Solo bromeando! (Just kidding for you non spanish speakers)
After a 4 hour layover in Atlanta, and walking the length of the airport which is about 3 to 4 miles, we got on our plane for the short 4 hour plane ride to Costa Rica. We arrived in San Jose late friday evening, and while getting our luggage the conveyor belt broke and we waited for tico time workers to fix it. After getting through customs, we were met by a large hoard of local people holding signs and yelling names. We got on our bus and met our host families at the university, Universidad Veritas, an art and architecture school with a very modern design.
Jon (my roommate) and I were driven by Maria Joaquina Rojas, our host mother, and her husband to their house in a neighboring town. They have a 24 year old son, Juan Jose, and a 19 year old daughter who wants to be a school teacher. They are extremely nice, and Mrs. Maria knows a little spanish but in case I can´t figure something out her kids know english very well and can translate. Their house is nice, and Jon and I live in a bonus house that had 4 bedrooms and a small bathroom with ¨agua caliente!¨ (hot water) as Mrs. Maria was excited to tell us. As I had kind of figured out from using google maps, our home is the farthest from the University and a 30 minute walk, but it is worth it to live with such nice people.
This is the view out of our window in the hallway from the second floor of our little bonus house
Jon's lovely bedroom
My bedroom with the wall which doesnt reach the ceiling and has a plastic window in it in order to provide sunlight
Homeless man on the street
Downtown San Jose
In the morning jon got in the shower first and says that the water really isnt that hot, so i hop in the shower and discover that the water in the shower, is in fact, cold. I guess it is a good way to limit water usage because my showers have been about 2 minutes long every morning. Mrs. Maria makes us a good breakfast that so far has consisted of gallo pinto (rice and beans), fruit, this extremely sugary fruit juice, and bread. She is one of the nicest people I have ever met and is just like a mom to us. She asks us to not help with the dishes, and even requested that she be able to clean our rooms during the day. Now thats my kind of living!
The first day we went on a bus tour around San Jose, and stopped downtown to walk around for a little bit. We were supposed to visit Galeria Namu, famous for its high quality local crafts and things like that, but evidently they forgot about us and were closed. In their downtown they have cow statues that are painted by local artists, just like cincinnati had pigs. The city isnt really that different from a city in America with the exception that people are out walking around and there is always activity. They even have ice cream guys on bicycles that ride around the parks and sell refreshments. There just seems to be a little more traffic both on foot and in car tha tin america. We ate lunch downtown at a restaurant that served us local grub and it was very good. I am lucky that I like everyone on this trip from Miami. There has been a lot of bonding and so far everyone is relaxed and gets along really well. Being around each other all day isnt exactly beneficial to my spanish speaking skills, so it is nice to talk to our host family in spanish and try to talk to people in stores in spanish.
After a long day yesterday, Jon and I both took naps during the first real rain of the spring. Costa Rica has been in a drought recently (probably due to global warming or something), but yesterday it poured. and poured. and then poured some more. After we woke up, our host mom served us dinner with the 2 other american guys who are living with her, both studying at the same university as us but through Montana State. We played some cards with her son and one of the other american kids on the back porch in the downpour and just hung out. we met up with a bunch of other miami students later, and had trouble getting back to our house by taxi because the address that we were given is 1 of 2 possible locations in town, but we made it safely home.
No comments:
Post a Comment