Enjoy junior Claudia Benson’s journal about her Winter Term 2013 trip to Costa Rica. Claudia is a Criminal Justice and Spanish major from Newburgh, Indiana.

January 9, 2013- As we are in the sky and seeing all the beauty from above, I keep wondering if it’s really me on that plane almost landing in Costa Rica.

This is a dream come true.  This is place is an amazing place with its beauty, its people, and its culture, “Pura Vida.”

January 10, 2013- Today we went to Inbio Park. It was an amazing park where you are able to see the different flora and fauna Costa Rica has. We met a tour guide who was very specific in explaining all the information we needed to know about the place. The most amazing part was when we walked through where the butterflies where and after chasing them for a few minutes, one came up to me and stood on my right arm. The tour guide said to me, “you are going to have good luck for a year.” That was really good to hear!

Also the food in Costa Rica is amazing. In the mornings at the hotel where we are staying (Christina Suites), they serve a buffet, all you can eat. They have gallo pinto (rice and black beans), fresh fruits (papaya, pineapple, watermelon and others), eggs, vegetables, homemade bread, yogurt, different kind of fruit juices, coffee, tea, and other delicious food.

January 11, 2013- Today we went to El Volcan Poas – a main crater, active and beautiful in Costa Rica. It is very well-known for its beauty and excitement. Next to it was the Botos Lagoon. It is an extinct volcanic crater filled by rainforest. Only a few microorganisms and algae can live in it. Then we went to La Paz Waterfalls with over 70 acres of wildlife and forest to explore. You are able to walk around and see the animals and watch the waterfalls sprinkle on your face. You also walk through long trails wind along the La Paz River through both cloud and rainforest, showing the diversity of the plant and wildlife, while not disturbing the natural surroundings.

After walking for so many acres, we decided it was time to find a coffee shop to try the delicious Costa Rican coffee. We drove to San Jose and found a coffee shop called Café Don Mayo. Don Mayo comes from the best coffee-growing zone in Costa Rica, the highlands of Tarrazu, by a small family business dedicated to cultivation, processing and exportation of their own coffee farms, for the most demanding markets worldwide. It has been recognized as the best coffee in Costa Rica, winning the First Place in the Cup of Excellence Costa Rica 2009.

January 12, 2013- Today we went to the National Park Braulio Carrillo. The park was established on April 15, 1978. It is the most extensive area in central Costa Rica with 117,842 acres and is managed by the Central Volcano Range Conservation Area administration. The park’s name, Braulio Carrillo, is in honor of the third Chief of State to govern Costa Rica from 1837 to 1842. The National Park has a magnificent flora and fauna that is protected by thick evergreen forests and lush vegetation, mainly made up of primary forests, where some 6000 species of plants and large trees exist, like Manu, oak and others. It was a great experience to be able to walk on trails that were surrounded by wildlife and other beauties of Mother Nature.

January 13, 2013- Today we went to the Golden Museum, three museums in one. We were able to see where the money in Costa Rica (Colones) started and how its appearance has changed throughout the years. Then we went to see all the different types of coins in Costa Rica, since before and after Christ. The exhibition for the coins belongs to a man named Pacheco. He is a very rich individual in Costa Rica, and he owns the collection of coins. He is leasing the space at the Museum so everyone who walks by has the privilege to see the different kind of coins in Costa Rica. Each coin at the museum is worth more than $10,000. This was a great experience to learn how the money in Costa Rica has changed through the years.
We then went to see another exhibition. This time is was of Lola Fernandez, a Colombian-born painter who moved with her family to Costa Rica in the late ’20s. She traveled all around the work and has worked mostly with abstract. She is still alive and lives in Costa Rica.
Lastly, we went to see the Pre-Colombian Museum. I learned that a lot of animals like the jaguar, puma, and the felines in general had so much to do with beliefs, traditions, and culture.

