Day 5:
Nice start to the morning.....another wonderful breakfast! Then we came back to the room and got ready for our journey to find Jacob a school. After everyone was showered and dressed in nice clothes, we went up to the hotel to talk to the receptionist...the young girl who speaks good English. She told us how to get to the schools and which bus to take. Then she got on the phone to call about setting up our trip to the beach tomorrow....Manuel Antonio.....and got us a wonderful deal. The bus comapny that takes people to the beach charges $39.00 one way per person. They pick you up at 9am(it takes three hours to get to the beach) and they make you get on the bus to come home at 2pm. Didn't sound like too good a deal to us but she was already on the phone calling "Ricky" who will pick us up at 7:30am and bring us back whenever we want and we are paying a lot less than with the bus service. She has been a godsend!
Once that was settled we headed out. We went to Alejuela to catch a bus to Heredia where we were to pick up another bus to Santa Domingo where the one school was supposed to be. I told the bus driver in Alajuela where we wanted to go in Heredia and he said okay. We drove and drove and finally went back up to the driver and asked him where we were supposed to get off. Every stop for the last 6 stops had been Heredia! Grrrrr!!! All of a sudden I hear..."You need someone speak English?" It was as if God himself was speaking to me from Heaven!! I turned and saw a young man about Jacob's age sitting in the front seat. I told him what I needed and he talked to the driver for me. We realized that we needed to get off the bus right there and find one with a sign to Santa Domingo. So we did! We are very hot at this point so we decide to go into the building behind us and get a drink. Turns out that building behind us was......A MALL!! A real mall with levels and stores and escalators......sorry I was daydreaming! :-) Once we got inside and found a drink Jacob asked the lady if there was a place to get his hair cut (in spanish!) :-) She told us where it was so we went there and Jacob cut ALL of his hair off!!! Seriously!
After the hair cut we asked the lady what was the best way to get to the school and she said it would be by taxi. So outside we go to find a taxi driver...rememeber our luck with taxi drivers? Well today was better! Geofrey was our drive and he knew where we wanted to go so off we went. He actually spoke pretty good English which was good because he didn't actually know where the school was and had to pull over for directions, but was able to do it pretty quickly because were able to determine he didn't know where he was going. Once he had directions from someone on the side of the road we headed off again only to have to turn around and go back because (1) the car wouldn't go up the side of the mountain and (2) it wasn't the school we needed. So after he had spent 10 minutes giving us more or less the scenic tour of Santa Domingo...we paid him and got out of the taxi to catch the bus to San Jose! Once we got to San Jose we had to find a taxi to take us to the school and this driver spoke English too...how did we get so lucky?
Jacob decided that the school he wanted to go to was one of the ones in San Jose called Lincoln School www.lincoln.ed.cr check it out! We took a tour of the school but Jake was in love with it before we ever started the tour. Now we start the paperwork and once that is done we set up our interviews and Jacob's testing for when we get there in June. The lady we dealt with was very helpful and even had the name of one of the mothers who is a realtor and another name of a family with a place for rent that is like a guest house on their property. (Furnished with two bedrooms and two bathrooms).It is on their property so you don't have to worry about security and it is really close to th school.
Once we had finished the school shopping we caught another taxi back to San Jose....this time with a driver who spoke no English and had no seatbelts in the back seat. Did I say he drove like a crazy man? No? Well he did! He took us to the bus depot in San Jose where we caught a bus back to Alejuela. Once we got to Alejuela we decided to do some shopping at the market where we picked up a few things for our refrigerator. We then caught a bus back to the hotel and I walked down the street to order dinner while Bob and Jake took the bags back to the hotel room. Jake then walked down to the restaurant to meet me and walk back with me.
We were going to go swimming but I was too tired once dinner was done so I am doing this note and then getting ready for bed because breakfast at 7am is going to come early.
Can't wait to go to the beach!!
Talk to all of you tomorrow!!
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