So last weekend was an interesting one. I went to Bagaces, a small rural town in Costa Rica and meet Odilie's mother, brother, sister, and various nieces and nephews. Daniel, her nephew, took me out on another canopy tour (zip line). Just like the last time I went to do a canopy tour, it poured rain. But it made the zip lines go about twice as fast, so it wasn't all bad.

I also got to meet some pretty great people while I was there. A family from Florida was there on vacation, and we hit it off pretty well. They actually came with Daniel and I on our next excursion, which was to the most beautiful waterfall I have ever seen. It was actually possible to go behind the falling water and jump into the pond trough the water.

Odilie's family treated me extremely well. My bed was a brick, and there were wild monkeys howling all night long, so I didn't get very much sleep at all. But it was a definite experience. I was actually able to find my way there and back on a bus, which built up my confidence in my Spanish. In San José there was a traffic jam that put a two hour delay in me getting back Saturday. Can't say that made me too happy, since my iPod was dead. But I survived.

Tonight I went out with my sister Johanna, two of her friends and Lisa, the exchange student from Germany. Went to a little restaurant and then hung out in the park. It feels so great being outdoors at night in Costa Rica. When National Geographic said Atenas had the best climate in the world, I think they were specifically talking about the nighttime. I wish I could describe it in a way that would do it justice.

The clock is ticking on tico time. Come Friday I will only have a week left in Costa Rica.

Here are some pics of where I live...finally.

I have been pounding so many new words into my head lately. I am trying to make the most of my final 15 days in Costa Rica. Every day lately I have been making a list of the words I don't know from class (which there are a lot of) and trying to memorize them at night. I should have been doing this from the very beginning, obviously, but it is never too late to start.

My nights have been pretty busy, too, because I spend most of them cooking for groups of students from the U.S. But it's all good, because I get to practice a lot of Spanish and get free cooking lessons to boot.

Yesterday I stopped by Victor's house to chat with my other Costa Rican family. I thought they would have fallen apart without me, the they were in surprisingly high spirits. They had a new student arrive the day before from Germany. Lisa (her name) is going to be in Costa Rica studying Spanish for ONE YEAR! If that wasn't enough to make you angry, she already speaks German (por supuesto), English and French. But I think the worst part is she is only 17.

Tomorrow I head for Guanacaste, another province in the north of Costa Rica, solo. I am going to stay with Odie's family for a few days and work with her nephew, who is a graphic designer. Guanacaste is supposed to be one of the more rural areas of the country, with a lot of beaches and national parks. Let's hope so!

I have lived with my new family for a week now. They are truly amazing people, and I am so lucky the chose to share their home with me. Tonight I will help mi mamá with cooking dinner for the new group of eco-tourists arriving today. One of the other cool things I need to mention about this house is that I have a maid. Yup. And I don't just mean a mom who washes my clothes and cooks for me (which is great, don't get me wrong). But I mean I have a full-time maid, one who will cook whatever I want when I want, wash all of my clothes as soon as I give them to her, and will make my bed for me. But me, being the good ol' southern boy that I am, can't really bring myself to ask her to do anything for me. Really, being here in Costa Rica and having this experience is more than enough.

One other funny thing is that the kitchen sink has a hole in the faucet, so if you turn it on full throttle water shoots out of the whole. I have shot myself in the eye twice. Yesterday I saw two white rabbits in my yard. At first I only saw one, but after I ran back in the house to get my camera, another one popped up. One let me get extremely close up before it scampered off. When it finally left, it didn't really even look scared as it hobbled off slowly, kinda like it was saying, "I am just not in the mood to be touched right now. See you tomorrow." Maybe it lives on the property and is just very used to people. I don't know.

Funny story from class today. Marie Ela, my teacher, told me about a German woman she had in her class one time who was a nurse in the US. When she first got to the US, she didn't know very much English apparently, but did know "ducha" meant shower in Spanish and German. (This is going somewhere, I promise.) But her coworkers, wanting to make conversation, would still talk to her about basic things so she could practice her English. Well, one day they asked her what she did that morning, and her answer was, "I took a doosh," thinking it would translate the same. We laughed about that for about 10 minutes in class, and I am still laughing now.

Tomorrow Robert and I head out on a special mission to San Jose. The mission: buy a guitar. But since it is San Jose, there is a high chance at least one of us won't make it back alive. Not because the town is particularly dangerous, but because we might die of dehydration, starvation or boredom while stuck in San Jose traffic. The roads the city are definitely more planned out than in Atenas, but that doesn't mean that drivers care about following the rules. Almost every store or restaurant has parking lot attendants to help people get in and out alive. The attendants at the mall have pump-action shotguns.

Tonight my family is taking me to La Trocha, a local restaurant. It is one of the better ones in Atenas, and a lot of gringos eat there. After class today I went to Odilie's house and she made spaghetti for me and her husband. As we pulled up to the house, Odie stopped the car and said, "You hear that? My husband and his music." Edwardo was blasting out the jams. She said sometimes he even turns on the karaoke machine and sings at the top of his lungs when nobody else is around.

Then I came back to my house and read by the pool for about an hour. I am about 50 pages from finishing "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius." It is an autobiography about this guy who's parents die when he is in his early 20s, leaving him to take care of his little brother. He also wrote the screenplay for what looks to be the best movie ever when it comes about in October, "Where the Wild Things Are."

Since I now live in a house with the Internet, I think I want to change my No. 1 thing I miss about the U.S. to two-ply toilet paper.

Yesterday I moved in with my new family and they put me right to work. They work with an organization called Eco-Teach Costa Rica that takes groups on ecological tours of the country. What my family does is house and feed the groups the day they get here and the day they leave. Their lodge can house more than 50 people.

So last night I helped them cook for the group that was preparing to leave. They started me off on something easy (coconut balls), but after seeing that I obviously know my way around a kitchen, I was given some extra responsibly. My favorite part was the fried plantains. Yum. I also got a really good recipe for a veggie burger that I want to try to make when I get back to the states - soy meat, eggs, flour, peppers and onions.

Dinner was basically a feast, and I stuffed myself with all the mango, pineapple, watermelon and papaya I could eat. And I will get to do that everyday for the next month.

The family was surprised by how much Spanish I knew, and frankly, I was, too. I was able to follow all of the cooking instructions, tell them why I wanted to learn Spanish, and tell them about studying journalism in college. In the past week, Spanish and I have really started to click. I know it is a bit premature, but I am already starting to thing about what my next language will be. Italian, maybe? No se.

I am going to put some pics of my new crib on facebook soon.