Monday

Yesterday was a good day! I woke up around 6:30 am and had gallo pinto and eggs with ham for breakfast, coffee and OJ. I scurried off to school to Society and the Environment. The class was again interesting. We talked about the use and waste of resources, mainly focusing on Costa Rica. The leadership of the country has taken strides in the last couple of decades to prevent forest loss and has greatly improved in this area. However, Claudia says that people continue to misuse and waste resources. We talked about our own states and what resources we had and that we used and what the problems were back home for a comparison. Overall, a pretty interesting class!

I hung out at school for about an hour after class to update my blog and talk with my friends. I then headed home to have lunch - fried chicken, squash, and mashed potatoes!!! I have never liked squash, but it was DELICIOUS!

After lunch, I was still tired from the weekend so I enjoyed an hour and a half long siesta!!! It was incredible. I then woke up and just hung around until 2:30, and I went and met another student to go get a cafecito at Cafe Delicias!!!

CAFE DELICIAS could put Starbucks to shame!!!! The menu was incredible - any kind of cake or pie or sweet you could want, any kind of coffee or tea drink, hot or cold, and a lot of typical Costa Rican foods as well! I will definitely be going back there ASAP, maybe even today!!! I used the WiFi and so did my companero. Afterwards, we headed back towards school. We stopped at the supply store and I got some colored pencils and blank CDs. We made it back to the U for a small fiesta with the USAC professors and staff and other students. They had some food for us and music to celebrate Independence Day. We all decided to meet up later in the night to all hang out together and celebrate Independence Day!

I made it back home around 5 or so and spent some time working on my blog and getting some things organized. For supper, we had leftovers. I talked to mom and dad on Skype for a while, and relaxed for the rest of the evening. I got ready and met MSG to walk to La U to meet up with the other students to go to the central part of town. They had already gotten out of class, so we walked to a couple of their houses to meet them and then we all walked together. We met our other friends near the park and all went to a cool place just near the park that was having an Independence Day fiesta!!! It had an upstairs and downstairs area. Downstairs was loud and there were black lights and crazy posters everywhere and techno music was playing way too loud, and upstairs was lighter, cooler, and had salsa music playing. There were also some foosball and pool tables there. I ran into a tico friend and some of us played foosball. Then some of us silly gringos tried to salsa! It was fun, but the ticos definitely were better! We eventually made it back downstairs to the loud music, and somehow those of us girls that were left there ended up in the middle of a circle of tico friends of KL's host brother. We have met them all before and they are all really nice! Anyway it was fun for us to all dance together! Afterward we headed to another student's house to get some water and snacks. His house is SO COOL! His mom and her brothers I believe made most of the stuff in their house. It looks like something off of HGTV. I wish I knew how to describe it. There was "stuff" everywhere, but it was so adorable and all worked together somehow! His family own's Bugy's, a fast-food like restaurant here in San Ramon that he said has better food than any fast food restaurant he's been to! Unfortunately they were closed, so we settled for galletas (cookies) instead! We then headed home via taxi, and I came in and went straight to bed!