It seems like I have been here much longer than 10 days, but I think it is just because there is so much to do!

Last weekend was pretty quiet, we were just getting a feel of Heredia and trying to find our feet and work out how Colones (the local currency) work and working out you do not leave home without an umbrella! On Sunday night we had dinner as a group. All 40 of us were seated at one massive table and it was pretty overwhelming trying to work out who everyone was and where they were from. But the food was good (Italian not Costa Rican) and the craic was great. There are a lot of great people on this trip and I am looking forward to getting to know them all.

Monday was the first day of class and the morning was absolutely beautiful, so of course we were stuck inside in a classroom. It seems to be a recurring pattern, the weather is usually beautiful and sunny in the mornings and it clouds up and rains in the afternoons. We have class until 2pm every day and usually as soonas we are out it starts to rain! I think it is a conspiracy to make sure we do actually do some readings! The classes are pretty interesting, although a lot of it at the minute is the basic stuff I covered in class last semester in my Human Rights and International Law classes in DePaul. There is a great cafeteria on campus which has really cheap food, so I am eating here every day for about $2 for lunch! It is also all Costa Rican food and it is very good. Luckily my stomach is ok with the Costa Rican food.

On Monday evening a large group of us went to see Batman which was in English with Spanish subtitles. It was a very good movie, but I was just thinking how frustrating it must be for the Costa Ricans to have to watch all the major movies in English with only Spanish subtitles.

Tuesday and Wednesday we got stuck into our classes, readings and exploring Heredia. It is not a very exciting town but it has a few cute shops and places that I have had the chance to explore.

On Thursday we had a site visit to CEJIL an NGO that takes cases of Human Rights abuses to the Inter American Commission on Human Rights and on to the Inter American Court of Human Rights on the behalf of victims. I am so ignorant about the situation in Latin America and listening to the lawyers at CEJIL and learning about the violations of Human Rights that have gone on in Latin America particularly in the 1960's and 1970's is just heart breaking at times. One of the things that upset me the most was learning about the dirty war in Argentina and how there are still mothers of people who were "disappeared", meaning they were kidnapped and tortured and probably killed by the government, parading outside the major institutions of the government seeking to know what happened to their children/husbands or loved ones. And there are the children who were abducted and raised by the people who totured and murdered their parents who eventually found out 20 years later that the people they thought were their parents had actually murdered their real parents. The amount of atrocities and heart ache people in this region have gone through is unbelievable.

On Friday after classes we headed to the bus station and took a 5.5 hr bus journey through Costa Rica to the Caribbean coast. We were lucky to get bus tickets as it was a holiday weekend and people ended up standing for 5.5 hrs! What we hadn't realized was the Puerto Viejo, which is the beach town we went to, is one of the wettest places in Costa Rica and it barely stopped raining the whole weekend! However we just got on with it, the water was warm, the rain was warm and the temperature was warm so we just spent our time in the sea. We stayed at a youth hostel called Rockin' J's which has to be seen to be believed. The walls, floors and every other available surface are covered in mosaic done by previous residents. The tables have stuff that has been left behind stuck to them, including passports and ID cards. It was incredibly cheap because we stayed in a tent in what was basically a big barn full of tents. There was also a "hammock hotel" which was another barn full of hammocks you could rent but we decided to splurge on the tents! It was actually very comfortable because they had mattresses and sheets inside them and we managed very nicely. They did really good breakfasts of coconut and banana pancakes which were delicious!

On the Saturday we went to La Playa Negra, or the black beach which is a beach with black sand caused by the volcanic activity all over Costa Rica. It was really cool but the waves were pretty rough and the sand got churned up so we got covered in this fine black sand that got everywhere! After a short while we moved to some white sand beaches further along the coast and got cleaned up and when the sun did finally come out for an hour or so in the afternoon we lay in the sun and enjoyed the rays.

On Saturday evening we went to a really nice restaurant called Salsa Brava where I had fresh fish and fresh pina coladas made from very fresh coconut and pineapple. They tasted like nothing I have ever tasted before and I know anything else will not compare to them.

On Sunday we packed up our stuff and headed down the coast further to Punta Uva beach. Our taxi driver thought we were a bunch of crazy Americans heading to the beach in the rain but it was amazing. The beach was in a beautiful cove on the edge of the rain forest right out in the middle of nowhere and we had the beach nearly to ourselves with just one or two other families coming and going while we body surfed and floated on the waves. It was such a relaxing day and I was so lucky to be there with 3 very chilled, relaxed and easy going girls who were all just ready to go with the flow, accept that the weather was bad but enjoy it anyway!

The bus journey home was fairly uneventful, although again we were very lucky to get seats as the bus was very crowded, but we had a rather fast driver who got us back to San Jose in 4.5 hrs incuding a 20 minute rest stop! We were also stopped by the police for a random passport search and of course none of us were carrying our passports but we obviously didn't look like we were smuggling ourselves over the Panama border, or our Spanish was so pathetic they took pity on us and let us away with just showing ID.

So now onto the next weeks adventure which will be classes all week and then I am heading to a place called Tamarindo at the weekend which is on the Pacific coast to learn to surf!