First 10 Days

Wow... I've been so busy, I didn't even realize that I haven't written since my first day here!  Sorry to my family, friends, and anyone else who may be reading this.  But have no fear, I'll get you all caught up.

I'll start with my first day in Puriscal.  It was pretty overwhelming, but definitely exciting.  Our families greeted us as we unloaded our luggage from the bus, and my first impression was that us exchange students were the tallest ones in the group.  I guess height is one thing that can't be gaged on skype.  There was a performance of a typical  Costa Rican Dance, and then everyone went their separate ways.  My family has a pickup truck, so unlike a lot of the people who walked home, Erica (an Italian student living with  my granparents) and I loaded our luggage into the truck bed and headed home.  In the car, my host mother gave me flowers and my host grandmother gave me a little "M" statue that now sits above my bed.

My family's house is on the same property as my father's parent's house.  I pretty much consider them my two houses because I'm always going back and forth between the two.  Here is my house:

 I took the picture from the other house, so you can tell how close they are.  And here is their house:

My dad's parents live here with their 19 year old son Berny, and now Erica and Taylor (a former AFSer from the US who has returned for a gap year) live there too. 

And here is my room:  

There are three bedrooms in my house, so I sleep in this one, my parents and baby sister sleep in one, and then my mom's sister (who lives with us) sleeps in the third.

I'm not gonna give you a play by play of these first ten days, because that would take too long, and I'm sure you would get bored.  Instead I'lljust highlight a few of the many exciting things I´ve done so far.

Last Monday, the day after I arrived in Puriscal, I went to San Jose with mi abuela, Erica, Cris (Berny's girlfriend), and Lara (an Austrian AFSer whose exchange ended yesterday).  Erica needed to go shopping for school shoes, but we also saw some famous landmarks of Costa Rica:

Catedral Nacional de Costa Rica

Teatro Nacional de Costa Rica

Wednesday I hiked the "mountain" across the street from my house, which is actually somewhere between a hill and a small mountain, but was very tiring to climb.  I was with Erica, Taylor, and a boy who lives on our street and is a freind of the family, since mi abuela insisted that we bring a boy with us for "protection."  

View of my neighborhood from the top

At the top of the mountain there were cows grazing, and the boy we were with's family owns some of them.  We ended up walking a calf all the way down the mountain because apparently it had escaped from the barn and was not supposed to be at the top with the full grown cows.

Me with the calf

Erica and I half way up the mountain.

Thursday was supposed to be my first day of school, but I have the same class- Technology- for the whole morning on Thursdays, and I was the only one who showed up.  Therefore, I ended up being released early. (Later I found out that I have a choice of which Tech class I go to, so I assume everyone else had chosen the other one that day).  Then I found out that there was some sort of meeting for teachers, which meant there were no classes after lunch.  So pretty much I had no class the whole day.  This kind of thing happens a lot, or at least it seems that way to me after a few days.  Friday, what I now consider to be my real first day of school, I had 3 periods free because those teachers weren't there.  Today I explained to my class that in America, if a teacher isn't there, we still have class with a substitute.  They were shocked!

Anyway, I'll write more about school later becasue there's a lot to tell.  Oh and I also have to write about my adventures on Sunday, ziplining and repelling down waterfalls!  I have tons of pictures and videos, but you'll have to wait.  This is enough stuff for one day.