First from Costa Rica!

Here I sit, in the Maximo Nivel building (the organization we're volunteering with), waiting for a certain blue-eyed someone to finish up his first day building houses so we can go shopping. And while sitting I figured, what would be a better way to spend my time then by telling the awesome story of our flight over, as well as the first 24 hours? The answer came: sleeping. However, as the only place to sleep is a really hard wooden bench, I think I will save that for a little bit later.

I will start off by saying that the day we left, we were running late. This was my fault. Anyone surprised by this? Possibly, BUT in my defense, I slept through my alarm which set my plan for the day back about an hour. So when Stanley came to pick me up I was feverishly trying to make us breakfast (using up some of the perishable food) and pack my carry ons and make sure I hadn't forgotten anything. He quickly calmed me down, and finished cooking the eggs, all the while shouting questions at me to make sure I wasn't forgetting anything.

Needless to say, between that, a quick stop at Wal-Mart, and a fill-up at the gas station, we were about a half hour late to Stanley's dad's house. However, we got to the airport in time and with only a few hold-ups (such as the workers at Frontier who didn't seem to realize we did, in fact, know how to work a computer, and my bag being open and flinging food everywhere in the airport lobby) we found ourselves waiting for about a half hour before loading our plane to Denver.

We were excited, needless to say, and celebrated by eating a cold piece of Little Ceasar's pizza leftover from the night before (this was part of the food that had gone spilling on the floor. Don't worry, it was in a Ziploc and yes, we were soundly judged).

After a short trip where we both managed to fall asleep and thereby miss the toasty chocolate chip cookies (which, if you know Stanley or I, you know how much of a travesty this was), but safely landed on the ground in Denver full of anticipation for our 8. Hour. Layover.

No, that was not typed wrong. 8 hours. Of waiting. In an airport. IN DENVER. Again, it is lucky Stanley and I are easily entertained people, because after trying, unsuccessfully, to sleep for an hour and a half, we were semi-forced by the awkward humans encroaching on our sleeping space to go and explore the Denver airport.

Let me just say, for those of you who have never been to Denver, it can be quite fun. There are 3 concourses and a terminal, all with a train linking them together. We were situated in concourse A, which had your typical things: Ben and Jerry's McDonalds, Panda Express, 7 different versions of Travel Center with their overpriced blankets and magazines. Concourse C was simliar, but concourse B? It was a gold-mine of entertainment. Mostly because it had more stuff. Also, while in concourse B we discovered an awesome game called "Stand stationary on the moving walkways and wave to the people at the gates, seeing how many of them you can get to wave back." Once we mastered that game, we added a fun twist, instead calling it "stand stationary on the moving walkway and wave to people WHILE commentating on it like a 3rd person commentator at a sporting event." Seriously. Best way to spend your time at an airport. Plus, we made lots of people smile, which is always nice.

After riding the train (dancing to the music that came on whenever the train stopped or started, of course), exploring all the concourses, and having to go BACK through security because we got off on the wrong side, it was officially 8:30 and we had successfully wasted 3 hours.

Yup. We still had 3.5 to go.

So we filled it by eating food, having some Ben and Jerry's and watching our favorite movie "The Devil Wears Prada." After which, we retired to our terminal to call our families while Stanley did some reading and I finished up on some last minute assignments.

We loaded the plane and departed almost exactly on time, which sorta blew my mind. The ride itself would have been good, had it not been completely impossible to fall asleep. I spent the first 3 hours of the 5 hours flight wondering why my legs felt so antsy and wishing I could feel the coldness from the window. Eventually, overcome with tiredness I passed out for the last 2 hours, but this time, thanks to Stanley waking me up, we managed to get our cookies. And dude. They were really good.

So we arrived at 5 am, tired, cranky, and just feeling all over musty and airplane-ey. We made it through customs and immigration to be picked up by a woman named Ingrid who talked very quickly in Spanish because Stanley, bless his heart, said he could understand it. Luckily he could understand about 80% of it, but I was left smiling and nodding most of the way. We met another volunteer who actually turned out to be one of my 4 roommates. Her name is Breena, she's from San Diego and is going to be volunteering with me on my project.

We were dropped off at our family's houses and it turns out Stanley lives about a 2 minute walk away from me, which is really, REALLY nice. We separated under the agreement that I would head over to his place as soon as we had eaten breakfast and settled in.

This only sorta worked. Breakfast wasn't to be ready until 8, so I figured I'd settle in for an hour long nap and wake up to eat. This failed miserably and I rolled out of bed hating myself for keeping my host mom waiting to make breakfast. She didn't seem horribly put out by it though, but it was hard to tell considering she only speaks Spanish. There we met Nick, the Canadian guy who's staying with the family as well.

Anyway, after breakfast I went over to Stanley's only to be greeted by a fairly stern man who told me Stanley was sleeping and I could not go in to wake him up, but at my request said he could tell Stanley I came by.

After this I decided I too needed more sleep. So I slept AGAIN from 11 until 1, only to be awakened by STANLEY coming over! We ended up walking around the neighborhood where we lived, which is the residential part of a city called San Pedro, right outside of San Jose proper. It was a lot of fun, and we got to see some various markets and restaurants. Stanley, however, needed to be at Maximo for his orientation at 2:30, so we called it quits around 1:50 so he could go into the city with his "mom" and we could unpack with the promise that he would come on by after orientation and we'd finally be able to go shopping for the stuff we'd forgotten.

After unpacking, I figured I would tuck in for another little nap (remember, I was making up for an entire week of sleep deprivation here) and that Stanley would be by in about an hour and wake me up to go. We figured the orientation would only last an hour or so.

However, we were incorrect. I bleerily remember waking up to see some new girls coming in (there are 6 girls in the house total, plus Nick, so it's a full house) but then rolled over to fall asleep again, only to wake up a little while later to hear Stanley calling "Hola!" into the back of the house. I stumbled (literally) into the hallway where we talked for a bit. I looked at the clock and saw that I had slept from 2:30 until 5:45. And it felt GREAT.

I will digress for a moment to explain why we were in the hall. In the book it mentions no visitors being in the rooms, and this had been enforced by Stanley's "family's" reaction to me, a female, coming over to visit him. My mom, however, seemed to be totally okay with him being over and in my room as we soon learned when she came by and asked why we were standing in the hallway. We must have looked startled because then she pointed to the room and was like "oh yeah, you can go in the room, it's totally fine!" (she obviously didn't say that since she doesn't speak English, but that was the equivalent). So we got to hang out for a little bit and meet the other girls who I would be living with.

Stanley then went home to have his dinner while we had ours. After which we all walked over to the supermarket to buy some snacks for our rooms. Stanley and I then parted ways with the promise to see each other at the bus stop in the morning at 7:20, and then I spent the rest of the night talking with my new housemates until we went to bed around 10. Which, don't worry, I slept like a log and am still tired today. Apparently it takes more than one day to make up for that much lost sleep.

So yes, that was day 1 and travelling. Today has been mostly orientation and looking around and finding stuff. I'm super excited to begin volunteering and can't wait until I become more at home in the city!

Toodles!

-Jillian

p.s. New layout: Thoughts? Feelings? Impressions?