Wow, day 20 huh! Another Friday, another day where people you know leave! Tomas’s last day is today, which is a bit of a shame. The day’s not actually over yet though, it’s about 2:30pm and he and I along with Claudia are going to try out one of the couple of Italian restaurants in the town – something I’ve been meaning to do since I got here.

At the moment it’s just me and Claudia in the spanish class, and that doesn’t look like it’s going to change next week. Next week we have Nelsy who is our favourite teacher but our classes are at the opposite times to everyone else so while Claudia and I are in class, everyone else will be out enjoying themselves. Not to worry.

Oh yes I meant to post a link to my scenery photos on facebook – click here if you want to see them all! Here’s a few that I like.

On 9 May I mentioned that I found a new drink in Playa Carrillo, well my neighbour who lives across the street from my host family sells the same thing in Samara! Here’s a picture of my new favourite drink in the whole world, and me with Kevin, the guy who sells them.

Not a lot else to report today, the days are getting quieter as fewer people are coming to the school and well, after you’ve been in a small town this size for 3 weeks options for things to do start running out.

10 May – Monday
The water’s back on! Woo! Clean clothes and a proper shower! Well, I say a proper shower… it’s still a cold water shower though.

When I got into school today, Tomas told me that the place where we were drinking last night thinks I didn’t pay for one of my drinks. Bah, sure, I thought. Look I even have a receipt to prove it. What happened was, normally the muchacho (guy) comes over to take your drinks order where you’re sitting and you pay at the end. But at one point I got sick of waiting and went up to the bar to get another drink and I paid for it there. However after giving him the money for my drink, the guy simply walked off out the back without doing anything. Eventually the muchacho notices me waiting and I told him I’d just paid for a drink and had got nothing, and so he made me one and brought it over. I’m sure that he also added that drink to the bill after I’d already paid for it.

Anyway, I’m not going back there, it’s the furtherest bar from the school, the food is slow, some people don’t like the drinks they get from there and the service is bad. And it’s expensive. However, something I can’t get my head around is something that happens very commonly here – you go up to the bar to pay for a drink, you pay for your drink and then the person behind the bar makes your drink when THEY feel like it – you often don’t get it straight away. I’m not sure if there’s a communication breakdown, I’m doing something wrong or if I’m simply being impatient, but if I go up to the bar to pay for a drink that means I want it now!

I got my haircut for 5,000 colones (£7.50) which my host mum informs me was horrificly expensive and her friend would have done it for 2,000. Hmm, scary, anyway the salon had air-conditioning; if it didn’t have it I would have melted into the chair during the haircut.

11 May – Tuesday
I tried to get a photo taken of my host family today. My host mum wouldn’t let me because she thought she looked ugly. Otro día, she said.

12 May – Wednesday
I caught the bus to Nicoya today after waiting for it for ages. The bus timetables displayed here show you the times for the bus from the start of the route, not for the bus stop you are currently at – helpful huh! So the bus could turn up any time between the time displayed and June, if you’re lucky. Anyway, here’s the full Samara bus timetable to Nicoya:

Quite why I took a photo of the bus times I don’t know. Oh yes, it was because I’m lazy and couldn’t be bothered writing down all the times. And hey, maybe someone will see this blog post who’s stuck in Samara and wants to know when the buses out are! Just to add, there’s also a bus to San Jose from Samara, but there’s only one, and it leaves at 4:30am.

I was trying to find out times for the bus to Liberia where I will catch my flight out from (geez, are we getting close to that time already?) and ran into a bit of trouble communicating with the ticket lady. What I worked out she was saying (I think) was that although I can take her bus, I can get it 1,300 colones (£2) if I go down the street to the other bus stop. She pointed me down the only street leading out of the bus stop and said something that went way over my head, and by some miraculous twist of fate I walked through a rather dodgy residential neighbourhood and arrived at the correct bus station which was tucked in a corner. There I learned that buses go every 20 minutes and you can’t buy a ticket in advance anyway. Oh well, now I know!

