Diaries from the Pure Life

I’m all settled into my Tica home. I have a room with a TV (currently watching NCIS en Espanol) and my own bathroom, which is really nice. I thought that conversation would be impossibly difficult, but I’m doing very well. Well, compared to Lauren, that is. She needs extra attention because of her disabilities (she has cerebral palsy) but her Spanish is severely slacking, bless her heart. I anticipate having to translate quite a bit. I really like my family though. The husband, Francisco, is very funny and animated. The wife, Rosmary, is more reserved, but I think I’m going to like her a lot. Perhaps it’s just because I’ve never traveled alone before but I feel very alone and disconnected from the rest of the world. I miss my mom and brother a lot. Life here seems to be fairly similar to home and my Tica family is about at the same level of socioeconomic status as my family, though I don’t know how that compares here. Did I mention that they don’t flush toilet paper? You simply put it in the trashcan. That is something I will need to get used to. I have instantly fallen in love with the weather. It is night in January and it’s around 60 degrees outside - at 9 PM! Also the street art here is amazing. I can’t wait to meet back up with my group and talk about our experiences. Now, to read. Night!

I’m sitting here in the Miami airport, the place I’ll be until 3:45 when I’ll be boarding my second plane ever to Costa Rica. I hope that I will keep up with my travels through this journal. My first flight wasn’t so bad. Apparently there was a lot of turbulence, and I thought there had been, but I didn’t really have anything to compare it to, so I just went along with it. Flying was a lot like I had imagined. The security section went a lot more smoothly than I thought it would, though I was a bit confused on where to find it at first. I am currently sitting at a food court sipping on some coffee, since I only got around two and a half hours of sleep last night. When I awoke this morning at 4:15 AM, it was around 25 degrees outside. Now, it is around 60 degrees here in Florida. There are seven of us here at the moment and we probably won’t be meeting many others until we arrive at the gate and check in and get past security. I hope that everyone makes it here safely. My professors seem like really fun people. Michael Matthews is probably one of the most intriguing men I’ve ever met. I’m afraid of the language barrier, especially since I am getting a taste of it here in Miami. Oh well, we’ll see how this goes…

I haven’t been able to get much internet access because my house has internet, but not wifi so I can only use the internet for a few minutes a day. 

I have written in a diary every day so once I get a lot of internet access (probably this weekend at the hotel in Tortuguero), I will post my diary entries here. (:

I leave for Costa Rica in 5 days. This diary will track my travels. I will write here when I can since I will have limited internet access and no cell phone. Please follow if you’d like to follow me through my journey to Costa Rica!