day 2: san joaquin de flores to monteverde

woke up at 6am and ate your typical costa rican breakfast, guapo tico (rice and beans) and fruit and juice. i can not eat rice and beans twice a day for 36 days, on way jose. hung out at the b&b and met some more coole people. watched england vs. netherlands, boring gave except for beckham's goal. walked around the small town for a while by myself for about 20 minutes and then came back and picked random fruit off of trees. a guy on the trip, jason, is a biologist or something and let us know what we could and could not eat. i liked the passion fruit it was really sorry. sat around some more got bored because we dont leave for monteverde till 1pm so i went back into town with 3 of the girls to go to the supermercado. 2 of them are 17 and since they're minors they have an 8:30 curfew, pretty rough. the girl from the uk buys 3 packs of cigarettes, she's 18 and has been smoking for 6 years - dang brittish. there you only have to be 16 and can smoke them from birth. van is 45 mins late to pick us up and it's a 3.5 hr drive to monteverde even though its only 200 km (approximately 120 miles). apparently to lessen the number of tourists that visit they made the road one of the worst i've ever seen (even worse than lousiana). it is covered with potholes and at some point oru driver antonio had to slow to under 20 kmh. halfway there we stopped forlunch and i had conrne con rice which was semidecent and cost only $2. antonio then let us stop to take pics at a butterfly garden (man, i dont know why ol ags never built one of these they're awesome note: sarcasm). most of the ride i just sat in silence listening to my ipod because i'm really the only one who doesn't know any spanish - it was pretty frustrated. i got to my homestay around 5:45 and met my family, theyre really nice but don't speak any english which should force me to learn more quickly. we have abuela hermelinda whos 56, mama elena whos 33, hijos andres (14), ricardo (12), and melania and melissa (3 year old twins). ricardo is the coolest of the bunch, he laughs at me a lot which i can respect. the fact that they don't speak any english makes for many long, awkward pauses and giggles. dinner was spaghetti which was fairly good but i'm not a huge fan of their food so i can seem myself losing some weight while i'm here. i moved in and got situated, i live in a sm,all outside room, tin roof with my own entrance, a bed, desk, and drawers - not the greatest but better than i expected. from my first conversation i can already tall that family's in costa rica are more affectionate and express their love much more frequently than in the states. i gave my familia tica there present (a picture boo of texas) and the kids loved it. i showed them houston and corpus and their eyes just lit up wonder, it was really quite incredible. if someone were to give me a book of costa rica i'd have been like, yeah cool. after i finally gave up on trying to communicate with my family for the night and prayed that i'd learn something tomorrow so i wouldn't feel like a huge idiot on monday. showered and went to bed by 9:30pm.