Ok so I was able to get two photos taken of my host family today… here they are!

In the first photo, there’s Ramon, me, Norma, and Carolina, and in the second photo there’s Norma, me and Malori, who used to be a student in the school but she still lives in the house while she travels and works.

13 May – Thursday
Our class yesterday was the hardest by far, we were learning the difference between the imperfect tense and the preterite tense, which if you don’t know any spanish is really hard to explain – because there’s not really an english equivalent which is what makes it so hard to learn in the first place.

Tonight I went to Bar Olas because I heard that some students from the school were going there. I got there at 8:30 since people were saying 8:00, and the only people from the school were two guys who I hadn’t talked to before, and didn’t seem the slightest bit interested in talking to me so I left again, luckily I saw people I know about 2 minutes up the beach so that was good. The bar had no fans and there was no breeze so it got uncomfortable real fast, so we went back up the beach to our favourite Tabanuco’s. I had some cocktails including my favourite one that contains ice-cream, but then I realised I’m starting to run out of money quite fast so there won’t be any more cocktails from now on I don’t think.

Oh boy, our exam is tomorrow. It’s not exactly a formal exam and it’s not going to determine the rest of my life but I still like to try and get a good score in the exams.

Ok so today was one of those days where everything was just perfect and it’s this sort of day where I think that I wish I could stay here forever. I often feel a little bit guilty that everybody else that I know won’t get to see and experience this sort of thing but as they say, life is what you make of it.

Today I decided to go to Carrillo, the next beach over to the south, everyone else said that you need to bike but “rubbish” I thought, I can walk it. So I left at about 11am and got there at 1pm (I think – I purposely didn’t take my watch). It was a nice beach, although not that different from Samara really. But I did find this guy selling drinks out of a little mobile trolley on the beach. In a cup he put crushed ice, then syrup, then milk powder, then more crushed ice, then more syrup, then condensed milk on top. It was quite possibly the best drink ever for the price (700 colones, about £1 or NZD $2.20). I was told later that there’s the same kind of stall in Samara. I have to find it!

Carrillo is 7 km from Samara, and my house is about 1 km from Samara in the opposite direction, so I must have walked at least 16 km today in the heat. I took four litres of water with me and drunk it all. Carrillo beach was nice as I mentioned but the town was not really walking distance from the beach as opposed to Samara where everything is in one convenient place. Plus, it was Sunday at 2pm and everything was closed. On the way back, I saw Tomas from the school in Carrillo, then about halfway back I saw Arthur and walked with him, and then as we neared the school we saw Claudia who is the other student in my class. I really realised today what a small place this is – it’s kind of good in a way.

We had a few drinks on the beach as usual, I got a Pina Colada, two B52s and an Imperial beer for the princely sum of 11,000 colones (£16.50) and made my way back home. At home since I was a little drunk my Spanish magically got better and I had a good conversation again with my host family.

Although unfortunately everything has its bad side, considering though the amount of food my host mum serves me at breakfast and at dinner, and the fact that I’m doing very little exercise because it’s just so hot, I feel like I’m going to return from Costa Rica 8 or 9 kgs heaver than when I got here. I hope that doesn’t happen.

I took a lot of photos of scenery but not a lot of photos yet of the town so I’ll take photos of the town tomorrow hopefully.

Oh and I heard from someone at the school that the little insects that have green lights attached to the end of them are called “lightning bugs” in the States, and they’re very common there. I also heard from my friend Katrina that they’re “Fireflies”, so you can take your pick! I think they’re cool.

Since so much was happening this week, I’ve got a whole week in one blog entry! It’s very long.

4 MAY Tuesday
It’s 9pm on Tuesday and the power went out about 90 minutes ago now, I thought it was worth trying to sleep but it’s not gonna happen! No lights means no electricity and no electricity means no fan. And no fan means no escape from the 100 degree heat. At least with the loud fan on I can get some sleep.

