Week 1 is done!

Hola mis amigos!
Well it's Monday, the start of my second week in Costa Rica. The first was incredible, there is a lot to tell, so I'll try to break it down.
Well the flights down weren't so bad, as I was taking off from Calgary I started talking to the girl beside me. Her name was Carmen... I think. But she was from Red Deer, heading to Florida for a cruise. Nice girl, 29 and a real estate appraiser for commercial properties in Red Deer. Apparently they are having a boom in that section, so if you're looking to invest in commercial real estate... :)
Bottom line of this story is that I had a friend to sit with in Seattle for 3 hours. We went and got a beer and some hearty stew in one of the lounges there, and then did a little shopping. There are a ton of stores in the airport there, it's like a little mall. Kinda weird.
The next leg of the tour was uneventful, except that I sat beside two sketchy looking characters who were speaking what I thought was an arabic language, which made me kinda nervous... But after listening for awhile and not hearing... well... ask Rhawn for the words, I don't want to post this and catch unwanted international attention. In fact, I realized after a few minutes that they were speaking spanish! This was a little disconcerting, seeing as how I thought I would be able to understand it better than that. I later found out that people from the Dominican Republic (I covertly checked their passports) have really strange spanish accents, and it's not such a bad thing that I couldn't understand what they were saying. Sweet.
Got to SJO Saturday at 12:30, made it through customs without any problems, picked up my bags and wandered out to meet my group. There was a small mob outside the airport, I guess someone told the paparazzi that I was comin in... haha or maybe it was just a bunch of cab drivers trying to get my money. One person happened to have an ISA sign, so I went to her. She walked me over to where some of my new friends were sitting, and we waited for the rest of the crew to arrive so we could catch our shuttle to town. It was the beginning of a long line of Americans that I was to meet over the next several days.
The bus ride from the airport to Veritas University took about 25 minutes, and all the families were waiting there to meet us. I got introduced to my Tica (Costa Rica) madre, got/gave the kiss on the cheek cuz that's what they do when they meet people here. After we determined that I speak very little spanish, we hopped in their car and headed down to the house. It's about a 6 or 7 minute walk downhill from the University, which is really handy since classes start every day at 8am. And here I thought I might actually have a chance to sleep in. Shoulda known better.
I'm living in a nice house, with my Tica madre Rosalba, her daughter Camilla, and her grandson Kevin. Also, their family friend Alvaro lives there, and he's a good guy. Speaks english when he can tell that I have no idea what's being said. Other than that, it's all spanish all the time, because it helps the students learn the language better.
My second translator is my roommate Aaron. He speaks the language really well, because he lived in Bolivia for 12 years. So it's kinda interesting around the house, the spanish flies all around me and I pick up what I can. Every day I'm understanding a little better, and am more able to communicate with mi familia. But it's still pretty tough.
Our first day here we had an orientation with ISA, and they showed us some of the activities available to us throughout the semester. They look great, everything from hiking, ATVing, horseback riding in the mountains or on the beach, bungee jumping, surfing, canopy tours in the forests... the list goes on and on, and they all look great! It's going to be a lot cheaper than I thought, the activities range between 15 and 60 dollars, give or take. I'm planning on heading out of San Jose every weekend, and seeing what the country has to offer.
Don't get me wrong tho, San Jose has it's fun too. We've made it out to a few of the bars and had a good time. There are 52 students in the ISA Costa Rica program, and on any given night 20 or so are up for whatever. Our second night here we wandered up to a bar that had a bunch of heineken signs all over it, they were playin some spanish and some top 40 kinda music so it was a good mix. Even better - they had foosball! So a bunch of us played for a while, then me and this guy Greg got challenged by a couple Ticos. We beat them the first game, and then they whooped us the second game. The beer needed refreshing at that point so we let them have the table.
Beer down here is great, everyone drinks "Imperial" or "Pilsen". The exchange rate here is kinda wonky, it rests at about 500 colones to 1 dollar. So a beer here ranges from 700-1000 colones... and last time I checked, 2 bucks a beer is freakin phenominal.
