Apparently there is a tropical depression over the region so we are getting lots of rain in the afternoons and the evenings. Sorry for the short email last night but I was borrowing someone elses laptop as we did not have the internet in our room. We have it all sorted now so I am back in contact with the outside world.
It was all a little overwhelming when I arrived yesterday as everyone speaks Spanish and very little English. But I was picked up at the airport by a person from the hotel who spoke English and was very friendly and pointed out some cute places. Costa Rica reminds me a lot of Anguilla, lots of colorful houses and tin rooves and the busses are multicolored. It is a very cute place, but very different from Chicago!
Yesterday i met up with 2 other girls on the program, Emily and Jennifer, who are from phoenix and thankfully Emily speaks great Spanish so we went back to the grocery store and she translated what everything was. We sat out on their patio and had drinks with the security guard Francisco, who is learning English and he was very happy to give us directions and show us around. Today he drove us to the bank and to the big supermarket so the fridge is now stocked which is great!
After lunch Kate arrived a day early because she has not been well so she has spent the day in the room. Emily, jennifer and i went into Heredia City and found our way around. We saw the main square and the big church, but it was raining pretty hard by that stage. We also found a really cute jewelry store where we bought lots of jewelry. We spent most of the afternoon in a small local bar playing dominos with an older Costa Rican man. It was really fun and great to hear about Costa Rica from a Costa Rican. We bought dinner from a local place that sells American food! A guy from Georgia has moved down to Costa Rica and has a restaurant across from the University where we are going to class and he told me the fish and chips was proper fish and chips. The chips were pretty good but the fish definitely did not meet my expectations! But it was nice to have something familiar to eat. On the way back however we got caught in a massive downpour and got soaked to the skin! It is the rainy season after all.