Hello everyone! This is now the third time I´ve written this as I get to the part where I include pictures and I´m sunk. So let me try another update. I´m here and I´m writing you from an internet cafe which is really some guy´s garage with one computer and a sign that says ¨ucem cafe net¨.

My homestay family is great, and I have an awesome situation in that I have a little casita behind their house which is totally private and all mine with a nice big room and a very nice bathroom. Since some students are sharing an apartment and one bathroom with their hosts I feel very lucky to have such a private area where I can close myself off when I want privacy. The family consists of the mom, dad and three kids in their mid twenties who all go to university. The father works for the Parks Department (or the equivilent) and is gone during the week as his office is four hours away (!). The mom is a character and we get along really well. She loves to laugh and loves to gossip and loves very much to tow me along on big walks around the neighborhood while she catches up with the neighbors and tells them stories of all the ultra-hilarious things I did that day. I never knew I was so funny. And as we walk around the town together we talk, which fuels more hilarious stories to tell the next neighbor and by the time we get to the last house it´s a 30 minute affair!

Here is the front of the family´s house:

All of the houses are behind elaborate gates. I don´t know if this is a cultural thing or a safety thing. The neighborhood seems very safe (although I´m not trekking around at night).

Here is my little house:

And now let´s have a look around my house.

One side of my room....

...and the other side of my room!

And lest I forget my coveted private bathroom.

I take about two showers a day because it´s very....sticky here. It´s quite warm for sure, but it puts Texas humidity to shame. And the thing of it is that all the women wear synthetic fabrics! Whatever. I´m happy in cotton everything and Tevas all the time.

So I was greeted very well on Saturday and I shared a meal ( a very delicious meal) with the family before I slept for twelve hours. The next morning I went to breakfast of fresh fruit with the most wonderful mangos I´ve ever had, bananas, pineapple, pico gallo (rice and beans...a staple) and fresh tortillas. Ahhhhhh, que rico! Despues de breakfast my host family asked if I´d like to go on an excursion to a volcano. Great! So we head out, the mom dad and myself, and first drive through the capital of San Jose before heading off to the mountain. In San Jose the thing that most caught my eye was the enormous line of cars honking their horns and waving flags and shouting something out the window. I mean there were 20 or 25 cars like this and it was really holding up already crazy traffic. I asked my mama what they were for and she said they were campaigning for a new president for the upcoming election. Oh really? Certainly the election must be soon for such a loud and boisterous show of support. Nope....try in two years! I´ll bet Bush would have loved to get such a show of support! FAT CHANCE!!!

So it was a beautiful drive as we climbed higher and higher and higher and headed up the mountains towards the volcano. Mostly we went through potato and onion farms, but there were many cows standing on the side of the road content to eat the wild grass.
The view was mostly like this, many potato farms:

And of course the requisite roosters walking around EVERYWHERE!

So after two hours of a beautiful and relaxing drive we got to the volcano. Unfortunately it was impossible to see out because of heavy cloud cover (apparently you are able to see both oceans from where we were), but still it was cool to see inside the crater of a dormant volcano.

The water is green because of the high sulfur concentration:

And here is the side wall of the volcano:

Apparently the only time that volcano was active in recent memory was the very moment Pres. John F. Kenney´s plane touched down at the airport in Costa Rica for a visit in the 1960s. It had been dormant for 100s of years before and ever since. I don´t know, she might have been feeding me a story but at least it was a good one. So we hiked all around the volcano and it was very interesting.

After that, and on our way home we stopped at another volcano to visit a woman that used to cook for my host father when he worked at the first volcano (follow that?). They visited for 30 minutes while I tried to follow and then gave up because it sounded like they kept saying the same words over and over again and I began to believe they were purposely messing with me. But then the woman they called Negra (for the color of her hair) made us a nice lunch of garbanzo beans and rice and tortillas and my conspiracy theories disappeared.

After we left Negra´s house, and because it was Sunday, we all went to church. But this was no regular church, it was the premier Iglesia in Costa Rica which is about an hour and a half from our house in Alajuela but luckily on the way home. It was an absolutely breathtakingly beautiful church, and I´m sure my pictures won´t do it justice.

The church was packed, and apparently on August 2 it´s a national holiday and the virgin of Costa Rica´s special day and so every Catholic in Costa Rica (and there are a lot of them) go to this church for service. And most people WALK for two or three days in order to do their penance. My mom got really excited when she realized that I´d still be in Costa Rica on this special day because she makes a two day pilgrimage there which includes walking across two cities. I pretended not to understand her.

After the mass most of the congregation took their empty milk jugs to the holy water fountain to fill them up so they could apparently have holy water at the ready in their fridge. Maybe for extra special recipies. Here they are with the spigots of miraculous water:

That night we stopped twice more to visit with various extended family, cousins, friends, etc. The stream of people is unending and the excess of Spanish can be exhausting but it´s great practice for me everytime I hear another hilarious story about myself and my neverending hijinks.

My host mom is a fantastic cook, and I´m certainly not going to be losing a lot of weight while here as butter is not really used sparingly. This morning she made me the most wonderful Empanadas (tortillas filled with cheese) from the fresh cheese we bought on the side of the road Sunday. The fruit and the Empanadas were so delicious that I took a picture of them.

And here is a picture of my mama as she prepared me breakfast at 6:30 this morning. She´s apparently not excited about posing for a picture first thing in the morning so better ones will be forthcoming.

Today I had my first day of school and began to be acquainted with my gorgeous outdoor classrooms and the people within it. I took my placement test today and tomorrow will find out what level I´m in and who my three other classmates will be. Here are some pictures I took of the school today:

And after class today we went to a local restaurant to get to know one another and our surroundings. Here we are!!

There are 25 students from Washington state and another 20 from California who all started school today so you can imagine that we´re a little conspicuous when we all walk around in a group through the city. Yeah... a little bit.

Okay so that´s all for now. I´m getting through the culture shock and enjoying myself a lot. I was suprised at how much spanish returned to me just through speaking with my host family and I´m excited to really dig my heels in and learn some serious stuff (and especially other tenses, since currently every time I speak it´s in present tense and makes it sound like I´m really really busy).

¡Hasta luego!