Unanimously Voted the Best-Day-Ever on the Caribbean Coast

The following retro-post is from Week 2, August 25-31. I will try to make it semi-short but very sweet (who does this sound like? Yuk Yuk Yuk)

• My classes began on Monday the 25th, and my schedule is as follows (in case you are interested in knowing when I will NOT be online...any other time is up for grabs!) Monday 9-12 Poverty & Human Development in Latin America, 1:15-3:30 Spanish. Tuesday 9-12 Rural & Urban Dimensions of Sustainable Human Development, 1-4 Ecotourism, Conservation & Local Development. Wednesday occasional Experience Sharing Meeting from 9-12, then 2-5 Current Environmental Issues in Latin America. Thursday 1:15-3:30 Spanish again. 
• FYI, Costa Rica is in Central Standard Time, as it is so close to the Equator that sunrise and sunset vary very little (usually 6am and 6pm or earlier) and it thus does not "celebrate" Daylight Savings Time.
• During Spanish class we had a placement exam, where--despite having only taken 2 semesters in my life--I placed into the Intermediate II class, the highest level they teach in CIDH. My goal is (and all my teachers and my host dad assure me it will come to pass) to be fluent by the time I leave in December. I have a lot of work  to do, but am so grateful for the challenge of being in this class with people who have studied Spanish for 6 years!
•  Showering before breakfast EVERY DAY is a cultural norm here, so I will have to get used to that (laugh it up, Bryan and Hollis.) Today my mom enlightened me with "Um, I think it's a cultural norm in the States, too." Oh come on, you can hit the hippie harder than that!! HaHa:) 
• I hung out with my 4-year-old host nephew, we'll call him Chicitico. He and I played some hiding games, he introduced me to Alejandrito, his little turtle, whom he fed and allowed to walk on the couch. Then we took pictures of things, and he gave me a kiss on the cheek before we napped together on the couch. He is sort of spoiled, but gosh what I wouldn't give to have some sort of young person in the house.
• I found nearby internet access at McDonald's, where they serve a burger entitled the "McNifica" (English equivalent: The Magnificent). Oh how clever. On my way home I saw my first mice/rats, which got me pretty grossed out. They are the only thing that disgusts me...should I be posting this where the whole world can see? Anyway, you would know if you saw my reaction to some parts of Ratatouille....[shudder]
• I'm getting a ton of much-needed practice from speaking Spanish with my family. I'm progressing really quickly--soon I will be able to talk to people my age and maybe make some Costa Rican friends, hooray!!
• Weekend 2 was spent in Puerto Viejo, on the Caribbean Coast. We stayed at an awesome hostel (Rocking Js if you ever find yourself in the area), slept in hammocks on the beach, listened to live music (and our guy friends singing My Heart Will Go On), jumped on a trampoline in the rain while intoxicated (such a good idea, why hadn't we thought of that before?) then chilled on the beach with some speakers and stargazed--there are literally twice the amount of stars here than can be seen at my house in the country in the US. Wow. We were worried that the daily afternoon rain would bring cloud cover and hide the stars anywhere we went, but we were (thankfully!) wrong, at least for a little while. And we told ghost stories, to top it off. Ask Amanda about her ex-boyfriend's sister's ex-boyfriend who was Haitian. It'll freak you out.
• 8/30 was Unanimously voted the best day ever (you can see the photo album aquí). We bussed to Cahuita National Park. There we saw monkeys, snakes, leaf cutter ants, Creepy Springs (which just begged to have a horror film made about it), a sloth (the worst sloth ever because it was moving so "fast". Check him out yourself), dodged half-eaten fruit thrown at us by the monkeys, skinny dipped in the Caribbean at midday (how many people can claim that?), found out later that there were caimans in the water-haha! trekked through creepy looking lakes, then 2 km back to  the "town" of Cahuita where we ate a Caribbean dinner (no plantains, what?!) then (terrible) live music, an invitation to Bocas del Toro (the gringo band goes every 3 months, for obvious reasons), then some more tunes on the beach, some beer, and lots of bonding. 
• Slept fairly well the next few nights because I was not in a hammock---nor was that un-hammock full of sand when I woke up in the morning! Tried to go to San Ramón to meet up with Tom the Brit for the Cow Festival (my favorite animal!) but had no information whatsoever and no way to possess such info, so I had to forego the great fun times at San Ramón. But it meant less money spent and more time on the Caribbean, so I ain't complaining:)

Week the Uno in America the Central

Thus far in Costa Rica I have: (to make this shorter I will roughly categorize the events into the weeks in which they occurred) Week 1, August 18-24, 2008.

