first entry

So, Matt and I made it to Samara. The first day was a bit eventful. We arrived in San Jose around midnight and our bus left at 8:30am the next day so we decided to stay overnight in the airport. It wasn't a horrible night, but not the best sleep either. We took the interbus to Samara which is about a five hour drive from San Jose. Our apartment, the town, and the beach that is less than 300 yards across a horse pasture from our place are all awesome. However, soon after arrival, we thought we were on the verge of a crisis because the internet seemed not to work at our complex. As most of you know, Matt has to access the internet to be able to tutor the Koreans in the morning. Luckily an Italian IT guy came to the rescue; the crisis was aborted, and Matt was able to communicate with the far east this morning. The only other hiccup here is that apparently in Costa Rica, pin numbers that begin with a zero are invalid. As you may have guessed, mine begins with a zero. I was unsuccessful in my attempts to change my pin - apparently you can't change your pin number from abroad for security reasons. Luckily I can still use my credit card and borrow cash from Matt as needed.


Those issues aside, things are lovely here. I'm really glad we chose to spend our time in Samara b/c it's the perfect mix of a rural, small-town atmosphere along with having all the services we could want. We took a surfing lesson this afternoon. While I would say it was less than successful, we get free use of surfboards for the next seven days with our $25 lesson. This is an amazing deal compared to most places down here, and hopefully with seven days of practice we'll be a bit more competent in a week.


One thing I remember about Costa Rica from my 2004 trip is that it gets dark really early here - perfect for my love of early bed times. I'll be hitting the hay here shortly. Matt is insisting that he add some details, so I'll turn the computer over to him now...

Apparently we are genderizing our text fonts in CR, thus why Lauren designated me to this manly blue font.

The only complaint that I have thus far is that I have not seen one single monkey.  The person that we rented this condo from went on and on in her descriptive emails to us prior to the trip about how much she enjoyed watching the monkeys gallivant and play in the trees while sitting by the pool.  For one reason or another, I have yet to spot a primate - hopefully I can rectify this by tomorrow evening (small goals).