You know that when the lightning and thunder gets to a certain point that usually the power’s going to go out. The rain’s eased off and I can hear myself think again, so the power and the fan coming back on can’t be too far off surely.

I keep seeing these little flying lights around, I’m not sure exactly what they are but they must be some sort of flying glow-worm. It’s like it’s a little moth or something with a little green light bulb attached to its tail. Well that’s what I assume – I can’t actually see what it is because it’s dark when they turn up.

Tomorrow a couple from the school are going to rent kayaks and go out to the island that you can see from the school. They’ve invited me to go with them and I’d love to except they’re super fit people who recently swum for 1 hour 30 mins and I’m worried I won’t be able to keep up with them.

Also today one of the guys from the school, Arthur, asked me if I wanted to go play videogames with him tomorrow. There’s a “shop” here where you can go in, pick a movie and watch it on one of their televisions. They also have playstation 3s and Nintendo Wiis. I haven’t been in yet but might be going in tomorrow it seems. Arthur’s a lovely guy but his Spanish is more advanced than mine and his first language is French so his Spanish has a real French twang to it so communicating is a bit difficult.

Alright, it’s 9:21 and the fan and lights came back on! Now it’s time to find out if that cockroach I could see climbing down the wall got into my clothes. Hmm, can’t see the cockroach, but I can see a big hory spider. Lovely.

5 MAY Wednesday
Today I went on another bike ride, this one wasn’t a guided tour, instead it was just an impromptu ride with two other guys from the school. We went to the same beach that we tried to get to last time but failed. This time it was okay, the rain wasn’t so bad.

The guy on the left is Arthur from France and the guy on the right is Tomas from Switzerland. There’s a surprising number of people here from Switzerland, France, Germany and Austria.

We biked down the beach after crossing a river, and it was very empty although there was a surf school seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Right at the end of the beach there was a road which I assumed was the road we tried and failed to negotiate on bikes last week. A guy on a motorbike came down the road and we noticed the bike was clean so we figured the road can’t have been too bad and I even got up the courage to ask him if it was possible to negotiate the road by bike, and I even understood the answer (for the most part).

On the way back we saw monkeys in the trees, the first time I’d seen them since I got here – apparently before the rain started, you could see them everywhere because there were no leaves in the brown trees. I only managed to take one semi-decent photo, but you can see the mum with her baby on her back.

We stopped at a bar located out in the boondocks on the way home and had an Imperial (the local beer) then went back to Samara and had a few more beers right on the beach, which I never tire of.

6 MAY Thursday
We were told today that the water was going off at midday, although I couldn’t quite understand the rest of what my host father was saying. Apparently we have to shower this morning because the water is supposed to be off until the end of Friday. Gah.

Tonight five of us took a trip to Playa Ostional because there are giant turtles there laying eggs. We went at night because there wasn’t a chance to see them during the day without missing class – unfortunately that meant we weren’t allowed to take photos because the turtles don’t like lights at night. But, it looked kind of like the photos you can see on this page.

It was really amazing, we watched one turtle dig a big hole, lay about 50 or so eggs and then cover it up again. It would then make an effort to camouflage the nest, and then it would bugger off back to the sea. It did a real good job of disguising where it dug the hole, because you couldn’t even see it after it had covered it up again and gone.

The two guides had tiny little red flashlights which weren’t much use, and as is the style in Costa Rica, if the guides saw any of the locals that they knew, they would just stop what they were doing and have a chat for a bit while we stood there in the pitch black saying to ourselves “umm, can we have the flashlight back please?”

In fact, that applies to driving as well, whether it’s taxis, buses, guides, or the people in general, if they see someone they know (which is very common in this small town) they’ll just stop whatever they’re doing (stop the car if they’re driving) and have a chat. Very friendly, but not what we’re used to when they’re supposed to be providing a service!

We got back at about 10:30pm and it was straight over to Ladies’ Night at Tabenuco’s bar, which is the closest bar to the school and has plenty of seats on the beach, and local beers for 1000 colones (£1.50). It was a good night, apparently it’s very busy every Thursday with Ladies’ Night.

