Hello from Costa Rica!

I am writing to you from my Costa Rican bed in my Costa Rican bedroom in my Costa Rican house. I am currently eating Sun Chips (yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, not very Costa Rican of me) and wearing my FLEECE. Go figure.

Today was one of the longer days of my life. Not in a bad way, or anything. It just lasted a very long time. Mikaela and I woke up at 3:45, and we left the house at around 4:45 to head to the airport. Our travels all went very smoothly as far as flights and layovers and all of that. The flights were pretty empty too, which was nice. I didn't really pay much attention to my surroundings until we started our descent into San Jose. I went to an empty aisle and sat in the window seat and was instantly wowed by what iI saw. Green. Green, green, and more green. Many different layers of clouds, which was really cool to fly through; you could see thunderheads spotting the landscape surrounded by patches of sunlight, and the coast shining a little bit in the distance. There were green mountains dotted with houses and green valleys, and I even saw a tiny waterfall pouring into a giant pool in the middle of the rainforest. I can already tell it's just as gorgeous as everyone has been telling me it is.

So we landed, went through all of the immigration and customs stuff, and went out and met up with a few other people who are here for the semester. We had to wait for about an hour for one last girl to find us, so we got the chance to get to know each other a little bit, and it seems like a really fun group. There will be more arriving all throughout the month of September, so I'm looking forward to meeting lots of new people.

Mikaela and I spent the rest of the day getting acquainted with our host family and our host house, and trying to adjust to speaking and hearing Spanish all of the time. Our family is absolutely amazing! There are four people in the family: Beatriz and her husband Romeo, and their two daughters, Tiare, who is 14, and Mariana, who is almost 3. They have been so welcoming and open and easygoing, and Beatriz made us an absolutely delicious dinner of arroz con pollo (rice with chicken), salad, and fried plantains. They've been great about answering all of our questions about Costa Rica and life in their house, and they've taken the time to drive us around their area a little bit to show us some of the fun places to go shopping and go see movies, etc.

I think this week will be pretty long, but after we get into a routine of class and then my internship starts, and after we get to know people and start knowing our way around and going on fun weekend trips, I will feel a lot more adjusted and time will start flying by. All right, I'm tired! And it's 8:40pm and they are serving dinner! Gotta go. Much love.

The time has come.

Well, folks, the time has come for me to say good-bye for now. After much packing and deliberating all week long (if you count downloading the first two seasons of Friends and hanging out with all of MY friends every night as "deliberating"), I'm off to Costa Rica for the next 4 months of my life. I'll be up in the air at around 6:50 tomorrow morning, and from there it's just a 3 hour flight to Houston and a 2.5 hour flight to San Jose, and then it's adios English, hola Spanish for a whole 16 weeks. I'm sure I'll be describing the brain aches to you in much detail. So many reasons to keep reading this blog. =]

Anyway, I know it's hard to remember to read these things (I've never been very good at it myself), but I just thought I'd write to keep my thoughts organized and have some memories from my trip, and at the same time update anyone who is interested in consistently reading it. Note: if I don't post for an extended period of time, don't call the authorities; I am probably just doing the usual and procrastinating. Hopefully there will be some fun pictures to see as well, although most of them will probably make their way onto Facebook too.

So that's about it for now! I love you all, I'll miss you mucho, and if anyone wants to take a sweet vacation and come visit me in November, talk to Elena. =]

Much love. Peace.