Fri 9 October

430am!!! I crawled out of bed and took a quick shower to wake myself up. I had some raisin brain and then saw that a car was approaching the house. I got my things and put them in the car, and then got in. When I got into the car, it wasn’t Alex. I was a bit confused but then figured out that it was a driver from EARTH that would be taking us to Guanacaste. We picked up Alex and then started driving to San Jose. Alex took out a map and showed me the route that we would be taking, and then showed me the volcanoes that we would see on the way. I fell asleep and woke up as we were pulling up to Alex's apartment. We went inside and I saw Alexandra the wife, and then met one of the son's Juan. We ate Gio pinto and bread and cream cheese. After breakfast, Juan and I took one car, and Alex, his wife and the EARTH driver took the other one. Juan and I got to know each other quickly and became good friends. We jammed out to our music that we brought and showed each other our favorite artist's. We drove for about 1 hour and a half, and then met up with the parents at a restaurant on the highway. I had a small sandwich and then we hit the road again. We drove for about 3 more hours and were almost there when we had to stop because of a huge accident up ahead. We sat there for about 10min and then decided to take some back roads. I’m very glad I wasn’t driving because I probably would have crashed. People in Latin America are crazy drivers. There are no lanes and people can go as fast as they want. This makes driving all together turn into a video game except you can’t restart if you crash. We took the back roads for about 30min and then came back on to the main roads about a block away from where the crash happened. We then ate lunch at a Chinese restaurant that was owned by the parents of Juan's friend. While we were there, there was a group of students eating and some of them were gringos so the whole group was staring at me. Finally as they were leaving, they came up to me and asked me where I was from. I found out that 3 out of the 4 gringas were from WI and 1 was from MN. When they were walking out of the door, Alexandra yelled to them in Spanish, do you have emails ladies?? They all turned around and said yes and wrote them down and gave them to me. Also one Tica from the group wrote hers down too. My face was probably red because I was embarrassed and didn’t expect Alexandra to yell that. After the girls left my new family was joking with me and I knew this was going to be a good weekend. Once we got to the house, I met Fiorella the daughter, and Sandra the house keeper. We unloaded everything and then went inside. The house was gorgeous. My family constructed it and it was very tico inside. The house was constructed out of dark wood and windows with only screens to make it very open and well ventilated. After getting settled in, Juan and I went to his friend’s house and we chilled there for a while. After that, we went home and went to bed.