Arrival!

Hello!

I’ve made it safely to Costa Rica! My flights went surprisingly well, considering my hatred of flying: everything was on time, I only had to wait ten minutes at my connection, and on my second flight I sat next to a little boy named Salvo who kept sharing his KitKats with me. After I navigated myself through customs, my bag was the very first one I saw at baggage claim and Don Fernando was waiting as promised to pick me up. The only snag was that I wasn’t able to call home (sorry Mom!) because I didn’t have time to look for a phone card and my cell phone doesn’t work here after all (Mom – it gets no service, it just keeps saying “searching”). Anyway, Don Fernando herded me and another ICADS student named Matthew into a rickety old yellow bus and drove us to our host families. The road situation is a bit crazy - at one point, he took a wrong turn but simply drove down and through a ditch to get back onto the main road. It is very hot and humid here but incredibly verdant and beautiful! There are palm trees and mountains everywhere. And cows. And people riding horses all about public parks! This is something I hope to partake in. Anyway, Don Fernando dropped me off at my house, which I took some pictures of and will post if I can figure out how to. The family is extremely nice, but it was a bit intimidating at first, for there were dozens and dozens of them all talking at once and introducing themselves – I don’t remember any of their names! In addition to the throngs of people, they have a little dog that looks like a Chihuahua with very long legs named Mini and a cat named Satcha and a parrot named Carolina (they keep warning me that she bites) and three other birds with incomprehensible names. Thus far, my Spanish has proved to be rather patchy – I told one of the women living here that I liked her garden and she took it to mean that I was some sort of master gardener and I think that I may have accidentally agreed to skip my group trip to the beach this Saturday in order to transform her trash heap into a florid paradise. Luckily, no one in the family seems to care that my Spanish is hopeless, they just smile at me and offer me more food - as soon as I got here, they pressed a big bowl of arroz con leche (like rice pudding) into my hands and an hour and a half later, they served me a large dinner of fried rice with chicken and vegetables and fried yucca – delicious! Immediately after dinner, they told me that I must be exhausted and scolded each other for keeping me up so long and ushered me into my room and closed the door. However, it was only 7:30 and I wasn’t not sleepy at all and I’d already finished my only book (aaahhhhh!!!!), so I didn’t quite know what to do with myself, so I decided to write my first blog post! There isn’t any internet in the house, so I won’t be able to email anybody or post this until tomorrow. I hope that you aren’t panicking about me, Mom! Love you all!