Out of the Country…

Well…Matt and I survived our trips out of the country!   Costa Rica was amazing.  It was gorgeous and we had a lot of fun.  The students were great and I'm really glad we did this trip.  9 days was a long time though and I missed the boys A TON so I was ready to be home.  I have so many pictures from Costa Rica and still need to get pics from other people, so I will do another Costa Rica post later.  In the meantime, here are some group pics and some scenery pics from my trip!

All of us when we met at the airport at 4:30 a.m….no one was late :)

This is a group pic of the chaperones on the day we planted trees in the rain forest.

 InBio Parque National Reserve

 All of us at Poas Volcano

All the chaperones  (Diego - our tour director, Nori - Asst. Principal, Karen -Special Ed. teacher, Angelica, Me and Stacey- Nori's sister-in-law)

This is my group from the week at the volcano. Every chaperone had a group that checked in with them at all locations.  My group was awesome and we named ourselves "Quality over Quantity!"  We had the best group name for sure!

Michelle, Cat, Me, Leah and Sarah

 Eating ice cream that is hot pink and made from cactus juice…it tasted like sherbet, it was very good!

 Angelica, Karen and I at a waterfall.

 This is the lake where we went kayaking.

 Love the view….lake, mountains, clouds and sky.  The view was amazing no matter where we were in the country….so pretty!

 Just a pic of the Rain Forest

 A couple group pics at the waterfall….we had to walk 450 steps down (and then back up) to get to this waterfall and the water was FREEZING but we had a blast and it was well worth it. 

A couple nights our hotel was right on the beach.  This was the view of the ocean at night!

 The ocean through all the palm trees.

 Another beach on the Pacific Coast.  We could swim here, the riptides were too bad for us to swim in the ocean by our hotel.

 Angelica and I with Carlos, our bus driver.  He was AMAZING at his job.  I'm not sure how he navigated us through some of the places he did, but we always got to our destination safely!

The last night we stayed in a hotel in downtown San Jose.  Here is the view from my balcony…so relaxing!

 What a sunset...

 Diego and I at the airport.  So crazy that we spent 9 straight days with someone (24 hrs a day) that we may never see again. 

 One last group pic with Diego at the airport.

That is it for Costa Rica for now…stay tuned for more to come later!  Onto Germany….

Matt got to Munich on Sunday morning and a coworker picked him up and took him an hour or so south of the city to the Germany portion of the Alps and to see Neuschwanstein Castle.  This is the castle that Walt Disney used as inspiration for Cinderella's Castle.  He doesn't take nearly as many pictures as me, so this is all I've got.  Enjoy!

A Bavarian Pretzel Matt brought home…bigger than Landon's head!!