The Capitol

After leaving Ryan and Kit's place, we made our way up to Washington DC. We spent the first night in a cabing just south of the city, where they once trained spies! The city definately surpassed our expectations in the short time we were there. We saw all the sights and everything was free, even the museums! We even saw a police escorted limo leaving the White House... perhaps George?

Ryan, Kit and Mia!

We are now in Forest Virginia, visiting Ryan, Kit and their new baby Mia! Our niece is very cute! Ryan and Kit are alright too... We finally got to see what Ryan does, so now I'll have an answer when you ask. Mia definately takes a lot of attention and Miranda and I are doing our best to help out. We babysat on Saturday night so the new parents could go out and hit the town! We are camping on the back lawn, right beside the horses! We have been feeding carrots to the horse shown in the picture with Miranda... but Miranda touched the fence as the horse ate the carrot. The fence is electric and they both got shocked... you should have seen the horse run away! We are really lucky to be in a position to be able to visit like this and are excited to see what is next!

What Now??

We are finished working in Muskoka now and everyone keeps asking us what we are doing next. It's actually pretty hard to keep answering that question when we don't really know! For now we are just visiting friends and family in Toronto and trying to plan our lives. Nest week we are going on a road trip to see our brand new niece, Mia (and Ryan and Kit too I guess)! After that we will be driving home with stops in Washington DC and New York City. We even have tickets to Yankee Stadium already! So, we think we will be fine and things will figure themselves out...

Summertime

We spent our week back in Toronto visiting everyone and now we've headed up to Muskoka Woods for the next three months.
There is a whole new realm of camp we're learning about right now. I like to call it "The Marriage Factor". There are many different perks within the Marriage Factor, some big, some small. For instance, the accomodations are much better. As well, I am now encouraged to spend time alone with a boy. Furthermore, other married couples will include you in their conversations about different facets of married life. Topics like toilet-seat etiquette, sleeping habits and even S-E-X, are all open for public discussion.

As much as it's fun and novel to play "grown-ups" here, we manage to keep the maturity level on the low-medium scale. We've been told that we are "the only married couple in our positions." Meaning, we're the oldest instructors this camp has ever seen. Most married people up here are full-time staff with keys and clipboards and courier bags full of lists and pens and things.

To be honest, we're fine with that. The longer we can post-pone "real life" the better. We plan on having a blast until then.

Costa Rica to Panama and Back Again

Our return to Toronto is fast approaching, but we thought we´d add one last entry.

After Tamarindo, we visited Quepos. It´s a small town about 6 hours south of Tamarindo. It´s a short bus ride away from a beautiful national park called Manuel Antonio. We saw so much wildlife there! Monkeys and tucans and sloths...oh my.
The beaches there were some of the best we´ve seen in our three months.

We also ended up spending a week in Panama on the Bocas del Toro islands! We met up with our Irish friend Ellie there and had a blast! Surprise, surprise, we visited MORE beaches! (Don´t you just HATE us?) We went dolphin watching one day. Our boat driver really knew what was up! He drove the boat around in circles and we got to see the dolphins jump and play in the wake. It was incredible!

And here we are, back in San Jose, Costa Rica and really loving the city! We´ve spent so much time in small towns and villages that being in the city is really fun. Throughout the trip we´d take buses into major cities and high-tailed it out to surrounding towns. I think being here is making us miss Toronto a little and the bustle of city life. It´s perfecting timing because we fly out on Saturday!

Even though we´ll be in Ontario for the summer, we plan on keeping up our entries while we´re at camp. So if you´re not completely bored of our blog, you can check it out! Thanks for all your responses and emails during our trip!

We can´t wait to see all of you again!

The Costa Rica Experience - Vol. 1

We arrived in Costa Rica with our new friend Ellie! She is from Ireland and is lovely! We had all been on connecting flights for a sum total of 12 hours when it should have only taken 5! But we got a FREE first-class meal out of it, so...well, we were fed anyway.
After a few nights in a lovely BandB, we moved on to Monteverde where the three of us went on an awesome canopy tour! We zip-lined through the jungle about 200ft above the ground. In the tour we were able to do what they called ¨The Tarzan Swing¨. It was pretty scary. Miranda screamed like a banshee and swore like a sailor.
For all those globally-minded friends of ours, we also went to a fair-trade, organic coffee farm! It was really interesting to see how hard people work, especially when they´re trying to be environmentally friendly!
We took a few buses after all that to Tamarindo! For those that don´t know it´s a pretty popular surf town. Mikey spent 3 days in the ocean and about 5 minutes on the board! He did better than Miranda, whose picture says it all. I think you can see her hand peeking out of the foam.
More to come from Costa Rica soon!

Roatan... another beautiful Island

We left Utila on a 38 foot Catamaran for Roatan, another one of the Bay Islands in Honduras. The trip took 4 hours and we have now decided that boats are the only way to travel! We even got to stop and swim in 2 miles of water, about 10 miles from shore... crazy.

Roatan was very beautiful, with beuatiful sunsets and much better beaches than Utila. In fact, in the 2 dyas we spent there, we rarely left them. One day we rented a moped and drove to West Bay beach, which is the nicest one we have seen yet! It had really good snorkelling, white white sand, and lots of sun! We went out for Thai food on April 29, our 2 month anniversary! It´s crazy how fast things have gone by already.

I´m sure this next bit of news is what you have all been waiting for (at least my mom for sure...): we bought return tickets! We fly home on May 24, getting in around 7 pm. We are excited to come home and see everyone again, but first we have to enjoy Costa Rica and a bit of Panama perhaps.