I'm makin a list, checkin it twice.

Today is November 18, 2008.  I am ready to come home.  I have had it up to here with Costa Rican food.  Today for lunch I had rice and beans and hard-boiled egg.  I had to come home for a snack of Special K just to get me through the day.  On the other hand, I am done teaching.  I have given the vast majority of my exams and the kids are running free—so to speak.  Today my first grade class got cancelled, which is always a relief.  I was supposed to make up an exam for my fourth graders, but I kind of forgot.  And by kind of, I mean I just didn’t want to.  Luckily, I only have 27 days left.  I don’t know how that happened exactly.  My kids think that it’s terrible that I am going home so soon, but I think that by February, they will have forgotten all about me.  I am not entirely sure that I have been a positive influence on them, but I don’t know that it is going to last. 

Last night there was an earthquake!  I didn’t even realize that Costa Rica was susceptible to earth quakes, but last night I woke up at midnight to my bed shaking—well it was more rolling but, you know the feeling.  It was apparently a 6.2!  My host sister Melissa says that the epicenter was in Panama but I don’t really believe her.  She just talks a lot. I don’t think that there is a lot of validity to it, but you know, she's only nine.  No aftershocks to speak of.  During the earthquake, I thought about getting up to hide under something, but then decided against it and just covered up my head. 

I read One Mississippi this weekend.  It was tragic.  But it was also humorous and smart.  I really didn’t see the ending coming.  There was a paragraph towards the end that is actually haunting me.  Every time I think about it I get chills.  It’s strange, when I finish a really good book, I often feel the need to hug it, as if I’m hugging the characters inside instead of just a bunch of bound pages.  It’s weird, I get that, but I can’t help it.  You know how Holden Caufield said that there are certain authors who you read and then feel like you know?  That even after you finish the book you wish you could call up the author?  I don’t get that way about authors, but I certainly get attached to the characters. 

My list of things to do when I get home is getting longer.

1. Meet Me in St. Louis with Katie Perkins (also baking cookies)
2. In-N-Out
3. South Coast with Alison
4. See the Christmas Lights in Naples
5. Really Decent Mexican Food—Chips and Guacamole, fajitas, tacos, who cares, so long as there’s flavor. 
6. Pick up Reid at the Airport
7. See Adam’s dorm room
8. Seven Grand
9. CELL PHONE
10. Taix for French Food
11. Cobras and Matadors
12. Them Terribles concert
13. Gossip Girls Marathon (as well as all other Television I have missed this year.)

So friends and family, the countdown is underway and I am taking requests of things to bring back to the Estados Unidos.  Much Love. Pura Vida.