Travel Day and Day One

Whew! Its been a whirl wind! I can't believe its only been two days though. I feel like I have been here much longer than that! I love it here, it is so beautiful and fun!

One of my fears did actually happen though, my luggage was lost... The hope was that I would get it today, but I didn't come, unfortunately. I am doing ok though. I survived the first night and morning ok, but when I found out I would not be getting my luggage today, I kinda broke down. My roommate was super sweet and hugged me and talked to me and helped me feel a lot better. I am calling the airline first thing in the morning to find out the status though!

The travel day was long, but smooth. Nothing too exciting except that my luggage was lost, but that is like a bad-exciting. Getting into Costa Rica was great though. The people were so welcoming, especially from CEA. One lady took me shopping for some essentials right away and helped me understand the way the money works here. Everything is in the 100s and 1000s or 10000s! It can be very overwhelming and confusing at first; I am just barely getting the hang of it.

All of the other students in the Residencia dorm are really nice and easy to get along with. The dorm is super nice as well and we all have plenty of space! Every morning Mon-Fri we have cooks that come in and make breakfast for all of us! For lunch and dinner we have meal tickets that we are allowed to use at certain restaurants close by. It is a really cool system.



So today we woke up bright and early and had a walking tour of San Jose! I met all of the other students in the program and they are very fun. San jose is a really fun and colorful city! The "ticos" are very nice and happy and go out of their way to help others. After our foot tour we went to a coffee farm and had a tour of that. It was very pretty and the tour guides were kind of like actors and did a Spanish/English show that went with the tour. They were hilarious! Then we all had an amazing lunch and I got to talk more with some of the students. All morning the weather was very sunny and very warm.

We came back to the neighborhood where my school (Veritas University) is and where my dorm is. We got some information about the excursions we are going on over the weekends (I am so excited about them) and some of the other activities we are able to do. While we were there, all of the sudden it started to rain really hard. I even heard some thunder! It was quite a contrast from earlier today.

After that, the rest of the day was free to ourselves and many of us went to the nearby mall to pick up some necessities and check out the local shopping. (By this time I knew I wouldn't be getting my luggage and so this was a good chance for me to get at least some underwear and a shirt). The mall is enormous and very crowded! The stores are really... interesting, but I was able to find what I needed.

There was a huge group of us from the study abroad program that met up around dinner time after shopping at the mall and we all decided to go out to dinner. It was kind of a fiasco because there was like 12 of us and we all didn't really know where we were going. In the end, a small group of us ended up at a restaurant called Rio that is really popular and fun, but a bunch more people came later and it ended up really great! It just took forever and tons of walking and annoyed taxi drivers :)

The taxis here are very reliable, cheap, and plentiful. Its awesome! My roommate, Monse, is really great too because she speaks fluent spanish so that has been quite amazing.

More to update soon!

I will post some pictures soon too!