Welcome to the Rich Coast!

Currently sitting in the rooftop restaurant area of my hotel in San Jose, Costa Rica, surrounded by a few of my new EAP classmates. Its 11:07 here and we're the stragglers, up with our computers open, blogging and working on our first assignments under the warm night sky. I don't know if I have a word yet to describe my experience here so far. Somewhere in between completely intimidating and fascinating. Its still way too new, although its hard to believe its only the first day. My arrival into this country seems like it must have been further back than 24 hours.

I met up with my three traveling "companeros", as my dad called them, at LAX yesterday afternoon. We sat in the terminal and between the four of us tried to recall as much as we could about what we would be doing from the emails and guides we had received from our schools. I made a quick stop at the I <3 LA store to pick up some last minute gifts for the host family I'll have at the end of my trip and we took off. The entire trip between LAX to our layover in Mexico City, to our arrival in San Jose is all kind of a blur. I  apparently stood out as an obvious American and no one let me get past "hola!" before they switched over to English. Slightly disappointing. My goal by the time I get back is to speak only in Spanish to every airport employee I come in contact with, whether they like it or not.

Once we arrived in Costa Rica we had the stressful task of finding a legitimate taxi that wouldn't kidnap us and drive us to some dark sketchy ally and sell us into slavery...at least that what the printed instructions made it sound like would happen. In fact there was one solitary taxi waiting outside the airport (we were the last flight in) and one bewildered but determined taxi driver, who somehow crammed 4 girls, and about 8 giant duffel bags into a small sedan. Riding in a Costa Rican cab in the middle of the night is an experience. Our driver blasted American music as he sped at 100 kmph, not stopping at stop signs, cutting off large trucks, and driving in the wrong lane pretty much any time there wasn't an oncoming car. We could not stop laughing, but he got us there in about half the time our instructions said he would.

We checked into Hotel Cacts, which looks pretty humble on the outside but is actually quite beautiful once the manager, Miguel lets you in the gates. It is all open air, with tropical plants dripping off of every  imitation-adobe surface. Barking geckos pop out and scramble around the walls and make their little squeak-toy sounds starting around 6 pm.

 I think I'll fill you in more on San Jose tomorrow, since I am now the second to last person up. Goodnight friends! I'm thinking about you all pretty much constantly