When in Costa Rica...

...you must post on your blog. There is plenty of interesting stuff I could tell you about my last couple of weeks when I was still at home and working as an event manager for senior graduation parties. There´s plenty I could tell you about finishing up my old job of 2 and a half years and adjusting to life after Ryther. There´s plenty I could tell you about being macked on by this guy who....no, I won´t tell you about that... but there is plenty I could tell you that is not in any way related to being in Costa Rica.


But that wouldn´t be very fun now would it.

Look at the cool new characters I can make with my spanish keyboard: ¨¿Ñ`Ç

And I can say little and sometimes pointless things in Spanish, like siempre...and fuera...

But for my 2nd day here and having no background in Spanish I´m pretty proud of myself. Jerred and Morgan (my peace corps friends whom I am visiting here) and their host mom Matilde and I all played spoons last night. She speaks no english other than ¨oh my god!" but it´s been fun trying to pick up on conversation based on context, and Jerred and Morgan especially are fantastic translators.

In a lot of ways the community feels like a cross between Tepic (the Mexican city my family visited through our church years ago) and Babine (the Canadian first nations village I lived in for two months during college). We are not without conveniences and live only a short busride from a bigger city, but don´t have hot water, paved roads, or cable. Everyone so far has been very friendly and don´t stare too much at the new gringo girl in the neighborhood :)

Let´s end with a story: Yesterday afternoon we decided to take naps since it had been a long day (I flew in at 5am and the bus ride to San Isidro was three hours). I woke up to the sound of small animals under my bed. Too terrified to move or risk putting my feet on the floor where they could be chewed off, I sat paralyzed for what felt like 5min but was probably only 30 seconds. I turned on the light and whatever was under the bed growled and stilled, but gathering my courage I peeked over the side close to the wall and saw the back of the cat with something black under its paws. The door was shut but there´s a window to the kitchen that is only covered by a sheet, so ¨Mi nina¨ (cat in spanish- thought you would like that, Paul) must have snuck in that way.

Feeling calmer now that I knew she had it under control, I waited until all sounds of crunching ceased and she walked calmly out from under the bed, looked at me as if expecting a ¨Way to go!¨ and meowed three times. I let her out of my room then and chanced a peek under the bed to see only a pile of mussed up feathers, the bird carcass now presumably being in the cat´s stomach. I can´t remember the last time I had such an exciting nap.