1. It gets light here that early
2. I went to bed at 9 the night before, and
3. The train that goes through the city goes through the streets, but there are not safety features that block the tracks from the cars, so it has to honk loudly every time it goes through the city so that the cars know a train is coming and they should stop.
Anyways, then we went downstairs for breakfast. I had toast with guanabana jelly, café con leche, meat with cheese and crackers, yogurt-which they pour out of milk jugs here so there is no spill-, and fruit which was pineapple, watermelon, and papaya.
After breakfast, it was time to explore the area around us. I discovered that it is perfectly acceptable to trim the edges of your front lawn with a machete and that trash is placed in pretty little metal baskets so that animals do not get into it.
We also stopped at a really cute hipster-type café. They serve crepes, macaroons, teas, coffees and fruit juices.
Finally, it was time to meet our families. My house mom is named Imara and my house dad is Samuel, who pastor a baptist church, and I met their daughter Carla, who is a nurse at the Universidad de Costa Rica. They have a Volkswagen they drove us in, and when they were putting our suitcases in the trunk, they had a huge bunch of plantains in there that they said they will make tostones with, which are my favorite! When we got to their house, they had a fruit tree out front with a fruit I have never seen before, the granadilla, which is a passion fruit, but I guess I've only had passion fruit flavored things without seeing the fruit itself, and they make a juice with it, which they served to us. They also have a dog, Rocky, who is a husky, and orange cat, Tigre, and a grey cat. So far, the animals haven't come inside yet at all. I think maybe they just live outside on the porch that has a roof over it, but I'm not sure yet.
They have a very nice house with 5 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a large kitchen, a large family room/dining room area, and a nice patio that has a table to have dinner at and laundry things. I'll take more pictures of it later. I live on the second floor, up a skinny spiral staircase, so it was an adventure to get my suitcase up, but now I'm all packed and settled in.
For lunch, we had steak with onions, a veggie medley with carrots and another veggie I have never heard of, the chayote, which is green and shaped like a pear, but tastes like zucchini, and rice. I also had a different kind of cheese and hand made tortillas.
Afterwards, Judy and I, that's the girl that is also living in my house from CSU, went to find the University's swimming pool. It was only a 10 minute walk away from our house, but the main campus was another 20 minutes from that. Some guys had to help us find our way there, and it is a very nice but very huge campus. It looks easy to get lost in. Luckily, Carla works as a nurse at the university, so she is going to drive us to school with her every morning. Walking was no picnic, because there are very few cross walks here, people drive like maniacs, the side walks are super skinny, and sometimes disappear, and there a parts that have big holes in the ground or its rocky or steep. I felt like I was hiking in an urban jungle. The homes and businesses that line the street are very colorful.
We found a park in our residential neighborhood that has a basketball court, slides, monkey bars, swings and see-saws, so we got to play on those a bit before dinner. For dinner, we had rice mixed with beans which had a special name, but I forget, with café con leche and picadillo, which is a mix of cubed meat, cubed carrots, and cubed chayote in a good sauce. Any leftovers we had were given to Rocky and then we sat and shared about our families.
Tomorrow, we take the bus to the university for orientation. I hope to get better familiarized with the campus and see if the professors are nice. Hasta luego!
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