

...Pomona dreaming. 

Even the weird Texan bugmen joined in! Yayyyy scientists. 

We body painted them both by the end of the night. 

Almost as good as the time they played jump rope with us. 

...Parish (scientist #1) brought a scorpion, a gold beetle, and this guy for nightly show and tell. 

He's been looking for a gold one for ages. 

Sarah, lookin' fancy. 

The gang, pre-going out. 

OH! Jeff graduated from Hope College this semester, so we had a ceremony for him and presented him with hastily-made cap and diploma, signed by Alan Masters himself. 

This is undoubtedly the best graduation picture ever taken. Of anyone. 

Skyler, getting creative. For all you LoTR fans (the ones who matter),  I don't really need to caption this. 

...bamf. 

SO WE CELEBRATED. We all managed to get our second submissions of our papers in by noon on Friday (and some of us managed to make the 9 k trek to the San Luis Waterfall for some last-Monteverde-day birdwatching and stream-scrambling). 

After that, we packed our bags and set off to San Gerardo station for one last night in our natural habitat: 

biological field stations deep in the forest: bunks and delicious tico camp food, sing-alongs by lantern-light and Flor de Cana with fresca and coke. 

...with capture the flag, heat lighting in the distance, a picture and video slide show of Moncho's design, skits by the students satirizing the professors (with love), the Jacamar I wanted to see, and the music refusing to stop until two hours after we'd been told to quiet---it was everything we all could have hoped for. 

Minus the presence of Jessica Forbes, who had to leave early, before the hike. 

Her departure brought the first tears on:  and as we worked our way through Country Roads, The Gardener, Hallelujah, Branko requesting Sheryl Crow and Johel swinging his mug to De la Cana se Hace el Guaro...more of us lost it. Gyah. Focusing. 

After a morning of gallo pinto and patacones, we walked five hours, fording five rivers to get to Lake Arenal and the volcano. It was like old times, and really reminiscent of the hikes around Eladio's:

 from the horseflies to the guans. 

Thirty minutes on the shore of the lake found me splitting a last, triumphant mango from Skyler's homestay family with Kayla's knife: covered in mud and sweat and feeling uneasy at the prospect of a single day left to be with the CIEE family. A single day in Costa Rica, that is. 

...Much of the hike was spent making plans for summer to meet up. Reminiscing. 

[[BLAH I CAN BARELY HANDLE THINKING BACK ON THIS RIGHT NOW]]

....ahem. 

For two hours, we threw ourselves wildly down water slides and 

hung out in hot spring hot tubs at the base of the volcano. 

Alan brought "accouterments" for our sodas, and we felt wildly under-dressed and dirty in a resort setting. 

Then there was our last sunset: seen under cloud cover, dusky red and gray over San Jose in the rain. 

We ate our last dinner at the same restaurant we ate in on night number two, before the first field trip. 

Disorientingly familiar. 

Familiar, though, in that the twenty eight---waahhhh Jess Forbes---twenty seven of us that seemed so many the first time around seemed unbelievably smaller. Our family. The people that I, to quote a journal entry on March 20th, have shared anti-itch cream, rum, and tents with--long nights studying and mangoes at breakfast with--my stories and their stories and the magnificence of a life-changing experience. 

We all drank wine, toasted each other and Skyler when his birthday cake was brought from the back--

and made our way back to Hotel Balmoral, where it all began. 

....I don't have to repeat that disorientingly familiar part again. Not really. 

         The better part of an hour was spent weeping and hugging and singing each others' and our professors' praises in the front lobby. I feel fairly bad for the hotel staff who had to deal with us: this big, blubbering, sentimental mess of biology-fueled love: the kind that runs deeper than iron-red-tropics-clay stains at the seams and knees of our garments. Honestly, the time I got to spend with all these passionate, insane, endearingly vulgar, fantastically nerdy, BEAUTIFUL, knowledgeable nature-loving people was the most self-affirming experience I've ever had. I have come back to the states tanned and a little wilder, with my eyes a little wider and my view on life more complex, more solid than it has ever been. CIEE really knows how to drive conservation and an appreciation for both life and the environment home. 

Alan's hope that every single one of our lives were changed is certainly a reality. 

      I could write for days about all that Costa Rica meant to me, but honestly, I'd rather tell you face-to-face, or in the pictures. It was more than I could have ever hoped for, and studying abroad is certainly the best academic decision I've made at Pomona. It's beyond odd that with my flight out of San Jose yesterday, I was done with my junior year of college: I am now a senior. That's just disorienting. 

So...for parting shots, I have some final stats. 

36 close friends gained. Two new families acquired.

510 bird species identified. 

Five classes taken and passed: six out of seven Costa Rican provinces visited and appreciated. 

103 of the best days of my life. 

And last but not least: an outlook on the other side that is purely Pura Vida. 

         Thanks to everybody who made this semester what it was to me: I look forward to adventuring with you all in the future, because we certainly haven't seen the last of one another. The memories and knowledge gained  will be with me forever. I can't wait to see what I can give back to the earth in the future to pay forward all the love and wonder from that unbelievable country: Costa Rica. 

...the end?

Cheers.