cuerda de saltar means jump rope

Where to even begin? Well, I will start with me swimming in a volcano. Hah – I know it sounds impossible, but sometimes I like to that (the impossible). Now I will leave you hanging (its like blatant foreshadowing) and tell you about some other things previous to that happening.

I returned to Venecia, which is currently in full swing of “Expo Venecia”. This is probably comparable to a combination of Town Day and the Belmont Carnival (or really any generic carnival) with some Costa Rican smallish farm town thrown in (as in cows, beans and rice, loud spanish cowboy music, etc). Its probably the most people I have seen at one place in Venecia since I have been here.  I only briefly walked through it on Friday night as it was into its first few hours of being. But don’t worry – it’s for this whole week and next weekend so I plan to get my full fill of it this weekend, with possible other ACM students in tow. Now why did I miss it you might ask? Because I was headed to La Fortuna (the same town as the previously mentioned volcano trip) for round two.

Saturday was nice, spent in a local river with a bunch of local ticos who eventually built up my confidence enough that I was able to jump off some nice water falls. However, the more exciting part came on Sunday. We were in search of a location less expensive then the usual million dollar white water rafting or zip line adventure. We got wind of a hike up the old volcano, which is now a crater. Exercise is hard to come by here, especially in tourist attractions so we decided it was a must.

We walked a little over 2 miles to even get to the entrance of the park, where we were warned (for probably the 4^th or 5^th time) that this was a hard hike. The Tico dislike for exercise made us shrug off any doubts and we headed on our way. We had a brief bit of hiking in more open area, and got quite the view of La Fortuna.

Yes, another Conistonian in Costa Rica. Jake Eaton (obviously with his yellow osprey backpack)

Now, I will admit it was quite the hard hike. The intense humidity and heat are never an ideal environment for extreme excersise, but it’s a given here in Costa Rica. We were also ascending a volcano, which I guess are very steep. I would compare this hike to The Incline in Colorado Springs, for those who are familiar. Basically, it was 2 miles of staircase (except that would mean they were even and well laid out and not make of rock and roots and mud and rainforst). However, this was the least of my worries. The most of my worries was that I was in the jungle shire (see picture below) and I could not figure out how to look all around me without then slipping or tripping or falling.

This is the jungle shire.

We then arrived at the rim of the crater. It looked like this. I thought that was beautiful (not saying that it isn’t but just wait).

Then we hiked down into the crater. And then I swam. In a crater on top of a Volcano. Holy smokes!!

I think this maybe be another most beautiful place in the world.

Now it is the middle of the week, and I am back in measuring the student population mode. However, today is “Dia de Deportes” or Day of Sports. It’s a national holiday, and no one has class. It’s basically like a national field day (back in the good old days of elementary school). So, I went San Martin (the school I volunteer at regularly) and played. A lot. All day.

Corra! Corra!

(Racing on pavement means alot of scraped knees)

It's official.

Jump rope. 

Angelina calls. Its time for us to brush our teeth. This is a result of a quick photo shoot a couple nights ago after we all brushed our teeth and Angelina thought we looked especially pretty.

nutria marina means sea otter

I am now into the second (and thus last) half of my semester abroad. The way our program works, our semester consists of an almost like block-like schedule, much a like a Colorado College semester. We spend a block in San Jose, learning Spanish and developing research projects. Then we spend a block doing research. Then we check in to make sure our research is going alright, and then continue another block of research. Finally, we have a last block back in San Jose with more Spanish and a final research report.

So here begins block three, entitled CR321 (Costa Rica 321). Prerequisites include CR123 (an introductory class to Costa Rican culture, mangos and research methods) and CR222 (a 200 level course involving direct immersion into both a tranquil country environment and a occasionally overwhelming self directed research project).

With my brief return to the city, and then back to the country, I can definitely see the differences that I love of each place.  There is something to be said for having a premade schedule that you follow everyday, like I do in San Jose. The minimal amount of decisions I had to make while back there was a nice change. Though I did not miss the city air(/smog) or other such city aspects that I’ve never been in love with. However, being around a lot of people who I knew, and always understand me is nice once in a while. San Jose also contains bagels, a phenomenon that my family here had never experienced so I brought half a dozen of them home and we sampled them toasted with cream cheese and butter (flavors included cinnamon and raisin, sesame seed, poppy seed, everything, whole wheat, plain and garlic).

