Traigame la hamburguesa no rara, por favor.

He sobrevivido cinco días en Costa Rica. I have survived five days in Costa Rica of speaking Spanish, or more accurately Spanglish. Okay, survive is a bit of an exaggeration. The food is decent. Las mujeres son bellezas. I have been helped more than I would imagine by my host family in practicing Spanish, who are too nice. But when you're not going the “Do you speak American?” route, and actually trying to interact at a linguistic and personal level, it is a lot more to become accustomed to, and you have to steel yourself against the inevitable malpropisms of rapid fire speech. E.g., I ordered a “strange hamburger“ because I conflated “raro“ or “strange“ with not rare. Strangely, or not so strangely the hamburger that was sent out did taste strange, so perhaps my malaprop was a prediction.

In classes, they speak slow and clearly enough that I can understand pretty much every single word, but once you are outside of the classroom you realize how much speakers elide pronounciations, or if it's not that just generally don't always follow a text book dialogue.

I've never seen a greener place in my life than in Heredia, near the capital of San Jose. I would have pictures, but the computers in the internet cafe don't have interfaces for memory cards so that I could upload them. Walking to school each day I pass by caffeine in its original form of coffee plants. There are gates and bars around every house, and there is a multi-colored and many architectured mishmash of houses and businesses. Okay, my time on the computer is running out, so I'll just go ahead and say “hasta leugo” and spare the reader a mental slideshow.

But I think I'm progressing and tomorrow I'm going on a rafting expedition for the day, for my first adventure. Besides dodging cars in the mishmash of broken and disconnected sidewalks.