El llegado!

I arrived yesterday in Costa Rica. All I knew - was that someone was picking me up that had my name on a sheet of paper, that my mama ticas name was Ana Cecilia and her address, and that I needed to be at school this morning at 8:30. I arrived... I did not see my name on any sign... I waited... However, there were some very nice people around. One guy with a travel agency called my mama ticas house and made sure that someone was planning to pick me up. Sure enough they were, and someone arrived within 15 minutes to pick me up and take me to my homestay.

My mama tica is 57 years old and single. She has one son whose name is Max but Max works during the week and it only home on Monday, so I met him today. There is another girl, Melanie, who is a student as well and she is staying here as well. I'm excited to get to know her. She has already been here for a month and is going to be here until the end of June.

Today, I had the opportunity to walk around the city a little bit with the other (there are only 2 of us) independent student, Collin, when we had down time between our oral exams and orientation and between orientation and lunch. La Universidad Veritas is actually the most expensive private university in San Jose. There are 1500 students, and all study art, design, or architecture, but we are just in the Spanish program. I'm excited for classes to start. Not very many people (international students like me) are Christians, so I am really excited to get to know them and hopefully be a light. Tonight, we are going to a "bar" because there is live music, so I am excited to be their friend and hopefully help them to know that Christians aren't horrible people. Already today, Collin was asking me about how I was a Christian and everything. He has gone to church, but I am not sure if he is a Christian. This trip is going to be an experience.

This weekend, we may be going on an excursion to Monteverde, which is a mountain up in the rainforest and there is like a zipline up above the canopy and everything! During our orientation (of us 2 students..) we were talking to Luis about the excursions and he said we could go this weekend, and the school would set everything up, since Luis has a travel agency which is part of the school. We are going to try to get a ton of other students to come with us as well! It should be really cool. That's all for today! I will update later.