here's to The Real World (he said after six hours of reading and xbox).

...but I figure you wouldn't want to hear about that, so this is me signing off from the Gnome From Home.

hope you enjoyed it and, if Reality doesn't catch up with me, maybe you'll be reading this again at some point.

the drinks with which I have been toasting the past 40 hours have evolved from orange juice to champagne to wine to coffee to more coffee to green tea.

here's to the fancy premium members lounge.

here's to ignoring the sleep-in-comfort verticality feature in business class chairs.

here's to just sitting up enjoying in-flight entertainment whilst getting relatively pissed.

here's to arriving home.

here's to toilets you can put toilet paper in.

here's to warm showers.

here's to home-cooked meals that involve neither rice nor beans, and neither waffles nor maple syrup.

here's to my extremely senile cat holding out whilst I was away again.

here's to nearly falling asleep on the train.

here's to walking in the cold to stay awake.

here's to caffeine-induced heart palpitations.

here's to beating jet lag.

...better save that last one til tomorrow. Can't be too sure yet.

can you have a hangover from queuing? (note correct spelling, had to wait until girlfriend was off the computer to look that up and satisfy my linguistic itch)

if you can... I have one. But nothing a few free meals, a nice hotel room and some Business Class tickets on the next flight to London, courtesy of the lovely/guilty people at Delta Airlines, can't fix.

Hasta la proxima Costa Rica.

Wendy from Hotel Trotamundos in Alajuela (I really have to start focusing my attention on talking to other travellers, not the staff of various resturants, hotels, bars and shops) asked us why we cut our trip short. "It can't have been three weeks."

...Guess time flies anywhere in Costa Rica. But we've still got two days, so that's a little bit of time before we have to fly.

Today went to the Manuel Antonio National Park... saw a few sloths, a massive toucan, a group of howler monkeys, the most bad-ass spider ever (yellow, spiky and in the shape of an arrow-head) and the beached remnants of a bjillion purple and orange crabs. Didn't see the howler monkey, though it did make its existence known.
Also went to the beach... saw Jen get burnt (again, you see, it ain't just me), palms tree actually on a beach and a sizeable hermit crab. Didn't see the wave that ended me and my board, though it did make its existence known.

finding ourselves in roughly the correct timezone, we decided to spent our evening watching the Oscars. Disappointed Toy Story didn't win Best Picture.

This was part of a recovery from travelling by bus for 5 hours and getting scorched (just a fate I'll have to accept my fate) on the beach. I blame my book, which is so dense and so un-beach-friendly that I refuse to accept that I could have gotten burnt in the time it took me to read ten pages. Curse you A. S. Byatt.

As I muster the energy to lift my hand enough to hold my book, being extremely careful not to let any obstacles (people, sofa cushions, rogue feathers and hairs) brush my valentines-rose-red skin, my tired brain struggles to remember why I do this to myself. The shallow answer is getting effortlessly buff, the slightly less shallow answer is for those heroic three seconds before the wave slaps me down again. I'll probably forget tomorrow as well, but I'm sure the aching in my limbs and the slap on my burns will be a shocking reminder.

Snorkelling in the morning, pooling at lunch, surfing in the afternoon, dinnering in the evening and wondering at the end of it if all birthdays can be this good.

Also wishing there was something I could be hard and cynical and British about at the same time... will direct that at the yanks and their running-with-the-hostel-stereotype conversations about how we, humans, are like the bacteria of the earth and someone should like really do something before stuff like goes. But the surf's up, so deal with that later.

(bitterness comes with age and I am like 23 now)

Not really much to tell you... lazy day... went to see sloths... I'm sure they'd write a similar blog post... with a big smile on their face, of course.

Leaving family (with presents), followed by Volcano Hike (with built-in complaints from American tourists about lack of ''wildlife''), followed by Massive Uno Game, followed by Jeep-Boat-Jeep to Monteverde, followed by the Burrito of Awesomeosity (mostly eaten by girlfriend... note to chicas, if you want a burrito, then say so, don't eat the chico's after saying you won't have one), followed by zip-lining, followed by Tarzan Swings, followed by more zip-lining, followed by looking over pictures of me tensing my neck into painful expressions of shock, followed by looking over pictures of my adrenalined grin (with ''smile lines'' or wrinkles), followed by trip to the supermarket (for pasta, pesto, anchovies, honey and almond cereal, and other foods that, of course, originate from Costa Rica), followed, of course, by beer.

