6/14 Arrival

Hola a todos!
We have made it to Costa Rica! Our flight arrived around 12 noon their time (which is 2 hours behind EST in case you were wondering about the time difference). The flight was uneventful: small plane; watched the Adjustment Bureau which was mediocre. Nothing beats Virgin Airlines. But that's neither here nor there. Once we arrived in San Jose, we met up with the rest of our group and proceeded through customs which took forever. Thankfully, no one's baggage got lost; however, someone mistakenly took one girl's suitcase which Delta is trying to track down. In the mean time, we're all pitching in to help her. So after we left the airport we loaded a van and started the trek to campus in San Luis de Monteverde which is about 3.5 hrs away. The drive was really gorgeous, especially once we got up into the mountains. However, then is turned downright scary since it was raining and we were on these tiny dirt roads just going up and up into the mountains. Because of the weather and since we made a pit stop for food (which I naturally had to take a picture of because it was so yummy and my first meal in Costa Rica), we took a little longer in arriving to campus. However, on the way, we saw monkeys which I tried to take a picture of! Once we arrived we immediately dropped our bags and went to dinner and then the welcome orientation. Dinner was a yummy combo of rice and beans (of course) and some french fries (papas fritas) and salad. Now we are back in our bungalow, and I have two other roommates - Allie and Caitlyn. Everyone is exhausted, and we must be at breakfast at 7:30 in the morning so I'm sure we'll all be turning in early!

 I hope once I upload some pictures, you all will be able to see just how gorgeous this country it. Everything is incredibly lush and green and we're so high up in the mountains that it looks like were in the clouds (hence the Monteverde Cloud Forest which is a national park that backs up to campus). So far everyone is really nice both on the trip and locally. Tomorrow we are going to a town called Santa Elena which I look forward to telling you all about later. Let's just hope this storm passes. Oh, last thing that kind of caught me off guard - when I logged onto the internet, it was automatically in Google Costa Rica and everything was in Spanish lol. Even now all my tabs for this blog are in Spanish. Technology these days... Ok, time to hit the hay.

Buena noche!