We have also managed to find our new neighborhood pub, it ain't Dixons, but it gets the job done. It's called Pescadita (little fish). Beer there is 800 colones, but the best part about it is the owner, Jose Alberto. Apparently he's been in America a few times, and has always been treated really well, so he likes to return the favor whenever he can. I've been there 3 times, with a group of 12-15 people each time, and he's bought a round of shots every time. Unreal guy. The other night we pulled the tables to the outsides and made a little dance floor, and he threw on some salsa music and a bunch of us gringos danced in the middle of the bar. Mind you, this bar could probably only hold 40 people, and every time we go there, we pretty much run the place. It's great.
What else...
You gotta understand, i should be updating this more often than I have been and as such, I'm bound to forget a lot. But this is an unreal experience.
Fast forward to the end of the week, I've met most of the 52 people and haven't found one that I don't like yet. Everyone seems to be here for the same reason - to have a good time, make friends, share experiences; and if we can learn spanish at the same time, all the better.
We all met on Friday to head to Monteverde, a cloud forest in the mountains. The bus ride took about 6 hours, but some of the views were awesome. The best part of that night was actually just settling into our hotel rooms, havin a couple beer and playing some pool, and hittin the hay since we knew we had to be up at 6:30.
We were up the next mornin and headin out at 7:30, up the mountain towards the adventure tours base. Started the day with a 3 hour ATV trip, down some back roads and across some small rivers, but they also hit some straights and let us open 'em up and kick 'em sideways a bit, so it was a great morning. After that, I went on a canopy tour through the treetops. This was unbelievable, I've never done anything like it in my life. You stand on these platforms in the treetops, and clip onto cables stretched through the forest. Then you take off! Next thing you know, you're sliding through the forest 50 feet off the ground. And those are the tame ones. Halfway through, you do a tarzan swing, where they walk you up a 30-foot platform and clip you to a rope. Then they basically shove you off, and you go swinging way out over everything. There's a video of me doing it on facebook, you can't really see the initial jump but you can see the swing out. It was wild.
But the last line was the craziest by far. The stats they gave us was that the line is 1000 feet long, and 300 feet in the air. That is no exaggeration. It was the weirdest, craziest, coolest thing I've ever seen. You look out over this huge valley, and you are suspended on a single cable that seems to stretch away forever. You're moving so fast that the heights don't even really get to you, you can look down and see your tiny shadow just rocketing along on the ground way below you. I would recommend this to anybody who ever gets a remote chance to do it. And if you don't have a remote chance, you're not being positive enough. Find a way.
Like I said, the people here are awesome. Gotta shout out to my MAPS (it's the spanish equivalent that we made up for BFF). Don't tell me it's lame, you weren't there. Hahaha. In fact, a bunch of us are headin out to the pub for a couple tonight, so I should get outta here and start some homework. We have it every day so that we don't get it on the weekends, which is handy cuz by the looks of it we're never gonna have time for it on the weekends anyhow!
One last thing I should mention - the food. It's some of the best stuff I've ever eaten. I have fresh pineapple, banana, papaya, or some random fruit every morning for breakfast with my gallo pinto (a traditional dish of rice and beans, very tasty). For lunch it's some sort of meat (chicken, often, with some sort of sauce) with a double starch which is the custom here. Rice with potatoes is pretty common. Dinner is fish, beef, chicken, lasagna, spaghetti, or some other unbelievably flavorful concoction that our madre makes. There is always fried peppers or onions in everything, but I haven't encountered anything overly spicy yet! It's great! The only problem I have is that they don't seem to understand that I have a small appetite, so I have to throw out some every night. Maybe they'll catch on soon. Oh and the coffee is great too.

Well my fingers are tired, I know I've forgotten a lot but I did my best to convey that this is an amazing trip and I'm going to have a really hard time going home. Just have to continue to live it up eh!

Thanks for reading.