One thing I’ve noticed a lot in my time here, but really stood out tonight, is that you really often see a hot local guy “a Tico” with a hot white girlfriend, but you never ever see the reverse – there is never a hot local girl “Tica” with a hot white guy. The logical part of me can process that, but the mathematical part of me tells me that something doesn’t quite add up here.

7 MAY Friday
Today I finally got a chance to go kayaking, something I can’t believe it took me two weeks to do. It didn’t quite go as well as I hoped, but was still fun! I put on a lot of sunscreen for the trip, but because it was a bazillion degrees, the sweat started coming and meant that the sunscreen melted into my eyes, and being in the middle of the ocean on a kayak, there was nothing to wipe them with, so I had stinging eyes for the first half of the trip.

We went ashore wherever we were – I saw a sign that said Playa Samara Sur (South) so we can’t have gone too far – and asked some kind people that spoke english for some tissues to wipe my eyes. Being able to see again made the trip back to Samara much more fun!

I went out with Angela and Mike, an older couple who had their own kayak. Because there’s only the beach – no harbour – you have to navigate the waves with your kayak, and they fell out on the way out when a big wave tipped over the kayak, so their kayak was filled with water for a lot of the trip. I fell out when I got back, a big wave tipped me out just as I came near the waves, but that was fine because I was back on the beach!

Out in the ocean would have been the perfect place to take photos, but the kayak is not the best place to have a camera (lucky I didn’t take it since my kayak capsized).

I got back to my house after kayaking and there was a cockroach on my bed – lovely. I managed to not care about them up until now but that before there was a cockroach actually on the bed. Later on in the night I saw my host mum with cockroach spray and I mentioned casually that I saw one on the bed. Well, she called her daughter over and they turned the room upside down and pulled the bed apart trying to find it. When they failed, she told me about how she really hates cockroaches.

One really sucky part about Friday is that for many people, it’s their last day at the school. Today I had to say bye to Angela and Mike and also Arthur who are leaving at the end of the weekend, who have been my best friends while I’ve been here. Mike’s the older guy who was on the first bike tour last week. It’s usually easy enough to make new friends when the new people come in on Monday but it’s still sad to see your new friends go.

Tonight we watched a movie (Fool’s Gold) but it had to be in English because we couldn’t get the remote to work. After a while we realised we were trying a Panasonic DVD remote on a Sony player, and we couldn’t find the Sony remote. Then, it was a girl’s 20th birthday so we went to Tabenuco’s again. Three nights going out in a row, I’m getting too old for this! Although since I realised that I’ve hardly spent any of my spending money, I bought a variety of cocktails from the cocktail menu. One was called a Samara and was blue and smelled like meat, and another had coconut and actual blended ice-cream and was quite possibly the best drink ever invented.

While we were out, Arthur said that there’s no way I look 30, I look more his age. And since he’s 18, he immediately became my new best friend. But then he said that I’m starting to get an English accent, so now he’s no longer my best friend.

8 MAY Saturday
Arthur and I went to Nicoya today on the bus, it’s the closest place to Samara with any sort of population – to me it seemed a bit bigger than Te Awamutu but Wikipedia tells me that it’s double the size. We were due to catch the 10 oclock bus, but then Arthur’s chain on his bike came off (for about the millionth time) on the way to the bus stop and we got there at 10:08, only to find that once again the official bus timetable doesn’t match what was in our guidebook and we were there almost 40 minutes late. The next bus was not for 80-something minutes, so we had a long wait ahead.

I got a bit stressed in Nicoya because I hadn’t learned the Spanish words associated with shopping – for example, when I wanted to ask the shop assistant if I could try some clothes on, I was using the word “to try” as in “to attempt something” instead of “try on”, so I was actually asking her if I could attempt the clothes. Of course, I was met with blank stares.

