Day 3

Sooo.. Yesturday was our first day at the University of Costa Rica! We had orientation and divided up into our neighborhoods so we could meet our neighbors. My neigborhood Cedros has a lot of students! Wesley and I have met a few people close by that we really like. A bunch of the students are from Texas Tech, literally like half of the students here this month but the rest of us are from different places. So far I haven't met anyone else from Virginia! Wesley is from Alabama, an international relations major. We've been getting along really well! I am so glad I have a roommate because let's be serious, I can't navigate anywhere. So we catch the bus at the end of our kind of driveway with a bunch of people and have like a 15 minute bus ride to campus. University of Costa Rica is actually really prestigious throughout Central America and is massive and beautiful! It's so crazy to see a busy city with such tropical plants! They made it a point to tell us to watch our step constantly because the ground is always changing from earthquakes and new trees growing etc, there are gigantic tree roots everywhere! It's really beautiful. However, no one told me it's winter here!! It's the rainy season so it's been raining a bit lately but hopefully it gets nicer :] Usually it rains for a short period and is done but days like today it rained or misted alll dayy long. They say you can see the mountains all around San Jose however we haven't seen them yet because of the dang rain! I'll add a few random pictures from campus/San Jose. I definitely need to take more!

a really pretty church close where I get off the bus to get to campus..

some neat graffiti nearby..

part of campus with some soccer fields in the background..

A building on campus.

one of the libraries on campus.

just part of campus.
I have to take some of our classrooms and buildings!

So anyways. I really like the people I've met, everyone's really friendly and a bunch of us who live in Cedros went out last night to a local bar (like 2 min up the road) ha it's actually a chinese restaurant. Another strange thing I didn't know, Costa Rica's largest minority are chinese! So there are chinese restaurants everywhhereee and also dentists. I don't know what that's all about but there are a loott of dentists.

So we took our placement tests and I got into Spanish 410 Espanol Superior Avanzado! The one I needed. Wesley is also in that class but his conversational spanish is muuuchhh better than mine. So our class has 12 people and we have two teachers and class from 8-1 everyday. I love the teachers so far, so it should be good! There is another boy in my class Beto who's parents are from El Salvador but he doesn't know spanish either so we have a lot in common. There's also a guy from the Bahamas! It's really interesting!

So tomorrow is our first real day of class. I have met a few people who want to exercise here so we're going running tomorrow morning together! (Nerdy, I know.) ha but it'll be nice I feel so lazy not doing anything, then the weather, and all the delicious food oh man. Also tomorrow a friend of mine from the neighborhood wants to go look into a gym up the road so we'll check that out and see if it's good.

And the foooood! So good! Everything is so fresh! I've been eating lots of fruits and vegetables. Fruit every morning, had black beans and rice with scrambled eggs with watermelon yesturday morning, papaya this morning with empanadas? Is that what they're called mom? And for dinner had avocado with my black beans and rice and salad with huge tomatoes and peppers. yumm.. We also had this drink with dinner that's a lot like lemonade but greenish and thicker, so delicious! I think it's made with those mini apple looking fruits we ate in Nicaragua with salt.. What are those mom and have you heard of making drinks out of them? It's super good though.

Well I'll have to write more later and definitely take more pictures. I can't wait for Tortuga island Saturday! There's also a movie theater nearby that does 2 for the price of one on Tuesdays so we want to go to that and there's a play playing this weekend that's supposed to be very good that we may go see. Many of us are also planning on coordinating a trip somewhere for our long weekend perhaps some ziplining? We'll see!