Hey everyone! It´s Fiona (yes Dad I´m alive – also for my talent I did something in Mandarin so that should keep Mom happy for a bit)

I started out the day waking everyone up at 8 am, although most people were already up since we´ve been waking up at 6:30 the past few days. (No Mom, I did not oversleep, my roommates woke me up). I reminded everyone to wear bathing suits and bring a towel and flip-flops along with the normal necessities. At 8:30 we had gallo pinto for breakfast along with pineapple, passionfruit, and fruit punch for juice options. Around 9:15 we left the house and went on a 40-minute hike to get to the waterfall. The hike was pretty steep – we hiked up and downhill, along the gravel and mud, and in the forest and mountains while in the sun, so we had to take a lot of water and sunscreen breaks, but it was 100% worth it when reached the waterfall.

The waterfall is 120 feet high (pretty big) and the first thing that everyone did once seeing it was pull out our cameras to start taking pictures (technically Memo made sure we put our bags on big rocks first so no bugs would crawl into them, but you get the point). We all slowly made our way to the rocks near the water and began “swimming”. The water was freezing but we got in anyways and adjusted, because when do you get to swim in a waterfall in Costa Rica?! We took some more pictures, because you can never have enough pictures, and some of us (including me) almost got eaten by the waterfall, but we all made it back safely (well my shoe didn´t, see picture:/). The moral of the story is that we all had an amazing time in the waterfall and was one of the most memorable experiences I´ve had so far in Costa Rica.

Around 11:30 we started getting out of the waterfall (not many people including me brought towels but we sun-dried so it worked out and I regret nothing) and prepared to hike back to the base for lunch. Memo also gave us all little cookie treats which was the sweetest thing ever and the best way to end the waterfall. After we reapplied sunscreen (don´t want to burn!) and bug spray, we began hiking back to the house. I thought the hike back would have been so much worse considering we were going downhill a lot on the way, but it surprisingly ended up going much faster than expected. We got back to the house around 12:50, and for the first time we bought empanadas for lunch (they were amazing but I missed Diego). After a little downtime, we got on the bus to go to Turrialba around 2:10, and arrived 20 minutes later.

First, a few of us bought necklaces and then we made our way to the farmers market. The farmers market smelled so fresh first of all, but the majority of us went to a stand to buy handmade bracelets. We spent around half an hour there, then after getting a little history lesson from Memo, we walked to a bakery. Everyone got a different assortment of pastries, but my favorite was this lemon tart-type treat (literally the best thing I´ve ever tasted). After the bakery, we loaded up on more sugar (parents I´m sure you´re loving this) and went to get ice cream. The decorations on the walls of the ice cream shop were my favorite aspects of it, but I heard from everyone that the ice cream was amazing too (I don´t like ice cream so I didn´t get any, but Maryanne was extremely excited about it). They also had the cutest marshmallow animals though which I was very tempted to buy, but didn´t, because I´m a responsible person.

After the ice cream, we all waited until the very last second to decide to take a picture in front of the Turrialba sign, but we made it on the bus on time ish. Before we got off the bus we gave a big thank you to Dave for driving us back and had around half an hour of downtime before dinner at 6:00 pm. For dinner, we had this chickpea soup which was actually incredible, rice and salad. Diego (we LOVE Diego) also made us this cookie in condensed milk type dish for dessert for the first time which was such a cute and sweet surprise (we really love Diego). After dinner, everyone had downtime to relax and get ready for the nightly meeting at 7:00 pm where I did a recap of the day (which I just wrote), went over the daily quote and question, talked about roses and thorns and pluses, and wishes, and passed the torch and souvenir shop bracelet over to the next leaders of the day. I then sat down, wrote the daily blog (which you just read), and had to rush through writing the blog because it´s currently 9:54 pm and I have to finish by 10 and I want to see the pictures from the other blogs so bye thanks for listening to me ramble.

Also Happy Birthday Daran!

• Fiona

P.S. Mom yes the shoe that I lost was the one we got on Black Friday and yes I do really want to get another one so if you could find a sketchy website that sells singular shoes that would be much appreciated okay love you bye!