• Very smooth trip here, no hassle in Miami airport (that's a first!); caught my first glimpse of Costa Rica outside the window, green sprawling fields, trees, rivers--I couldn't wait to explore!
• My host family consists of my parents, madre nueva, (M.N) and padre nuevo (P.N.), and 3 host brothers, a host sister and 2 host nephews, none of whom live with us (and most of whom I have met). We also have a blind dog named Sweetie; I like to stand in the kitchen really quietly and watch her bump into my leg before finding out that I'm there. One day she fell down the stairs (but she's ok, no worries)
• I live in Vargas Araya, a small "neighborhood" in the San Pedro suburb of San José, the capitol of Costa Rica. My address is (the addresses here are so funny) "25 meters north of the spare parts store". Some people actually live "150 meters east of where the church used to be". Yet, the taxi drivers know where to find it! My classes are at ULatina, which I thought was a 10 minute walk from my house, but it turns out to be somewhere between 5 and 7. I lucked out :)
• My first full day here I toured downtown San José with M.N. She took me to the sprawling supermarket, pointed out major landmarks like the National Theater, and we visited the hotel where P.N. works--the electricity was out when we arrived, which is apparently not uncommon here!
• I've discovered that people honk  their car horns all the time here. When they pass you on the left, if a cab driver sees a fellow cab driver, if they know you or want to get your attention, if you're standing on the corner and they want to "ask" if you need a ride, if they think you're sexy, if it's 5:11 on a Tuesday, etc. (That last one might be an exaggeration...)
• Although San José is a fairly dirty or grimy place, I love it here and think it is absolutely beautiful--to use Merijoy's words, "in its own forgotten way." There are parks full of green plants and amphitheaters, gutters overflowing with trash, it rains every afternoon and the broken or nonexistent sidewalks are slippery with water and motor oil, there are rats that I don't want to think about, and always some strange smell--but something on my walk home smells absolutely amazing, like someone on the second floor is constantly  baking. And I want to find out who they are and whether I can have some cake.
• The national beer, Imperial, is pretty good and fairly strong--my host parents took me out for a celebratory cerveza my first night here, and although I will not say I was actually tipsy, I was definitely happy but couldn't remember any Spanish.
• There are 20ish students in the group I am with (CIDH, International Center for Sustainable Human Development), and they are all pretty cool so far. We had our orientation at La Catalina, a mountain resort convention center with a beautiful view of San José, especially at night. Then we hiked around La Paz Waterfall Gardens and saw their monkey, bird, hummingbird, snake, frog, orchid and butterfly (my favorite one) exhibits. It was nice to be guaranteed to see some wildlife at least once while I'm here! Pictures of La Catalina and La Paz Waterfall Gardens aquí.
• I went to a nearby bar with Joe and Phil from the group one night, and it's a good thing we went to the one M.N. had suggested because our other choice--right across the street, Acapulco Bar--burned down while we were inside Ciros. 
• Sunday the  24th I woke up at 5:30 and met some friends in town to take a whitewater rafting trip down the Pacuare River near Cartago (S/SE of San José). The trip was amazing, classes 1-4 rapids, great guides, cold water, exhilarating with some relaxing parts, a lunch stop, swim stops, all the while in a jungle valley where you can see iguanas and three toed sloths (no ocelots this time), and tiny poisonous frogs. We went with Aventuras Naturales, a carbon neutral excursion group that was fairly expensive ($100+) but included transportation, rafting, breakfast, lunch, guides, equipment and transportation back to San José. I would definitely recommend this company! Picture aquí and some videos: that time I thought I was dead, playing in the water, and how rapids look up-close (said in an Australian accent).