Then, the bus back was completely full. I’m pretty sure that there are only two obese women in the whole of Costa Rica (seriously, everyone’s so fit here), and they were both on that bus. One woman stood in the aisle right beside me with her massive stomach pressing up against me for a while, and the buses are not known for their spaciousness. She got off quite soon luckily, but then the other obese woman ended up beside me, facing the other way so her bum was in my space for the rest of the trip!

I mentioned the other day that the water went off, well today it’s still not back on, and I don’t really know why. Couple that with the fact that it’s now a gazillion degrees (officially several orders of magnitude than a bazillion) and you have the recipe for a not very pleasant day. It also didn’t help my stress levels in Nicoya.

It was hard enough dealing with no hot water in the shower, but now there’s no shower full stop. We have a massive bucket of cold water in each shower which we need to fill the toilet with each time, and also we have to shower ourselves with it by pouring the water manually over ourselves. I’m not sure how much longer this water is going to last, but it’s affecting the whole street so hopefully it won’t last much longer. Someone else in the street who speaks English told me that it won’t be back on for another 2 or 3 days.

There’s something a bit messed up with the mobile phone system here. There’s no mobile reception in my house but if you’re lucky there’s some at the school. However, the system can’t seem to work out when it’s successfully delivered a message, so every time I go into the school (and back into cellphone reception), I get the same text message from Mum that reads “Yes. No meetings today and working from home”. I’ve received that message 10 times now.

I’m not going out tonight! Three nights in a row is enough. I had a good night tonight with my host family, I was in the Spanish speaking mood and my host mum was not in her “talking at 100 miles an hour” mood, so we had a big chat about all sorts of things. And her daughter taught me the spanish word for “farts”, so that was awesome.

The daughter said something funny tonight, she’s learning some real basic phrases in English and French – these were her pretty much her exact words, keeping in mind she can only speak Spanish:

“Yo sé como decir ‘me llamo Carolina’ en Francais, es ‘How are you?’”

which translates as

“I know how to say ‘My name is Carolina’ in French, it’s ‘[said in English] How are you?’”

I think she got her foreign phrases mixed up there! Hmm, that was surprisingly hard to explain if you don’t know Spanish.

Hopefully tomorrow is my “day of exploring and taking photos of everything”, which it will be unless some sort of get-together comes up, which it almost certainly will.

These photos are here on facebook, but I thought I’d write a bit about them here.

The photo on the left was a road that we drove down in San Jose on the way back to Leah’s house, it shocked me a bit, I’ve never seen houses like that before, they were kind of all built on top of each other and I’m not exactly sure what was holding them all together.

The other photo is in Price Smart, a place where you can buy things in bulk, and it was quite cool! All I could understand in the shop is all the little kids running around in the shop saying “Yo quiero! Yo quiero!!” (I want! I want!). They had absolutely massive packets of M&Ms. Luckily I don’t have enough room in my suitcase to bring too many back to London.

A couple of other photos here.

I took the bus back to Samara yesterday, I had been dropped off at the wrong bus stop, I was actually supposed to be at the bus stop up the road, but people seem to be quite easygoing here and the bus driver put on the brakes in the middle of the road and I ran up and got on, and the bus driver tried to tell me something which I’m pretty sure was along the lines of “err, this isn’t the right bus stop”. Never mind! Someone was in my seat, but he knew it and was starting to move before I even said anything. Quite a few people were standing for the first few hours of the trip but after a while people got off and the standing people could sit down.

Today has been another day of the internet being up and down, kind of irritating when I’m trying to get blog updates done but hey, nothing that can be done!

Seems that everyone heard about the creature I encountered in the bathroom and everyone wants to see pictures of it. Perhaps the story has been blown out of proportion

Not a lot happened today, we started classes with a new teacher who is a lot more relaxed than our teacher from last week. There are much fewer students this week than last, I think it’s getting into low season. There was only me and one other person in the class. There was supposed to be a third person but she got an eye infection. I also bought another t-shirt and some bright red togs. Soon we’re going to Arriba (a bar) for drinks with the new students.

I took some photos on my phone because my camera run out of batteries but then like an idiot I forgot to bring the phone cable, so that will be a job for tomorrow.

