I have arrived!!!

Well, my first full day here and so far it’s going good! My first hour here yesterday I was already ready to leave. Thankfully it got better by the end of the day. Today has been even better and I know these 5 months are going to be incredible. I’ve started making some friends; we’re a very diverse group. We have 10 girls sleeping in the same room…with hardly any space for our belongings. There are a few of us from the US, one from New Zealand, two from El Salvador, one from Costa Rica, and the last one hasn’t arrived yet and we can’t remember where she’s from. We are having fun talking about the differences in our cultures and I’m sure my Spanish will be much better before I leave my time here.

It started raining a few hours ago and hasn’t stopped. There was a little bit of thunder, but mostly it just pours. We stay in a big building with no A/C but we actually don’t need it at all because the temperature is so perfect. I actually got a little cold when it started raining. The building has a lot of windows and openings so there’s constant fresh air and it’s nice to hear the rain. The main building on the base is where my room is. The first floor has the main area where we eat and have group meetings, etc. There are several different areas of the building so I won’t even try to explain it, but my room is upstairs. The building was built in 1930 and first served as a coffee plant then a school of architecture and now the YWAM San Jose base.

Everything here is so green and the trees and plants are very different from what I’m used to. One side of the property is nothing but bamboo…the biggest bamboo I’ve ever seen! Before I came, I had so many people telling me that there would be animals everywhere but I haven’t seen anything yet, unless you count little flying insects or a small spider with really long legs that was watching me brush my teeth this morning. I was talking to one of the guys that’s in my DTS and he actually lives about 10 minutes from base; he said you have to go outside the city to really see the animals.

Anyway, I’m going to go chat with my new friends but I’ll post again in the next week!