I don’t have any particularly astounding events that have happened to update you on, but I thought I would just include some fun tidbits I seemed to have forgotten in other posts.

The first is these extremely bizarre raccoons. They remind me more of monkeys. We drove by them while in La Fortuna. A good number of cars had stopped to look at them (tourists and ticos – I think they’re weird enough that even locals are fascinated) and take pictures of feed them. When we drove down the same road about 3 hours later there was a different group of cars stopped in the same place, with the same raccoon creatures being fed. They may be very weird looking, but these raccoons are smart, and well fed, and have the paparazzi constantly following them.

The second is my previously pictured adorable cousin Santi was baptized last weekend. He was a great sport and slept through the whole thing. He then threw a very good party (considering he is only three months old) from noon to one in the morning.

During my brief visit back to the city I skyped a good portion of the Vasington clan. It was quite the experience!

Grandpa's first skype, ever!

Jack's knowledge of skype is beyond mine, so somehow he can make emily look like she is pilot. 

Becky does not fail to surprise me. This is a photo I was taking, as I do often, of kids I was measuring to include in a final presentation. At the last moment, Becky walked into the room. How did she find me at this school or the room I was in? Good question. Luckily I have the ability to speak to animals and asked her. Obviously she is a dog. Obviously she has a keen sense of smell. Obviously she can find me. She didn’t elaborate more, so I didn’t ask anymore. 

The title has nothing to do with anything in this post, except that this post is about me and I really, really like sea otters. 

volcan means volcano

Sorry for the lack of attention to this responsibility. I’ll try to be a little more attentive in the future. But if you were wondering, I am still in Costa Rica and alive and well and humid and wearing scrubs. 

Where to even begin? Well, last weekend was spent with my advisors and Chloe and Maggie in La Fortuna near Volcan Arenal. So that was rather exciting because I had never been to a volcano before. And it didn’t erupt while I was there, so that was also very nice of it. It was really beautiful, and we spent a good part of Sunday just driving around the area and taking pictures of the Volcano from all angles. We also did do some work related to our research but thats not even half as interesting as a real live volcano. My advisor knows the area well, so he knew all the good places to stop for pictures or food, including a swiss hotel to have coffee. This hotel came very close to the previously mentioned most beautiful placed in the world.  I would not have minded if they accidently left without me and I had to live there for the rest of my life.

Arenal in all of its volcanic glory. You can see smoke coming out of the top when the clouds occasionally break!

The view from the swiss hotel. Probably not exactly the same as switzerland looks, but still beautiful.

Diana (one of our advisors), me (incase you forgot what i look like), chloe and maggie.

We also visited my advisor’s vacation house. It was near a beautiful river, which I was completely content to just sit at and do pretty much absolutely nothing for a little while. It also reminded me how I want to go to the beach and swim. So I have added that to my to do list in the next couple of weeks. I think I will be able to accomplish this task.

The river with plenty of rocks to sit and stop and stare.

Currently I have returned back to my city life. We are spending tomorrow (Monday) checking in with ACM on how everything is going, and hopefully discovering we are right on track and have some data that holds potential to become results of some sort or another. Tuesday we will all present about our research and how it seems to be going. I am excited to hear about the variety of research projects and what everyone has been doing for the past couple of weeks.

My presentation will be a lot of pictures of really terribly adorable children, because that’s mostly what my project is, with the side note that I am measuring them and handing out surveys. The main point is how cute they are, so I will include visual aids of their overwhelming ability to make you smile. 

I joined them after this photo. 

The stickers on their foreheads would be my fault (I gave them to them).

We played soccer for a while (fighting obesity one soccer game at a time). The times were socks versus shoes. I was on socks.

Time for lunch. 

They all brush their teeth after every meal. This is Mateo, he offered me his toothbrush to use after he was done but I politely reclined. 

Too cute.

