Happy Birthday to me!

Yesterday was my birthday so thankyou for all the messages, emails and calls. All much appreciated. I think the trick to birthdays away is to be with the time zones becuase whew you wake up you get birthday wishes from home rather than having to wait for people at home to wake up. Ingrid and Fernando made me feel very welcome and cooked pancakes for breakfast before taking me to a volcano for the afternoon. It was stunning - about an hour and a half drive into the mountains and then we arrive at this national park where the volcano is. It has a crater of 1.5km which makes it the second largerst in the world. You stand above it looking down and you are above the cloud line so clouds are spilling into the crater and the vapours are being let out from vents - mystical. Then we walked a little bit to get to an old crater which is now an acidic lake and was deep turquoise colour. Afterwards we went out for lunch and I tried a typical drink made from sugar cane and hot milk which tastes like the smell of camarmel when it is being heated. Very sugary but I liked it. Finally in the evening they had bought a cake from me and so I could blow out some candles. A really fun day!

At Volcano Poas...

Term is starting on Wednesday and I have to get the bus from the football stadium at 8am so today I am going to a test run to see how long it takes to walk there. I can also get a bust during term time but I an not sure about on this first day as we have been aksed to meet centrally in the town. I'm very excited about starting - I just can't wait to finally get settled down to some work. It has been almost 2 years in the perparation and is now so close.