Ok, so this morning I got up at 1am to use the baño, and saw a massive tail sticking out the door of the bathroom. Once I got the courage to look again, I saw something massive sitting right in the doorway:

All I can say is thank god there are two bathrooms in the house. And also thank god that I got up at 1am, because when I got up again at 7am, it had hidden itself right in the corner of the shower under the shower curtain – if I had’ve not got up at 1am I would have used the shower at 7 and stood right on it.

The first graduation at the school was this week, it was for those students who had just completed their last week. They all had to give a speech in Spanish in front of everyone, I’m not looking forward to that. At least it could be written down on paper. There was a large group of high school students graduating and their speeches were given in horrificly American accents, it was hilarious. I mean, I’m no expert, but I’ve been told my accent isn’t as strong as others, so I can say it!

Yesterday I’d talked to Leah, an old friend who I used to work with in New Zealand when I was doing KFC delivery – ooh that was some time ago now! She said she’d like me to come and see her which I liked the idea of a lot. It meant though that I had to navigate the buses for a five hour ride from Sámara to San José. No problem I thought. Oh wait – the only direct bus leaves at 4.30 on Saturday morning, not my idea of fun. So I asked the receptionist at the school, Paola, if I could catch a bus to Nicoya and then a bus from there to San José. “It’s risky”, she said, “because there´s only one afternoon bus from Nicoya to San José and you may be standing for 4 hours”. No problem I thought, I live in London and have to stand on trains all the time, how bad could it be.

So first I had to get from Samara to Nicoya. My information booklet said the bus left at 3:00. The woman at the bus terminal told me 2:00 and the sign at the bus stop said 2:30. It turned up at 2:50. It was actually less of a rickity old bus than I expected, and it only cost 800 colones (£1.20). An american tourist and I were the only two white people on the bus, everyone else was a local. Every time the bus stopped, the locals that got on shook hands with all the other locals, everybody clearly knew each other! It played some cheesy latino music for the whole trip which made the whole experience very authentic.

At Nicoya we pulled up to a very chaotic scene with people everywhere waiting for all kinds of buses, luckily I had an hour to spare which gave me plenty of time to find where to buy a ticket from to San José. It cost 3315 colones (£5). Sure enough, the cashier told me “no hay asientos” (standing room only) and everyone piled on the bus at 5:00. There were five of us standing, and I overheard one of the women say something like “este es el campo del pie!” (this is the camp of the standing) as we were all huddled by the emergency exit. But once the bus started we noticed there were exactly five empty seats, so we all sat down. The bus stopped somewhere and picked up another person, so somebody had to move, but it wasn’t me! (There was assigned seating.)

Halfway to San José the bus driver stopped the bus without announcing anything and turned off the engine, and everyone piled off the bus except me and a woman who had a sleeping kid. I tried to ask the bus driver if we were staying here but didn’t understand the response. I worked out though that everyone’s bags were still on the bus so they can’t be going far. Still it was a bit nerve racking though!

San José was interesting, I haven’t seen Leah in such a long time and I met her husband Carlos and her baby Adam and her dog. They have a nice house in an area surrounded by a massive fence with barbed wire above it and security guards at the entrances. I can kind of see why they need it because we drove around San José a bit and quite frankly a lot of it looks a bit scary. The bus station in particular looked particularly bad. I’m real glad to have some local knowledge. Carlos bought my return ticket for me and made it so that I can be picked up from somewhere other than the bus station!

We saw the Irazu Volcano which was really nice despite being clouded over near the crater. As a foreigner I had to pay a $10US entry fee as opposed to the locals who can pay $2US. There were lots of people selling fruits, vegetables and cheeses on the side of the road and there were some horses which we think had gotten loose and were running down the road, they seemed a bit frightened because they seemed to be charging the car.

