I've had two days in San Ramon now and am absolutely loving it. I arrived here late afternoon on Friday and met all the other volunteers who are currently here, people come and go quite a bit so I'm meeting heaps of new people which is great! At the moment we have 7 girls living in the house, it's quite an experience!

On Friday night we went into a bar in town to watch a Costa Rica vs Guatemala soccer match, they get very into soccer here and Costa Rica even managed to win! On Saturday morning the other new volunteer and I were taken on a walking tour through San Ramon, we started at La Feria which is a farmers market that operates on Fridays and Sundays. The fruit and vegetables there were huge and so cheap! It was like the Wellington vege markets, but 5 times the size! After a few hours walking through town we came back to the house and relaxed for a few hours before the Australian girl who is here at the moment cooked us an amazing dinner of fresh fish, salad and chips for my birthday. The girls even had a wee birthday cake for me! We went into the only "club" in town for ladies night on Saturday night, it was seriously entertaining! The guys here are incredible dancers and were trying to teach us how to dance...needless to say it was interesting!

On Sunday morning we went down to the Catholic church for mass, by the time we got there the church was so packed there were people spilling out onto the streets! We managed to sneak inside, but it was so hot we had to leave after a few minutes, next time I think we'll try and arrive a little earlier so we can get a seat, but from what I did see it was nothing like mass at home, I haven't even seen that many people at mass for Christmas! We had a very chilled day for the rest of the day and then went out to dinner in town again, the meals were massive and it only cost about $12NZD for dinner and a glass of wine! (Not very good wine though, I think being from NZ may have taught me to drink a little too well!!)

This afternoon I'm going to be starting my volunteering project, I've been placed as an assistant teacher in one of the high schools here, I'm sure it's going to be interesting! Our schedules are all quite flexible, I will be teaching alternate mornings and afternoons and then evening classes for adults from Monday - Thursday (this is likely to change, nothing seems to happen the way it should around here!!).

So far I'm loving San Ramon, the people here are so friendly and the taxi drivers all know we live at "Casa de los Gringos" - the Gringo House, and are really appreciative of what we're here to do, they're really keen to make sure we have a fantastic experience in San Ramon and really go out of their way to be helpful. I can't quite believe I've already been in Costa Rica for 2 weeks, I think the next 8 weeks are going to fly by!