Three Weeks Down!

Wow! I can't believe I have already been gone for three weeks! I also can't believe how much I have learned in that time! Last week was a very busy week for me so I didn't have much free time to blog.

After my weekend at Jaco, I went back to my 3 hours of spanish a day. In all honesty, I really love going to class here. Everyday of class I learn something new that I can apply to my conversations at home and around town and I love it! On Monday, I emailed the Spanish advisor from EWU to get some information on where I would be at for my Spanish minor and what classes I would need to take once I got back home. I sent him the description of the courses and hours of class I was taking here and he came back with an email that surprised me and definitely made me think! Even though I am in the lowest "track" for spanish here in Costa Rica, I am actually taking 4 semesters worth of spanish classes all crammed into 4ish months. The reason that is possible is because since we are fully immersed, we are learning at almost twice the speed! So back to the email I recieved... My advisor strongly suggested that I change my major from a major in High School Physical Education to a double major in Spanish and Physical Education! It definitely gave me something to think about, and I will probably make my decision once my time is done here and I see where my spanish is at!

On tuesday, everyone at USAC had to takea trip to San Jose for fingerprinting at immigration. Everything went very smoothly there, but the lady I was with spoke zero English so that was a little difficult. Luckily, I understand enough Spanish now that I could at least figure out what she was asking, it was just difficult for me to figure out how to respond! Espcially when she asked me to translate my tattoo that says "She flies by her own wings". When I told her I didnt know the translation she made me take my shoe off to show her -not that it did any good since its in english AND in cursive- and then she made me print it twice on paper for her. I could tell she was getting frustrated when she pulled out her google translate and then asked me if it was talking about snakes and I said no haha. Not sure where she got that from.... finally after spending 15 minutes on the tattoo alone she gave up and sent me off to get fingerprinted! W left Puntarenas at 5am and were done with immigration by 10am! After immigration we got to go to the mall for a few hours! I was so happy to see all of the "american" brands and "american" food. I ended up getting Taco Bell (of course) but found I really didn't like it. The cheese is very different here and it was dripping with it. So I decided I wanted some fruit! There were no fruit places, but there were smoothie places so I decided to check them out! As a was walking by I noticed they had some cut up pineapple (my favorite). After coming to Costa Rica basically knowing no Spanish I am proud of how much I have already learned. After a few minutes of thinking I figured out how to ask for just a cup of pineapple, no smoothie. I was pleased when the worker knew exactly what I was asking. :)

Not much else happened after that except thursday night I learned a new card game...entirely in Spanish! My houst dad is the sweetest guy ever and was so excited that I was playing with him. He told me that I could invite my friends over whenever and we could all play together!

My FAVORITE meal here... seriously I love it.

On friday I had my first midterm!! Like I said before, I am technically taking four quarters worth of classes all meshed into 4 months. I got my scores from it today and got a 97/100! I am so proud of myself because I am usually a horrible test taker and blank out. Hard work actually does pay off! Our next midterm is this Friday and I can tell it's going to be a bit harder so I went to a tutor today and it really helped. Wish me luck for the next one!

On Saturday, a few friends and I traveled to Tortuga Isla... What an expirence that was! We started off our day by waking up at 4:30am in order to catch the 5am ferry to Paquera.

Views from the ferry

The only catch is that Paquera is about a 15 minute ride to Curu the national park we were trying to get to. We were told that there wasn't a running bus so we were anticipating having to find a taxi somehow. Although, once we got off the ferry we saw that there actually was a bus running! We just had to figure out if it would be going to Curu or not. So we asked the bus driver and he said yes for 500 colones (less then $1ea) he would take us there! So that was easy enough. The hard part was yet to come.....

Once we got to Curu and paid the park fee we had to walk about 2.5kilos to get to the place where the boat was. We weren't too worried about it until we came across a herd of very curious, easily startled loose cows... I never thought that I was scared of cows until this day! There were well over 150 cows in total that started trampling around when they saw the slighest movement. Maybe it's incorrect of me to say that i'm afraid of the cow itself, because I was more scared of getting caught in the middle of a stampede... At one point we were completely surrounded by cows so we were trying to make no sudden movement so that they wouldnt get riled up and trample us. Finally, we got used to the cows (or as used to them as possible). Then all of a sudden we saw a HUUUUGE bull come running up. He started making some bull-like sounds and that's when I decided it was time to peace out. I went and hid behind a tree hoping the bull wouldn't see me! After we decided the bull was just making sure his chicks were OK I came out from behind the tree. On the way back from the park I decided to document the moment with a picture.

This was the tree I tried blending in with LOL

We were a little early, so we spent about an hour on the beach before we went onto the boat! Once on the boat I started getting really excited and nervous (fear of the ocean started kicking in). But I wasn't going to let that stop my fun! It turned out to be a really great day full of beautiful beaches, and beautiful water. If you want to see how my day went watch the video I made below!