First Week in Costa Rica

I have had a wonderful first week here in Costa Rica. I really can't believe that I have only been here a week. So that this blog post is not 3 million words long, I am going to break it into a few sections with funnies mixed in where they fit.

1. Host Family and Language School
2. Weekend trips
3. Praises!
4. Pictures

I am getting to know my host family and the other student that is here at my house. The family is amazing and the mom, Emy, has been wonderful to help me with my Spanish. I have had several conversations with other members of the family in Spanish (I can understand a lot of what they say and I do my best to respond in very broken Spanish). Grace, the other student at my house, is from Korea. She is here until the end of October. She was in the States for a year learning English and then came here to learn Spanish! I hope to post pictures of my host family soon. Please pray for Emy (my house mom). She had surgery last week and is in a lot of pain.

On Saturday, Grace and I went to downtown San Jose. We went to buy a bus ticket for Monday to go to the beach but ended up spending the day shopping and ate lunch at Pizza Hut. It was quite an adventure to buy the bus ticket. We got in what we thought was the correct line to buy the ticket and waited for 30 minutes. When we got to the front of the line, we were told we were not in the correct line. Praise God that there was a man near that spoke some English. He helped us find the correct line. At Pizza Hut, I attempted to buy 1 slice of pizza and a drink. I ended up with 3 slices of pizza and a drink. Just one of many many language mistakes.  We also fed the birds at the park. (My mom says that I look like a bag lady feeding the birds LOL)  (See pictures of the day below)

Today, was a Costa Rican holiday called Culture Day. (has something to do with Christopher Columbus and the discovery of the new world)  Grace and I took a bus to Playa de Jaco. (Jaco Beach)  It was about a 2 1/2 to 3 hour bus ride. When the bus arrived in what we assumed was Jaco, we were not sure where to get off the bus. First, we didn't know where the beach was and we didn't know where the bus station was so that we could return this afternoon. Thankfully we were able to ask the bus driver and he understood us and pointed us in the correct direction. We ate lunch at KFC (yes I said Kentucky Fried Chicken LOL). Then we headed to the beach. As you will be able to see from the pictures below it was quite rainy but we had fun anyway. We returned this afternoon so we had only 3 hours in Jaco but since it was raining it was plenty of time.

PICTURES with Descriptions

Right before it started raining. Love the coconut trees!

Some kind of animal tooth! I didn't actually want to touch it.

Holding a coconut in the pouring rain next to some kind of fire structure?

This would be even better if it was sunny!

Grace and I met an American man who was gracious enough to take our picture.

Eunseon is Grace's name in Korean

Jennifer in the CR! The sand is not like Florida sand. It's mostly tiny rocks

I am on a sand bar and it is beginning to rain quite hard.

The sky had cleared some. Its quite pretty, but would be better with sun.

I really wanted to wade out to the rocks but I couldn't tell how deep the water was.

The water wasn't too cold, but when it is raining and the sun is hiding it can be chilly!

There were palm trees and coconut trees everywhere.

The stores in downtown San Jose are already decorating for Christmas!

Feeding the birds. It felt really weird.

Grace feeding the bird. She was braver than I was and went first.

Standing behind an art structure in front of the "gold museum"