Since I'm living through my friend Carol's adventures in Costa Rica till I join her in June the following is her first email detailing some funny first moments in the country.

Hey everyone!
Well I have made it safely to Nicoya, Costa Rica all in one piece, despite a rocky start. Let´s see...where to begin. Well I flew in Saturday night and managed to get to my hotel with out incident, and then back to the bus station in the morning ok, but then the adventure started. i was hoping the bus system was easier to navigate than it was. It was quite different than the friendly and convenient Bellingham bus service. :) Very few of the buses are marked with their destination and none of the buses stop at the bus stops to pick you up unless you stand in the middle of the road and wave them down. Luckily, I had a guide to get me on the right bus. Then once on the bus the driver does not call out any of the destinations we pass, so I was never sure when we got to Nicoya.

The girl next to me was getting annoyed that I asked her so many times if we were in Nicoya. The buses hold about 50 people and people brought all sorts of things onboard, big bags of mangos, bananas, a slab of raw meat, bouquets of flowers, everything short of live animals. at one point a man boarded and sold beer, soda and burritos out of his cooler to passengers, then gave the driver a cut of his profits and got off...I’m not sure if that was legal. The roads are very narrow and have many potholes in them and our driver did about 60 or 70 mph at all times, even around corners, so standing passengers flew into each other. They also pass other cars on blind a corner which was quite an adrenaline rush. it is about 95 degrees or so (I’m not sure though because I don’t understand Celsius thermometers, not to mention not understanding metric, or the money system here...487colones to the dollar...it makes you nervous when you spend 1500 on a soda) and the bus isn’t air-conditioned at all. Our bus ran over and killed 2 iguanas in the trip, and ran over an already dead monkey. The countryside was beautiful though, we drove through tropical rain forests, farm land, deserts and regular forests. I saw banana and coffee plantations on either side of the road. Well enough about the bus.

I arrived in Nicoya and got dropped off at my host family’s house after almost bursting into tears at the bus station because there was no one there to pick me up.

The Diaz family (host family) has a very small 3 bedroom, 1 bath home with all green walls, and everything and I mean everything else decorated with lace and pictures of Jesus. The couches are lace, the curtains, and the bedspreads (except mine which has pastel ducks, baby rattles, and kittens on it.....it goes well with my Mickey Mouse towel). My room is small with just a bed and a small table that is meant to change babies on. When I got there I met another language student who is also in the house, Clara, from England. So she sleeps in one bedroom, me in another, and the parents and both of the daughters (ages 14 and 18) share the 3rd bedroom. All 6 of us share the same bathroom. The sinks and showers only have cold water. I remember reading in a travel book before I came that that was the case, and the book said cold showers are refreshing...maybe the first one was, but not so much anymore. By the time you get any soap on you are trembling with hypothermia so i never get very clean. Also no paper can go down the toilets, so it all goes in a basket in the bathroom so the house always smells quite a bit like baby diapers.

The food is ok, we are served rice and beans for every meal, including breakfast. The first night it was rice, beans, and some sort of potato stew and watermelon juice. Morning was rice, beans (left over from dinner) and a piece of bologna smothered in butter. Dinner tonight was rice, beans, a mystery meat...possibly chicken, strawberry juice and a mango. I never thought of myself as a picky eater but I think I might become one pretty soon. Clara and I eat alone, as the family never sits down and eats dinner together. I imagine if Clara wasn’t also at the house (she leaves next week) it would be quite lonely eating alone for every meal; she said that is how it has been for her for the last week before I came. Nury, the mother, waits on us hand and foot. It makes me quite uncomfortable. She refuses to let us help with dinner, or clear our plates afterwards. When I got back from school today she had taken all my dirty laundry I had balled up in my backpack, washed, ironed, and folded it all and set it on my bed.

I really like the school, although I have only had one day of it so far. Today we went to another student´s host family’s house and her family is much much more wealthy than mine. She has a large room, air conditioning, hot water showers, she can flush toilet paper, she gets her own bathroom, and she gets coco puffs for breakfast...they haven´t served her rice and beans once. Clara and I keep telling each other that we are getting a better "cultural" experience.

I am in a class with 2 other students, but right now the school has about 15 students in the morning and 10 in the afternoon classes. All of the morning students, except for me are with a big university group in London, including Clara. They are all 20-22 years old, but they are only here until the end of the week and then they leave and new people will come in. I guess in the afternoon there are 5 students from Washington DC, but I haven’t met any of them yet.

So far I haven’t been able to understand much of anything that the locals are saying to each other or to me. They have accents I am not used to and funny phrases...for example to say hello to someone on the street you say "adios"....maybe its just me, but doesn’t that mean goodbye and not hello? I understand everything my professor says in class though and she only speaks Spanish to us so that is encouraging somewhat. After classes today i went out to lunch with a few other students, I paid roughly 1.75$ for a big chicken sandwich and a glass of fruit juice. Then we had an afternoon outing through the language school to the historic church and a lesson on the wildlife in the parks here.

Tomorrow is an afternoon outing to Sumara beach, and Wednesday is salsa dancing lessons, which I am really looking forward to. All the English students who went to the beach last week and tried to surf have large cuts up and down their legs because the sand is very course at that beach...so I don’t know if I will try to surf right off the bat.

Tomorrow there is some big tradition in Nicoya that goes on once a year. There is a giant hill on one side of the city with a big cross on top. all of the locals walk up and down the hill to the cross from sunrise to sunset in honor of Jesus’ crucifixion (well that is what I understood from the conversation when my host mom was talking to me, so who knows....that’s a long time to walk). Well that is about it for now... I will keep you all updated on how the trip develops.

Much amor,
Carol
P.S. there was a lizard on my bedroom wall the first night