Entrada primera de Costa Rica!

Querida gente! Mujeres y caballeros! Amigos, ranas* y cinturones de seguridad*!

*some of the new words I learned yesterday (rana = frog; cinturon de seguridad = seatbelt)

I have safely arrived in San Jose, Costa Rica after 18 hours, 3 flights (including a stop in El Salvador), adventures in immigration/customs, and a supremely rickety bus ride.

Some highlights of my Aventuras so far include:
-sitting next to a spanish speaking couple and their 2yo daughter Isabella on my first flight. she and I practiced our colors together en espanol :)
-the german-speaking woman sitting behind me on the second flight, who was from Bielefeld (right near where I did my study abroad in Germany!)... she and I talked a bunch in German and Spanish as well
-helping my new friend AnneMarie through customs in San Jose. She's a beginning spanish learner and her customs guy didn't speak English and had a strong accent, so I got the honor of explaining to him (in spanish that came out a lot better than I expected it to) that we were volunteer teachers entering as tourists and that we would apply for a visa within the alloted 90 day period.)
-so many palm trees! so much barbed wire!
-being woken up by interesting sounding birds this morning
-creepy steam coming from the ceiling of the shakey airplane at takeoff (the group bonded over our terror)
-moment when i realized that 'adios' means 'to god' ...


...........aaaaaaaand much much more. There's a girl here (Graceann) who is my height, has a similar body, similar features, similar hair, similar style, lots of tattoos.... and a site very near mine. We're debating pretending to be sisters. Boruca is apparently a fantastic, awesome, laid-back place where tattoos are no problem, the people are friendly and very dark-skinned, and the children are ridiculously cute (according to the people who picked us up and had been there.) Sara, Drew, and I all live relatively near each other and brought our guitars, so I have a feeling that jam sessions will occur at some point.

ANYway. it's 6:13, aka time to pack my stuff together and grab breakfast before my first full day in America Central.

BESOS!