Every family has their holiday traditions, some are typical and some are down-right quirky. Whether it is wearing your most tacky Christmas sweater, always baking a certain food, or driving around to see Christmas decorations, they all make you feel at home. Unfortunately, some college students don’t have the luxury of making it home during the holidays and many may feel sad and not into the holiday spirit. If you are going to be in Kingsville or Corpus, away from family or with your entire family and need something to do, we have a solution for you!  

Global Connect presents the 2012 HO-HO Hay ride! The members of our team have put together a hay ride that will take you through the most beautifully decorated areas of Corpus Christi during the holiday season. Anyone is welcome; especially students that can’t make it back home for the holidays. What better way to raise your spirits and get you geared up for the holidays! We will have candy, refreshments, Christmas carols, and more on our adventure through the city. Come in your best Christmas spirit wear, Santa hats and all! If you would love to go but can’t get to Corpus, the Blue and Gold bus can take you there! The hay ride is completely free; all you have to do enjoy t decorations. Don’t forget your cameras because you will want to remember this once in a lifetime hay ride! So come join for a night filled with fresh air and holiday spirit that is good for the whole family! 

With the holidays just around the corner, many people begin to feel a mixture of emotions. To some, there is a sense of excitement and joy when Christmas is near. For others, the holidays bring a wave of stress. We all remember when we were little kids and how much excitement and anticipation came with Christmas. We longed for so many simple toys and it didn’t matter the price of each present as long as there were tons of wrapped presents under the tree with our name on it! As a little kid the only thing there was to do to prepare for Christmas day was to make sure there was a nice warm plate of cookies and a glass of cold milk for Santa. If only things were still so simple…

Buying gifts, wrapping gifts, making sure to buy gifts for everyone without leaving anyone out! Then comes the holiday dinners…buying food, preparing food, being the outgoing entertainer of the evening, and not to mention the awful cleanup after everyone goes home. In addition to already being stuffed full of delicious food, I, along with many other people that can relate, then have to go to another family members house for yet another round! My number one stress of the holidays is getting the energy to get off the couch after a long day and big meal at my mom’s, then making my way to my dad’s for another huge and delicious meal. Don’t get me wrong, the food and spending time with family (at least the family that we like) is all fine and dandy…but can’t I just be a little kid again and just bake some cookies and set out some milk?? 
Although the stresses of the holidays can be overwhelming, there are a few things that may help relieve the stress. My family has come up with a great way to relieve some of the stress involved with buying presents for everyone. Every Thanksgiving, the adults in my family will draw names to determine who they will buy a present for that Christmas. We usually put a low spending cap on the present as well so no one feels like they need to out-buy someone else. This is one very simple way to relieve some of the holiday stresses. Another thing that my family does is to have sort of a pot-luck Christmas. We usually have holiday dinners at my mom’s house so she tends to cook the large items, like the turkey and ham. Everyone else in the family will bring a side dish, and usually it’s the same thing for everyone each year. These two suggestions will help with some of the major stresses of the holidays, but there are still many things that just can’t be controlled. Things such as traffic and weather are unpredictable, and the best way to cope with those is just to expect the unexpected. These types of events often can send someone over the edge when they are already stressed out. A snow storm or traffic at a standstill is not the end of the world, I promise! Try a couple of these simple suggestions this holiday season to relieve your stresses. Happy Holidays!

            have been to many states and a few countries, but by far the most adventurous place I have been to is Costa Rica. I have been to the country twice and both have proven to be more of an adventure than planned. Costa Rica has many different types of landscape, such as rainforests, oak forests, mangrove swamps, and much of the area is cultivated for fruit and coffee beans. Thanks to my mother, who loves to keep me and whoever is on vacation with us busy the whole time, I have been able to see a large portion of the country. This country has long been considered a safe country to travel to and has had
few incidents with foreign tourists, although crime rates in the country have recently been increasing. It is always a good idea to check into the safety of places you plan to travel to in the near future.

On my first vacation to Costa Rica in 2004, I was twelve years old. My mom, dad, and I flew into San Jose and decided to do a few things before the day was over. Just outside San Jose, down a few back roads, we took a gondola tour that took us on a short ride through the rain forest  This was interesting because it was the first time any of us had seen the rain forest, but it began to rain heavily before the ride was over. This is where our first adventure began. When the ride was over we got in our car to drive back to our hotel, but the traffic on the dirt roads came to a standstill. We had to sit on the same road for a couple hours before we were able to move anywhere because there had been a mudslide farther up the road that had    to be cleared away. When we finally got going, glad to finally see a paved road, our rental car windshield wipers suddenly went out on us while it was still pouring down rain. We got back to our hotel, Hotel Grano de Oro in San Jose, and it was a very nice place. It is a Tropical Victorian Mansion and is very well decorated with tropical plants, along with beautiful courtyards and a top notch restaurant. The only thing I thought was a downside to the hotel is that it is not air conditioned, although San Jose has a climate that usually gets cool at night so most places do not need air  conditioning.

The next day we drove to Tabacon Hot Springs, where we stayed at a hotel in the Arenal Volcano National  Park for two nights.This hotel was also very nice, although we did get an unexpected scorpion guest in our bathroom. The hotel was at the base of the Arenal Volcano, which was both exhilarating a terrifying at the same time. This was especially true when it would let out deep rumbles throughout the time we stayed there. The most recent major eruption was in 1968 and is said to have been “sleeping” since 2010, breaking the constant trend of minor explosions since 1968. We hiked in the park and also found a zip lining tour. There are many companies to take tours through and information for tours is provided on the hyperlinked website. The zip line is a definite must when it comes to visiting Costa Rica because it takes you through the trees of the rainforest, high up in the canopies. There is a good chance of seeing lots of wildlife on these tours and we heard many monkeys and saw lots of tropical birds. The zip line brought us right back down to the hot springs, so it was very close to the hotel and convenient. In our time at the national park, we also visited a Honey Bear Refuge and hiked to a couple beautiful waterfalls. 

On day four, we traveled to Jaco and made a couple stops along the way. The first stop was in Puntarenas were we took a crocodile boat tour. This was probably my favorite part of the trip because I got to see “Jesus
Lizards”, the ones that run on water. I was amazed by this because I thought they were fake and only existed in the movie Jurassic Park. During the tour, the guide got out of the boat and hand fed a wild fourteen foot crocodile. It was astonishing. There are multiple crocodile tours out of Puntarenas to choose from. After this tour, we continued on and stopped at the Carara National Park and did some hiking. Carara was established in 1978 as a Biological Reserve and was upgraded to a National Park in 1998 because of its popularity. That night when we made it to Jaco, we could do nothing but rest the next day since my mom had succeeded in
completely wearing us out.

On our last day, we headed back to San Jose and made our first unplanned stop at Lankester Botanical Gardens, located about thirty minutes southeast of San Jose. The garden dates back to the 1940’s and was donated to the University of Costa Rica to ensure its continued existence. The gardens were simply beautiful with all the tropical plants and the view of a huge rainforest valley. We saw wild macaws flying across the valley at sunset, and I got to feed a toucan. This is also a
stop that I would recommend during a trip to Costa Rica if you happen to be in the area. The last night before flying back home, we stayed in Hotel Grano de Oro again and said goodbye to this tropical and wild country.