Hola Todos
It´s taking me a while to type because the keyboards in Costa Rica are different than the USA...actually, a lot of things are different here. Something weird: when you go to the bathroom, you can´t throw the toilet paper in the toilet; it goes in the trashcan. Something good: I understand more spanish than I thought I did and can get my point across when asked something. Something bad: while I know more than I thought, I know WAY less than everyone else here, so it can be embarrassing sometimes to feel like I don´t understand the people when the speak to me.
The weather here is FANTASTIC if you love the heat; every day feels like 80 degrees (Fareinheit) or more and it´s sunny even though it´s only February. Even in California-a warm state- it´s still jacket-wearing weather there. Either way it´s great weather here; even as I type, I´m wearing capris (which still feel too hot) and a tank top...
Retelling you everything that has happened since leaving for Miami would take WAY too long (i think it took up about ten pages in my notebook) so I´ll give a shortened version. At Miami, I met all the other US AFSers that would be going to Costa Rica. There are about 16 of us, and only TWO of us are staying an entire year. Everyone was super nice, but Lindsay (the other year-long student) and I were on a different flight than the other semester students. Once in Costa Rica, we met some of the AFS volunteers whose names, unfortunately, I can´t remember. We still had to wait for the semester USA students to arrive, and Lindsey and I met and talked with Brandon, a semester exchange student from Canada.
Once everyone got to Costa Rica, we were all loaded into a bus and driven through San José (a beautiful city) to Tres Ríos, where we stayed in youth hostels from friday afternoon to sunday at 1 pm. In Tres Ríos, the US students were the first exchangers to arrive, and so it wasn´t until later that we met the students from countries such as Austria, Japan, New Zealand (coolest accents EVER), Switzerland, Germany and Brasil. There were other countries too, such as Iceland or the Czech Republic, but there´s far more than I could ever remember.
All of us students went through a day and a half of orientation and information on Costa Rica, but it´s true that it was FAR more useful than any of the orientations we´ve had before. Since we were actually in Costa Rica and the AFS volunteers were Costa Rican, they had a lot of the answers that so many of us had been longing to know the answer to. I think that of all the volunteers, my favorite was Luigi because he seemed like the only one that would come over to us students and sit on the ground with us so that we could ask him whatever we wanted.
After those orientation days, we were split up by areas of Costa Rica into different vans or buses. I was in the blue group (which loaded 7 students into a big van car thing) and we met a NEW AFS volunteer named Cristofero (though I have no idea whether or not I spelled it right). He was SUPER nice, and the van drive was 4 hours long...after the first 2 hours, our group of 7 was split up when 4 of them had to leave in a different direction towards Los Santos. The last three of us went back into the van and finished the last 2 hours; what was really nice, though, was that Cristofero came and sat with us in the back, and we all talked about Costa Rica and our home countries for a long time. So yeah, after those looooong four hours, we got out of the van to find two families. Two. And neither of them was mine. It was my mother´s birthday that day and so she was celebrating and didn´t come to pick me up. After a little, someone called my host sister, Amanda, and I was driven to my house by another host family.
The house I live in here is pink and cozy and cute. I´m pretty sure I stole my younger host sister´s (Camila) room but it´s only temporary and she won´t have to share a room with her mom just because I came. Well, I love my family, my new country and everything about it (other than the missing my family in California part) and I would comment on the school system here that seems so different than what I´m used to, but I´ll wait until I´ve experienced it for myself...
Hasta Luego!
Mackenzie
It´s taking me a while to type because the keyboards in Costa Rica are different than the USA...actually, a lot of things are different here. Something weird: when you go to the bathroom, you can´t throw the toilet paper in the toilet; it goes in the trashcan. Something good: I understand more spanish than I thought I did and can get my point across when asked something. Something bad: while I know more than I thought, I know WAY less than everyone else here, so it can be embarrassing sometimes to feel like I don´t understand the people when the speak to me.
The weather here is FANTASTIC if you love the heat; every day feels like 80 degrees (Fareinheit) or more and it´s sunny even though it´s only February. Even in California-a warm state- it´s still jacket-wearing weather there. Either way it´s great weather here; even as I type, I´m wearing capris (which still feel too hot) and a tank top...
Retelling you everything that has happened since leaving for Miami would take WAY too long (i think it took up about ten pages in my notebook) so I´ll give a shortened version. At Miami, I met all the other US AFSers that would be going to Costa Rica. There are about 16 of us, and only TWO of us are staying an entire year. Everyone was super nice, but Lindsay (the other year-long student) and I were on a different flight than the other semester students. Once in Costa Rica, we met some of the AFS volunteers whose names, unfortunately, I can´t remember. We still had to wait for the semester USA students to arrive, and Lindsey and I met and talked with Brandon, a semester exchange student from Canada.
Once everyone got to Costa Rica, we were all loaded into a bus and driven through San José (a beautiful city) to Tres Ríos, where we stayed in youth hostels from friday afternoon to sunday at 1 pm. In Tres Ríos, the US students were the first exchangers to arrive, and so it wasn´t until later that we met the students from countries such as Austria, Japan, New Zealand (coolest accents EVER), Switzerland, Germany and Brasil. There were other countries too, such as Iceland or the Czech Republic, but there´s far more than I could ever remember.
All of us students went through a day and a half of orientation and information on Costa Rica, but it´s true that it was FAR more useful than any of the orientations we´ve had before. Since we were actually in Costa Rica and the AFS volunteers were Costa Rican, they had a lot of the answers that so many of us had been longing to know the answer to. I think that of all the volunteers, my favorite was Luigi because he seemed like the only one that would come over to us students and sit on the ground with us so that we could ask him whatever we wanted.
After those orientation days, we were split up by areas of Costa Rica into different vans or buses. I was in the blue group (which loaded 7 students into a big van car thing) and we met a NEW AFS volunteer named Cristofero (though I have no idea whether or not I spelled it right). He was SUPER nice, and the van drive was 4 hours long...after the first 2 hours, our group of 7 was split up when 4 of them had to leave in a different direction towards Los Santos. The last three of us went back into the van and finished the last 2 hours; what was really nice, though, was that Cristofero came and sat with us in the back, and we all talked about Costa Rica and our home countries for a long time. So yeah, after those looooong four hours, we got out of the van to find two families. Two. And neither of them was mine. It was my mother´s birthday that day and so she was celebrating and didn´t come to pick me up. After a little, someone called my host sister, Amanda, and I was driven to my house by another host family.
The house I live in here is pink and cozy and cute. I´m pretty sure I stole my younger host sister´s (Camila) room but it´s only temporary and she won´t have to share a room with her mom just because I came. Well, I love my family, my new country and everything about it (other than the missing my family in California part) and I would comment on the school system here that seems so different than what I´m used to, but I´ll wait until I´ve experienced it for myself...
Hasta Luego!
Mackenzie
No comments:
Post a Comment