How I Learned the Pain of Nuts and Dollars

Hotel Aranjuez, San Jose, Costa Rica

Yesterday it was too hot. There was some shade under trees but one of the trees had a squirrel in it and whenever you walked beneath the tree, the squirrel would drop half-eaten nuts on your head. You had to stay under the big umbrella leaves, but even then you could hear the nuts thumping on them. The hotel we are staying at has no roof and no doors in some places (courtyards). There are plants growing inside. They aren't in pots!

The funny thing is you can't put toilet paper in the toilets. You have to put it in the garbage. I kept putting my toilet paper in the toilet by mistake and in the middle of the night the toilet started making these weird retching and gurgling noises.

My dad thought he was asking the hotel clerk in Spanish "can we use dollars?" but it turns out he was asking him if he could use "pains". The word for dollars is dolares (with an accent over the o) and the word for pains is dolores! The Costa Rican money is called colones.

Today we are going on a four hour bus ride to meet our host family in Monteverde. Tomorrow we start Spanish school. That might help my dad.