Things to remember when traveling to another country:

1) a translation book
2) a camera that works
3) more than 2 shirts

Did I remember these?? Of coarse not! But for some reason I packed 4 jumbo boxes of tampons and 3 toothbrushes as if they are items only found in the States. A translation book with how to conjugate words would make my life so much easier, especially in class, but instead I get to be the bum who looks on with someone else. For some reason I thought I would be speaking fluent Spanish the moment I set foot in Costa Rica, but I quickly found out that was just a self-imposed optimistic illusion. Maybe I'm being hard on myself, but today I realized how great my verbal handicap was when this beautiful girl sat next to me on the bus and I couldn't say a word. I couldn't say Hello because she would have proceeded (hopefully at least..) into a conversation in which I would embarrassingly have to stop her and say Lo siento, un poco hablo espanol. (I'm sorry, I speak a little Spanish). So instead I just sat there thinking to myself how unfortunate the situation was and practiced in my head what I would have liked to say:)

Now I know it must sound a little strange how someone could be traveling for 6 months and not remember to bring a camera. Well, I brought the camera, but it didn't occur to me that I might want to check if I had a memory card in the camera. While taking a bus to Volcano Irazu I realized this after I tried to look at the photos I had just taken and nothing was there. Luckily, one of my new friends, Andres, had a working camera and offered to send me copies. And as for my lack of clean clothes... I got donated 2 new shirts by a very nice girl. Things are looking bright so far.