Its nice to be in the city again and with my family, though I already miss the ability to just go on a walk near some fields and cows. I'll leave you with a country photo to reminisce. 

han visto means you all have seen

I am finishing my last week of the first half of my research portion of this program. That’s a complicated way of saying it, but I don’t really know how else to explain it. I feel fairly comfortable in this town, especially since I spend all day walking around and exploring it as I visit schools, in comparison to San Jose where I spent most of the time in the ACM building taking classes, and only knew some about the city itself for the first couple weeks. With this comfort comes a mentality that I usually think I look like a normal person walking around, and often forget how much I stick out. Here’s a story to help explain,

This morning I went to a school to measure kids (the usual). However, this was the biggest school in town, with over five hundred kids (most of the other schools range in size from forty to a hundred and fifty or so students) so I had only distributed surveys to a portion of the classes, and only intended to measure a portion of the students. However, I couldn’t really remember which classes I had visited. It was also the morning, and I had distributed classed in the afternoon, so I assumed that none of the students would be there, but I thought I would check anyway. So, I began to search for them. I stepped into a first grade classroom, and spoke to the students, saying hello and watching them smile as they herd my foreign accent. I then asked them if they had seen me before. They all immediately answered yes. Perfect, I thought, that was easy to find them. I then asked who had their surveys. No one responded with a yes, and many looked a little confused. Oh great, I thought, they all forgot. Then I asked if they could bring them another time, and my response was more confused faces. So then I asked if I had even ever given them any handouts. They said no. This process continued in almost every single class.

I realized asking them if they had seen me before wasn’t a good clarifying question to see if I had distributed surveys to the class. Pretty much every student there had seen me, at one time or another. But not because I had visited their class. I am the only gringa here, and I walk around, a lot. I only have three scrub options to wear every day, so my wardrobe is pretty limited and doesn’t blend in that well with the rest of the town. So in the past two weeks, they all probably had seen me, and knew who I was. So much for thinking I am starting to blend in like a local.

And some photo documentation of my new school friends:  

Everyone wears uniforms, the kinder kids wear all light blue (its terribly adorable)

Bunny ears is an international photograph pass time 

piña means pineapple

This week, I did actual research, not just hand out surveys. Then, I had to take that collected data, and put it in the biggest excel spreadsheet of my life. I don’t really like that part much at all. So I’m not going to write about it.

Instead, I am going to include passing thoughts I have had over the past week about random events that could possibly be of interest. If they begin to bore you, feel free to stop reading at anytime. You run no chance of offending me since I have no idea who reads this anyways.

First off, when we went to The Most Beautiful Place in the World (its official now, so I’m capitalizing the titile), we had our nuvi car direction machine going in the front. I thought, “Oh that’s fun! Just like the U.S.”. Then I realized, They do not have addresses in Costa Rica. How is this machine even possible in this country?!  I quickly questioned my host parents on how this could possibly be so. I still don’t really know. Magic, I guess. Considering there are no street names here, half the roads seem to have been added on a whim, and no house numbers, I usually think it’s a miracle I ever arrive anywhere. 

When we were preparing to leave for The Most Beautiful Place in the World, we changed out of our church clothes. My host mom likes pink a lot, so she buys a lot of thrift store pink shirts, often from the U.S. On Sunday morning she came down wearing a shirt that read “I’m not fat, I’m just Knocked Up!”. I laughed to myself, and then proceeded to explain to her what her shirt said. Luckily she thought it was funny too, but still changed before we went out.

Another thing I like about this town is everyone’s refrigerators are rarely full.  No, I don’t starve. Finishing the food that is put infront of me is equally as difficult here as it was in San Jose. However, my host mom goes to the grocery store atleast twice a day. When we made dinner the other night, she went once and I went twice during the process as we realized we were missing, or simply wanting, other ingredients. Everything is as fresh as possible, though it does mean a lot of decision making (to prepare every meal, you must first decide what to make. It’s like in the U.S. where we try to make something from all the stuff we have. But, it gives me good decision making practice)

My next door neighbor, who is also my host aunt (sort of) paints a lot of things as a job in addition to being a mom. She is currently painting different small murals for a school in the next town over, so I have been helping her instead of doing data entry. This was the product of yesterday's procrastination. He's about 3 feet tall, and will live on the wall of a school.

As I walk to school everyday, and home, and between schools, and when I’m bored, I’ve become a good navigator of streets that act both as the town road and a route for many 18 wheeler trailers. First off, I did not know pineapple trucks have a smell. But they do. And it’s wonderful. They cut off the top of all of the pineapples before they put them on the truck. The truck with all the tops doesn’t really smell, but the one with all the fruit, when it drives by, its really unbelievable. Also, Becky still continues to try to accompany me on all my walks. However, schools don’t love having a dog coming into all their classes, so I’m getting good at sneaking out of the house. It’s like I’m a teenager trying to sneak out to some forbidden location at night, except its 6:30 in the morning, I’m wearing scrubs, and I’m hiding from a dog.

