Well, I know you were all holding your breath, wondering how I'd manage traveling in a non-English speaking country, trying to get to a beach 100 km from the airport, armed only with my wits, some traveler's checks, and a spanish-english dictionary. Well, don't let me keep you in suspense any longer - I made it!
After an uneventful flight where I dozed off and on (somehow the 3 1/2 hours of sleep I'd gotten last night wasn't quite enough), I got to Costa Rica around 12:30. I breezed through customs easily, which actually annoyed me. Technically you need to have proof that you are leaving Costa Rica within 90 days in order to be allowed to enter the country. Usually this is just a round-trip ticket, but since I was planning on leaving by bus, and wasn't even sure when I'd be leaving, I had had to buy a fully refundable return ticket which I plan on canceling. And they didn't even ask for it! Oh well, better safe than sorry, I guess.
I managed to ask directions to the bus stop in broken Spanish, and even got in the bus headed in the right direction! Once I got to San Jose I had to board yet another bus to head to Jaco, but first I had to find another bus station. I finally made it there, just as the 3:00 bus was about to leave. Unfortunately, I was then told that I'd need a ticket, and in the 2 minutes it took me to get that, the bus left! Lame.
I finally arrived at the School of the World around dark, and was taken to my host family, where I will be staying for a week. My host family is vey friendly, and there are two other people staying with them. We ended up chatting in Spanish for several hours - great practice! And, there was a huge bonus - one of the people staying with them, Monica, is a runner! We woke up the next morning (today) at 6 and went for a 5 mile run along the beach, where I saw some very intimidating breakers that I will be attempting to surf later on.
And that brings me to the present, where I'm sitting at the School of the World, waiting for classes to start. Today I have 2 spanish classes, surfing, then yoga. It's definitely a tough life :-)
Hope all is well with everyone back in the US, and you'll be hearing from me again soon.
P.S. At least at first, I'll be updating this blog pretty regularly (like once a day). I highly suggest using something like Google Reader to view the feed, as that makes it really easy to see when there's a new entry. Otherwise if you check once a week the posts will get overwhelming!
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