The first days

Sorry for the long post, but these past two days have been quite an adventure! After landing in the Juan Santamaria airport in San Jose, the driver that was supposed to bring me to the hospital wasn’t there. I finally found another person that claimed he was from the hostel, but I was really skeptical. After much arguing in spanglish, I decided to believe him and eventually wound up where I was supposed to be.

The hostel is pretty nice. I share a room with 7 other people! There’s a nice pool, a great outside area with hammocks, chairs, and a covered kitchen and bar. There’s also a little restaurant I ate at tonight. Everyone is really friendly. Right away, I met some people from South Dakota and decided to take a swim in the freezing pool. I’ve met people from all over the U.S., some from Denmark, Holland, Canada, London, and Greece. Everyone has really cool stories.


This is the pool in the hostel. It was freezing cold and raining.


Sitting out by the pool, I realized how similar Costa Rica is to Florida, until I noticed the amazing mountain views!


This is the view from the kitchen!

At the hostel, there’s a group of Indonesian men who were working on a boat in Punta Arenas, Costa Rica in really bad conditions. The government found out and is keeping them at the hostel until they can get them home, since they don’t have papers. They are really nice, but there are cops staying here to make sure everything is okay.

Last night I decided to take a trip to the mall with one of my friends. The mall is pretty close to the hostel. It’s 3 stories and has a ton of stores: American Eagle, Payless, TCBY, and just about any other American fast-food restaurant (Go America!). So, my first night in Costa Rica I ate Wendy’s, and went to see Clash of the Titans (in 3D) for about $5. This place is cheap!

Since Costa Rica is so close to the equator, it gets light out around 5:30am. So, everyone gets up at around 6 am. On top of the light, the hostel is really noisy (the buses start running at 4:30am and like to honk!). There is no AC here, so the windows are always open. All of these things make for poor sleeping conditions.

Anywho, after relaxing a bit by the pool, I met two other people that will be working in the children’s hospital with me- Sara and Rachel. Both are really nice and we already started planning out our weekend trips! This weekend: a catamaran cruise to Isla Tortuga! We had an orientation meeting for the hospital today. It should be fun and a good experience. After that, we went out and explored some of San Jose. It was all really interesting and VERY different than any place I’ve ever seen. It was mostly run down, but there were some nice places, like the Supreme Court and embassies. We passed a stray dog wandering the streets (don’t worry, it looked happy, and cars stopped for it). There also seem to be cats that hang around the buildings.

We stopped and had lunch at a “soda”: a little café/restaurant type thing. The food was good, and we got all of this for only 1,800 colones ($3.50):

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This is Sara and me eating our first Costa Rican meal!

Here is a cute part of town:



When we finally made it back to the hostel, we jumped in the freezing pool again and laid out to relax. I got to take a HOT shower tonight, unlike my cold shower this morning. On a side note, I realized I should have brought a towel with me since I’ve been using my robe to dry off each time I get wet. For dinner I went to the hostel’s restaurant, Mochila. I’m hoping to get to bed early tonight, since I will probably be getting up at 6am again. Tomorrow I leave the hostel and begin my stay with my host family!