We had lunch at a place called Cartago which is where Carlos is from. I picked something called Rice with Chicken and Curry, not very Spanish I know but I knew it would have a Spanish taste to it. It turned out to be rice with chicken that had been marinated in curry powder but was still really great and was really large for about £5. Then we went to a mall, there were exactly the same shops as any mall in London, with Nike, Billabong, Quiksilver etc. on the menu. Instead I went to a general department store and bought two t-shirts for about £7.50.

We got home about 5.30pm, we’re about to have dinner!

HERE ARE PHOTOS FROM SAN JOSE.

Last night I thought it wasn’t going to rain but sure enough, about 9:30 I was doing homework in my room and then bang, crash, lightning over and over again and the usual pounding of the rain on the roof. At least this time it had the decency to wait until I had finished all my stuff for the day. It was nice to be dry for once!

It feels weird doing homework again. We have alternating morning/afternoon classes so that means when we have a morning class, we get a lot more homework because we have all that day and all the next morning to complete it. Sometimes I almost forget it.

I hate to think what our teacher would say if we didn’t do the homework, as she’s very strict. She corrects every single mistake we make no matter how small, but that’s actually a good thing, because how else do you know if you’re doing something wrong! She’s very energetic. Yesterday I was going to be a minute late for her class and I pedalled my heart out on the bike to ensure I was there on time, and just as i was pulling into the bike stands the bell started ringing so I was just on time, but rather than risk being 30 seconds late to class I decided to forego filling my water bottle.

My homestay is quite a nice place. There’s Norma, her husband and her 16 year old daughter. She also has 3 sons living in San Jose (the capital). I had quite a bit of trouble understanding her at first, but Norma and I had quite a nice talk last night about families and food and a couple of other things, and it went really well. I can’t understand a thing the husband says but there’s another student of the school from America living here and she is the same – can’t understand much.

For some reason I expected all the locals on the street to say hi every time you pass them, but it’s not true, and whereever we go as a group of students, nobody ever talks to the locals. I wonder if that’s because we’re too nervous because our spanish is so bad (that’s the case with me) or whether the locals have a genuine dislike for the foreigners. I think it’s not the latter because the few locals I’ve seen talk to me every time I see them. I’ve only been in the town 5 days and you keep seeing the same people everywhere every day. Being in such a small town is weird, but nice!

I feel I’ve been a bit negative in my last few posts, but I think it was the rain and adjusting to the new place! Everything is going well. I love the classes, and when it’s not raining, the beach is beautiful, and there is not much better than having a drink for £1 right on the beach. My homestay is getting better as my confidence in speaking spanish improves and the time goes really fast every day, I thought I would have lots of spare time, but I don’t – it’s all taken up with activities, lessons, and socialising. Yesterday I saw someone I know having a drink at a bar on the beach (that in itself was awesome enough) but it doesn’t take long for other people to stop and say hi and end up having a drink as well. It’s this sort of reason that I chose a small town for learning Spanish in, and I think I made the right choice.

Although I still think that when I go to Mexico and Peru that I’ll study spanish in a city. I want to see both sides!

I managed to go into a shop yesterday and ask the checkout girl where the bug spray was, and I succeeded. And then I understood the other guy there when he asked me if I wanted a bag. Woohoo! Also, I got an icecream and little milk drink for 550 colones, which is about 75p, although they were very small. I went to a restaurant with the girls from my class and you could buy a massive drink of real fruit juice mixed with milk for about £1.70, it was the best drink ever, kind of like mango lassi but with real mango (also papaya and other juices too). They have so many tropical fruits and they’re all real cheap – my homestay mum has massive plastic bags filled with all sorts of fruits.

Today we went on a bike ride, we were going to go to Carrillo but people had already been there so we set off for Buena Vista instead. The name sounded good (“good view” in english) but unfortunately we couldn’t make it there because the roads were impassable because of all the rain. I was told before I came here that some of the roads on the west coast are impassable in the rainy season and now I see why.

HERE’S THE PHOTOS OF THE BIKE RIDE.

