i'm sorry tourists, does it make the whole thing a bit less 'authentic' when there's a British kid sitting in the computer room? well don't worry, after a quick 'authentic' dance show and some 'authentic' food you can go back to your 'authentic' hotel and relax knowing you've seen things as they really are... but that you ultimately prefer a cocktail by the pool.

i said one line (but i'm bending it to 'one line for each' because everything's just so damned important)...

- yesterday i had my first experience with almond snickers, strawberry daiquiri and slightly dodgy street meat, and i wouldn't recommend either.

- yesterday i also went head-first through what i felt to be a massive rite of passage in Spanish-language learning... backing a almost total conversation almost totally battered.

- but, in the biggest moment of the week, Juliette (my partner in educational crimes against humanity, like spelling 'colour' with a 'u') left to go home. woose. guess i'll have to train alex to be less of a demonchild myself. stage 1: go get the stick. stage 2: sit... still.

so i've come back to school, after three years of university education and a wealth of life experience, and yet still I can't work out why you would need a white crayon.

tan update: i am about three fifths of the way towards being accidentally mistaken for someone who, possibly, lives close to, but not necessarily on, a beach, a beach which is probably quite a way above Chelmsford, potentially in Norfolk.

good to know that the kids in my house still appreciate a good bit of molten rock falling down the side of a volcano, but they seemed less amazed than me about getting to hold a firefly, nature's perpetually raving pillheads.

is it odd that watching people get mauled for four hours on tv yesterday has made me want to go bull-running?

also, have to advertise this to the world, got told last night that i dance a good salsa. greatest moment of my life? let's just see if my future son/daughter will solve world hunger...

look, alright... if the spanish speaking world didn't want the two things to get confused, they wouldn't have made 'sangria' and 'sandria' (watermelon) so similar. i did think 2pm was a little early to be getting on it.

not going to lie, really quite enjoyed watching bunnies with toothbrushes the size of bazookas wage war on the jagged inside of a dark grimey cave full of evil frogs... but i think if it happened in real life the children i was watching said cartoon with would be a little more scared... i mean, scarred.

call me a capitalist, but i thought it would make business sense for a $3 haircut to leave you needing another one a week later. this is really not the case and also, after wondering for years what shape my head actually is, i can tell you my curiosity has been satisfied. although it's never great to be told by 20 niños pequeños (preschool children) that they don't like your new style.

also, a note to all those commenting on the lack of tannosity in recent pictures... i don't know how to tan, and even if i did, the Costa Rican sun doesn't change the rules, it changes the whole damn sport.

ten o'clock bedtime and this morning i am nackered! all worth it for the artificial paradise of fourteen swimming pools, fourteen different temperatures, five courses at dinner, three hours reading my book in a hottub (ill-advised if you want to minimise page wrinklage) and one cocktail from a bar in the middle of a pool. unfortunately, zero partridges.

just covered my bag in Spiderman 3 stickers... if kids want to leave them lying around.

...and that was me trying to stick to the original short-as-humanly-possible philosophy of the blog

apologies for radio silence... **takes deep breath preparing to say why**

met up with friends in la fortuna, had ice cream, went to hostel with pool, was british and got into pool despite rain and relative degrees of cold wind, had rum and cokes in pool, drank some more, ate seafood calzone, drank some more, apparently mumbled in sleep (apparently), booked volcano tour, read book in hammock, went on volcano tour (saw a wax tree, a laughing falcon, those ants that carry big pieces of leaves, bullet ants, regular ants, and lava), got free lift back from cool tour driver (also called Oli), 6 hours sleep, walked up massive hill with various members of local community (6:30am), had tuna, rice and frijoles (black bean) paste next to a waterfall, walked down hill, arrived home (4:30pm), had shower, slept, taught children,, went into la fortuna, had ice cream, talked in decent spanish to various shop owners, agreed to private classes with one woman, came home, watched boys at the house dissect massive beetles, ate dinner (without beetles... i hope) and still managed to have enough energy to burn Leo (one of boys at the house) at Chess. Hackemate!

young children are frequently metaphorically described as being like sponges with information, and I agree... if you hold them under the water for long enough, they're bound to soak something up.