This weekend I have a reunion with my advisor. Hopefully he likes my spreadsheets. 

bonita means beautiful

On Sunday I went to the most beautiful place in the world for lunch. That was exciting, and I have now never have to worry again about figuring where I am going to get married. Or where I am going to live for the rest of my life. But I’ll get to that later, I just thought it was an exciting sentence to start off my post. Now, back to Saturday where I left off last time.

Saturday was Maggie’s birthday, her 21^st to be exact. So in true 21^st birthday fashion, we spent the day at a hot springs, eating refried beans out of  a packet on tortilla chips (that was sarcasm by the way, it wasn’t a typical 21^st birthday, but none the less wonderful). We were in a natural hot springs, and spent the hours of 11 am to 5 pm soaking in various pools of varying temperatures. We took breaks only to get massages (a mere $30/hour.). I would have to say it was quite the stressful day. Our one moment of high heart rates came when a snake was discovered in the small cabin where you get massages. It ended up being very extremely rather large, and put up a fight against the two employees who made it their mission to kill it. I currently don’t have pictures of this wonderful place, or the snake. But I will get them, and then you will get to see them both in all their glory.

When I got home, the iguana was still here (that one that arrive on Thursday). He was a little scary and startling, and I had begun sleeping with my door closed to make sure he did not join me in bed during the night. So, I decided to remove him from our living room on the end of a very long stick. Here are pictures of him during his multi day visit, when I would find him in various locations.

Skyping his iguana friends - look I got a new house!! 

  

   One time my family friend here thought the iguana was my host sister's toy. Then when she tried to pick him up, she realized he was not when he hissed and whipped his tail. She scream. 

Hanging out in his humble abode. Rude.

Sunday is a day without work here, a time for church and visiting and things that make you smile. I accompanied my family to Catholic Mass. I still don’t know quite enough Spanish to follow the whole thing, and just kind of made up my own words and tune when the whole congregation sang. But it was cool to see an entire community (I’m confident most of the entire town was there), and I plan to continue going every week. After church we talked and visited with other people in the town (I introduced myself countless times, and remember maybe one of the names I was told). After, we returned home with my host cousin, his wife, and their newborn baby Santiago. I have to say, I have had extreme luck in locating small children in this country. It’s fantastic. Here is evidence:

Santiago and his mom.

Her matching colored outfits make her exponentially cuter, which I didn't think was possible. 

My host mom said we were going to a pretty lake, which sounded nice, and we all loaded up into cars. We drove for about half an hour, and that’s when we arrived in the most beautiful place in the world. Now, pictures to explain (since they are worth a thousand words, or so I have heard).

Hello and welcome to the restaurant located in the most beautiful place in the world.

Real. I swear.

Lots of birds. Obviously they want to live in the most beautiful place in the world too, who can blame them?

Take a seat.

Your view while you eat (also host cousin in law, mom and cousin)

Here is a picture so you can all find it too. There are no addresses in Costa Rica, otherwise I would just tell you it. 

Disclaimer: I realy truly did not alter the colors of these pictures. It was real life in ridiculous colors. Like I was living in a Photoshop-ed world.

  

Tomorrow I begin the first day of actually measuring children’s height and weight, and asking them (awkwardly and politely) to please lift up their shirt (only a little please!) so I can measure their abdominal circumference (which means first prodding their side to locate their iliac crest). It should be interesting.  However, this also means getting ready for school tomorrow is a process, and I must begin that production. The school day begins at 7 am here, so mine begins a good while before that. 

encuesta means survey

And so concludes my first week as a researcher. That’s pretty cool, one week of real world experiences down and about seven left to go. I feel fairly comfortable here already. I think I am growing accustomed to the role of half guest half family member so that transition was easier than the first time, in addition to already being accustomed to this family having visited last weekend. Both of these made for a smooth transition. In addition, I get to make my own schedule here, which is a blessing and a burden. It did allow me to take it slow the first few days (stepping lightly as my program director fondly calls it) and get my bearings before I dove into my research. This was somewhat of a strange phenomenon, having grown accustomed to the block plan, which gives you approximately a few moments to catch your breath before charging full tilt ahead. Though I enjoy the fast paced experience of the block plan (and sorely missed it the come the second afternoon of my lackadaisical lifestyle) it was a nice introduction to these two months. 

