My mom told her friend (who lives here) that we wanted to see a scorpion. He asked one of his workers if he could find one and take the stinger off and give it to us. This morning he brought us the scorpion and he asked if we wanted to hold it. It was crawling up his arm, and he was just playing with it like a toy. My mom held it, but she was too afraid to hold it for more than 10 seconds. I held it too, and it was really weird. It felt like nothing when it was in your hand, but when the worker took it off, its legs felt like little grappling hooks as it was trying to hold on.
There are over 1,500 types of scorpions, but this one is a bark scorpion called a Centruroides Limbatus, and it lives in Nicaragua, Honduras , Panama, but is most common in Costa Rice . Centr- means "pointed" and ur- means "tail." There is already an animal with the name Centrurus, with -oides meaning "like" as the ending root, the first word Centruroides means "like centrurus(pointed tail)" and Limbatus means "black-edged." Although, I held a scorpion, I don't think I will be holding another one any time soon...
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Yesterday I went to the orphanage in Los Cedros. I volunteered with my family for 3 hours to get to know the kids, but we are going two days out of every week our entire stay. The things the orphanage want us to do are: Arts and Crafts, Music, and play with the kids. I made friends quickly with them, but all they wanted to do was play on my phone. They took a ton of pictures, and I had to delete most of the blurry pictures of foreheads and grass. They also play with my ukulele, and I didn't know how to say "Please don't touch the tuning pegs on my ukulele" in spanish, so most of my spanish speaking consisted of "no toca" (tōkä) which means don't touch, or "este" meaning this... We played tag, or "toce" (tōkāy) which means touch, around their little play structure. I have to admit it was pretty fun too!
The kids here in the orphanage were happy and well cared for. They were like one big family. In the orphanage, there are: nine kids under the age of 7, one baby, and two boys in their early twenties. The boys weren't there. They were at a religious camp where they are learning life skills and learning about the bible, so they could come back to help with the orphanage. A lot of kids end up in orphanages because their parents abandon them without any explanation, their parents are unfit to care for them and the government takes them away, or their parents wish for them to have a better life than being in poverty without food. When I was at the orphanage I felt like I was making kids smile. I am excited and I can't wait to go again!
The other day, I went horseback-riding. I went with my mom, my sister, her friend Taylor, and Taylor's instructor, Martin. We started at 5 o'clock pm (when the sun was just starting to go down) and we got back around 6:30 pm when it was pitch black. While we were walking, the sun was going down through the tall grass and wheat. It was so beautiful! My sister rode a hoarse for her first time, and she loved it. She wants to take horseback-riding lessons, and what shocked me was that they are only $6 a lesson! Our ride was through overgrown pastures, but to me it looked like an overgrown Savanna. We rode through this for an hour until we finally reached the beach. My horse and my mom's horse wanted to roll around in the sand when we were on the beach, so we had to keep our horses moving, we couldn't let them stop. To get off the beach we had to "run" up a steep hill, and I felt like I was going to fall off! Other than that, and losing my sunglasses twice, I had such a fun overall experience on the horse!
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