My Life In Costa Rica

Me, Raych & Uncle Daddy!












If you can't tell what's going on in this picture...Landon farted!! SICKO!!!



On Thursday we went to this restaurant way up in the mountains that serves the biggest, most tender pork chops I've ever eaten(not to hurt your feelings dad!) It was real neat! The view was the most amazing, beautiful view I've ever seen! It was so pretty because we were driving up the mountain in the dark and then you looked down and could see all the lights of the city!!! BEAUTIFUL!!! The sunset was really pretty too! It was a bright orange color! Me, Raychel, Mario and Landon walked up the road a little bit and took some pictures so hopefully they show up ok on the blog. I'm just going to post some random pics on here because there's really not nething else to say.

Happy Birthday Raychel!

Yesterday was Raychel's birthday! She turned 19 years old! We had three different parties for her! In the morning we had a cake for her in our grammer teacher's class. He loves parties and he loves to eat :) Everyone around the school told us if we bring food on fridays he throws a party! lol Then the second party was in our phonetics class. We had another cake, fruit, and ice cream! Then we surprised Raychel and went over to Gloria and Carlos' house and they had balloons blown up for her! We had ANOTHER cake and we ate gallo pinto(our favorite!!!) and the most tender carne I've ever eaten!!! yummm! So needless to say I don't need to eat for the next couple of days...lol. School has been goin great! I've taken two tests and I feel pretty confident about them so hopefully i did well!

Our first week has come to an end!

We are done with our first week of school!!! YEA! The weekend is here! It was a good week and i learned a lot!!! there were some times when i had no idea what was going on but thank God for mario and dee! The teacher's only talk in spanish to you and when i found that out i thought i would NEVER learn anything! But i have learned so much already! It amazes me! I have 4 classes everyday: 2 grammar classes, a language class, and a phonetics class. My favorite class is phonetics because we actually leanr how to speak spanish and i have a good teacher.
Not much else has been happenin this week. We've been very busy with school. Sunday after church we went to a city called Coronado and ate some gallo pinto. Then we drove to Los Cuadros where our other church is located and drove around there for a couple ofminutes. We didn't stay very long because it's so dangerous. The church has recently had a shooting and so we can't go tothe church anymore. But Raychel got some good pictures of the ranchos and of a big hill that we drove down.
On tuesday i went to a basketball game that pastor blake actually plays for. it was a good game! they won by like 15 points or something like that. it was a pretty big game, they show it on tv and everything! pastor blake said they are ranked number 1 in the country! A lot of the youth from the church went and we talked to a lot of them during the game. It's amazing how you can build a friendship even with a language barrier! Everyone just comes up and starts talking to you in spanish and somehow we communicate! It's hard to explain but it's really neat! I just can't wait until we can actually have a full conversation with them!
On Wednesday we took 2 buses to Gloria's house and walked 20 minutes up a steep hill to get to her house! it was good exercise!
Thursday (Last night) was Otero's night! We had some yummy pizza and then i watched the Pittsburgh/Miami game!!! I am very excited that iget to watch football here! And now we are at today. We had a fiesta about an hour ago for all the new students.And tonight we are going to Carlos and Gloria's church and afterwards we'll probably go look at the transvestites downtown.
Austa Luego!

Say What?!?

Last night was the most embarassing night of my life! I did THE most emberassing thing! ok so i don't really know that much spanish yet so keep that in mind.Their church has about 7,000 memebers - it's a mega church - and this service was their youth group so there was about 500 people in service last night. So the pastor was seeing who was the loudest and whichever side was the loudest got to go up and give their offering...so the other side was the loudest so they got called up to give their offering. But see i didn't know that. i just thought he called everyone up to give their offering. so i got up real fast and everyone who knows me knows thati walk real fast...so i started walking up there and deanza, daniel, kendra, raychel, and gloria started saying JESS! but i didn't hear them. so i got about halfway up to the front and turned around and no one was behind me!!! So gloria ran after me and put her arm around me. I was soooo embarassed!!! I turned around and was soooo red! So then i just stood there cuz i didn't want to look like an idiot and just waited for him to call our group! but hey at least i gave my offering! :)when i went back to my seat i got a mixture of reactions....i guess everyone was watching me and wondering what the heck i was doing when i was walking up there. so i got some dirty looks and the guys sitting a few rows behind us were cracking up...so i felt better that they were laughing...lol...i was dying laughing once i finally got back to my seat. Kendra was in tears cuz she was laughing so hard! it was the funniest thing ever!!
After service was fun though...we went on the transvestite tour downtown again. It's crazy! These guys look so much like women you can't even tell the difference untill they open their mouth and start talking to you. gross!
Well we have almost finished orientation for school...monday will be our last day and then we'll start school on tuesday!!! yay!!! Orientation is THE most boring thing in the world! we have all fell asleep at least once! and raychel listens to her ipod during it....so needless to say, thank God it's almost over! Our class will have 5 teenagers in it...me, raychel, kendra, daniel, and this kid named josh that we met the other day...he's from nebraska and we all get along so that will be good. We go to school from 7:30AM until 12:00 noon. It's not too long of a day but it's early!
Today we are going to the fedia - i don't know if that's how you spell it - but it's a market and we're gonna go taste some samples and buy some freash fruit!yummy! they have some really neat fruit here...some of it looks like sea creatures!
Well i guess that's all i have to say...if another embarassing story pops up, and i'm sure it will then i will post it! :)
ok to explain the pictures...most are self explanatory...the ones in the dark are of raychel and daniel doin gymnastica outside at 11:00....it was fun stuff...and the rest are just oddball pics.