Bienvenidos!

The girls

Flying in over San José is absolutely breathtaking; the mountains rise up and seem to stretch on forever. The man sitting behind me was telling his group- his seatmates and the woman with the aisle seat in my row, that San José is one of the most difficult airports to land in because of the topography.
Boarding the plane, the men behind me were talking about Manchu Pichu, and one was referring to the city above it, but couldn’t remember the name. I told him it was Cusco, and we spoke for a few minutes. He has never been to Peru, and I told him how much I had loved my trip and the Incan city. He asked why I was going to Costa Rica, and I told him it was with study abroad…which he did twenty years or so with FSU.

Small world, no?

Initially, I thought American Airlines liked me better than Dad; after all of his horror stories about flying with them, I was a little scared to add my own to the list of Blomgren flying mishaps. As we landed in San José, I was excited because there hadn’t been any problems….and then the connection between our plane and the terminal took approximately fifteen to twenty extra minutes.
Translated into Bruce, that would be an extra hour though, no?

Why ever let the truth interfere with a good story?

Julie and Marisa were on my flight from Miami, which was really nice. We found our group and met Ana, who is the contact through FSU and will be taking care of us and making sure our experience runs smoothly.

Our group consists of me, Marisa, Julie and Caleb staying with host families in Santa Ana, and Mandy, Jeri Lynn, John and Cliff staying at Conversa.
John was already here, so the rest of us and far too much luggage crammed ourselves into a van for the drive to Santa Ana. Jeri Lynn got better pictures than I did.

Those of us staying in town were dropped off with our families, and we also met Gata, who knows everything and everyone in Santa Ana.



My home for the next three weeks!

My host mom and dad, Paula and Jamie, were at work when we arrived, but I met Paula’s mother and the two sons, Josue (14) and Adrian (10). I never did catch Paula’s mother’s name, but I’m just thinking of her as the abuela. She was surprised that I’m twenty; she didn’t think I was any older than seventeen. She also called Paula when I got in, to tell her I was here, and she called me linda over and over again, which is always nice to hear. She walked me back to the house where Marisa and Julie are staying, and I met their host parents as well.

This is Mike, a sweetheart of a cat. I'm already in love with him

It’s interesting, people greet each other on the street here by saying Adios, but they hold out the A, so the greeting sounds like AaaaDios- or A Dios. I like it.

I met my host parents a bit later- Jaime speaks perfect English, which I did not expect. It makes the experience a bit less of an immersion than I had anticipated.

On a side note, the internet is only at Conversa, and I’m not taking my computer up every day, so I’ll post my blogs when I can. Blogger lets me mess with the dates, so I’ll post each entry on the day I wrote them.

Hasta luego,

Rainey