Pictures!!

My teacher let me upload pics on her computer!!!

The beautiful church... Catholic I think.


My itty bitty but incredibly sufficient room.


A picture from the street... I think I was on a bus. Translation: I was going REALLY fast.

hola from COSTA RICA!!!

Hola, I have been in Costa Rica for three days now and I really like it. I have learned sooo much Spanish already. The first two days I got here, two cars I rode in broke down. I have been told that´s not the norm! Heredia is very, very, very busy and noisy and the cars have the right of way which is something new. Also, even though my phone has international, it doesn´t have service so I can´t use it. And I didn´t bring my computer. So I have to fight for the two computers that are available in the whole school of Costa Rica, or as I am doing right now, use the internet cafe for less than a dollar an hour. But there´s no AC... oh well can´t have everything.

I would LOVE to post pics up, especially since I want my picture to be on the front page of the DIWYY.com website, I currently of no way of doing so. My camera is a piece of junk, and I don´t have a USB cord. The computers don´t take memory cards as far as I know. It´s so hard to not have all of the technology you´re used to.

My tico family is super nice. I have my own room, which is small but has sufficient closet space which is what´s important anyways. The water in the shower is very cold. I got it up to lukewarm this morning, and I was very excited.

Mom seems to be enjoying herself, too. It´s going to be weird when she leaves on the 14th. I will probably miss home a lot more then.

I am very excited to be doing this, I really want to travel but most importantly LIVE abroad. That´s how you really learn a place. But I don´t think I will want to live permanently in Costa Rica. In general, the people do not seem very nice. Or at least they do not like white people. You get stares where ever you go, and they´re not nice. My teacher in the school and my family are definitely exceptions though. I wonder if this is how it feels to be a minority in Texas...

Anyways, I have a few minutes left on my hour that I paid for here. I hope to keep my blog updated but I never know when I´ll have access. Especially not on the weekends, though, because I´ll be out. This weekend we are going to Arenol Volcano, and doing the zipline and riding horses and some other crazy stuff. I don´t care about riding horses, because we have those at home. But I hear there´s a hot spring...

almost that time...

got my nails done in order to be spiffy for my month-long vacation! :)

The Renting Revolution: Chegg.com

So I was trying to sell my used textbooks at the end of this semester, and I got mad at amazon (where I usually sell them) because they took a fee of like 11 bucks out of my already very cheaply priced text book. So I tried out chegg.com, a website that buys back and rents out textbooks. I sold my astronomy textbook, a book that amazon wouldn't even list for me, for $35. Chegg paid for shipping and I just packed my book in a box, slapped the sticker on it, and put it in a UPS mailbox. They sent me a check within a week and a half. :) Yay! I love checks written to me. And now I'm going to rent my geology book for my summer class for $28 instead of purchasing it new for $178. Sweet deal. It sounds kind of fishy at first, but after I got my check I'm a believer. Buying textbooks is such a ripoff because most of the time theres a new edition out before you can sell your's. Plus I have a code, CC127417, where the buyer gets 5% off their books and $5 more on the buy-backs. And I get $5 on every order :) Sweet.

Next stop.... Costa Rica!!

It has been a looooong time since I have written in here and that's because nothing very exciting has happened since Calfornia... well we went to Orlando, Florida for my birthday/graduation but I guess I never got pics posted up on that. Just imagine me standing next to Mickey Mouse and you'll get the picture. (HA, get it, picture!)

Anyways, my next adventure's destination is COSTA RICA! This operation has been planned for months... since sometime last August I want to say. I will be studying abroad in Heredia, Costa Rica for most of the month of June and a teeny bit of July. (I'll be back in the states for the 4th, of course). My Spanish class from Grayson College will be studying at Intercultura School in Heredia and I am super psyched!! By the way, I am a Spanish major. My mom's also going for a week.

So I will keep it updated throughout my stay in Heredia, and though I won't have my lappytop there are supposedly internet cafes everywhere you look. And lizards. And I despise lizards. (No me gustan lagartos!) And yes, I will probably pepper my sentences with Spanish phrases as that is the whole point of studying in CR!

Florida

So after a short break filled with work and being sick, I'm now on my actual vacation in Florida!! Sanibel Island. And then Disney world. But right now enjoying Sanibel even though it's raining...

On the way home

Well we are sitting in the sacramento airport at gate A2 awaiting our trip home. It's a complicated trip home...three stops only two planes and other sorts of mess...oh well I'm glad that we get to take off three times :))) that's my favorite part. We're about to start boarding so I'm gonna get off so I don't get killed by the air marshalls.