Wow has the past day SUCKED. Murphy´s Law is without a doubt in effect where ever I go. So it goes like this:

My plane is scheduled to leave Milwaukee at 3:46 but it ended up being about 5 before we left. Left to fly to Chicago. It was a 19 minute flight. I waited in the airport for about 3 1/2 hours to fly to Chicago, a city that is an hour and a half drive from Milwaukee. Once I got into Chicago I realized that my plane was already supposed to be boarding so I made a mad dash from the E Concourse to the K Concourse. E to K in O´Hare...THAT´S LIKE NINE MILES. Anyway, so once I got to the right gate I found out that they had just transferred my flight to a different gate and it was going to be delayed for over an hour. Great. When we FINALLY got on our way to Miami I realized, once again, that I was barely going to make boarding for my next flight to San Jose. This time I had to do a full out sprint with my 50 lb shoulder bag. At least this time they had mile markers. After I had been walking/jogging for about 10 minutes I saw a sign that said E Concourse 18 Minutes. WHAT???? By this time the sweat was rolling down my face, as I was wearing two tanks tops, a sweatshirt, and a light jacket. But I made it just as they were about to close boarding, thank God, and that´s only because this flight had been delayed about an hour too. The whole way to San Jose, when I should have been sleeping, I was awake wondering how they would have been able to transfer my luggage fast enough. Valid worry. One bag made it, the other did not. Keep in mind the flight is already an hour late. After watching the luggage thinger for about 20 minutes desperately hopping that my gigantic green bag would make it´s appearance I realized that I would have to go stand in line with some other people and tell them I had lost my luggage. Please keep in mind that at this point it is 1:30 in the morning. After finally getting all my luggage stuff taken care of I walked right through customs, literally. It seems that the customs people had gone home for the night. There was absolutely no one there. Which is good, because I just read that they changed the visa requirements to 90 days instead of 180 and I sure as hell don´t have a visa. I think I´m going to be here for about 95 days. Anyway, with a growing sense of dread I walked out of the customs area to see....no one. The person that was supposed to meet me wasn´t there. There were, however, some skeevy looking taxi drivers willing to take me to my hotel, which I sure didn´t have. I think that was the worst feeling I´ve ever had. I managed to make my way up to the check-in area where this guy told me that I was better off just staying in the airport because it was night. So there I sat until about 6 in the morning. I figured that then I would be able to buy a phone card. Nope! The only place they sell those is in the gate area, which I needed a ticket to get in. How convenient.

At this point I´m so tired, hungry and dehydrated that I was seriously contemplating just hopping a plane for home. But that would be a big waste of time, money and effort so I decided to suck it up and come up with a plan. The plan is as follows: Pick a random hotel out of my Costa Rica book and get a taxi driver to bring me there. It worked out remarkably well, actually. I picked the Hotel La Gran Via, which was the first lucky thing to happen to me in what felt like decades. The front desk guy is my savior. I´m going to name my first child Willie after the Tico that saved my life. Within 10 minutes I had a room, a phone card, some colones and a bacon, egg and cheese biscuit. Unfortunately it was only 7 and I still didn´t have anyone to call that could really figure out what I´m supposed to do. So I called my dad and had him call my international affairs director at Northern when it got to late enough, who called me back right away and told me that he had contacted people at my school. The people from down here called me and just told me to take a taxi to my host family´s house. Finally, a real plan. Unfortunately, I have wait for my luggage, which won´t be delivered to my hotel until sometime between 4 and 8. Ugh!!! My host family is going to think I´m not coming and I can´t really call them because I don´t know nearly enough Spanish. Or any, really, as it turns out.

At about 9 I took a nap until 12, when I decided to get up and shower. How convenient that all my shower stuff was in my other bag. Along with all of my clean clothes. The bag I have is chock full of books and dirty laundry. Yuck. But I washed my hair with a tiny bar of soap in the shower with the 3 knobs all marked H and decided that, since I had some time to kill, I´d check out downtown San Jose, which the Hotel La Gran Via is located in the middle of. There are people EVERYWHERE. There´s a million shops, most of them for clothing, and people bustling around everywhere in a strange mingling of pedestrian traffic and vehicles. I didn´t want to go too far because I didn´t want to get lost and my feet have blisters on them from running through airports in heeled shoes. Fortunately this little internet cafe is right next to my hotel.

My first impressions of San Jose are suprisingly favorable. The ride in, which took about 20 minutes, was gorgeous, and the downtown area is run down looking but very clean and has just enough people running around to make you feel safe. Well, as safe as a blonde American who barely knows any Spanish walking around by herself can really feel anyway. But it´s time for me to go get some food and go back to the hotel to wait for my luggage. I´ll be so relieved when I finally get to my host family´s house. I start school at 8:30 tomorrow morning (where ever the hell the school is) so my life should take on some semblance of order by then. I hope. I can´t handle too much more of this.

- posted by Jaime @ 1:12 PM