La Fortuna and Heredia

So, to wrap up our orientation fun, we went on a little vacation to a town called La Fortuna. This adorable tourist town is located at the base of the volcano Arenal, and is best known for it's natural hot springs and outdoors activities. After a week cramming Spanish back into our heads and trying to adjust to Tico life, a weekend vacation was wonderful.

To get to La Fortuna, we had an hour and a half bus ride, mostly on unpaved roads, followed by a ferry ride across a huge lake! Saturday we had a chance to wander around La Fortuna and enjoy the town and then we went to the hot springs. They were beautiful and warm and we had fun as a whole group of 16 taking up the majority of one of the pools.

The next morning, we hiked to the La Fortuna waterfall! It was so incredibly beautiful (I feel like I've been saying that a lot this last week and a half) and we got to go swimming in the pool at the bottom of the falls. The water was perfect, the weather was perfect, the scenery was incredible, and I was in heaven :) Great people, beautiful things to see, Spanish and new experiences everyday...this is my kind of country!

By Sunday night, it was time to approach reality...we will have to go to school eventually. The exciting part was we were able to meet our real host families (the Monteverde families were only for a week, this one is for 5 months)! Mine is wonderful. Ana, my mom, takes such good care of me, and has spent the past two days cooking for me and showing me the bus route to school. Ronald, the dad, is hilarious and a generally happy guy. I have two host brothers Juan Pablo (25) and Joshua (21), I haven't been able to spend much time with either of them though, since they work and go to school at hours off of mine. Natalia is 16 and our rooms are across the hall from each other. She is really sweet and fun, and it's nice to have another girl in the house (not that I don't love you Clayton and Travis). Also, my host mom's two sisters live in the two houses next door, so there's a constant stream of people in and out that are all related someho, I haven't figured all that out yet.

This week, we are getting to know our city, and our school, we also bought Costa Rican cell phones, and have had some less exciting classes on safety, health, and class registration. Next week we actually start class, so we'll see how that goes!