los ticos y los gringos

I forgot to mention that when I got off the plane saturday and went outside to find the person picking me up i was bombarded with taxi drivers! i kept saying no, but of course they would ask me if i needed help or if i needed a ride. finally a woman working for some company asked who was suppost to pick me up and my brain had to switch to spanish. It took me a few seconds to realize that i was now in a spanish speaking country. but all is well. she contacted the person for me and i waited another 20 minutes. on the way to the house where im living i saw fireworks in the distance which was pretty cool to see on the 4th of july in a foreign country.
the person told us the president or someone with high level authority hosts a party all the time on the western side of san jose. the catch is you have to be an american to go or even be invited.
it was definitely dark on the drive to the house, and i was starting to get a little concerned about where this place was. every where i looked the buildings looked old and dirty and every house had bars surrounding it; some even with barbwire. i thought ok i think we might be in a bad part of town or were lost. but the part of san jose was really sketchy. it turns out thats how all the houses and businesses are. as soon as i walked in the house everyone in the family was so excited and my roommates were excited too. they thought i wasnt ever going to get there.
Kacey is from west virginia but goes to Elon university and Ashley is from Kentucky and goes to UK. we get along very well and all have some trouble understanding our senora. we all played a game of pictionary (in spanish) with her two grandsons: Daniel is 14 and Ralf is 16. and they both look like the Jonas Brothers. so weve nicknamed them Jonas. yesterday we got out of orientation and said yall better hurry home bc its about to rain. of course i didnt have my rainjacket and between 3 of us we had one umbrella. it rains the same time every day. about 1:00 in the afternoon until about 4:00. it also is not very warm here. gets chilly very easily. i went to bed last night around 9:30. i was so exhausted and had to get up really early this morning.
today ive been up at 6:45 am, for the past two days now. we had our first orientation yesterday and then this morning we had our oral placement exam at 8:30. I did better than I thought I would. I placed into intermediate level based on the conversation I had with the professor that interviewed me. I am defintely okay with that so Im not in a class thats way over my head. weve got a small break before they take our group to downtown san jose to go to the bank or look around and just get familiar with the city. i think tonight we might go have dinner and a few drinks at an american bar for one of my roommates friend's birthday. it might be a little nice to be at a place where there arent a lot of ticos around. thats what the costa rican people are called. and they call us gringos. everyone has been extremely nice and very helpful and welcoming. our first classes start tomorrow and im a little anxious about it. but i know that its going to be a great class and i will learn alot. hasta pronto vez....