Football and class, am I really in Costa Rica?

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September 13, 2010

Weekend:
The past weekend was very relaxing, and reminded me a lot of my recent trip to Dahab and past visits to Mexico. With the town a little sleepy due to the rainy season, there was not a whole lot to be doing. I spent the majority of my weekend in front of a TV watching football. Saturday was college football, and the local sports bar, Sharky’s, has direct TV and 5 screens! I never realized how amazing watching 5 games at a time could be. It was great to see the Huskies demolish Syracuse, and that quarterback from Michigan is making quite a name for himself.

Sunday was NFL day, and what a surprise it was to see the Seattle Seahawks score 20+ unanswered points and absolutely stun everyone by beating the 49ers. I have a buddy here from the Bay area and we were watching the game together, it started out great for him but then he couldn’t believe what happened, and neither could I. At halftime we decided to go get a smoothie since all we’d been drinking was beer for the past few hours and we happened to go out during a downpour. We were gone maybe 10 minutes, 15 max, and on the 3 block walk to the smoothie place we got soaked. I looked like I had just come out of a pool. The photocopy of my passport that I had been keeping in my pocket was ruined, but thankfully my colones were made of sturdier material. As the rainy season begins here I must get used to this occurring. They suggested an umbrella on the packing list but I thought they were joking. I might need to buy one now. I can only imagine how wet Montverde will be, seeing as it is in the rainforest. At least in Tamarindo it normally stays dry in the mornings, and showers are only sporadic in the afternoon. As soon as it gets dark its fair game for downpours and thunder and lightning.

Monday:

Today was my first day of class. After attempting to go to bed relatively early I slept like crap and was already up when my alarm went off at 6:30. After some toast and a quick shower I went to take my placement exam, however the director wasn’t there. At 7 45 I finally took it, breezing through the 3 pages in less than 15 minutes. I aced every section except for por vs para, and the irregular past tense verbs. I definitely need a refresher on irregular verbs. Today in class our unit was on the imperfect past. Cake. I did this stuff freshman year of high school. I don’t want to be overbearing and ask to be moved, but it was killing me as we took 2 hours to learn 3 verb endings and 3 irregular verbs. That could have taken 15 minutes. I did learn a bit about when to use the imperfect. Sadly I need a refresher on numbers and some more basic things, but I have 10 weeks so I can’t be too impatient. It is nice however that my class consists of myself, my roommate Kyle, and 1 teacher. We have 2 hours of grammar lessons, which include much conversation (we have to give her examples of the grammar on the spot so we are forced to use our Spanish and she doesn’t speak in English unless there is a word we really can’t figure out) and then after a 20 minute break we have 2 hours with our culture/ speaking teacher. Today we did arts and crafts which seemed a bit odd to me but Wednesday is independence day here in Costa Rica so we are making lanterns for our party tomorrow night. Historically all Costa Ricans make these lanterns and have a big parade the night of the 14th of September even though September 15th is independence day. We have no class on Wednesday so I’m thinking of taking a day trip somewhere or partying hard Tuesday night (Sounders play Saprissa, a Costa Rican team). I only have a week here so I want to get to know as much of Tamarindo as possible, but I don’t think there is much left to explore. I still need to go swim at some point, but with the bad weather the water is dirty and not many hours of sunlight exist to enjoy the beach. I might take a surf lesson later in the week but I need to talk with the surf instructors.

The U.S. Open final is about to start so I am going to watch that with my buddy and then at 5 we have a welcome drink for myself and the one other new student. After that its tie for some Monday night football! I need a big game from the KC running back if I have a chance at winning my fantasy game this week. Peyton Manning killed me, 30 points, that was 3/8 of my opponents points.

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