In Costa Rica, pedestrians NEVER have the right of way. This was one of the things that I read online, and now I can say I’ve experienced it in person. The cars don’t even slow down for cross walks.

San Jose is not a place we want to live. We’re checking out the costal towns on Tuesday. It’s not a bad place. The climate is amazing and the people are really friendly. It just isn’t resonating with me or Andy. Despite that, we’ve been having a fun time here with our host Cyril. He’s introduced us to all of his friends and taken us out everywhere. When we arrived last night, we dropped our stuff off and walked out the door to go out to a bar with Cyril and the three Dutch (or Duchies as we liked to refer to them) girls that were also crashing at his place. We stayed out until 3:30 am. We went to a few different places and as the night wore on, I got a little braver with my limited Spanish language skills. It really is much easier to pick up things and expand your horizons when there’s no other choice.

At the bar, I ran into a language quirk that was confirmed by Matt, Cyril’s neighbor. He’s from Kansas City and been in San Jose for two weeks. If you order a vodka (vadka) and Red Bull, they will not understand and just bring the Red Bull. If you order a vodka (voodka) and Red Bull, the drink will come correctly.

“The Duchies” had to be up at 5:45 this morning to leave for another location. We had to be up at 6:30 because we had promised to put together wheel chairs. None of us were all too excited about that commitment when the alarm rang this morning. But, we dragged ourselves up like troopers, got a cab and ended up putting together four chairs in the hour we were there. It was actually pretty fun. We only stayed for a while because Cyril had another commitment.

When we got home Andy and I crashed into our couchsurfing bed on the living room floor and slept like the dead for most of the day. How Cyril is still operating at 10 pm on three hours of sleep is beyond me.

Now that we’ve got our bearings a little and changed some gringo dollars into colons I think we’ll head out into the city by ourselves tomorrow and see what there is to see. A good English to Spanish translation book is high on my list of purchases.