"Do you know the way to San Jose....er....I mean...Heredia?"

This has been a crazy week, I am sooooo glad it's the weekend! On Tuesday I got brave and headed to the other side of the city (Heredia) to visit a friend of my aunt's who is in Costa Rica for a few weeks. To cut costs, I decided to take the bus there and then come back in a taxi. Lucky for me, a few friends were heading downtown San Jose so I joined them for that leg of the journey. In San Jose, there is no published bus schedule so once we got downtown, one of my friends began asking people where to catch the bus to Heredia. It's always good to ask 3 or 4 people, because more than likely you'll get a number of different answers! And oh ya, did I mention that in San Jose most of the streets are not named or numbered? And if they are (mostly downtown) people don't really know the names or numbers??? After a bit of a hike through the streets, we found the place and I was on my own the rest of the way. I had no idea where to get off the bus, but once we got to Heredia, I actually saw a sign pointing to the hotel...it was only a few km away! I decided to get off the bus and take a cab the rest of the way. HOWEVER....I couldn't reach the cord to pull to tell the driver to stop at the next bus stop!!! I just love being short! I decided to wait til someone else pulled the cord and luckily someone did a few blocks later. I started walking and saw another sign that the hotel was only a Km away, so since it was such a nice day I walked the rest of the way. If you know me, you know that I was bound to take a wrong turn at some point...and I did. I came to a fork in the road and turned right when I should have turned left, but after asking for directions from a condominium guard, I found the way. I ended up having a great visit with some great Canadians at a beautiful hotel and then came all the way back to San Francisco in a cab. I had an awesome cab driver who didn't wait around in traffic letting the meter (or the "maria" as they say here) rack up a high fare. He zipped around the sidestreets and we ended up chatting the whole way in spanish with a bit of spanglish thrown in on both our parts. Although I'm sure I didn't make alot of sense most of the time, I think I was at least able to get my points across (maybe he was just nodding out of courtesy???) and so I was pretty excited after the trip.

My next adventure coming up is figuring out how to take a bus to Alajuela where the airport is. Pastor Jim and Teresa Rilling are coming to Costa Rica next weekend for a wedding and I get to visit with them! Pastor Jim is one of the pastors at Sylvan Lake Alliance Church and I had the privilege of working with him for my last year in Sylvan Lake...and Teresa is...well... pretty much one of my favourite people in the world! So I'm pretty pumped to see them.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to relaxing this weekend and getting some much needed rest (I was not well on Wed). Hope you have a wonderful "fin de semana"!