Post numero uno

I'm finally posting! It seems like forever since I've sat down at a computer (and I still haven't considering the labs are full and I have to stand at the the one I'm using now). Anyways...

We got into San Jose late Saturday night and took a bus from the airport to Veritas which is the university we're studying at. Our host family picked us up and we ended up hanging out and staying up until 12:30 am (2:30 am Ohio time) talking Spanish and getting the rundown on the city/country/rules. My roommate Stephanie knows Spanish well so she was my translator. It was rough and overwhelming :( Our family consists of an older couple who live by themselves and they are very nice. They also have a big hairy dog that smells just great. I have my own room and it's pretty nice. Theres a twin bed and a lot of storage. There are also huge windows that wake me up in the morning. Yay.

Sunday was a long day. We woke up and went into San Jose on a bus and we toured the city and walked around. It's alot different than West Milton/Oxford. It re-affirmed my love for the country and lack of love for big cities which gets me more excited for our weekend trips. We ate at a restaurant downtown and I got fajitas which was very good. Speaking of the food...we were all told about rice and beans everyday, every meal BUT our host family is from Peru and the man is on a diet so no rice and beans (so far)!! They have served us eggs and toast yesterday and a plate of fruit and toast today. For dinner last night, we had pasta. In other words, the food has been good. I'll need to dig into some rice and beans eventually though.

The rain came yesterday. Apparently their rainy season hadn't started (which is unusual)...until yesterday. It poured from about 4 pm until after I fell asleep. Its kind of cool though because you can sense when its coming. The weather is as follows...sunning and hot in the morning then rain in the afternoon. Apparently everyday it will be like this. It hasn't started yet today but it looks like it could anytime.

We found out last night that our hosts own two Hollywood Video stores. They ask if we wanted to go so we were excited thinking it would be a short trip (we were supposed to meet up with the group at nine). It ended up that they were closing the stores for the night so we waited then they took us to McDonalds to get ice cream. We didn't get back until almost ten :( It was still pretty cool to ride around the city with Costa Rican people that we had just met.

Today, we went to a big bank downtown. They have a lot of windows and you had to get a ticket when you come in to get in line. This may not be unusual in big cities, but it was new to me. We got a good exchange rate! Its nice to finally have colones. The exchange rate was 550 colones for every dollar.

After lunch we went to CINDE which is a marketing companies that promotes investment in Costa Rica. They reach out to companies and try to bring in international businesses. They have alot of incentives to attract them to Costa Rica. I never really thought about something like this existing but the presentation was very interesting. We got to see their growth in terms of GDP and investment and how their main exports and production have changed over the years.

Thats pretty much what has been going on. Everybody is getting along well in our whole group. We all stay in different directions for the University but thats where we all meet. We make plans because we have no cell phones. Just like old times.

I want to say hello to my family and everybody else (Jeff especially). I hope all is well in Ohio!

I don't know when i'll write again but I doubt it will be this long...but maybe so.

Adios mi familia y amigos!