January 14, 2013- Today we went to Tarcoles River, Jaco Beach and Manuel Antonio National Park. At the Tarcoles River, we saw from a bridge a family of crocodiles. There were more than 40 at the time. They were sun bathing and relaxing while everyone watched them from above. All I can say about this tour is that it was amazing. I can’t believe I came so close to nature and found out how beautiful it really is. We were able to go into the mangles and see a family of Capuchins, a type of monkey in Costa Rica. They all came at once to be fed and of course it was the male boss that came first, then the rest of the family. It was amazing; they are like little people fighting to get food. We also got to see a crocodile; she was about seven feet long, just lying in the water and relaxing. Out of the entire day, that was the most interesting part of it, seeing the monkeys in the mangles. One monkey followed us all the way out to the beach. He thought the whole time we had food for him.

Chelsea Adams is a KWC junior from Louisville, Kentucky, majoring in Communications with an emphasis in Advertising and PR. She is spending the Spring 2012 Semester in London and is sending updates to KWConnect about her adventures. If you missed previous entries, you can catch up here.

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So we are getting down to our last days here in London and it is getting mighty depressing. I’ve been super busy with the end of classes, preparing for finals and the last things I wanted to do before I leave. I absolutely cannot wait to get home and see my family, my best friends, and especially my Kappa Deltas, but at the same time I don’t want to leave here.

My final to-do list for London included some strange things. I needed to go to my favorite markets again. I needed to do some souvenir shopping for my family that I had been putting off all semester, mostly because of lack of space in my dorm room. The Olympic Parks are on the list, even though I can’t actually go in them anymore. There were some different areas of town that I’d been told to visit. I need to go to Abbey Road and take a picture like the Beatles album cover. And lastly, I wanted to see the Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens (right by me!), because I saw it in a Mary-Kate and Ashley movie. I’m a total ‘90s girl, you don’t have to tell me twice.

With just a few days left in this wonderful city I have hit most of my stops. The Peter Pan statue was great for a picture, and so were the Olympic Parks. We were pretty upset that we couldn’t get very close to the buildings; they have stuff going on each day that you are required to purchase a ticket for so we could only get pictures from far away. On the bright side there was a fantastic mall really close, so we did some last minute shopping. Well, more like my friends did some shopping and I watched. The budget is getting extremely tight!

I finally finished my souvenir shopping on Saturday morning with one final trip to Portobello Market, one of my absolute favorite places. My friends and I are going to Abbey Road early Thursday morning. We didn’t mean to put it off this far, but it had some construction and we wanted to get the picture exactly right going across the “zebra crossing” or the white striped pedestrian walkway.

As an added plus, I got to see Matt Lauer shooting parts of the Today show at Kensington Palace! I was raised watching the Today show every morning and absolutely love Matt! I was so excited I couldn’t stop giggling and looked like a complete dork. I didn’t get a chance to get a real picture of him and me because he was in a hurry to catch a flight, but he did talk to me (specifically!) three times! My mom also caught a glimpse of me in the background of that day’s show. As much as I love the Today show, that was a great thing to experience on one of my last days here!

Matt Lauer!

Tonight I’ve done my laundry to get ready for packing. I pulled the suitcases down for the first time since I stuck them on top of my closet. As we get closer to leaving, I get more upset and more excited. We have all become known to start crying at random times for seemingly no reason. It’s unreal that I wake up every morning knowing exactly how many days until I get home without even having to think about it. It’s going to be different not living in such a busy, beautiful city. I’m definitely going to miss the public transport. It’s so easy and convenient!

But what is going to be harder is leaving all the amazing people I’ve gotten so close to over the past four months. I expected to make friends here, close friends even. I did not expect to become so close to these people that I can’t imagine not knowing the next time I’ll see them. They don’t tell you how hard that will be. So while I am counting down the days to seeing everyone back in good ol’ Kentucky, I am also miserable that I won’t be seeing the people in London anymore.

With all of that said, there are things I can’t wait for! I can’t wait to hold my baby niece, for good cooking, for the dollar instead of the pound, and to drive with the windows down. It’s going to be a hard long day, but Friday morning cannot come fast enough for this girl!

Chelsea Adams is a KWC junior from Louisville, Kentucky, majoring in Communications with an emphasis in Advertising and PR. She is spending the Spring 2012 Semester in London and is sending updates to KWConnect about her adventures. If you missed previous entries, you can catch up here.

