Day 1-Arrive in Costa Rica

Today has been a very long day! I've been up since 2am Costa Rica time and it is now 10pm here. The flights went very smoothly and we landed in San Jose, Costa Rica around 2pm ready to start our day! We were greeted by our guide, Maggie, who will be with us for most of our stay. We immediately got on a very small bus, packed all of our stuff in and headed to the bank to exchange our money. This was the first culture shock for me as I was standing in line with my American dollars not knowing how I was going to communicate with the bank teller that I needed the Costa Rican currency, colonas. Luckily, he seemed to know what I needed and was very helpful.

From there, we went to lunch and then the market where they sold all sorts of fresh fruits and vegetables. This was my favorite part of the day. Mangoes are the fruit in season right now here and they are delicious! I had to get one so I could eat it later, but it was quite the struggle buying something from someone who knows absolutely no English. Costa Rican's (or ticos as they call themselves here) are some of the nicest people I've ever met. They are so patient and wanted to know all about where we were from. Me and two other girls in my group put our heads together to try to form sentences to have a conversation with the man selling us mangoes. He laughed at us quite a bit but it was a fun experience!

The coolest part of today was that we experienced a small earthquake! As we were getting on the bus from the market, the ground started shaking and the fences started clanging. I looked at Maggie, our guide and she said that we were experiencing an earthquake. Small earthquakes are very common here, so no one made a big deal about it at all and after a few seconds when it stopped, everyone just went back to what they were doing.

We walked by a school today and I saw six boys playing soccer with a crushed plastic soda bottle as their soccer ball and their backpacks as goals. It was so neat to see today what the Costa Rican culture is like. It was a very overwhelming day with the language barriers, but I made it through and I am ready to take on tomorrow! We are going to La Paz, which is a beautiful waterfall so I am really looking forward to that! God bless!