Bienvenidos a San José

I made it! After much exhausting traveling, I finally have arrived in San José, Costa Rica. My parents brought me to the airport in San Diego last night, and I landed here around 5:45 a.m. this morning, being greeted by what could have been arguably the most beautiful sunrise I have ever seen. There was a little "comic" mishap yesterday: when I got my ID out for check-in, I noticed something was missing from my wallet- my ATM card. After changing my underpants, I realized that I had left the card in the ATM deposit machine at the bank in Escondido. So after a few frantic telefono calls, my older bro Levi rushed my card to the aeropuerto, which ensured that I wouldn't have to live off the $46 I had in my pocket for the next 5 weeks. Said goodbye to the parents, waited for the connecting flight to Denver, which was 45 minutes late causing me to almost miss my flight to CR. But, alas, the shoddy Denver weather came to my aid and delayed the second flight because of snow and thunderstorms (its May 12 btw).

When I landed and got through customs, I was picked up by a lovely Tican gentleman named Manuel Acuña, who brought me across the city to my host family's house near El Parque Sabanilla. During our ride, Manuel told me a bit about the history of Costa Rica (in Spanish, mind you)- the Spanish first named it Costa Rica because they initially thought there was a ton of gold here, but it turns out once they went inland, there was no indigenous treasure to be found. So, they took many of the female indígenas back to Spain as slaves and killed the men. Sounds pretty just, yeah? Anywho, there is a very, very small indigenous population in Costa Rica today, with most inhabitants coming from European descent. For this reason, many costarricenses consider themselves to be "white". The costarricenses look quite a bit different than most of the immigrants I am accustomed to seeing back home, who are usually short, darker complexioned Indians from Mexico and such. But, the people here are more fair-skinned and taller because of their mixed descent from Italians, Spaniards, and other Europeans.

Got to my house around 7 this morning and my Tican mother, Floribeth, was eagerly awaiting my arrival. She showed me my room upstairs and then made me some hot breakfast accompanied by a delectable copa of roasted coffee, Costa Rica's specialty; Probably one of the best cups of coffee I've ever had, partly because I had been up all night and partly because the coffee here is unmatched elsewhere. Coffee was the source of Costa Rica's economic development in the 19th century, and distinguished it economically from the other Central American countries. Apparently, Costa Rica's soil and climate make it perfect for cultivating the coffee bean, so the industry took off and brought many immigrants to the country to get involved in production. My Tican madre Flori told me that a lot of German immigrants came to improve the business side of the industry. Also, she said that coffee has been a successful and fair industry because the production has remained in the hands of small farmers rather than a few huge landowners. This is because coffee cultivation is a painstaking process, so coffee barons monopolize the processing, marketing and financing of coffee production. So where was I going with this? Oh, yeah, Costa Rica has awesome coffee. Mos def gonna bring some home with me!

After breakfast, I took a 5-hour nap then hit the town with ticamadre Flori. We walked around the mall for a short time while she gave me a crash-course introduction to Costa Rican culture. On Wednesdays at el cine in the mall, movies are 1000 colones, equal to about $2 U.S., so Flori went to see Iron Man 2 en español. great flick! After the movie, it was already dark because Costa Rica doesn't have daylight savings time, so we returned home by bus and ate dinner of rice, beef and some vegetables in a seasoned sauce. For dessert, we had homemade ice cream popsicles my ticamadre made with some fruit only found in Costa Rica (starts with a "z"...).

Now, I'm off to bed- I start class tomorrow. The group of 15 from Houghton College in New York don't arrive until Saturday, so I will be ridin' solo until then! Gonna read under the stars and watch airplanes in the night sky from my roof! that sounds kinda familiar...hm

God has been good to me so far on the trip! I already am amazed by the beauty of His wondrous creation here. Pray that he will continue to bless my time here~ buenas noches todos!