Hola! Costa Rica so far is amazing, but it did give me a few first impressions. To start, the country’s people seem to be very hospitable. From the very moment we got here almost everyone has had a positive attitude towards us. We may get a few passing looks, but the amount of people that have tried to talk to us in English/are patient with our Spanish is amazing. Also, another impression I got is that this city’s infrastructure is poor. Coming into the country I really expected a utopia. I know this unrealistic, but from everything I saw researched I was fairly underwhelmed. The streets have massive potholes and the sidewalks are unkempt. Lastly, the weather. It’s awesome, I’ve never seen such night and day weather. In the morning it’s a hot and humid day, but then once it hits 12 torrential downpours just appear. I love weather and seeing this phenom is spectacular.
Following this, some of my greatest experiences are things that I didn’t imagine. The biggest being the people. Going on this trip I was very scared that it would be awkward and that we would only be friends with the groups we were given. This expectation was completely wrong. Everyone on this trip is unique and funny in their own right. They all seem like awesome people, and it amazes me how much we’ve all bonded over this short period of time. From frisbee, to soccer, to food, to walking, to basketball, to writing this blog post with everyone around. I truly haven’t had this much fun in awhile. Also, they really cared about my birthday and made it very special. That really meant a lot. Moving on, another misconception I had going in that this trip changed was the workload. Going into this I expected to have not a lot of free time, I was very wrong. The tours were light and I enjoy writing. So far the biggest misconceptions I’ve had turned out to be all positives. Costa Rica is full of surprises and I love it.