Happy Friday! I've completed my first week of school here, and I've learned a lot and met some great people. I'm living in an apartment building owned by the school, with about 10 other students. There is a really nice dog named Eruz who keeps a friendly but protective eye on all of us. There is also- I love this!- a band, like a marching band except they don't move around, that plays in the field across the street every day at 3pm! I want to figure out who they are. I sort of want to play with them!
Four of us share my particular apartment unit- there are four private rooms with private baths, and a kitchen/dining are and patio we share. My apartment-mates are a young woman from Norway and a couple from Sao Paulo. The woman from Norway, Cecilia, is basically fluent in English. The couple from Brazil doesn't speak much English, although the guy, Caeo, speaks a little more than his girlfriend Paula. So, we speak in [basic] Spanish, which is great! The apartments have a really nice pool where we all spend a lot of time hanging out in the late afternoon. Cecilia and I, along with a lot of other North Americans here, do socialize in English a lot, but so far the balance of English and Spanish in my daily life is such that I am making friends but still definitely improving in Spanish, so I like it.
My class at CPI, the school, was good this week. At first it wasn't great- the teacher didn't seem to understand our questions and there was sometimes down time. But it definitely got better and today was very good. We played "Tabu" in class-- Taboo the board game in Spanish! I love that game anyway, and it was a great vocabulary builder. There were four people in my class- the max allowed. They place students by level and it was pretty accurate for our group. Next week two of us are continuing, so we'll have a new teacher and probably two new classmates. I also signed up to do some extra conversation classes in the afternoon next week; I want to get the most out my time here.
The staff at the school are fantastic. They won't speak to you in English unless you're really struggling, but they'll help with anything. The daily routine is that the bus picks us up at the apartments at 7:30 (or so...), classes start at 8, and there's a break at 10 during which time they serve traditional Costa Rican snacks like fruit, fried tortillas with bean paste, and pan de coco (coconut bread). Classes end at noon. After class there are different optional activities; this week there was salsa dancing on Tuesday, cooking class on Wednesday, and an excursion to another nearby beach, Playa Tamarindo, on Thursday, among other things.
Playa Tamarindo is very touristy, it's pretty terrible. I went into one very nice store, and when the shopkeeper spoke to me in English, I kept responding in Spanish. She asked me where I was studying and when I told her, she gave me a discount. :) Despite hourds of tourists, though, the beach was lovely.
Today, four other students and I signed up for a canopy tour (zip lining) nearby. We were virtually assured we'd see monkeys! Unfortunately, we got to a point on the small road where traffic was backed up. Our driver got out to see what the problem was. When he came back, he told us there had been a fatal accident, and that the road would probably be closed for the rest of the day. It sounded horrible- very tragic. We will reschedule our ziplining for next week. The roads here are narrow, not well kept up (I'm told the country invests instead in health care and education), and dangerous. Very sad.
Also this week, I ventured into the aforementioned animal rescue place down the street, along with a fellow student's girlfriend who's visiting, an animal lover like I. The place is run by a German woman who takes in abandoned dogs and cats and, sort of unoficially, tries to find them better homes. When we stopped by, she was taking care of the skinniest dog I'd ever seen. I'm so glad she's doing what she's doing!
This place is a small world in many ways. There was a man in my class who lived in the next town over from me in NC for 9 years. One of my new friends, who lives in Oregon, discovered that one of the guys here who's just out of college dated her niece's roommate in college, in Wisconsin. Wow.
Tomorrow, I'm off to see Rincon de Viejo volcanic national park. I hope to have lots of wildlife pictures to post soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment