So, on Friday, I left at 8 am on a bus with all the other exchange students from Puriscal. We were all a bit sad that day because the people who were here for 6 weeks left that day. But, we put on positive attitudes and got ready for the weekend! We arrived at the AFS office at 9:30 and there I saw the people from the USA and it was sooo nice talking to them and hearing about how they were doing. SIDE NOTE: There are about 140 exchange students in all, and AFS didn't want to have one big orientation, so they split us all up into two groups on two different weekends. So, because of this, I only saw two others from the US, but it was great talking with them. We paid for our Visas that day(I wont even mention how much it cost......) and began our orientation. I am going to be honest, when the AFS people talked to us, it was boring. But, they talked to us in Spanish, and I understood everything they said!! The past orientation was in English, and it was cool to have this in Spanish (and a bit of English) and to see how much I have improved in only 6 weeks! After a few hours, we all got our things and walked to the hotel we were staying at, about 500 metros away from the office. It was a cute hotel, with a lot of space. I do feel a bit bad for the other residents staying there, because there were A LOT of crazy teenagers there speaking A LOT of different languages: Danish, German, Sweden, Italian, Spanish, English and so many more. I loved hearing everyone talk. Even if I didn't understand what they were saying, it was so cool and it made me want to learn more languages.
Here are some AFS friends
(from left to right: Hannah-Germany, Sarah-Norway, Jakob-Denmark, Hanna-Sweden, David-Denmark, y yo)
This was our lovely hotel: Hostal Toruma
The next day (sabado) we went to the INBio parque in Heredia. It was very beautiful. The first part of the morning was dedicated to AFS work/AFS talking to us about what to expect in the following months. We also did some activities inside, one of which was to get together with your local chapter and describe what it was like to live there. Well, Puriscal is obviously the best place to live(; so it wasn't that hard explaining our lives. I could also tell that me and my friends from Puriscal were a lot closer than some of the others, which made me feel like I have really good friends. We also had to put on skits about what school was like, and we talked about differences and culture shock. BUT the best activity was the scavenger hunt! We were put into groups accoding to countries (My group was USA, Canada, Australia, and I think Iceland.), were given a piece of paper, and were told to go find the answers, and the first group who finished them all by lunch would get a prize. Now, usually when it comes to scavenger hunts I get really into it, but we only had 2 hours to do this, and I wanted to see the entire park, not only little bits of it, so me and the other US kids kinda "lost" our group and went exploring. This.was.such.a.good.idea. We saw so much more than we would have seen! The park is a collection of different types of plants, fish, bugs, frogs, a petting zoo, butterflies, spiders, and supposedly a sloth, but I couldn't find it. :( Anyway our group didn't win......but that's okay. When we got back to the hotel, we were told we were going to have a talent show-which got half the people stocked, and the other half upset. Thankfully I was one of the people who were super excited. I did a collection of .........songs.....with the US kids, the Puriscal kids, my friend Sarah from Norway, and my friend Neels from Germany. We rocked it! Legit we won, and although it may or may not have been a bit.....crazy....everyone loved it and we got free cookies!
Our Puriscal poster
Emma and Ryan and I (USA)
It was a great weekend, I learned a lot, but I think I learned more from the exchange students than the volenteers. It was very helpful talking and listening to what the AFS people told us, yes I did learn things, but I learned how to overcome obstacles, ideas, or difficulties from the people who had actually expierenced the problems. Talking to the others made me feel a lot better and made my stay here feel more..real! I am really enjoying Costa Rica and hey guess what?! I can independently travel now! Playa here I come!!!
Pura Vida!
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