My great adventure!

Despite a few moments while being here, I have been able to supress my homesickness. However, today was one of those moments when I really felt the 2,000 mile distance from home. Today, the weather was beautiful, I wanted to spend the enitre morning outside, but I of course could not bc we had a three and a half hour workshop inside over microsoft excel, and how to use it..fun right? So after the lecture, we had about 2.5 hours of free time, and by that time it had started raining, so a few people were going into Atenas to run some errands and I thought I would go to so I could skype with a few people from home. Having only toured Atenas once for about twenty minuets, I had no idea where the internet cafe was, and I was forced to use my spanish speaking skills to navigate myself around this foregin town in an attempt to see and talk to my family, and I only had a half hour to do it, bc we needed to be back for class. After asking three security guards, a lady in the bank, some guy whose house I went to thinking it was the internet cafe (bc there was a sign pointing to it which read "internet cafe"), and two random people on the street, and having them all pont in different dirrections to the internet cafe, I became verry frustrated. Running through the streets alone in a foreign country in the pouring down rain, with my laptop is not the most calming situation. After 10 or 15 minuets of aimlesley wandering, desperatley searching for this internet cafe, I hung my head and broke down. Earlier, while I had been looking, I saw these four men leaning up against some bar watching me..it was a very shady scene, so as I walked by again, I heard one of the guys yell out "hey, come over here I will help you!" Now, having been told probably 100 times by my family, dont go walking alone, dont talk to strangers, dont carry anything valuable with you, my entire instinct told me to turn around and walk away. I decided there was probably a 55% chance that this guy would abduct me, and a 45% chance that he would actually help me...its a good thing that I am a gambler, becasue I decided to go up and talk to him (I think my prayers and guradian angel helped as well though). It was a good decision, becasuse he was able to point me into the right direction to find the internet cafe. I was able to have a nice conversation with my mom, jessica, melissa, gabrielle, nana, isabel, and grandpa over skype. Afterwards my homesickness passed, and I felt like a new person again! All I needed was to hear my moms reassuring voice, and see her face, for all of my worries to be wiped away! After this physically and emotionally draining day, I am exausted, and tomorrow we have to get up at 5:30AM to get to Poas volcan national park. So I am going to get to bed early today, thanks for all of your posts, love you and miss you all!