Life in Costa Rica

       Wow! Only one week has passed by, but I feel as though I've already been here for a couple! The first week of class went by very quickly, and I'm starting to get the "home" feeling with my host family. I thought that there might be cliques with such a small group (I believe there's only fifteen of us overall in the program), but so far there hasn't been any trouble because someone is being left out, which usually is me! On Friday, we spent two-and-a-half hours touring and roaming around the parts of San José we haven't seen yet, such as the Teatro de Nacional (National Theatre) and other buildings I have already forgotten, since I'm so terrible with official names. I hadn't really seen any huge buildings in Costa Rica like back in the United States until that day. Now it would sound like we all have a pretty good layout of the city by now...but since we travel mostly by buses here (as do the rest of the population because gas is a lot more expensive here than in the United States), we still often find ourselves asking each other, "Wait, where exactly is the place we're meeting up?" The class days here are pretty much the same like back home, with most classes only being a couple days a week, but one class (Español y Cultura) Monday-Friday every morning. But every week there is a huge activity that the whole group of students do, such as the touring of San José last Friday. For lunch, we either have the option of going to local "Sodas" (or the cheapest places to eat for the University of Costa Rica students, or our equivalence of Chipotle back home) or cooking in the ACM (school building) kitchen. I make my lunches in the kitchen with produce and groceries I went shopping for with my Tican sister the previous week because it's a lot cheaper in the long run, and I'm all about saving money. I really love my host family! My Tican mamí is probably the best cook I have ever had the pleasure to cook for me because EVERY MEAL is soooo good; with variety and so much flavor, and she cooks two meals a day during the week, three on the weekends.

       I have heard from other students some minor personal problems with their host families, so I am very grateful for being placed my host family, because we have had no problems yet! :) I have my mamí, papí, and hermana (mom, dad and sister) living in the house, and then a brother living in the house next to us. My Tican sister is twenty-four years old and the brother is around thirty-five I think. The parents are in their fifties, and the dad is very quiet. We have a yellow pet bird (which Elliot practically cooed with happiness when I told him), but I don't really play with it or anything because I'm not really into birds. There are so many stray dogs on the streets here (about three every two blocks) and I have noticed that my Tican sister seems to love dogs as much as I do. But when I asked her why the family doesn't have a dog, she told me my Tican dad doesn't want to ever get a dog again because they had one for fifteen years, and it was a huge heartache for everyone when it passed away.

       This Friday, we are heading off to Gira Finmac Tirimbina, a cocoa plantation in Limón that women run to fund local programs for empowering local women! Sooo excited to also see tropical rain forests and hopefully take some awesome pictures of me with scarlet macaws for Elliot!! Be sure to keep checking my blog for that post and the details! Miss you all back home!