Pura Vida!

I’m finally in Costa Rica! The flight was long a grueling with a lot of challenges. We were told that we were getting our visas in Costa Rica but the person checking me in wouldn’t let me board without one or a plane ticket back within 90 days!! So luckily we found out it could be refundable and my mom was nice enough to put it on her card for me so I could get on the plane!!! I didn’t run into any other problems getting into the country but I couldn’t sleep at all so by the time I landed in Costa Rica I had gone 24 hours with barely any sleep. Luckily the excitement of being in a new country gave me some energy.

As soon as I had grabbed my luggage my host family picked me up and took me to their place. Felipe had painted a sign with my name on it, it was so cute!!! Felipe is my hermano, he is ten and so nice, we like to play cards with each other. My mama’s name is Celia, she is very nice and provided me with my own room and bathroom and it constantly feeding me!! I finally learned to say I'm full, so she understands that I don't need any more food! My hermana Carla is 31 and nice, I haven’t talked to her much yet but she makes sure I know how to get around town and what taxis to use and so on. No one in my family speaks any english so right now I’m having a very hard time communicating with them, but it's been fun trying to figure each other out.

Our first night out was so much fun, we had a huge group, around 20 of us, and we went to the local bars and watched futbol and drank cervesas. We had a local tico (one of the hermanos of a classmate) show us a couple bars, the Ticos are very nice here and really funny!

I also have been running in the morning (surprisingly) but its so hot and humid with a TON of hills here that after a 25 min run i'm literally dripping in sweat!! But it is so much fun exploring the city on my own and learning my way around the town, (no I haven't gotten lost surprisingly! Luckily in Costa Rica every house is completely different from the next) Oh and by the way all you men out there that make fun of women for not knowing street names and only knowing landmarks, in Costa Rica they don’t have ANY street names they only know how to get places by landmarks!! For example an address for a house would be something like, Santa Lucia, 500 metros (blocks) este of the orange trees 200 metros norte from the school, the blue house. So we know what we are talking about when we go by landmarks not street names!

There is also a crazy two week long fiesta going on right now in Barva (a suburb of Heredia) where people wear masks and try to hit people on the streets with pig bladders while everyone runs away, its kind of crazy but so much fun to watch. I actually got hit once, which was kind of gross but cool that I was apart of the festivities.

Every night they have live music, parades, fireworks, and some many other things to do it has been amazing. Tuesday night a group of us went out and enjoyed the festival and then went to a near by bar. We met local ticos that could speak english and we hugn out all night! I even met my future husband (he just doesn't know it yet) Don't worry mom he is a keeper, he owns a bar, real estate, speaks four languages, can dance, plays the guitar and sings, is really funny, and very cute! I fell in love. Too bad he has a girlfriend :(. I'll win him over by the end though haha!!

Well thats all for now! It's hard to write on here becuase I only have internet at the school and it goes in and out but i'll try to keep this as up to date as I can.

Hasta Luego!

Sierra

P.S. it takes way to logn to upload pics on this thing so check out facebook for pictures