...followed, one would hope, by time spent chillig-out-on-beach-and-reading-book-in-a-hammock. followed, of course, by beer.

another emotional day saying goodbye to the school... why do I keep doing this to myself?

in other news, Friday at school means that games are played, prizes are won and punishments are dished out. The prize for knowing the answer to 'What is your name?' or 'Where do you live?' is a pencil, but the punishment is... and the boys looked genuinely scared... that you have to dance with Oli's girlfriend!

Not sure the pencil's worth it.

last night was steak, tonight is fried fresh fish... tough life, really.

today was negra sopa (horrible black soup)... but I don't let my life be ruled by food, so the most memorable part of today has to be colouring-in with the pre-school class, and seeing the various levels of imagination, ranging from a tiger that was black and orange (within the lines) to a cat whose nose was a different colour to its purple face and pink eyes, but not to its blue tail.

p.s. I am now the owner of a fine Casio F-91W timepiece. Only ten years later and my dreams of girlfriends and digital watches with alarms are finally coming true

sorry for lack of posts, distracted by the girlfriend...

if this trip is indeed a test of our relationship, so far she gets an A in the following subjects

- eating local food (two plates of pinto this morning!)

- playing Toy Story Top Trumps in Spanish

- not bemoaning the fact that it has rained since she got here

- not bemoaning my bemoaning of the 4 buses and 8 hours it took to get to the airport to pick her up

- getting bitten by mosquitos in the night (6 this morning!)

- sleeping soundly with snakes and lizards outside her window

but an F for

- paying more attention to the house puppy than me

it's very hard when the teacher who you are assisting shares the same name as you, because, after role-playing the correct way to formally greet someone, the children believe that the answer to the question "what is your name?" is always the same. That took some explaining to thirty kids all named Oliver.

Also (you get two today for lack of one yesterday)...

First day of school today, and some thoughts to cross my mind have been "that's a cool way to spend summer", "is it possible you've become more of a bastard in a year?" and "so, you got the same haircut as your brother, think that was a good idea?"

having sat on one for above and beyond ten hours yesterday... I began to wonder why we don't having rocking chairs in England. The answer came to me when I fell backwards off it and Margie said to me "why is it you europeans always have to be doing something? I told you if you keep rocking like that you're going to fall over, crazy fool". Oh, so that's what she was shouting the other day.

(note: "crazy fool" is only a rough translation by someone whose Spanish-speaking abilities have been, shall we say, impaired by a sharp knock to the back of the head)

You know you've been accepted into the fold when the family know it's alright to mock you, I just don't think I'll ever need to know the spanish word for 'hairline' again.

I feel like a traitor reading The Observer Music inside on a computer on a sunny day here, but the feelings of guilt are not strong enough to stop me from dragging my rocking chair into the sun and listening to The Streets. Just have to remember the factor-30 sun cream, or else Costa Rica will remind me that I am British the hard way.

I forgot about the damned cockrel... stupid enough to start crowing at 5 in the morning, but clever enough to know that at that time it´s too dark for me to go out there and find it!

Do you know what, it really was quite fun doing it last time... so I have decided to re-ignite the Gnome from Home blog and continue giving you one-line-a-day updates of my progress in this fine country. This is partly because it wouldn,t feel like Costa Rica if I didn,t blog a little and partly because I am almost certain that Miss Chiarotti will provide plenty of material to blog about (I promise not to over-share). Although hopefully by my blog tomorrow I will have found the apostrophe key, or else I,ll just look like a moron...

On that note, today,s blog could only be about one thing... Whilst the Costa Rican countryside is so fantastic that I couldn,t not break out the camera for a couple of blurry tree shots, I simultaneously blame it for bewitching me to such an extent that I got off the bus without the camera in my hand. Ah, you,ve all seen pictures and the girlfriend,s coming with hers next week.