The Past Few Days in a Nut Shell

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I have been SUPER busy these past few days, and I was already behind to begin with, so after my food post, I will write a short summary of my past week in Costa Rica. On monday, classes started. The bus picks students up at la parada, or bus stop, at 730, 745, and 8. Classes start at 830, but a lot of students go earlier to use the wifi, call home, or work on homework. Obviously, I don´t go anywhere early, and this is no different. Our schedule looks like this Monday through Friday–

830 to 930 Clase ‹Class›

930 to 940 Descanso ‹Break›

940 to 1040 Clase

1040 to 11 Marienda ‹Snack›

11 to 12 Clase

12 to 1210 Descanso

1210 to 110 Clase

110 Almuerzo ‹Lunch›

The actual class is not that bad. There are short grammar lessons which are mostly review. But there is a lot of conversation about pretty much what ever we want to talk about. The classes are divided by skill level and there are 4 people in each class. There are three other girls in my class and then the professor. There are a lot of activities on the Conversa campus that we can do during class. There is a mock hospital, grocery store, travel agency, bank, and restaurant. We go to one of these places each day to improve our vocab for specific situations. It is a great way to make learing Spanish for 4 hours a little more fun.

Monday, after class, We went to Alimentado Esperanza. It is an organization that is located in a very poor village about 20 minutes outside of Santa Ana. They feed breakfast to the children every morning and have a room full of toys inside that they can play with. They also have a park and a trampoline for the children. We went that day to meet with the coordinators to learn about the project and how we can help. After returning to Santa Ana, I went shopping with a few other students to buy art supplies for the next day.

Tuesday, I had class again. After class the majority of students went back to Alimentado Esperanza. We got art supplies, soccer balls, and snacks for the children. When we first got there, I went with a few children to recruit more around the town. Walking through the town was actually kind of sad. It is an extremely impovered town where there are children walking around without shoes, the houses are literally shacks with tin roofs and the children we so dirty. I met this one boy, Steven, that had a condition that looked like one of his legs were longer than the other, so he had trouble walking. He couldn't keep up with the other children because of his disability. I believe that it iwould be something that could be fixed, if only his family had the money to do so. It was hard to realize that there are people that actually live like this. But it also very very inspiring to see how happy these children were that we came just to play with them. I will be returning to Alimentado esperanza tomorrow and a few times next week.

Wednesday, we left class a few hours early to go to Herra Dura. It is a beach on the Pacific coast about two hours away from Santa Ana. On the way there, we stopped at this bridge over a small river. It was highly infested with crocodiles. It was crazy to see them in real life, in the wild. There were over 20 crocodiles near the bridge. About twenty minutes after that, we arrived at the beach. It was beautiful. Herra dura means horseshoe, and thats the shape of the beach. It was a beautiful cove. The water was the perfect temperature, too. I was in the water for about 4 hours just playing in the waves, having chicken fights and just hanging out. After being there for almost an hour, I felt a quick sharp shock. I thought I was stung by a jellyfish, but later learned that there are these tiny eels that shock you when they swim past. I got shocked 4 or 5 times throughout the day. It hurt pretty bad at first, but I just got used to it because I didn´t want to get out of the water. We watched the sun go down while in the water, and then headed back to Santa Ana.

Today, ‹I am finally caught up!› my allergies were veryyyy bad. I´m guessing because of all the salt water I inhaled the day before. After class, I laid in the hammock for about 2 hours and just relaxed. After that, a dance teacher came to Conversa and taught us a bunch of latino dances. It was really hard, but a lot of fun. It was a pretty uneventful day, but a nice break from all the craziness of the past week.

That´s all for now. Tomorrow I´m going back to Alimentando Esperanza after class and then getting my nails done. Saturday we are going rafting, and Sunday we are going to one of Costa Rica´s 7 volcanos.

Adios!

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