I cook with my host mom most days, depending on when my schedule returns me back to my house (pictures to come sometime soon). Today we made a sort of shepards pie concoction, except we used mashed yucca instead of potatoes, and soy hamburger with costarican sort of spices. Yum. Also because we are so much closer to many farms, we have a lot of fruits here that you can’t even really get back in the city in San Jose, let alone in the U S of A. I am making a photographic documentation of all the new fruits I try so I don’t forget their names and can go in search of them when I return here (someday, somehow. Not really sure on those details.) I should probably start a recipe book soon too, as I don’t think there’s enough room in my head for all these recipes.

Every day so far has also included at least an hour of painting with Angelina. We’ve made some pretty masterful artworks that are about on par with Monet or the Mona Lisa, though I would say their style is greatly influenced by that of Jackson Pollock. I also have gotten to know my town more as I have started walking to all the different schools to begin my research (the walking part is much to my host mom’s confusion, as is my habit of exercising for enjoyment. I find most costaricans find my interest in running on a daily basis extremely perplexing and almost unimaginable).  Becky continues to follow me to every school, walking sometimes almost three miles there, and then back again. And she usually walks around the school with me as well. Stray dogs are common here, so the schools usually assume she is just a random stray wandering around the school. I usually wait until I am almost leaving to explain that the scruffy grey mutt is actually my travel companion So far most have just thought it was endearing, not completely bizarre as I was worried at first. I have tried to tell her to stay home, but she doesn’t listen, so I finally gave in. And she’s a good listener when I practice my spanish or pronunciation of random words during my walks to schools, so I guess I can’t complain.

The schools themselves usually range in size from about eighty to a hundred and fifty kids, making them seem a little more manageable than the schools I grew up in. Its funny to watch the faces on all the little kids as I explain my study to them and ask if they can bring home my survey and fill it out with their parents (I promise stickers if they bring them back completed). I know I must sound pretty strange with some sort of accent, but it’s impossible for me to know what I sound like to them. Which is weird. I wish I could hear what I sound like to them. I realize more and more what a strange concept languages are while I’m here. Especially when explaining phrases, or song lyrics, or other things that I had never really thought about. For example, my host brother here, age 25, asked me what “Do you think you can handle this?” means (a line in a Shakira song). I still don’t know if he really understands.

This is the average terrain of my daily strolls (or sometimes intense hikes, depending on location, if the road is paved and/or extremely steep, and if it decided to rain, be a million degrees, or somewhere in the middle). Occasionally an 18-wheeler whizzes by, then I am startled. So is Becky.

And incase you were wondering what happened to my good friend the iguana, he remained in my house until this afternoon. Yesterday a family friend thought he was Angelina’s toy and almost picked him up. Then this afternoon I mustered up all my courage (I had grown a little scared of him, I’m not going to lie) and got a very long stick, and finally managed to get him afuera (outside). I hope he is well on his way to a location far, far from here. 

Ciao noches (a combination of goodbye and good night that Angelina created)

iguana means iguana

Here comes a long post, so get comfortable. I suggest a nice cup of Costa Rican coffee (or kindly say no thank you and drink tea instead as I often do) with a piece of mango or pineapple to enjoy as well while you read it, it’ll help set the mood.

Ready? Okay updates will now commence.

I am on day three of my rural stay. And though I have more internet then expected, and am not living without running water or electricity, I am definitely in a rural location. My pueblo (town) has a population of about 5.000. So everybody knows everybody. This means that everyone who asks me whom I am living with has some connection to my host mom and dad, such as my mom being the godmother of the daughter I was sitting next to on the bus. It also puts my gringa/macha status on a new level. Also, if you were ever wondering where the phrase gringo comes from, it developed from American’s love of traffic lights. We will wait even when no one is around for the green light to go – green, go – gringo (add an “a” on the end to make it feminine). Everyone I have met has been friendly, and I look forward to getting to the know the town over the next two months. I already made friends with the guy in the post office, and today took a two hour walk through all possible town center streets and a good long way down most dirt roads. The whole time I was accompanied by one of my three dogs. Her name is Becky, and she is a very good travel companion. So here is a photographic replication of my town tour with my good friend Becky.

