Tico high school and Food-starved Monkeys

Today was good, had my final two classes of the week, both were really good: La migraciones de Costa Rica looks interesting and Cultura and Desarrollo en American Latina, while full of fellow gringas, has two cool professors and I think will be pretty interesting as well.
Overall it's been an overwhelming week that's felt like the first week of high school all over again. Everyone just looks really young on campus. I have quite a few freshmen in my classes and they act and dress like high school kids- lots of jean miniskirts, gelled hair for guys and everyone wearing hollister/american eagle/aeropostale shirts. I was a complete coward this week and didn't really try to chat up any of the Ticos. Part of the problem though is when I do talk with them they are incredibly hard to understand, not sure why since I don't have problems understanding my professors or family...
Saw the most amazing thing at the local mall on Tuesday (amazing for me :). The mall was really nice, very American feeling with two stories and little kiosk stores running down the middle of each main hall. One of the kiosks was called Rice 'n Smile and they sold rice pudding of about ten different flavors. I absolutely love rice pudding! I got the choco-avellena flavor, which amounted to nutella rice pudding and was in heaven for the next half hour.
Anyway, now I have a lovely three day weekend to look forward to (no Friday classes) and I'll be headed out early in the morning to Manuel Antonio, a famous park on the Pacific Coast that is rumored to have extremely aggressive monkeys (we've been warned to guard our packs against food-hunting monkeys) and close by are beautiful beaches, including one nude gay beach which I think we might be avoiding. Should prove to be an adventure :)