Los primeros días aquí...

It has been an absolutely wonderful beginning to this trip.  I got in on Thursday around 2pm and it took a ton of time to get through the entry checkpoint, get luggage and pass through customs.  We loaded up all of the luggage and headed through San José to meet our families.

Some of the other students are placed together at one house, but I'm flying solo here in Lourdes.  At first I felt a little isolated from everyone else, but I am finding others who live near me, and I absolutely adore my family here!  Mi mamá tica is Marielos, and she is taking fantastic care of me.  She picked me up from the Casita, and we headed to her home in a taxi.  When I got here, she showed me around and helped me get settled in, and I met her daughter Lisa who is also a student at the University of Costa Rica (from here on out, UCR) and taking English classes.  They both seemed really surprised that I spoke Spanish, because they usually house students with very little speaking experience.  Later I met Pedro, Marielos' son, who works at Bank of America here and uses English frequently in his job.  They also have a dog, Kiara.  She is sweet, but generally steers clear of me, although she did bark at me today when I came in.  I took that as a good sign.

The following day (Friday,) we went for general orientation at the UCR with all the rules and recommendations that are so important in traveling abroad.  There are a ton of people enrolled in this program, with a mixture of undergrad and grad students, some teachers, and even one high school student I had met on the way here in the Houston airport.  I did feel a little old sitting in there with all of the younger students, but some of us more chronologically advanced people have kind of decided that 'viejita es la nueva joven.'  In addition to some of the other teachers in the program, I also finally got to meet LeAnn, the other scholarship winner.  She is awesome like I knew she would be, and we have a lot in common.  We are going to be including each other in our blogs and exchanging ideas.  You should check out her blog, too!  The address for her blog is 
http://www.viajesconsenorahenderson.blogspot.com/  
On to the rest of the last few days!

Yesterday (Saturday,) we had our academic orientation and tour of the campus.  

La Entrada

la Facultad de Letras

I really didn't think that any of the tour stuck, but when we were walking around later on our own, I recognized at least some of the places.  The most important ones for me will (probably) be...

and....  

la Casita

I found out that I am registered for the classes I wanted (yay!) even though my paper said 'Literatura," which I most certainly did not want.  After all of that, we went to the San Pedro Mall, where I got a cell phone for the month with 100 minutes for about 30 bucks.  Score!  The absolute highlight of my day, though, was when I went home for the first time on the bus without Marielos.  That was absolutely nerve-wracking, which was not helped by the sudden opening of the sky with accompanying downpour while we were waiting for the bus.  (The rainy season is NOT a myth.)  I was 100% certain that I would miss my stop, only having seen it on Friday during a different gully washer.  I was pretty sure we were going the right direction, and lo and behold, I found my way right to my front door with the world's greatest landmark--the man selling bananas two doors down from the house!  I was very happy about that and was even more so today when I still found my house and the banana man was taking Sunday off!  It is my hope that he has no immediate plans to retire.

Today was a most fantastic day with our first excursion, but I will save that for my next post.  I'm hoping to get a slide show up of everything we saw.  However, classes start tomorrow, and I need to get myself together for the walk to campus at 7:30am.  I'm looking forward to seeing how 90 class hours will unfold before July 29th.  Check back soon to see how things are going!