The flight - for real this time (plus other stuff)

Waiting in the terminal to board the plane, I was hungry and walked into a Quiznos. The guy ahead of me was definitely from Costa Rica. He was chatting it up with the Hispanic Quiznos employee. After he paid, he forgot to take his food with him. Naturally, I reminded him of his food. I introduced myself and Mario and I ate lunch together and spoke Spanish for a good hour before getting on the plane. He even gave me a phone number and email in case I need help or anything. It was awesome meeting a Costa Rican before even getting there.

On the plane, Mario wanted to sit next to me on the plane (this guy is like 40 and wants to hang out with me like we're high school buddies). Unfortunately we couldn't get it arranged in time. I sat in the middle seat (no surprise there) between another Costa Rican and an American businessman. The Costa Rican lady lived in Alaska with her husband for 20 years and Gilbert for 10 years. She was fluent in English and when we talked, I replied in Spanish. Awesome! We talked of many things, mostly about Costa Rica. She was worried about me getting to my host stay family's house in a taxi, and was confused why the family didn't come pick me up. She also told me all about being safe at night and watching my belongings. She said I will remember her as my airplane mom, haha.

Customs and immigration were painful to get through…long lines and lots of waiting. I finally paid for an official taxi to drive me to my house and the cab driver said he was impressed with my Spanish. He pointed out some key things along the way, like the National Theatre, the downtown mall, the city government building, and a few cute girls :)

Today is Sunday, National Election Day. It only happens every 4 years, like in the U.S., so it was a huge deal. People drive around with gigantic flags protruding from their cars as they honk constantly up and down the streets. There are 9 people/parties running for President, but only 3 have a good chance at making it. My family supports Laura Chinchilla, and it looks like she is going to become the first female President of Costa Rica! What’s interesting here is that no matter which party wins, EVERYONE parties.

To celebrate the elections, we traveled to downtown San Jose to the Mariott Hotel. It has got to be the most expensive hotel in the country. Insanely fancy. Acres and acres of beautifully-kept land before even approaching the gigantic hotel. Once inside we were served wine and appetizers. It felt strange being there because we weren’t really part of the elections but we were regarded as special guests for being foreign students so it was an honor nonetheless. We went to the bar Reventados afterwards to catch the rest of the Superbowl. I wanted the Colts to win but that interception by Peyton in the 4th pretty much put it away.

Jumping back to yesterday, we went to a park/university field. There’s a nice pool and large open grass area to run around, as well as tall trees for shade. A lot of the host stay families came and we had a picnic with games like jump rope, sack racing, basketball, Frisbee, and the Limbo. It was all around an awesome time. I played a game of basketball with some Costa Ricans and some American girls…although I won in horse the U.S. team lost in the 4 v. 4 game we played. It was so frickin’ hot I thought I could handle the sun but apparently I couldn’t…woke up the next morning with a super red nose, ears, and neck. I guess even Arizonan weather didn’t prepare me enough for this kind of sun.

Funny stories: While chatting with my host stay family, I saw they had a cactus in that outdoor room I mentioned earlier. I told them the name of the cactus in the U.S. is barrel cactus. They said they had another name for cactus: asiento de suegra. This means “chair for mother-in-law.” How funny is that!! I cracked up pretty hard. The dad said, when your day comes to have a mother-in-law, you can present a cactus to her as a gift!
Another story: I agreed to meet a few other U.S. students at a bus stop on the way to the University for class. One student suggested to meet at “la esquina de pañal.” Not knowing what this meant, I had to ask a local for directions. After getting a funny look from the Tico, I decided to look up pañal in the dictionary. It means diaper. I had just asked someone where the diaper corner is. Haha!

Tomorrow is our first day of the orientation writing class. I haven’t written anything in Spanish for quite a while, so wish me luck!