Here is where our walk begins. Thats Becky. 

We first followed my road for as far as possible. It becomes dirt, and not really paved, with some farms and such along the edges. Becky enjoyed the fallen foliage.

This is a hill we trudged up. It was probably harder for her. In the distance is a cowboy. Or atleast a man on a horse. I like to think of him as a cowboy.

This is Billy. He and Becky are not friends. At all.

We then hit the town. Here is Becky strolling, as she shows me a local pizza shop.

We continued on our merry way. 

We looked at some schools, and then considered the possibility of hitchhiking to far off lands. I convinced Becky another day would be better, we didn't even have a snack with us. 

The plaza infront of the church. Spy Becky if you can. 

She stopped for a quick drink. I told her that was gross. 

People tend to not want their houses anymore and kind of just leave them here. I think Becky Especially liked this one because it was pink.

And now that I am here, I can officially explain what my research process will entail. Though there is always the possibility that things do not go according to plan in the next couple weeks and the whole project gets revamped. But hopefully, knock on wood, everything works out. (If you want to knock on wood now too just for good measure I would appreciate that). On Monday, I had four different meetings with important people to explain my study. Both my advisors and the other two students (Maggie and Chloe) who are working with me came to all the meetings as well. Since it was a group effort it made it a lot less intimidating and nerve racking then I had imagined. We were well received at each meeting and have now each begun our research in our individual towns. My research is slightly stalled, as a meeting I had with the area’s superintendent was rescheduled for Thursday, leaving me with two days where I couldn’t go to schools. 

This is the building of the MEP where my superintendent man works. He said he could make me an office there. So I guess this is my office building. Whoa. 

I have utilized the free time for productive research related work, made flash cards of every household item I could think of, and spent a good many hours walking and running around my town. Oh, and also a good many hours drawing pictures with my new host sister Angelina. I will include a picture of her, so you can understand how overwhelmingly adorable she is.  

Thats another one of our dogs. Toti. He's Angelina's, which she reminds me very very often (Toti es mio!!)

Once I do have permission to go the schools (that hopefully occurring sometime mid

 afternoon tomorrow) I begin my solo adventures of presenting myself to schools to explain my study to principals and teachers, and handing out surveys. Then I hope to return in about a weeks time to gather anthropometric data (height, weight, abdominal circumference) to accompany the results to the survey. Then comes A LOT of data entry, as I expect to be giving out surveys to almost everyone in each school, which have between 60 – 150 students in them. Then comes the big high school, with over a 1,000 kids who I can’t just give stickers to so they’re happy like I will in the preschools and elementary schools. But having not left the teenage world very long ago, I think I will be able to find a common ground.

The next two months promise to be a big change. I am not with all the other students in my program as before, so besides internet and some pleasure reading books, my whole mundo (world) is in Spanish. Though it’s hard occasionally as almost no one speaks a word of English here, it will be a wonderful learning experience. I am also in charge of my own schedule, in terms of when I work and play. I think that’s probably the only time I will have two months like that (especially where someone cooks all my meals for me) in my whole entire life. So I’m determined to make the most of it. I have finally started to realize that while I am abroad the rest of the world is not, and thus their lives have continued on as normal.  It’s weird to think of CC trudging through it’s blocks, of Boston slowly melting into Spring, and life events happening when I am so far away. I have tried to avoid usual habits of facebook stalking when I use it, or constant use of the internet for outside world updates, as I want to live in this moment while I am here. But now I have come to appreciate the contact I have from the outside world. So though my responses to your attempts at communication may be a bit lenta (slow) keep them coming.

I would also like to mention that in between the work ‘English’ and ‘here’ in the above paragraph, I was interrupted by the fact that a giant iguana was in my kitchen and we had to chase it. Now it is stuck under the fridge. But don’t worry, I got pictures. (And just figured out what I'm going to title this post) 

 

                      This is him when we found him.     Then my mom tried to get him out the back door.

Instead he ran under the fridge, and as far as I know is still there. A new housemate, super. 

Well that was a lot of words and pictures. I still have a lot of tidbits and such, but I will include those on a later date. But its time for a ‘cafecito’ (like afternoon tea in great Britain except with coffee and snack) so I bid you ‘Adios’.