Hello! Guess what?? I am writing this from my apartment, and I’ll be able to post it right away because I HAVE WIFI!!!! WOOOO HOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

I do realize that the world existed for millennia before the creation of wifi. I also realize that I myself lived well into my 20s before wifi was a thing. And yes, I was surviving just fine without it.

But still.

HAVING WIFI IS AMAZING. Today was the first day of school for students, and I have so much work to do this week, but I am totally watching a movie on Netflix tonight. And I mean, it’s not like I need to sit around and watch movies all day, and it’s not like the things I wanted to do with wifi couldn’t wait. But there’s just something about having it that makes me feel so much more settled here. Even just the ability to post this blog when I finish writing it is so meaningful to me right now. I guess it’s true what they say; absence really does make the heart grow fonder!

To be honest, I had learned to manage a wifi-free existence for the most part. My friend Amanda (god bless her kind soul) plugged her password in on my phone, so I was able to FaceTime with my parents a couple times, and that saved me a lot of my Movistar data (Movistar is the phone company through which I have my prepaid SIM card). But since school is officially in full swing, I was really starting to get stressed since basically all of my stuff is online. Now I can take some time to do work from home each night if I want or need to (don’t worry, I’ll take some nights off for sure!). My other kind friend Brian also gave me his password, and the other night I hung out at his place doing work, but now I don’t have to bug other people, and I can sit in my own home and do work or watch a movie or listen to Spotify. Life is good.

Ok, enough about wifi! I feel like it’s been a while since I’ve posted. I definitely won’t be giving the play-by-play of every day since I last wrote, but I shall try to catch up. Thursday and Friday were more training days at school, so that kept us pretty busy. I won’t bore you with the school details since I did that in my last post. The long of the short of it was that orientation went well, and even though I was still completely overwhelmed by all the information and different processes, I am loving it. The biggest struggle has been getting comfortable with ambiguity and feeling incompetent. I am used to feeling really confident and competent at work, and here I just don’t. But the more I feel that way, the more I know that #1 I’m too hard on myself and #2 it’s ok to feel that way. Each day I learn a little more, and I know that in a couple months, I’ll feel way more comfortable. So I’m getting by. Here are some random work pics from the past few days.

The good news is that today was the first day with students! It was definitely the first day in a long time that I felt much more confident. I was so nervous to meet them, but they are awesome (don’t worry, Biotech, I still love and miss you!!). They are kind, funny, and welcoming. They asked me lots of questions about where I’m from, and they seemed to believe me when I told them that people from the Jersey Shore are not all like Snooki! I showed them my 30/60/90 Spring Lake photo, and we talked about the difference between Jersey beaches and Costa Rica beaches. We also talked about the Lang & Lit course, obviously, and that seemed to go well. The seniors definitely seem prepared; they know a lot about the course from last year and will totally be ready to tackle it head on. The juniors are eager to learn and are definitely conscientious students. I felt so much more relaxed after meeting my classes (at least A day kids; I meet B day students tomorrow). Sometimes the anticipation makes things much more scary than they actually are (I know you hear me on this Biotech).

I told my new students all about Biotech and how I’ll most likely talk about it a lot. They asked lots of questions about it there, as well. They were most saddened to hear that there is no recess at Biotech (did I mention we have recess here??). Just overall it was a really good first day. If you want to see a video of the seniors doing their entrance dance, you can find one here.

Somehow or other I skipped the weekend and jumped right to today. That’s probably because there isn’t much to report because I wasn’t feeling so hot. Oh, one funny thing that happened on Thursday is that a few of us tried to go to yoga, but the studio was closed. Apparently they close when it’s a full moon. So we ended up going for a snack instead and called it #FullMoonYoga. Now that I’m writing it out, it doesn’t sound so funny, but I swear in real life it was hilarious.

Ok, so, back to the weekend. Friday was fun; we went to Penny and George’s again, but this time we had hamburgers and hot dogs. It was a nice taste of home. We tried to leave somewhat early because a few of us needed to get up early for the beach, but even that was an adventure! Tracey had the name of a cab driver she had befriended, so we called him to come get us. I have written before about the lack of addresses, so you can imagine how complicated it is trying to get picked up in the middle of the mountains with no address. We decided to walk down to the main road to see if we could meet him there, and when we got to the corner, we realized there’s a bar right by the house, and there were a bunch of taxis right outside. We didn’t want Fabio (Tracey’s cab driver friend) to drive all the way out there for nothing, so we kept waiting, but now we know that it’s much easier to find a ride than we thought! I guess we ended up getting home around midnight, and at that point I already had a feeling I might not go to the beach. I wasn’t feeling well at all, and I had trouble sleeping.

I did end up missing the beach on Saturday. When my alarm went off at 5:30am (we were supposed to leave at 6), I knew it just wasn’t gonna happen. I spent most of the day sleeping and lying on the couch. I was just really worn out and felt kind of like I was coming down with the flu or something. I was able to get myself up long enough to walk to the grocery store to buy chicken soup, saltines, ginger ale, orange juice, bread, and tea. After that adventurous outing, I came back, forced myself to eat some soup, and stayed on the couch some more. I was bummed to miss the beach, but the rest and down time was much needed.

On Sunday I had a good day because we went to the hardware store (it’s called EPA but is basically Home Depot) and get some things for the apartment. I got some curtains, a bookcase, a shoe rack, a lamp, and a few other things. The apartment is slowly coming together, which is exciting. I haven’t hung much on the walls yet because they are all made out of concrete (this seems typical of a tico home), so I’ve been trying to get creative. I got some cute wall stickers that I put in my reading nook, and I have some flowers around to spruce things up. My favorite part of the decorating process was building the bookshelf and adding books to it. A house is not a home until there are some books on the shelves, amiright?

Well, that’s pretty much all I’ve got to say for today. Sorry this post was all out of order and whatnot. I didn’t really plan it ahead of time. Thanks, as always, for reading! ¡Pura vida!

Oh these are some random pictures of my trip to the mall from yesterday. I was feeling stressed, so I meandered around and ate some Smashburger. Not gonna lie; it was delicious!