Primera Dia!!

"Be submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility for Fod resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God that He may exalt you in due time."

People in Oklahoma are going to hate me once they read what I got to do my first day here. We were at a hotel called Casa Alegre. We layed out by the pool the entire day and got tan in the perfect weather. It was such a vacation paradise day.

At four o'clock that day we went to Blue Valley to meet our host mom: Elza (pronounced Elsa). She greeted us with a kiss on the cheek and said my new daughters!! Costa Ricans are very welcoming.

Our school is the nicest school I have ever seen. Seriously, its a private school and many diplomats send their kids to here. Its mostly outdoors, there are three stories some buildings, tan stone walls, marble floors, smaller classrooms and mac computers. The view from the school is the mountains and I kept saying "this is absolutely beautiful, I could be looking at theta pond in stillwater instead right now..wow"

Elza's house is a light orange in color and it is considered a very nice house in Costa Rica. We are very blessed to live in such a nice place. Every place is surrounded by iron gates that lock. Her house is towards the mountains more, therefore cooler in the night and morning. She has a son and a daughter. The daughter-Nicole or Nikki- is 25 and loves having us here. She is so nice and their whole family speaks English fluently.

Most people know a little bit of english, the people we are mostly around speak it fluently. In our school, all the classes are taught in english and they have one spanish class. Ordering at restaurants is a completely different world though.

Nikki and one of her friends took us to the Costa Rica Country Club-cost 35,000 dollars just to get the membership! We already got the hook ups :) They asked us about our pre-conceived ideas about CR. They were cracking up at what we thought they lived like.
Some Ideas I had before:
-I would sleep on a stone bed with a wide open window with a knife under my pillow ready to attack anyone wanting to kill me
-I would be looked down upon for being an American
-I would keep my laptop with me at all times so that I wouldn't get it stolen at home
-there wouldn't be alot of cars or buildings
-I would be robbed every 5 seconds
-we had to eat everything on our plates because it would be considered rude if we didn't finish
After talking to Nikki and her friend:
-we North Americans are stupid and have weird ideas about other places
-we aren't taught alot of geography and culture in our schools

Random Facts about CR:
* They have earthquakes! They told us the first night not to freak out if we had one in the middle of the night cause its common but still not an every day thing. All their buildings are built to be kinda elastic and moveable -unlike Hati- and also the earthquakes are less magnitude so its not a big deal.
*The peoples skin is lighter than I thought, sometimes you think you are looking at an American but then they start spittin out spanish and it shocks me.
* There are a ton of different ethnicities here, I still stick out though
*Note to anyone coming here!! Don't drive anywhere. They are crazy. Sometimes I just close my eyes in a taxi hoping we made it through the "suggested" stop signs.
*People start drinking here alot earlier, around 14..its a cultural thing.

Funny story:
-Carley was trying to say in Spanish "I was scared" at the dinner table and ended up switching two spanish words and saying "I sh*t" One of the friends on Nikki spit her wine out and cracked up laughing.

Thanks for tuning in!!
TriCia