Radisson Europa Htl Conf Ctr San Jose

... to be?) on a street that has a million busses constantly coming and when we finally got to the bus stop, the bus did not stop.

Embarrassing.

It turns out that you never have to run for the bus. If you stand at the curb (wherever you are) and put your arm out, the bus will stop no matter how close, or far away you are from the assigned bus stop . If you stand at the assigned bus stop and do not put your hand out, they will not ...

... type of cauliflower so I took a picture (tastes like cauliflower, looks like broccoli/a pine tree). Strange looking but tastes normal.

A bunch of us are going out to El Sultan (bar/club) tonight bc its our 2nd to last night before our final on Friday so for most people its their 3rd last night (to go out, 4th if you want to party the night before the final).
 

... and went to the Baldi hot springs resort, which was down the street from our hotel. It was a beautiful place with hot springs all over the place. There were some swim up bars and waterfalls and all sorts of different shaped hot springs pools. One of the springs was over 150 degrees Fahrenheit and apparently that is legal to have in a public place…I didn’t go in that; it was way too hot but I enjoyed the rest of them. There were all sorts of flowers and ...

... my Tico brother goes), and a technical institute university. There is one test for the technical school and a separate one that counts for the other two universities. Private universities have their own exams. Depending on the score the student gets, the student is limited to their major or their program of study. If the student does not like the major they have chosen, or the majors they are limited to choose from in general, they cannot switch unless they ...

... with children. In fact, in 2008, 38% of all vacations taken by Americans were taken with children. NLM also claimed that there are more 'multi-generational' trips being taken than ever before. On their family vacations 50 ...

Eventually... after a long journey Anja and I did eventually arrive in San José. Entering a country we didn´t know, hoping that a nice person would pick us up, whom we didn´t know, everything turned out the best it could. Alsonso, whom we found via hosptitality club, awaited us. From then on everything went great. We lived for the following 3 days in his parents house. This was better than any hotel. As the family is peruan, we got to know a lot about their culture and stuff, as well as ...

... SOOOOO bad. Could have been very nice but were filthy and/or not furnished. (We are not going to buy furniture and kitchen stuff for six-months of use). She was true to her word and started to drive us around to other rentals she thought we might like. Her phone rang constantly and although she was driving and talking with us . . . she did answer it. One call was from her daughter who had locked her keys in the car. Would we mind if we picked her daughter up ...

... four beers to many that night. At 6:30am Rios Tropicales (http://www.riostropicales.com/) picked us up, and it was a three hour drive to their base of operations where we had a nice local breakfast and were able to change into our rafting gear. From there we were off to the river Reventazon (http://www.e-raft.com/Regions/CostaRic a/RioReventazon.asp) (or) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reventaz% C3 ...

... kill two birds with one stone. (I never realized how often we sacrifice birds in our colloquialisms. Besides the aforementioned gem, there's "the early bird gets the worm," "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush," "birds of a feather flock together," and so on.) The kids seemed to really enjoy the lesson, and Christian, the teacher, got involved too. It was an illuminating look at differences in culture as well as language. For example, "El que con lobos anda a ...

... that my fingertips are perpetually wrinkled!

I am taking lots of pictures and will share them when I return.



Part II



We got up early, which is easier to do near the equator, as it is bright at 6am and dark by 6pm. After breakfast we split into two groups for training. My group started with caterpillar and plant taxonomy, entered data into the database, and learned how to care for the caterpillars in the "zoo."

After ...