The grass really is greener on the other side...

This is surreal. It's been an incredibly long day and yet it seems like everything has happened so fast. I've been in Costa Rica for 14 hours now but it doesn't feel anything like that.

So I'll begin by informing you that my flight from Houston to San José was better than my flight to Houston from LA... by leaps and bounds. To begin with, there we no crying babies. There was also no large man encroaching on my personal space. Instead I sat next to a girl, about my age, who was headed to Costa Rica for a two week long Spanish Med class and man who moved from the US to Costa Rica 15 years ago because he got married and had some children here. (His story was mildly amusing because it's what people swear I'm going to end up doing). The girl was very nice and the man had all kinds of things to say about the country. He said that if we did nothing else in Costa Rica, med school girl and I must, at the very least, go ziplining. I don't plan on letting him down.

After working my way through customs I wound up on the street, rather confused. I knew that I was supposed to be picked up by someone from the university but all of the people asking me if I needed a taxi, where I was headed, how I was getting there, if I needed to use a phone, etc. was rather overwhelming. Eventually I found the "Veritas University" sign where I met several other American students here for a quarter abroad. We hopped into a van driven by a very entertaining man (the extracurricular activity director for the university) and he took us on a wild ride through Costa Rican traffic. From the windows of the van, I got first real view of the land. Everything is green. I mean EVERYTHING. It rains here every afternoon. Not cold rain, just rain. And trust me, the plants enjoy it.

About 20 minutes after leaving the airport, I arrived at my new home: 100 meters south and 25 meters west of the Park of the Mangos. That's what addresses are like here. I suppose these kind of addresses make sense if you're a local, but how am I supposed to know where El Parque de Los Mangos is? You can't just type that into google maps.

Anyway, my driver got me here just fine. My host mom, Mayra, is just as amazing as I was promised. I can only think of the word "loving" when trying to describe her. She's kind and caring and incredibly entertaining. She also really is a champion javelin thrower. There are trophies all over the house to prove it!

 

I received a quick tour and by the time I’d finished unpacking, Doña Mayra had lunch/dinner fresh and ready. We ate a meal of rice, beans, tortillas, salad, fried yucca and platanos as we went over the household rules. Things are a lot easier here. Mayra does our laundry every week and all we have to do is clear the dishes off the table after meals. That certainly beats cleaning up after yourself!

At the very end of our meal Mayra's daughter-in-law, Adriana showed up with her adorable 7 month old son (Mayra's nieto or grandson), Santiago. He is a bit young for me, but I think I'm in love. 

Adriana and her husband Jonathan (Mayra's son) are amazing as well. They were going out for a friend's birthday and because it was Kelsey's 21st birthday at midnight as well, they said that we had to join. We got some more of those crazy Tica directions to a bar called Rockola, (which translates to something like a jukebox but is literally "rock-wave") and after a much needed nap, we got ready, called up our new friend "Marco the Taxi Man," and headed out for the night.