remiss in my duties

...I'm practicing my British English, though I am still speaking it with a Costa Rican accent.

As Nick, who called me this morning from the States so kindly pointed out, I really need to update! In the month since my last post, I've had a few more run-ins with the parrots, but they seem to have decided that it's not that much fun to wake me up now that I've decided that I kind of like them. Go figure.

First up, Justine and I were in Honduras a the beginning of June for the Fulbright student seminar. After our flight was cancelled and we spent almost 12 hours in the Juan Santamaria Airport here in Costa Rica (I still don't know why we didn't go home to nap for a bit), we made it to Honduras, where Embassy staff proceded to scare us out of our wits by telling us that if we wanted to go across the street to the Mall we should take a cab.

The whole conference was neat, we got to hear what all the other postgrad Fulbrighters are doing, of course almost half of them are working on doctoral dissertations, so their projects were a wee bit more organized and official than ours. No matter, ours were fun (Rachel O'Toole was right, I think the recent graduates had much more interesting and exciting projects...and we don't have to try to fit them into what some dissertation committee might want to see).

On the down side, the whole trip was to smart. I can't think of one normal conversation I had. Basically, there was an expert for everything we talked about - birds, trees, churches, unions, women, immigration, social spending, etc.

We visited a banana plantation. The same as usual, although because it was a Chiquita owned farm instead of independent contractor, it had amazing, but oh so amazing, labor conditions and environmental standards. The next day we went to Copan...way better than the last time I was there because we got to go into the tunnels. Also, we had abrief lecture by a super duper famous archeologist (former Fulbrighter, of course), who discovered some of the most important artifacts and temples in Copan.

Afterwards, we went to a bird sanctuary, called Macaw Mountain. Here, I learned to love the parrots that no longer torment me outside my window. We got to hold some of the more docile birds - a scarlet macaw and birds that looked suspiciously like my little neighbors. The scarlet macaw is huge (Mom, those are the huge birds we saw in Guanacaste!!!) and heavy and BEAUTIFUL!

Anyway, we got home to Costa Rica safely, after a litle heart pounding episode where we weren't sure we were going to make our flight from Honduras to El Salvador. But we did.

That was a Friday. Saturday Justine packed up and Sunday she flew out. The next Friday, Nick left. And now I live in a big (though not empty apartment). I say not empty because several colonies of ants have moved in with me. Yesterday, as I was throwing together some dinner (before going to watch the novela Pasion de Gavilanes at Chris' house..Nick, I'll give you an update next week) I noticed a thin black line running above my pantry, across my hallway wall, behind the bathroom sink. ANTS! I think they were moving the entire colony. Because evidently the wall inside my laundry room is not as inviting as behind the bathroom sink. Anyway, I cruelly sprayed them all, half-poisoning myself as well as them.

And really, that's the most exciting thing that's happened in a while. Everything else is just plain pura vida.