Week 1

So far San Jose is a pretty amazing city. I'm staying with a family of four - the Señora Ana, who is an ama de casa (which means stay at home mother), the Señor who owns and operates a bar, their son Evín, and their daughter who is deaf. I'd have pictures, but I managed to delete my entire first batch of them.

Every morning I get up at around 7 am. Then I grab a shower. This may not seem like a big deal, but you have absolutely no idea how complicated a shower is in Costa Rica. There is a small machine that replaces the entire showerhead. This machine is electric and is plugged into an outlet in the shower. Seem strange yet? Step 1: turn on water. This isn't bad. It works just like normal except that both knobs turn on cold water. The machine, however, is supposed to take care of this. Step 2: adjust water. The machine electrically heats the water up as it comes out - a cool idea. The consequence of this is that the only way to have water that's actually warm is to have next to no water pressure. So little that it is quite difficult to wash your hair. Ok, so two steps isn't really super complicated, but it feels like it sometimes.

We also saw tarantulas bigger than your head

Then I eat breakfast. Ana, my tica mama, is an amazing cook. We usually eat some combination of bread, cream cheese/regular cheese/a sour cream mixture, orange juice and coffee.

Finally, off to class. Class starts "promptly" at eight. There's an expression down here that translates roughly to "tica time". Tica is what the Costa Ricans call themselves. Tica time is the schedule that they operate on, which is somewhere between 5 and 30 minutes later than the clock time. For my class, it's around 5 minutes, but there are apparently other students whose professors aren't so prompt. The class runs until noon with a small break in the middle.

After class I come back home for lunch which varies but is always good. After lunch I do homework and then I have some free time. On Wednesdays, though, that time is taken by touring cultural things - ie museums or art galleries. So far we've been to one museum, and we have with another scheduled for Wednesday.

Evenings are reading, talking, and sometimes dance class at the university (any dance that has a spanish name is taught by a small, very enthusiastic woman) and sometimes the bars. Taxis cost between fifty cents and one dollar to wherever you want to go, so it's really, really easy to get around.

This weekend was insane. We went to Monteverde, which is a rainforest on the top of a mountain. We stayed at a hotel named Villa Verde and had a great time. On Saturday we took zip lines through the canopy. One of the other students had a watch that also took speeds as we went along. He reported that we exceeded 26 mph - not only was it a blast, but it was beautiful, as well. Later on we went on a night walk, which was possibly the highlight of the trip. We saw a porcupine. In Costa Rica the porcupines have prehinsile tails - which is a bit strange to me. We also saw tarantulas bigger than your head and a sloth (four toed) Later that night we went to a discoteca or dance club. Our group argued for a bit about whether they wanted to go, but eventually we mananged to convince everyone to come, which was an excellent decision. The club started a bit slow, but was packed by the end. The next morning, those of us who woke up - myself and three others - went for a hike through the national park. The highlight of the hike was the catarata or waterfall. Finally, we went home which involved three hours of dirt paths in a very old bus.

I'm off to try to find apicture or two of the trip - if I get a chance, I'll update with some.