As I walk across the patio to my room, a ruckus starts up from somewhere deeper in the garden. Endless barking and growling begins as I enter my room and continues nonstop until I leave. Even my host family occasionally comes out to try and quiet the chihuahua down. Don't blame it all on the 15-year-old dog though, its the lizard's fault too. He should probably quiet down from his post on the outside wall of my room. He just sounds like a giant cricket gone wrong. And the actual cricket chirping in the background? Well, I can deal with that.
After lunch, our host parents took Julia and me for a ride around the city to sort of get a feel for the place and how it worked and where things were. We stopped at a few markets and at the local mall, across the road from my university. The mall was pretty amusing. It's just like our mall back home, but with different names for the shops. Jamba Juice turns into “Tangerines”, and Claire's turns into “Oops!” (more fitting I think).
We spent some time before dinner just sitting on the porch with our host dad getting to know each other. At dinner Julia and I presented the gifts we brought in thanks for hosting us. Julia started to feel really under the weather at this point. It had been a long day of little sleep and lots of stress, since she'd never been out of the country before and was experiencing major culture shock. She went to sleep early to snap out of her condition for the upcoming day.
This is much more of a car city than it is a walking city, and yet driving here is almost impossible. According to our host parents, we live 15 minutes by foot from the university, and when I look back on how we drove there, it seems about right. Our host parents have also been really helpful with Spanish, teaching us new words and helping us figure out how to speak correctly if we mess up the grammar and such. Tomorrow will be the first day the whole group meets up, so it'll be interesting to see what people's home stay experiences have been like thus far.
1 comments:
Hello there! Glad to hear you made it to Costa Rica safely, and are adjusting to your new home. I had some issues with my e-mail, and just got access to it after a couple of weeks - and got the link to your blog! Today we went to Taste of Mundeline with kids and Mayya - reminded me of that time in Libertyville with you! We were missing you! Even kids remembered and talked about that day with you last summer. They were of course very tempted to try for another gold fish (or two!), but I knew better this time! Look what last ones started! :)
Have a great time and blog often!
Hugs, J+C+E+F
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