The hardest part is knowing where you are...

In order to get where you want to go, you first have to know where you are.  And it seems to me that no place is that harder than in San Jose, Costa Rica.  Ok, that may be a little bit of an exageration, but the grid system they use here is so simple that finding a location should be as easy as one, two, three.  I remember somebody saying when I was young that avenues go east west and streets go north south.  Of course I grew up on east west Main Street right between Central and Linder Avenues, so the rule didn't seem so set in stone.  That's exactly how it works here though.  You have Avenidas which travel east west and Calles which travel north south.  Unlike the northern parts of Chicago, you don't even need to remember the order of street names.  Either they lack creativity here, or they just love simplicity because the streets all have numbers -- accept of course Avenida Centrale and Calle Centrale. 
It took me about a day to figure out how you'd know if you were looking for the east or west 21st Street.  I thought it was just coincidence that all the street signs I saw east of central happened to be odd numbers...  It's a good thing I never had to walk from 21st street to 20th street because I would have had a long way to go.  Basically all the avenues and streets north and west of central have even numbers and south and east have odd numbers.  I have no clue how the addresses or house numbers themselves work, but usually directions are given with an avenue and street number followed by a the avenues or streets between which your destination is located.  So it would seem that finding a location would be incredibly easy, and it would, if only they had a little thing called street signs here. 
If your lucky, you might find a street sign on the side of a corner building.  That only seems to be the case about ten percent of the time though.  I've had to walk three blocks out of my way just to figure out what road I was on.  So basically, if you have one, don't throw out your GPS just yet...
It's nice in San Jose.  We're up in the hills about a thousand meters so the temperature is generally a nice comfortable 70 degrees or so.  Since I've arrived every day has been pretty much the same.  The clouds disperse and the sun shows through around ten in the morning and then it cools down a bit in the afternoon when the skies cloud over again around three.  In the evening it drizzles on and off unpredictably. 
I'm loving the food!  Gallo Pinto is one of my favorites.  Its a mixture of black beans and rice generally served with eggs and plantaines.  I finally figured out what Casado is.  Apparently that just refers to black beans and rice (but served separately on the side rather than mixed together as with Gallo).  Casado means married and today when I asked the girl at the hostel what exactly Gallo is, she said it means Honey Moon.  So I can only imagine that in the honey moon stage of a relationship the wife is nice enough to actually go through the extra step of mixing the beans and rice together whereas a long time married guy just gets a spoon or rice and a spoon of beans unceremoniously slopped onto his plate.  Or maybe married women just quickly realize their husbands aren't stupid and can mix the beans and rice together themselves...
I think I've cleared up my credit card problems, although I probably shouldn't count my chickens until they've hatched.  Citibank should be sending a new card to a corporate office I located in a suburb of San Jose.  When the card arrives they'll call my hostel to let me know.  Today I let the girl at the front desk know, but she seemed reluctant to say that they would be able to take a message for me let alone pass it on.  Actually that's putting it lightly.  She said, no, they couldn't.  I'm also wondering how I'm going to get the pin number.  I have a feeling my struggles have only just begun...  I also noticed today that my online banking is apparently connected to my atm card.  This makes absolutely no sense to me.  I lost my ATM card.  It's not like I wrote my login or password on the card!  Why would security protocols dictate that they have to shut off my online access?  Suppose I had a back up card with another bank and I needed to wire money over to it, cutting off my online access because I'd lost my atm card would lock down any ability I had to do that. 
In two words, Citibank Sucks. 
Actually, the reason I went to log onto my citibank account was because they'd apparently sent me a message.  I wonder if the message says, 'Thankyou for contacting us about your lost citibank atm card, we are now canceling that card and blocking off all access to your online account so you will be unable to see this message.'
Oh yeah, one last thing I know most of you are waiting to hear...  The keyboards here are a pain =)

Aargh!!!

Well, I guess it was bound to happen eventually.  I lost my bank card today.  I left it in the bank machine at the airport...  I guess a year of using idiot proof machines in europe and asia that won`t even spit out your money until you`ve taken your card back has gotten to me.  That and the absolute exhaustion. 

I noticed my card was missing when I went to pay for lunch.  Unfortunately I also made a second mistake when I took the original money out -- I thought I was gettng about 200 dollars worth or currency, but instead I only took out 20.  So I`m already low on money here and I have no way of getting more.  I guess I`ll be breaking into the cash and travelers checks early this trip.

No worries though.  I didn`t panic.  It`s not the end of the world, just a bit of a nuisance.  Calling the bank to report it was harder than I ever expected.  I looked up the number and the collect number they list for if you`re calling from out of the country refused to accept the charges.  Then I paid international rates to call the american toll free number.  When you`re calling a number specifically designed to report your card has been lost or stolen, why is the first thing they ask for the card number?  And why do they make it so hard to get through to an operator without giving that card number?  And why exactly did my online bank give me the number to report a lost credit card?  I didn`t lose my credit card, I lost my ATM card.  Fortunately I caught the customer service reps mistake when he mentioned the last transaction on the card -- no, that was another card, I didn`t lose that one!  Please don`t cancel it!!!!  Hopefully he didn`t. 

Let`s just say this is Citibank`s third strike.  I`m not happy with them and I`ll definitely be looking to move more of my business to other banks now...