Greetings from Costa Rica

Like the Costa Rican's say, this is the "pura vida". The direct translation is pure life, but in reality, it has a deeper meaning that is harder to translate. I'm currently writing from the dining room table, while sitting with my host family. My host family is comprised of a mother (83 years old) and two daughters, about 56 and 45. They're great. I have my friend Rebecca to thank. She's one of the people who recommended this program. She lived with this family ten years ago and connected me with them. They are full of humor, warmth and patience. There's another American girl staying here. She's still in high school and is spending several months down here. I was worried we'd speak too much English, but when the family is around we stick to Spanish!


I've been here for three days now. The trek down here was difficult. I left my apartment in DC on February 15th. While driving my 12' budget rental truck to Chevy Chase to stay at my friend's mom's house for the night, I couldn't help but ask myself why I was doing this. It was an emotional 30 minutes where I was trying to calm myself down, drive a relatively massive truck (considering all I own is a bicycle) and periodically freaking out about my life choices. I was lucky to spend dinner that night with some of my closest friends in DC. It was filled with a lot of tears, mostly mine, where again I was questioning my decisions and referred to the old phrase, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Nothing about DC was broken to me (except for our government, but that's another story.) I couldn't remember why I was choosing to leave. From the getgo I've felt like DC wasn't my "forever city", so this felt like a natural break. Let me put it in writing that I may go back, who knows. After the trek from DC, I spent a lovely week at home in Chicago. Thank goodness the weather was in my favor, which made the move much easier. I hate to say this, but while I was home I wasn't feeling excited for my upcoming trip. I'm hoping it was just nerves. I realize this is truly a once in a life time experience that I'm incredibly fortunate to have, but I wasn't exactly thinking about that. I was all consumed by nerves so I couldn't look forward to my travels. I'm very glad that I'm somewhat easing myself into things. Costa Rica is really the only structured part of my trip. With each stop, I will have more independence. If I may say so myself, I planned this quite well.


My last night in Chicago was Saturday, Feb 25. I got a whopping two hours of sleep. I'm not sure what I was up to. Lots of last minute details. Of course I haven't loaded the photos from my camera onto my computer in years. For some reason I couldn't get it to work at 2am. I may just get another memory card. The photos show up on my camera, but won't load onto my computer. I was too tired to figure it out. I think my head hit the pillow at 2:45am and I needed to get up at 4:30am. Fortunately, I didn't forget to pack much. I think most of my time was spent removing clothing from my backpack. I have no clue how my backpack is so full, because I have about 7 shirts, some shorts, running pants, leggings and two dresses for FOUR months. I think I brought enough toiletries for an army. I may have overdone it on the shoes too, which is ironic since I wear the same damn ones every day. But I needed my hiking boots, my gym shoes, my sperry's, chacos and flip flops. The shoes combined with the massive overload of toiletries filled my bag to the brim. I'm hoping I will use/part with things along the way. Otherwise my back will be killing me and I won't have room for souvenirs! #priorities


I flew to San Jose through Panama. The flight was painless. Upon landing in Panama another panic attack ensued. I was exhausted, hungry and confused. My flight wasn't on the board. I couldn't find a help desk for my life. There was only 30 minutes of free wifi and I could not figure out my gate! In my panicked state I went to Subway to grab a sammy. I don't even eat Subway at home. It felt like a total failure, but it was what I needed that moment. A slight (albeit expensive) taste of home. I was finally able to find a gate agent to ask about my flight. My host family picked me up at the airport and we headed home to settle in and for dinner.


Monday morning I needed to be at school by 8:00am for my language test. Class starts daily at 8:30am and goes until 12:30. I placed into one of the advanced classes. I really like the school. My teacher this week, Monica, is great. She speaks slowly, makes us speak in Spanish and is a great teacher. The school offers various programs throughout the week. On Monday after class we had orientation followed by a tour of the city. We stopped for lunch at a nearby restaurant. Lunch isn't included in my homestay and is surprisingly affordable. I'm thinking about attending the tour again next week, because I had no sense of my bearing. It seems like Costa Rican don't either. There are no addresses here! I kid you not. The directions I received for my house were 200 meters north and 25 meters west of the church. The streets are numbered but the Ticos (slang for Costa Ricans) don't know them. You give directions based on land markers, like the one above. You could also say 400 meters east and 200 meters south of the Central Park. It feels like I'll never learn my way around. 100 meters is about a block. I'm not sure why they don't just say blocks.

While it has only been three days here, they have been three great days. My freak out (at least for the moment) has calmed down. I look forward to going to school. Tomorrow I'm going on a field trip to los choros, a local waterfall. I will report back on that and some of the other activities I've done soon!


Hasta pronto,
Raquel