La fortuna

I have been living with a family in Costa Rica for just about three weeks now.  It feels like it has been so much longer.  It's hard to believe that I have has all these new experiences in three weeks.  It also feels like I haven't been home in years but in reality it's been less than a month.  At the same time it feels shorter than three weeks.  In that I still not very good at Spanish.  I am definitely improving but maybe not as quickly as I hoped.  I can see though that I am improving I understand about 70 percent of what my teachers say, and it's getting easier to get around at school.  I understand about 90 percent of what my host mom says to me and about 50 percent of what my host dad says to me.  And I can communicate with my classmates even though it isn't always very graceful.  At times it takes like ten minutes for someone to explain something to me, but they are very eager to help me for the most part.   We have had some very funny conversations like when one kid tried to describe what butter is to me in Spanish and he said it was "white, liquidy, cheese" as you can imagine I was pretty confused.  Also it is really confusing when people say things in" English", like my classmates were talking about  Las Vegas.  And I had no idea that's what they were trying to say cause of the accent.  To me it sounded like "las baegas".  Yesterday we drove to La Fortuna, a town about three hours away from Cartago.  It is very touristy.  It is full of Gringos like myself, and as a result over half the signs are in English.  It is a tourist destination because it is in the shadow of the largest volcano in the country Arenal.  Arenal is huge.  It's a little intimidating to look up at.  Although it has been "sleeping" for 3 years or so, we were still able I see smoke rising from the top.  This morning my host family went to a bike race.  And the little girls and a I spent the morning at the hotel with a cousin.  There is a small pool in the courtyard where we swam.  Then in he afternoon we went with some aunts and uncles and cousin, to more pools.  Some of these pools are very hot because they are fed by he scolding water which trickles down the mountain.  It was nice to be in the sun, although it is very very strong here.