Happy Valentine´s Day

Happy Valentine´s Day everybody! I hope you all have fun and do something interesting. I still don´t know many people here so it is unlikely that I will do anything in particular. Valentine´s Day doesn´t really seem a big deal in Costa Rica and I would hazard a guess that it´s not really a big deal anywhere outside the United States (thank you Hallmark and Hershey).

In other news, the people I work with at The Journal are great.

Jan, the contact who helped set up this whole thing, is in charge of marketing and publication for the newspaper. He is from the Czech Republic and a Mac grad. He can be very forceful and demanding when it comes to the newspaper and partying but is fun to hang out with.

Carlos is in charge of the international news section, loves soccer and is a nice guy so we get along really well. We talked about soccer for about an hour yesterday and he helped me sort out transportation to cover an event after I couldn´t understand what was being said to me over the phone and what was going on in general.

Ines is a secretary and she has been incredibly kind offering me all sorts of help and answering lots of questions. She actually just moved offices to a different place only a couple blocks away. She is wonderful to talk to and reminds me a bit of Aracelli, my Chilean host mom.

I´ve met a couple other people but those are the ones who I see most often and actually talk with. Work is going well, I moved into an apartment (which is tiny, but nice - see pictures), and life is pretty good.