Liar, liar, pants on fire

Clearly, I'm a liar. I claimed I was going to get better at writing these blogs and stay up to date. And I failed miserably. So no more promises from me. :) I'll just say that I'll do my best to write as much as I can.

The ants have become my arch enemies in my apartment. I kill about 50 a day. Maybe more. I often find one or two on my toothbrush (ALWAYS check before you brush), I find a handful crawling on my clothes in my laundry bag, I find them crawling out from under my keyboard on my laptop (it really disturbs them when I type), I find them inside tightly ziplocked baggies of food (how did they get in there???) ... well, you get the point. They're driving me crazy. And I just had to get that off my chest.

Now, on to less disturbing matters. A couple weeks ago I went to this really cool carnival in a town called Palmares (less than an hour from San Jose). It's apparently the biggest carnival in Costa Rica, and they had all kinds of rides and a parade and clubs. It was a blast.


Last week I participated in my first model UN. It was a little more work than I had imagined. I was India in the Human Rights Council, and we were talking about torture in conflict situations. So I had to do a lot of research on India (what international conventions had it ratified against torture, what was its own record on torture, what countries did it align with). And then the conference lasted three full days, so I was up to my ears in motions for "moderated caucuses" and voting procedures on making "friendly" and "unfriendly" amendments to draft resolutions. It was pretty intense. I learned that speaking like a diplomat is like learning another language. And I learned that, while it's fun to play pretend diplomacy, it can also be incredibly stressful at times.

Last but not least, my sister Wendy is visiting me! She and her boyfriend flew in Wednesday and will be flying back out in a couple days. I met them at the beach this weekend, and we spent a few days relaxing on the Carribean coast. They're on their way to spend a couple days at the volcano now before heading home Friday.

Glenn (Wendy's boyfriend) took this awesome shot:

Wendy and I on a lazy Sunday morning

I have three more friends visiting the first week in March, so my calendar is filling up, people. You only have a few more months to come visit me! :)

You didn't give up on me?

Yup, it's official. I'm the worst blogger ever. Apparently when I heard "holiday," I took that to mean a holiday from blogging too. But now I'm back. And I'll try not to leave you hanging for so long next time.

My big news is that I moved apartments. I was just too far from town, and it was getting to be too annoying. The bus only came every hour and a half, and I ended up taking a lot of taxis. So I moved into a three-bedroom apartment with two other girls from my class. One is from Switzerland, and the other is from France -- except the girl from France actually moved out to another apartment over Christmas break. I'm that hard to live with. :) No, actually she'd been thinking about moving for a while. She wanted to get farther out of town. How ironic. We should have switched places. So, now we have an extra bedroom. Anyone want to move to Costa Rica and live with me? Rent is only $240 a month with everything included. :) It's actually a really nice apartment, too. I'll have to take some pics and post them for you all. This apartment includes such luxuries as hot water throughout the house (most places, including my last apartment, only have hot water in the shower), an oven and a stove (no more hotplates and toaster ovens), a doorbell (most places you have to shout someone's name to get them to come out and unlock the front gate for you), and a balcony. I don't have as great a view, and I don't have a dryer anymore, but everything else is a total upgrade. And I get to have roommates again! So I'm rather happy.

My other big event of the past few weeks is that I went home for Christmas (perhaps that could be my excuse for not blogging??) It was wonderful to be home doing nothing for three weeks (well, I shouldn't say "nothing" -- my old work kept me pretty busy with editing jobs. Thanks, Carol!) I got to spend tons of time with the fam and all my friends in Chicago. I played Trivial Pursuit twice, and lost twice. I played Scattegories once, and lost once. I played Wordsters once, and ... wait ... I actually won that one. But my mom did give me a run for my money. I saw my old high school friends, I saw my old college roommates, I saw my old college newspaper coworkers, and I saw my cats! (They're in "foster care" with my old roommie and former co-owner of the cats.) I was a busy girl.

But now I'm back in Costa Rica. I just flew in last night (Wednesday). I left the house at 5:20 in the morning, and I didn't land in Costa Rica until 9:00. Most of that time was waiting around in airports (I had a layover in Phoenix), but still, it was exhausting. And I had my first class already today.

The weather is absolutely perfect here. Warm, but not too hot. Sunny. I was so happy when I got off the plane and rode in the back of the taxi with the windows down, and then I got in my bedroom and saw some ants crawling around, and I remembered that I wasn't the only one who loved warm weather. The bugs here really are everywhere. I took a shower with a big spider today. And the ants seem to like electronics for some reason -- every once in a while I see one or two on my computer, on my camera, on my printer, on my alarm clock. Other people say the same thing about their electronics. Weird. I'm looking at two tiny ants crawling on my desk right now. Wait, there's another one. Sigh. You may be freezing back in the States, but if you're relatively bug-free, you should count yourself lucky.