Learning "Ji-booty"

Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio has definitely set a high standard for my future park visits. This weekend I saw monkeys, crocodiles, iguanas, a jungle deer, and the most beautiful electric blue butterfly. The crocodiles actually were spotted outside our bus window, casually sunning themselves on a river bank, and thankfully none were present at Manuel Antonio. The jungle, beaches and ambiance were lovely, relaxing and the park was extremely well maintained. The six of us who ventured to Manuel Antonio (only a 3 1/2 hr ride from San Jose) stayed close by the park at Hostel Serena Vista, which certainly lived up to its name, with a front porch to the reception building that took in an ocean view with the water appearing to rise up above the jungle in front of us...not sure how else to describe it, but it looked incredible.
Swimming at the park's beaches was an opportunity to look back at the wonderfully undeveloped shore, a cool green jungle staring back at you instead of rows of condos like the beaches I've visited in the US. Unfortunately in our eagerness to soak up all this beauty we also soaked up a bit too much sun, ending Saturday with sunburns all around. Worth the pain though....the monkeys we saw on the beach were crazy. On the look out for food, and generally lacking fear of humans, the monkeys would run up to people's bags and steal away whatever food they could find. We all watched as late in the afternoon one monkey managed to steal a bag of cheetos almost a big as him. Another monkey stole a child's boxed milk, raced up a tree and after tossing aside the straw gulped down the milk, it was obvious he knew what he was up to. The whole weekend was a great rest from school and probably a bad break from Spanish, I don't think I spoke Spanish more than two times the whole three days.
Today though I started my day off right with Spanish class and ended it quite well with my new noncredit mixed martial arts class, which I think I'll be calling my Samurai class. I'm the only gringa and it's a small class with only five newbies and four higher level students(all of whom had spiffy Japanese martial arts uniforms on for class). The teacher is a tico, but with a sense of humor which is great because we are learning Japanese style martial arts- very very ritualistic and formalized, so his attidue helps relax the class. I'm used to the heavy contact approach of Krav Maga and I think I'll need to time to adjust to this new style.
We practiced some basic forms with fake wooden swords; I had to fight the urge to laugh as I was taught to lunge for a killing blow with my wooden sword. I think the class will be fun though so I plan on staying with it, besides it gives me the interesting opportunity to learn Japanese in Spanish....the teacher insists on counting in Japanese,which I of course have no knowledge of, and then we were taught the Japanese names of our forms today, but I had a hard time remembering Japanese words with Spanish accents. The only one I did manage to memorize was when we held the sword out flat in front of us the teacher called the form something that sounded like "Ji-booty", causing me much stress as I internally laughed like crazy, while striving for a straight face.