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Barcelona here we come! My friends and I went to Barcelona over Easter weekend. Some of us arrived Thursday afternoon and immediately checked into our hostel. We were pleasantly surprised at how clean it was. We were also met with good and ba d news. The good: teams participating in a local football (soccer) tournament were staying in the same place. The bad: the league was for 12-year-olds. For your information, 12-year-old soccer players have a LOT of energy and are extremely loud. To get away from the noise (and feed our grumbling tummies) we headed to a tapas restaurant right around the corner where we had the best meal of the weekend.  Tapas are delicious little appetizers that I cannot get enough of. When we got back we found out that our hostel offered a deal where they had someone take you out that night, so we thought it would be a great way to see good parts of the city and jumped right on that!

The next day the rest of our friends arrived. There ended up being nine of us total. We headed to the beach to find somewhere different to eat dinner. I wanted to eat paella, which is a rice dish with seafood traditionally served in Spain, so we staked out places with it on the menu (for a decent price) along with a variation of other items. That’s what I wanted so I ordered it even with the scary looking heads of some kind of sea creature on top. It was definitely scary, and I was not a huge fan. We played some volleyball on the beach after dinner and then headed back to the hostel to get ready for salsa dancing!

Saturday we went to Las Ramblas which is a huge street leading down to the beach lined with open air markets, stalls filled with all kinds of goodies, and restaurants. Everything was absolutely gorgeous! We also joined a free walking tour of the gothic quarter of the city It was really cool to be right in the heart of so many cool pieces of history–we sat on the steps where Christopher Columbus informed the King and Queen of Spain that he had found the new world! For dinner we went back to the same tapas place we went the first night. Every one of us let our eyes get way bigger than our stomachs; some of my friends ordered four tapas plates to themselves!

On Easter Sunday we went to mass right down the street. It was a Catalonian mass, but most of my friends and I are Catholic so we could still tell what was going on for the most part. That language barrier was something we struggled with the entire trip. We all thought that by going to Spain our high school Spanish would help us get around. Unfortunately the people in Barcelona speak Catalan, not Spanish. Talk about a culture shock. But with it being Easter and most places being closed we spent the day on the beach and walking around checking out the scenery. Definitely not a typical Easter, but one I’ll remember forever.

Easter on the Beach

Monday morning most of my friends went home to London, but four of us stayed another day. We looked at a lot of Gaudi architecture, including La Sagrada Familia and Park Guell. Let me tell you, if you’ve never heard of Gaudi you should look up his buildings right now because they are so unique you will never want to take your eyes off of them. I can’t believe how long they have been building La Sagrada Familia and it isn’t even finished yet! The detail is absolutely incredible! I’ve loved his architecture since I first heard about it in high school, and am so glad I got to spend an entire day just marveling at how amazing his work is. That night we went saw some awesome views of the city and then called it a night pretty early.

Sagrada Familia

My last day in Barcelona I spent on the beach. It was kind of cold there, so it wasn’t the summer beach weather I was expecting but it was perfect to just be there reading in the sun. I loved Barcelona, but getting so close to the end of the semester I was definitely ready to get back to London and spend as much time seeing as much more of the city as possible!

Next time … last post from London!

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Krystina Lindsey is a junior from Horse Branch, Kentucky, majoring in English with an emphasis in Literature. She is spending the Spring 2012 Semester in Austria and is sending updates to KWConnect about her adventures. If you missed previous entries, you can catch up here.
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After that, I went back to Salzburg. Two girls I was traveling with went to Venice, but I had already been, and I wanted to relax. So I traveled all alone back to Salzburg and on the train ride from Florence to Venice, I met this nice guy from Venice and these two Russian girls. Oddly enough, they had blonde hair and blue eyes and were named Natasha and Olga. Way to be stereotypical, ladies.

From Venice, I had to take an intercity bus to Villach, and then a train to Salzburg. That’s a lot of traveling. I left Florence at around 9:30 a.m. and arrived in Salzburg at around a quarter to six. But I’d still rather be on a train than an airplane.

Prague

This last weekend (April 20) I was in Prague. Prague is a wonderful place, and honestly, I don’t really remember much of it. But I think that was because I’d been traveling SO MUCH! On Sunday, I went to Cesky Krumlov, which is the film site for movies such as Hostel and Hostel 2. It was also extremely beautiful.

