The first week

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¡Hola a todos! I´ve been in Costa Rica since last thursday the 11th, and I absolutely love it here. I´m staying in Montelimar, Guadalupe in San Jose. I´m having a great time, learning lots of Spanish (in fact, its really hard not to write/talk in spanish right now, so if i slip in a spanish word or two, lo siento), meeting lots of people, and having a great time exploring a new place.

I´m living with Sarah, who also goes to UGA, but who I didnt know before this program, and we are having an AWESOME time together. Our mamacita (what we´re calling our host mom bc she´s little) is soooo nice. Ejemplo: on the paragraph that Sarah wrote about myself, she put that she loves Georgia Football, so our mamacita decorated her room with posters of Fútbol (aka soccer) haha! There´s a great picture of David Beckham right next to her bed 😉 She´s really nice and teaches us a lot of stuff... haha, like yesterday for breakfast we learned some palabras rojas (bad words)... but most of the time we learn good stuff from her! heehee. Roberto, her son, is in Minnesota right now, but he´s returning home on thursday Jan 18. He´s 24 so I´m excited to get to meet him.

The ticos (costa ricans) here are really nice and most of the time are really helpful. But if they´re driving, dont mess with them. Pedestrians dont have the right of way and there are no sidewalks, so when you cross the street, you better run. Bc they´re not gonna stop for you. When Sarah and Craig and I were walking back from Mall San Pedro monday, we basically played frogger. We made it though, without becoming flattened panqueques (pancakes)

Even though San Jose isnt what you see on the postcards of Costa Rica, its still beautiful. We´re surrounded by huge mountains and the weather here is amazing. stays about 75*-80* during the day. Yesterday, when we were running in the park near our choza (house), on one side the sun was setting behind the mountains and clouds and the sun rays were brilliant. And in the opposite direction, there was a HUGE rainbow. I mean... amazing!!

This weekend, our ISA (international studies abroad) group is going to Arenal y La Fortuna, where there´s an active volcano. We´re going to swim in the hot springs at the bottom of the mountain. and at night, you can see the red of the lava spilling over the mountain. I´m sooo excited!!

Saturday night, pretty much everyone in the group went to Palmares, which is this big giant fiesta. There were thousands and thousands and thousands of people there. It was incredible... good music (mostly reggaeton), cheap beer (3 beers for about $2.30), and lots of Ticos. We went to a dance club and danced for 6 hours straight without stopping. And when i say danced, i mean DANCED. It was great. I was so exhausted by the end of the night that i couldnt even talk. We boarded the bus at 12:30am (which is 1:30 atlanta time), but we were missing one girl and no one knew where she was in the tens-of-thousands of people. A couple of people found her after 1:30 hours of looking (¡gracias a Dios!) so we headed back home about 3am. Because of all the traffic, we didnt get back to San Jose until about 4:45am. The bus dropped us off in some deserted park in Tibás, San Jose, and we had to take cabs back home. But we made it back safe at about 5am (dont worry mom! we had a guy with us... and mace) and then Sarah and I went straight to bed. Unfortunately, bc the sun is fully in the sky by about 6am, I didnt sleep very long.


Some differences I´ve noticed here: the phone ring and tone is different...pedestrians dont have the right of way...we´ve eaten vegetarian hotdogs for breakfast...we eat beans for breakfast too... you have to manually turn on the hot water heater whenever you want to take a shower...its rude not to wear shoes or slippers inside... you have to use a calling card to call locally bc they charge you to make calls... they call KFC ´´Kentucky´´ (Ken-too-key)... the food is much much better here and very fresh... you cant throw toilet paper in the toilet bc it clogs up the pipes, so you have to throw it in a trash can... the call clubs ´discotecas´ and everyone likes to dance... its understood that you´ll be an hour later than what you had said (called ´tico time´)...

So far so good...more to come!

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