We Made It!

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We arrived safely in Costa Rica on Sunday afternoon without experiencing any serious travel problems. Meggy, a CPI staff member along with a CPI driver, picked us up at the airport and drove us directly to the school. After bringing our luggage inside (it looked like it was about to rain), they took us to a room where we took the placement test. There wasn't any time to get nervous about it, since it was first on the agenda! We took turns going for the speaking interview section of the placement test and getting our pictures taken for ID cards. After everyone was finished, we played a little game of "telephone" in Spanish. The Spanish phrase was close but with one hugely important difference by the time it traveled the whole way around the circle. Meggy then gave us a detailed orientation covering everything from sampling Costa Rican food to walking on Costa Rican streets to taking showers in the host family bathroom. Mayi, the student coordinator at CPI was also there and added some additional information.
By the end of the orientation, it had begun to rain -- hard. Things got a bit chaotic after that. Host families started showing up and pictures were taken and students got in cars and were driven off for their first night with their host families. Everything happened so quickly and it was raining so hard that it was difficult to keep up with getting pictures of each student with each host family. In fact, some had sent relatives to pick up their guests, and others carpooled, so a few of the pictures are with someone other than a host family member. In the end, CPI provided a driver for three of the students whose host families were not able to pick them up. Maybe we will be able to get photos of those families soon.
Today we took a walking tour of the nearby city of Heredia. The first picture that appears in this entry was our first group picture taken during that tour. I wanted to post it today because it is so nice, but that tour deserves a blog entry of its own, so please check back late tomorrow to see more pictures of Heredia, including the group taking a public bus, visiting a church, a cemetary, and the most important landmark in the province of Heredia, along with a very interesting visit to the traditional city market.

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Photos

Group Photo in Heredia
Read more about our walking tour of Heredia tomorrow!

Thinking Hard
Everyone was concentrating on the placement test

Telephone Game
Kayla passes along the Spanish phrase to Whitney in our little game of "telephone"

Orientation
Meggy gives us our orientation information

Good Listeners
The ASU group listens carefully to all of the information

Courtney
Courtney and her host father

Justin
Justin and his host mother

Brayden
Brayden and his host mother

Laressia
Laressia and her host mother and father

Waiting
The other students are waiting anxiously for their host families to arrive

John
John and his host mother

Stephen
Stephen and his host parents

Still Waiting
Laura, Hailie, Abby, Whitney and Kristen are still waiting for their families to arrive.

Kristen
Kristen and her host mother

Kayla
I think this is Kayla's host father. This is when it started to get confusing.

Whitney
Whitney with Kayla's host father (?) He was picking up both of them.

Erica
Erica with someone's brother who lives near someone. All of them seemed to be family members at that point.

Comments

[Robin Snider (Hailie's mom)]

Thank you!
Thank you for the wonderful update and pictures! Looking forward to more!

[Dr O]

Had connection problems and computer issues
Sorry to everyone that it took so long to get the first entry posted. I had some connection problems (slow and intermittent) and a variety of little computer issues. That is to be expected, but this was worse than usual. Thank you for your patience.

[Tony and Jill Evans]

Thanks for the Update
The pictures are great! You guys are going to have so much fun. We appreciate the updates Dr. O. Stephen's Dad