Hanging out in San Jose

This morning I woke up to the roosters at 445. That is definately going to take some getting used to. It gets dark here around 730 and light at 5. But we go to bed earlier so I guess its not too terrible. Today we had to meet in the center of San Jose at the teatro nacional for a kind of scavenger hunt to familiarize ourselves with the city. We were divided into groups of six and then given a list of places or things to do. It has been a ton of fun as our group has ventured around the city. We started off this morning at 7 and finished quite a bit of our list by 8 so we decided to just wander around and find things to see. We walked all the way to the end of avenida central and saw the hospital and found a neat park to hang out in. There was a cathedral across the street so we went there after a while of talking about our different host families. We sat in the cathedral for almost 30 min in silence just taking it in. It was absolutely beautiful and it just reminds you how reverent we should be towards God. People would come in and out and kneel down and pray. I´ve been in cathedrals before but this was the first time I actually sat down and really thought about it. I can tell that this trip is really going to challenge my views on religion. Many of the families are catholic so many of the students will be going to catholic churches on Sunday. After we left the cathedral our group just sat outside talking about what it will be like in a catholic church. My family is Pentecostal so that will be an interesting experience for me on Sunday. I can´t wait to share with everyone how that goes. I can´t wait to see how God speaks to me through being pentecostal for 3 months. It will definately be completely different then the church of Christ. After that experience, we walked around a lot more until cafecita at 10 with one of our staff members Laura. I´m definately going to have to learn to like coffee while I am here but it hasn´t been too bad so far. Everyday Costa Ricas have cafecita which is a time to gather around the table to have coffee and pastries. During our cafecita we got to ask Laura all sorts of questions that have come up so far like what our schedules will be like these next couple of weeks, and where will we stay in Nicaragua and Cuba, and do you have to throw the toilet paper in the trash can in public restrooms. She was very helpful and it was a nice hour spent enjoying cafecita. I got a drink called choco vienna which had chocolate, coffee, and ice cream. It was so sweet I could hardly finish it. After that we found a bank to change some of our US dollars into colones and then we had to find an internet cafe so that is where I am now. In about 30 minutes we will hop on a bus to go to ICADS. That is the place where we will be taking our Spanish classes every morning. Today we have to go take our test to see what level we will be in. After that we are heading to the mall for the final step on our scavenger hunt. Then it is back to teatro nacional at 5 to meet our host moms and go home. This trip has been so full of emotions and it is definately draining. Listening to and speaking Spanish all day wears you out while we are still getting used to it. It´s been nice this afternoon to get to speak a little English. Since my house has internet access, hopefully I will be updating this thing often so keep checking it. I did leave my camera cord at home so hopefully I can find one to buy or else there will be no picture...sorry. Maybe I can download some from my host moms camera. She went picture crazy last night and took a whole bunch of pictures of me and my sisters. It was a lot of fun. Well that is all for now because it is time to go on a search for the correct bus. I love you all!!