Each day anywhere between 2-4pm it rains, and it’s not just a little bit of rain, it’s RAIN – there’s lightning every 10 or 20 seconds and it turns the roads to mud in no time flat – except for the main road, the roads are not paved here! I’ve only been here 3 days but every piece of clothing I own is absolutely saturated, if not from the rain, then from the 24-hour-a-day sweating because of the 200% humidity. And the rain doesn’t stop until the early hours of the morning, betwen the rain banging on the roof and the really loud fan, sometimes I don’t get a lot of sleep.

I tried to buy some more clothes today but there aren’t that many places in this small town to buy clothes and what is there is real touristy. Although I’m not sure exactly what I’m looking for, the few things that I did find were the wrong size. I can’t try anything on because just spending 2 minutes in a shop without air-conditioning makes me break out in a massive sweat.

The internet here is patchy at best, it worked fine for the first two days but today it has been cutting in and out. Generally it’s not too bad though.

The class itself has been good, I look forward to our lessons each day. The teacher is quite strict, pointing out every mistake but that’s good really I think.

There’s lots of cockroaches here, they’re different to NZ cockroaches, they’re smaller but really fat and still pretty gross. Someone said they had a scorpion land on their back which fortunately hasn’t happened to me yet! Okay, I’ve just been corrected by someone at the school, they’re not cockroaches, they’re “abejones”. Here’s a picture of one that I found on the internet somewhere:

I hope one doesn’t land on me while I sleep.

One of the cooler things I see around is iguanas. Here’s my spanish class looking out the window at an iguana they saw in the tree:

Yes, my spanish class is comprised of four other girls and a female teacher! Anyway… here’s what we were looking at:

It was very cool! Here’s another one I saw:

I’m not planning to write up one of these every day… but it’s currently raining so hard that there’s not a lot else to do!

I was very nervous when I left Dallas, I was almost hoping the plane would have to turn back for some reason! Texas is a lot greener than I thought – I think I mentioned that in my last post.

Eventually I arrived at Liberia Airport, which to me was kind of what it would be like to fly into Te Kuiti Airport.

That building there is pretty much the entire airport. Stepping off the plane the heat really hits you, it must have been 5 degrees in London when I left and now it feels like 500.

Once outside the airport, there was chaos – many locals trying to sell taxis to the gringos. I had to try and find my pre-booked taxi amongst the crowds of people trying to sell their taxi services.

I was picked up by a couple of guys in a real beat-up old car that I wish I had’ve taken a photo of, but it looked like a mid 80′s Datsun. We stopped on the way to buy some beer (drinking and driving didn’t seem to be a problem here, although it was only one) and I got accosted by some one asking something about one dollar. My drivers told me he was a crazy person and to ignore him.

I did take some photos from the car.

They took me to my host family’s house, and straight away there was a problem because I’d already paid for the taxi, but the taxi driver said he hadn’t been paid. So I said in my broken spanish that I’d paid the school, so they got the school on the phone and we sorted it out in English luckily.

My room is nice, it’s small, but it’s got a fan thank God, and my own little bathroom.

I rested for a couple of hours, but because it was so hot I didn’t get much resting done. After half an hour all the power inexplicably went out (apparently it happens a lot here), which meant that the fan stopped working, and that I literally started melting.

At 6pm I went to the school where I’ll be studying spanish for 4 weeks. They were going to give us a tour of the town but because the power was out and there was torrential rain we couldn’t do much. So, after sitting around chatting for a while, I went back to the host family’s house. It was pitch black, pouring with rain, and I had to cycle home a mile or so through a new town that doesn’t speak English. And I’d seen first-hand how the locals drive. It was scary but all part of the adventure!

The photos aren’t particularly interesting, because once I got to my host family’s house I did a lot of sleeping and there was no power, and it’s been raining almost since I got here.

So far it’s all gone pretty much like I expected, I can get the gist of what my host family says to me but often can’t reply, but I’m looking forward to starting school tomorrow.

And no matter how long I’m here, I’m not going to get used to putting used toilet paper into the rubbish bin instead of into the toilet.