Safety in numbers

Last night Kristen and I were sitting in our room when I heard a commotion outside. I heard a car alarm (not surprising, they go off almost every hour) and then I heard a bunch of shouting and swearing and scuffling right on the other side of our wall. Then I heard more shouting and at this point I was staring wide eyed at Kristen who had her earphones on and I said... "I think some guys car almost got stolen!" Im sorry, it made me kind of giddy and scared at the same time.
Today we found out that the guy who tried to steal the car pulled a gun out on the owner... This isnt the first time its been this close to home. Our friend Matt had a knife pulled on him right around the corner... The same bus stop we take every single day.

I usually feel safe enough walking around alone during the day, going to San Jose or just simply going for a walk. Though even in the day when Kristen and I are walking around together its just as terrible. I feel intimidated by all the attention and almost a little unsafe, Costa Rican men can shout obscenities at me while wearing a ring, its shameless the way they do this, it just makes me feel gross. I usually dont make eye contact and sometimes this works... but only sometimes.
If I am walking alone at night its usually around the same vicinity that we live. We live in a fairly decent neighborhood and I am not always worried.... But the closer this gets to home the more afraid I am to walk alone places. The attention gets worse when the sun goes down.... But usually the only person I see and greet on the street is the street guard, which makes me feel safe in a way but then again I am an American girl... I just dont trust the men here, not unless its someone Ive met in the school or at the church or something.

I should probably clarify that I do feel safe in the area that I live in. But then these things happen and it makes you think twice about acting too comfortable because these things do happen. I have this thing called an overactive imagination, like one night I thought someone was walking on our roof and I was afraid to look at the window in fear that I would see some perpetrator standing there staring at me sleep. This imagination of mine makes me think of every possible situation I could be in and come up against here. I always have a plan A and a plan B in my head when I go places,  which could get me in trouble.

Well, on to better and brighter things!