Girls, Don´t wear short shorts

I´ve been in Costa Rica for about two days and I´ve experienced more than I ever could have imagined in this short of a time span. The awesome thing is that I have about 26 more days to go! My living conditions are far better than I had expected. I actually have my own apartment that I share with Steve Gosnell and a Venezuelan student, Nestor. Our host family speaks NO english, but Nestor is fluent in spanish and pretty good in english, so when my spanish fails, he can usually translate well. We actually even have our own apartment above our host family´s store, which is a vet. The people here are surprisingly nice as well. They will see our group of obvious americans while driving by and beep their horn and wave at us. I´m still not entirely sure, however, that they´re not making fun of us in some way. haha. However, people can also be a bit more manipulative and shady here than I had thought. It´s a very odd balance and hard to explain, so I´ll explain it with a perfect story example. At the bar last night, I bought a 1100 colon beer from our waiter, and I gave him a 2000 colon bill. However, he gave me 700 colones in change. Do the math. It´s not enough. Now in my usual fashion, I was ready to get pissed and threaten this guy to not do this (insert swear word here) again. However, Nestor was with me (who knows these Ticos well), and right after he saw me scream the waiters name in anger, he said no no Matt, smile when he comes over. I knew Nestor knew what he was talking about so I did. I was very polite and almost joking with this (insert swear word). He very politely apologized and immediately went to correct my change. No problem. I know he knew exactly what he was doing... it was intentional. However, he was very polite when I caught him and I figured maybe I shouldn´t be so quick to judge people who take advantage of stupid tourists just like I probably would if in his position in the U.S. All right I actually wouldn´t because I´m no hypocrite, but needless to say I bought the rest of my drinks directly from the bar that night. Screw Rafael the waiter. Thank you that is all.

Burf