As we were about to land in Costa Rica I couldn't believe how amazing it looked from the plane window, with rolling hills and mountations all covered in thick, green vegetation and rainforest the country looked beautiful. After a pretty hassel free flight I headed through customs to find one of the drivers, as promised in the email, waiting to pick me up...I'd never had one of the signs with my name on before! Here the driver and his wife (who were lovely, a great first impression of Costa Rican people) took me straight to San Pedro - a district in San Jose - to a local families house where I was going to stay for the next two weeks. All the neighbourhoods were very colourful with each house, shop and local amenities been various colours of the rainbow. The streets were very wide and most houses were on one level but raised from street level. The house was so cute and deceptivly big. It was raised due to natural rolling hills seen when landing. So walking up two small flights of stairs I arrived at the large covered porch, which had an amazing view over the neighbourhood. After been greated by my Mama Tica I headed to bed as due to the time different and missing a nights sleep I was exhausted. I woke up ready for my first dinner and was joined by Kelsey, another girl at the CRLA school. Kelsey, who is 23 from Texas, was great and as she had alot more Spanish already she spent alot of time translating between Maria (Mama Tica) and Hererro (Papa Tica). We enjoyed a pasta and salad then after chatting I headed back to my room to unpack and get ready for my first day of school!

After an early morning, Maria, Kelsey and I headed on the bus to school. After been shown around the school (which was pretty small) and a quick assessment I was placed in the beginners class and joined 4 american classmates! Everyone at the school seemed to be american, with one other Brit and a few from different european countries. I quickly felt like I'd been at the school for a while. After learning alot throughout the week I also enjoyed salsa classes and amazing lunches all week! I quickly began to understand alot of the spanish but still found it extremely difficult to say sentences! On the second evening another girl from the US, Nadwa, joined our home stay. After school we explored San Jose centre, which is pretty small for a capital and has a town like feel. It does have lots of shops, restaurants and other things you would expect in a city! It's main unusual feature for me was the address and direction system in the city. There were no street names except for the main avenues or house numbers. Address and locations were given by naming a major or the main landmark nearby then giving a direction and meters, for example the school was 200m south of the shopping mall...and that was the offical address! It got quite confusing as I didn't know my compass directions or any landmarks! We all also went out on the evening to the main strip of bars in San Pedro near the city's University. This was fun but very americanised! During the week we also arranged our weekend trip to Puerto Viejo, on the Carribbean side of the country. Very quickly the first week was over! After saying goodbye to my classmates who were going off to save turtles I got myself ready for my weekend with a few other people from the school! The first week was really good and helpful!