another day in san juan de oriente...

I can’t believe I’ve only been gone for 2 weeks – it feels like ages ago that I was waiting until the last minute to pack for this adventure. Which, by the way, I did a crappy job of doing… But anyway, this is where I live:

Yeah, that´s a volcano.

My room temp was about 80 last night, and I was definitely wearing sweatpants. They say it typically takes a person 2 weeks to fully adjust to a climate, and I’m pretty sure I’m close to achieving that goal. That’s not to say I’m not sweating in the 95% humidity, 95 degree heat during the day, it’s just a small milestone of the many to come…hopefully.

My host family is awesome. We can’t really communicate that well (maybe that’s why we all get along..?), but we most definitely try. It’s interesting, living with a family, because I haven’t really lived under someone else’s roof for a solid 6 years. I can’t say I miss the “where are you going?” and the “what time will you return?” questions, but I imagine it could be much worse. Oh, and I just found out that my family has a finca, so my host brother and I are going to check out the mango groves and avocado trees after my classes today. Yeah, I have classes on Saturdays.

These are two girls that live with me:


Speaking of food, pineapples are white here, not yellow. They’re just as sweet, but somehow quite a bit more tasty. They seem fresher, just like the avocados (which happen to have bright green casings here). I drink freshly blended juice for breakfast and dinner each day. On the contrary, I’ve never had so much fried food in my life. Gallo pinto, although really only rice and beans, is fried, and we consume that at least twice each day. Oh, and I think I had an omelet with hot dog the other morning, but it could’ve been some other form of mystery meat. Back to the fried food topic - I’m pretty sure that if my host mom wanted to attempt to burn down our house, she’d have enough grease in the kitchen to give it a wicked shot. Wait, does concrete melt..?

Oh, and sorry for the atypical vocab word - did I mention that one of my current sitemates is from Boston..?

So I sleep under a mosquito net, which makes it difficult for flying beasts to penetrate my sleeping bubble. Inevitably, one or two find a way in throughout the course of my 7-hour toss-and-turn-fest. The other night though, it wasn’t the dengue-carrying, malaria-spreading fiend that attacked me – it was a spider that was hanging out in my sheets. And where did this frisky little spider bite me, you ask? Let´s just say it wasn´t on my legs or feet...
Whoever said that roosters crow in the morning was so wrong. Last night, for instance, the roosters started in at 10:30pm, and stopped at around 7:30am. Nonetheless, it´s still a beautiful country:

This is a lagoon that was formed by a volcano - once we finally got down there it was amazing, but the hike back up was treachorous.

Oh, and one of the guys in my group is named Avi. Every time I see him I say “Avi-ously.” I’m really annoyed with myself for doing it, but I just can’t help it…luckily he doesn’t hate me…yet.

More soon!