Our first week...wow what a head spin!

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Well boys and girls we made it! What a first week it was. We still have not recovered from the flight yet but i think it is getting better, waking at 3 in the am hours feeling conpletely refreshed and trying like hell to get back to sleep to fit in to the time here. Anyhow we arrived on saturday night and met our hosts the nicest people i think i have ever met so patient as we did not speak any or little spanish but we managed to communicate with a great game of charades which continues to this day. Sunday we met some of the other guests which were staying in the same home stay 2 chicas (girls) named Kaci and Anna both from California. Our host was gracious and offered to take us to Los Chorros Cataratas (The Mc Huge waterfall) -see pictures- they were amazing the storm of water exiting the base of the falls was so strong i was forced away. All we had read about Costa Rica sort of painted a dim picture however Alajuela and the adjoining Cacao suburb are beautiful and the more we speak to people the more we are told to see the real Costa Ricans stay out of the big city of San Jose. Anyway, the falls were amazing and the food our hosts prepare is so full of flavour that it is hard to describe apart from delicious!

Monday
Our first Spanish lesson, Wow what a lot to take in 4 hours of hard thought retraining ourselves not to try to alter their language to suit our way of thinking but adapting to their way of speaking. After the lessons we returned home we ate and basically PASSED-OUT! i think it was about 7.30pm and had a bad night sleep but nothing was going to dampen our enthusiasium! We did meet our other house guests from Florida 4 Chicos (Guys).

Tuesday
Was a bit of a lazy day and class was at 1pm so we just read and relaxed. But Tuesday night was another story we decided to give the local cervesa(beer) a try and the local Moonshine(distilled from sugar cane) a try. this was a great night we played a card game were you basically drank yourself into a stupor by the end of the first hand and it just went downhill from there. However it was all done with a lot of laughter. The Americans found us Australians to be extremely amusing....to give you an idea of the size of the drinks 2 dollars and 40 cents bought a litre bottle of beer but it took 1.5 to get a good feeling going. Lynne of course was first to feel the mood and we all followed soon after. (Thanks for being polite, David, says Lynne as I spell check)

Wednesday
Went to the local pool/gym for a swim before class. Is it me or are the bathing suits/bikinis getting smaller. Maybe it is just the local fashion but it is all good! Swam for a while then went to an adjoining restaurant for a meal that was great the cuisine was good small serves of very tasty food and at great prices. English classes started at 1pm and that took us through till 5, home for dinner and off to bed with heads filled with spanish verbs and the rules on how to use them, yes the lessons are getting more difficult but Lynne is blasting through. Our teacher Cindy is great and so patient and so much fun her english is minimal but this helps because it forces us to try to speak spanish (by the way the keyboards are set for Spanish so forgive the punctuation)

Thursday (Nueves)
Have spent the day wandering around Alajuela. Our class was cancelled today as Cindy´s daughter was going to hospital for an operation. Will catch up lesson on Sabado (saturday).

Everyone is so friendly. They all great with a Buenos Dias or Hola...they can be young or old or teenagers. The feel here is tranquil..what Ticos or Costa Ricans call...tranquilo. No anger, no malice, very friendly. Better than expected actually. The families are close. Our host family lives on the same street as the mother and father, sister and her husband etc. The cows wander from paddock to paddock. Everyone is included in the community with helping us and other travellers on this program. We will stay at Cacao for 2 weeks (dos samesas) to be more comfortable with the language and help us plan our next venture in Costa Rica (not pronounced Coasta Rica, Glenno haha)

ciao for now

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