Settling in

Now that I've been in Costa Rica for a full 24 hours and have had a little time to settle in, I can tell you all something about where I'm staying.

I flew out at an insane early hour of the morning on Sunday. Many thanks to Marty & Mele for volunteering to pick me up at 3:45am so I and my 4 bags could get to the airport. I really do have the most awesome friends. All the air travel went very smoothly, everything on time, all my bags arrived and nothing adventurous at all happened until my taxi got to Ciudad Colón. The thing you need to know about rural Costa Rica is that there are no street names or addresses. So the directions I gave to my driver were- 'de la Casa Cural, 400 este, mano izquierda porton verde, casa beige al fondo'. Basically- 400 meters east of where the priest lives, on the left a green gate, beige house on the bottom. What are you supposed to do with that? You drive to Ciudad Colón and ask the first person you see where the Casa Cural is. You follow the first step of his directions. You ask the next person you see, where the Casa Cural is, you follow the first step of her directions. You find the Casa Cural, drive 4 blocks east and start looking for a green gate. The first one we tried was locked and no one answered our honk. My driver then tried calling the numbers I had for my landlords. No answer. Then he drove around a bit and just started asking people if they knew Jose Morales or his wife María. Eventually someone pointed us in the direction of another green gate and once it was opened, I recognized the patio of my apartment from the photo I'd seen online. All was well.

I'll be living in a 3 bedroom apartment with a nice living room, dining area and small kitchen. My two flatmates arrived today after traveling 27 hours from Asia. They are both part of the Asia Leaders Program and so have been studying together elsewhere for the past 4 months. Our apartment is at the bottom of a jigsaw complex that includes two studio apartments; the living quarters of our landlords, their kids and extended family; María's beauty salon and some kind of construction business. Most of our windows look out on stairways or outdoor storage areas but I do have a nice little window looking at the green field next door in my room. The view from our patio is currently a small cement mixer and a pickup truck filled with dirt. Not far beyond our house you can see steep green hills with the occasional fancy house nesting in a valley. I believe somewhere further up those hills is where UPEACE is located.

This morning I walked into town, a short 4 blocks, mostly downhill. I crossed over a little stream at the bottom of the hill and all along the way there's green everywhere and many different kinds of butterflies. Town is quite small, at least by my American standards. The area of shops and banks and etc. is about 6 blocks long by 2 blocks across. Lots of little storefronts selling fruits & vegetables, meat, baked goods. Two grocery stores. Two banks. I passed a pet store that in addition to puppies and a kitten had crates and crates of chickens (on the way into town I saw a lot of chickens roaming among the houses and into the street). The center of town is the Catholic Church with the football pitch in front of it. And by football pitch I mean of course, soccer field. I bought groceries at both supermercados plus a panadería and a frutería. Our landlords are making a welcome dinner for us tonight, so I'll soon get my first taste of Costa Rican cuisine.

I'm feeling pretty good about my adventures in Spanish so far. There are whole sentences where I know exactly what to say and I find I understand the gist of what people are saying to me even if I don't always know the words to answer them. I bailed into English once at the bank though if I'd taken a moment to think about it, I did actually know the words I needed. It's both funny (peculiar) and wonderful to think that the Spanish conversations, which now wash over me in line at the bank, on the radio and so on, in 11 months will be concrete images and ideas. I'm looking forward to that.

The weather was exactly as has been described to me. Warm and sunny in the morning, then just after noon light rain intermittently turning to heavier rain for a few hours. Now in the evening, overcast. It's quite humid but out of the sun the temperature is pleasant enough that I was far more comfortable today than I have been for the past sweltering week in Chicago. I think I see my first mosquito right now but it's staying safely out of my way at the moment.

I haven't seen many people biking, only two or three and maybe the rain has something to do with that. I'm still hoping to get a bike for myself here, both to explore further and to free myself from the UPEACE bus schedule. Once I've made the trip a few times by bus, I think I'll know enough about the route to determine how safe and ridable the roads are. I've just gotten the schedule for Orientation starting on Wednesday. Wish it were tomorrow. Listo. I'm ready.