So, I realize that I haven’t updated in a long time. Costa Rica has been great. My host mom, Rosa, is so hospitable and made me feel so welcome the second I met her. She cooks great food and lets us know that her house is our house and we can make ourselves at home. I think she made the adjustment to a new country much easier. She only speaks to us in Spanish, which I appreciate, but I’m still struggling to work up the guts to talk in Spanish… we will see how that goes, but I guess it has only been 2 weeks.
Rosa is also an excellent cook! She makes us eat a lot too… partially because she serves our food and partially because it is so good that we just want to keep eating. The first weekend we were here, her kids came over, who live a couple blocks away. One of them told us that everybody who has lived here has gained 15-20 pounds over the semester! I went on my first run yesterday and hopefully that will continue. Or, get ready for fat Nadia to return in June!
The first weekend that we were here, we explored our local areas a little bit. All five of us explored Moravia (the city we live in) on Saturday, and San Jose on Sunday. We just looked at the shops and went to the museums in San Jose.
All of us waiting for the bus! This is the best one of many takes, but we tried!
We made these at the art museum with magnetic shapes!
The school I am teaching at, Lincoln, is crazy! It is known to have the presidents kids go there, and many of the people who are running for the February election have students who go there too, so they have very high security. It feels strange, and the safety of it all even makes me a little uncomfortable. It’s just another adjustment I will have to make.
On the second day of orientation, the elementary student teachers didn’t have to go, so we went to the beach. It was a three hour bus ride, but it wasn’t so bad. However, the bus schedule randomly changes, so we thought the bus was at 7:30, when in fact it was at 7:00… so, we had to wait until 8:30 for the next one. We got there around 11:30 and stayed until the last bus at 5:00. Thank goodness for Greta! She is another teacher at Lincoln who also lives at Rosa’s house and she came with us and showed us how to travel in Costa Rica. We liked the beach so much, that on Saturday we went again and stayed at a hostel that was two doors down from the beach! Jaco is a large stretch of beach that is just gorgeous and the water is warm, the waves are good, but the sand is HOT! It is a black sand beach, and you literally can’t walk from the shore to the end of the sand without running, or else your feet will burn!
Kirra fixing our toilet in the hostel.
The stretch of beach to my right.
The stretch of beach to my left.
Ok, so I realize that this blog is all over the place, mainly because I haven’t updated in a while. There have been so many random and funny things that have happened that I wish I could remember them all… my goal is to update way more often so I can share them with you. I will update again this weekend!
