Hey people!

Eye eye!

how are you doing? we have discovered a really good internet cafe to do this from just up the road from our language school so we can check emails now if theres anything you need to mail us about (addresses are at the end of our profile)

Who´d have thought we´ve only been here five days? feels like longer we´ve done so much already! first few days were quite awkward as we were finding our feet in spanish...however we have now perfected the art of using the odd spanish word with hand gestures and if all else fails nodding and smiling always seems to work!

Our house in Heredia is very nice-they have three noisy poodles tho and its like a fortress-but then again all the houses here are! We´ve got our own end of the house so we can escape easily if the conversation gets too much!so far we´ve tried some unusual dishes-like chilli con carne for breakfast!-but so far all is a-ok!our house mum has two kids not much older than us (Luiz and Melissa)and she likes to talk to us in rapid spanish! thankfully tho Melissa can speak some English and tonight she is taking us out in Heredia.

we´ve been having latino dance classes in the mornings and we´ve even taken a cooking class and can now make real guacamole sort of...however think more eating than cooking went on to be fair

On thursday we went on a tour up into the mountains outside Heredia/San Jose and saw the coffee plantations and loads of fruit farms-and we got our first glimpse of the rainforest which was amazing, we went to the La Paz waterfalls which were 80ft tall and we got soaked (see photo evidence). We saw lots of frogs, some snakes (behind glass!),huge butterflies and even some hummingbirds which were beautiful. Stopped en route on the way back down at some random restaurant with no menus and no choice-so ended up with chicken and smash...no really!

So far the weather´s been, how do you put it, different; in the morning its really hot and sunny and then the afternoon hits and the cloud and rain move in,by 6pm its pitch black!!

language school´s really like being in GCSE'S again-today we had a test and have been doing tenses all week...and have homework till ten pm at night?! yes we know we are crazy-however next weekend we´ve signed ourselves up for the campus on the beach (hopefully a little more relaxed!)

Tomorrow we are meeting up with Amy and Denise (who thankfully speak lots of spanish) and we´re going on a tour to the coffee plantation followed by a trip to check out the capital San Jose. On sunday we have an excursion planned and are off at the crack of dawn to go on a catarmaran to an Island on the Pacific coast, we´ll tell you more about it soon!

Hope you like the photos, more to come!

Love Claire and Victoria XXXX