Estoy aqui ya!

Well, I’m IN Costa Rica. Right now. Wow.

So getting here I was staying in Kalamazoo with my friend’s cousin…. and then I went at 3 for the train to Chicago. Well there was an ice storm so instead of taking the train at 3 I got on it at like 6… and then we stopped to wait for a new crew for like 2 hours in the middle… and went really really slowly… so by the time I got to Chicago it was like 12, so instead of going to see Leana I went straight to the airport…. through all that stuff… flight to Atlanta…. MADE my connection there halleluah, and got on the plane to Costa Rica. So it really actually hit me just as I got on the plane to Costa Rica, that I was going and I spent about 2 minutes in line in total panic before I got onto the plane and then I was stuck going so I was just excited. When I got of the plane my first impression of Costa Rica was of course warm, palm trees, tropical paradise. Alajuela is very pretty, I would probably like to spend time there, there was a park with people riding around and horses and stuff, but I didn’t spend any time there just got onto the bus for San Jose. In San Jose I got a taxi supposedly to take me to this quacker hostel, but he couldn’t figure out where it was, so I was walking looking and then this guy offered to help so he was asking everyone he came across and trying to find it and finally after about half an hour, he found it.

So by evening I was about 36 hours without sleep and thinking only in Spanish, so basically exhausted. Not to mention the jar of peanut butter opened in my pack and it was COVERED so I had to deal with washing that out. I did get out and wandered the city a bit in the afternoon though so that was good.

This morning I left real early on the bus to Montezuma. Along the way I’ve taken so far the bus to Puntarenas, the ferry across to the peninsula, a bus to I don’t know where, and another bus to Montezuma. Which is where I am now, waiting for the bus to take me to the wildlife reserve where I’m staying.

So far my impression of Costa Rica is that the people are really nice and friendly, alhtough I’m not sure how much that relates to me being gringa. The countryside is beautiful. There are a lot of American here in Montezuma, and they tend to be more or less obnoxious. At least I notice the loud obnoxious ones as Americans…. there are also lots of Frencha nd Spanish and Switzerlandense and et cetra. My spanish is going pretty good, actually much better than I had hoped. it’s like I’ve gotten better even without speaking spanish during the time in the US. Like already my thoughts are sometime in spanish, and I noticed earlier I was actually thinking about difficult philosophical stuff in my head in spanish. Although I noticed because before long I was trying to think something I didn’t know the word for and had to switch to english. It sure is wierd to be so totally aware of my internal head dialoge. It was fun in San Jose because most people didn’t speak engish so I got to try my spnaish. And they were patient and helpful with me speaking spanish. Now in Montezuma most people speak english, and they are not very patient with my tring to speak spanish. Ah well, I will persist. By the way, espcially for you Dad but any of you who are bothered by the mispellings and typos, internet here is relatively expensive so i don’t want to take the time to proof read not to mention that my brain is seriously fried from lack of sleep and trying to figure out what’s going on and where I’m going, so I probably couldn’t figure out how to spell lots of this stuff anyways.

Ok I will update whenever I have time and internet!