A day without plunges. Today, we participated in a variety of tourist-y activities. First the group visited a Costa Rican National Park of the Volcano Poas. We took a bus up most of the volcano (thankfully!) and hiked up the rest on guided paths. It was really neat to see the huge crater on top of the mountain. We hiked around for the next couple of hours and learned a lot about different types of Costa Rican plants and terrain. After we had our fill of Volcan Poas we journeyed on to a Coffee Plantation. We took a tour of how coffee in Costa Rica is grown, harvested, and exported. (Coffee is a main export of Costa Rica). We also got to taste test a lot of coffee which was quite a treat. Our tour guide was very funny, but also very knowledgable.

Even though I have only been in Costa Rica for a couple of days, my Spanish is improving rapidly and many of my thoughts are in Spanish. It is so much easier to soak up a language once immersed in another culture. I can't wait to see how much I will have improved by the end of two months here!

Tomorrow I move in with my host family and will meet them for the first time. Wish me luck!

p.s. I do not know if my house will have wifi so it might become very difficult to communicate back home.