2 big things...

Number 1: had my own class today for the first time... praise was given for my artistic skills in representing certain actions, including 'I have a baby', which, now that i think about it, could have been confused with 'I hold a baby'... i didn't draw a graphic picture of childbirth, don't worry.

Number 2: just started to miss out on things back home. they don't really have a phrase here, so i'll just say Chao, Nanny

can't believe i didn't post it over the weekend (so this'll have to be a cheat entry about something that happened a few days ago)... on Monday 12 April 2010 I brought frisbee to the beach and shallow waters of The World's Rich Coasts (literal translation of Costa Rica). a face full of salt water has never tasted so sweet.

a wolf walked past the bus stop last night. everyone else was completely unphased.

seamlessly slipping between Bad Tourism (pizza restaurants on the beach and the odd shite souvenir) and Good Tourism (helping the children to a level of English that hopefully won't mean they go into the tourist industry). there's a fine line.

on a less state-of-the-world note... i'm going to miss this hammock and chats about evolution on the beach and below the stars. never had a bigger smile on my face than when fellow traveller Alex brought the final few seconds of Men In Black into the discussion of the universe. it's, like, universal.

Upon my return I have a Glastonbury ticket and a trip with Jennifer Chiarotti to Calpe, hooray for delaying entrance into the Real World (jobs, coffee, rent etc.)... only, and i must stress this, not to the extent of becoming the hostel-haunting beach bum who is an advert for not smoking weed just from his 40-minute insistence that the woman from Indiana Jones (film on TV last night) is his girlfriend, only he doesn't like living with her in Hollywood. That's escaping the Real World, but on a whole other level

I will see if, even with a day of surfing, beaching, reading and lazing, any part of today can beat the moment at which I was sitting in a hammock with a bowl of cereal listening to AIM.

How long is a twitter post? ok... i promised to minimise text on this blog, so here goes... Pinto. School. Kids. Teaching. Effort. Weekend. Early. Bus. Hours. Arrival. Photos. Beach. Hostel. Hammock. Seafood. Pina. Colada. Paradise. Surf. Beach. Surf. Amazing. Did you get that?

''look mate, if this were any other place in the world, at any other time, you'd have been dead long ago... but seeing as this happens to be a bathroom in Costa Rica (the apparent home of weird bugs/reptiles/miscellaneous) and as I happen to be feeling particularly chilled out today, I'm going to let you stay on the wall. But next time we cross paths, freaky moth-bug thing, you might not be so lucky...''

back at school... it's good to know Heads Shoulders Knees and Toes is not only Universal, but also a great and easy exercise with all age groups

i will take a picture of a hummingbird, just as soon as i see one at an opportune moment and as soon as i can afford a camera that can actually take a picture of something other than a blur... come back to me in three years time.

finally getting into a flow here... which is great because i think my brain's slowed to the pace of life here (which takes the attitude of it being too hot to bother with anything)... but bad because i'm already on the third of only six books i brought with me (the english language has become like a heavy duvet in winter).

went for a 6 hour walk today to another waterfall (not as big or loud as the previous one, and much less fun to play in) on what feels like a sweltering day. Hope the assertion that 'sweaty is the new black' (Joss Holden-Rea, 2010) is correct

something Lonely Planet forgot to include... if you turn on a light in the middle of a dark house at night, a dragonfly the size of your hand might just fly in your face.

and one more also (busy day), the news has announced that ricky martin is a homosexual... and everyone was surprised. you'd think that would be sarcasm, but 75% of the population of Costa Rica, the percentage of practicising Catholics, seem to be not only shocked, but very annoyed.

also, if you ever don't want to pay 200 Colones to use the toilet in a bar (only about 30p, but i refuse to be charged for a basic sanitary right), just shout English sentences in quick succession at the staff. and do the little toilet dance.

today i went to a river and where the water was actually blue... let's not linger on the science behind how the particular minerals of the rock blah blah blah, but instead just go 'fuck yeah! blue water!'. there was also a rope swing, and with a bad fall like mine, i can tell you that the blue tends to accentuate a red body.