The Lennon Wall in Prague

Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic

I’m taking a break on the weekend traveling for a while. The last weekend we have here is a four day one, so I’m going to Berlin with my roommate. I’m kind of super excited! (Can you tell?)

Now I should really get back to my papers. I’ve got a 6,000-7,000 word paper due on Mozart for my Music in the Age of Mozart class, a five-page paper due on Oedipus Rex and a 700-word review on a movie set during WWII (I think I’m going to do Boy in the Striped Pajamas, but I feel like quite a few people will pick Sound of Music.) (Another side note: I’m so sick of the Sound of Music. If I hear I Have Confidence one more time, someone may get a spork in their arm.)

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Krystina Lindsey is a junior from Horse Branch, Kentucky, majoring in English with an emphasis in Literature. She is spending the Spring 2012 Semester in Austria and is sending updates to KWConnect about her adventures. If you missed previous entries, you can catch up here.

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Spring Break, how do I love thee, let me count the ways. Okay, so it was more of a love/hate relationship. It started out spectacularly and then ended on a rather sour note.

We left on March 30 for Budapest, Hungary. It was beautiful there!! BEAUTIFUL, I tell you. The history was all rather fascinating. The group I travelled with went to the Terror Museum. Don’t get any ideas, friends. I’m still terrified of scary movies; this museum was about the reign of terror in post-WWII Hungary. Needless to say, most Hungarians probably hate Russia. (Well, most of Eastern Europe probably hates Russia.)

Budapest

After Budapest, we flew to Brussels, and immediately went to Paris. Probably the first and last time I will be on a first class car on a train. It was wonderful: free WiFi, free food and super comfy seats. In Paris, I’m pretty positive that I hyperextended my right arm. (In fact, today is April 26 and my arms are still kind of numb. That can’t be good, can it?)

And I pretty much dislike Paris. I’m not big into French (finally figured out it is because their language doesn’t sound angry. I like my angry sounding languages: German, Russian, etc.) and I also wasn’t completely stunned by things like the Eiffel Tower. It was pretty, and it was tall. I was more fascinated with Montmartre and the Moulin Rouge.

Unfortunately, there are no pictures of me with a cancan dancer, because Moulin Rouge tickets were like €100, so that was super out of my budget. I did enjoy quite a few crepes, but I didn’t try any escargot.

The palace of Versailles, near Paris.

After Paris, we went to Brussels, and stayed for two days. SO MANY FRIES AND WAFFLES!! (Side note: French fries are not, in fact, French, but Belgian.) It was nice, but by this time, I wasn’t happy with the people I travelled with and was ready to apparate to America (or even back to Salzburg).

Amsterdam. I want to go back to Amsterdam. We only spent a day there, and it was a cold and gross day, so for a city that the author John Green seems to adore, I either can’t see it, or wasn’t there long enough to absorb the awesome that resides there. I tried to go to the Anne Frank house, but the line literally wrapped around the building … way too much of a wait. Plus, as I mentioned, I was freezing.

On Easter Sunday, we flew from Amsterdam to Rome, where the city proceeded to mess with us for the entire trip. We were tired and exhausted of traveling, plus it got down into the high 30s, low 40s, and we were staying in camping villa. That’s right, friends, I went camping. Sort of.

I still saw all the classic sights: Roman Forum, the Coliseum, Trevi Fountain, etc. I was super excited to see the Vestal Virgins (which, if you’ve read Maureen Johnson’s 13 Little Blue Envelopes, you’d understand). AND THERE WAS SO MUCH GELATO!!

The Coliseum

The last day of Rome, we were going to take a train to Florence. I have been in love with Tuscany ever since watching Under the Tuscan Sun when I was like…12. Unfortunately, Rome just did not want me to fully enjoy Tuscany. We missed the first train we could take to Florence; the second train was missed because a Gypsy stole the phone of the one of the girls I was traveling with, and finally, we got to go to Florence. We enjoyed maybe three or four hours of sunlight, but never fear, it was GORGEOUS! I really want to go back!

New friends!

Next time … back to Salzburg, plus Prague!