Hola Amigos!!

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Hola! Como estas amigas? (Hi! How are you friends?)

On Wednesday, I had Spanish Class in the morning and then my NCC Class in the afternoon. Both are going great! In my Spanish Class, we walked around the institute for about an hour and our professor told us about the different medicinal plants and others that grown there. We even got to try (yes eat!) some of the leaves. Others, like garlic and oregano smelled so good! It was really interesting because most of the plants are good for headaches, upset stomachs etc. To give you all a better sense of my school imagine this: basically it is in the mountains (no joke!), with tons of plants, banana trees, flowers of all varieties everywhere and nestled in between are building with 3-4 rooms more or less with a table and 5 or so chairs and a dry erase board on the wall. Some rooms have TVs others do not. All have sliding screen doors which usually are left open or just the screen so bugs don’t get in. There is a bunch of cats at my school too that rome around and are SO cute! Some are orange and white and I want to take them home. They definitely get a lot of attention from me! Also in many places there are sweet hammocks that you can sit in during breaks or even sometimes we have class in them. The institute was founded 15 years ago and they have a website (in English!) if anyone would like to check it out: www.iclc.ws.

Also on Wednesday, we had a mini 1 hour dancing class! I learned how to salsa, meringue and many other dances! Although, I definitely need more practice, when I come back to the states I’m sure I will have some good moves!

With a holiday on Monday, this week just flew by for me and on Thursday I had school then a bunch of us had some lunch and then went to “Mega Super.” It’s a HUGE supermarket/grocery store/Walmart! They have everything! From pots and pans to clothes and peanut butter! And when you find peanut butter around here it’s a party, and its also at least US$5! Lauren and I decided we wanted to make some good o’ fattening American chocolate chip cookies! Realizing that we would be spending like $30 dollars to buy all of the ingredients to make the cookies from scratch, we decided to go with the package cookie mix where you just have to add eggs and butter. All in all, they did turn out pretty tasty and our host families liked them too. Only one small problem occurred in the beginning when we turned the oven to 300 degrees and started baking only to realize that the oven is in Celsius not Fahrenheit! So the oven was clearly way to hot! (By the way, 350 F is 180 C!) Important lesson learned! 😊 I played the big sister role tonight too, as my brother Juan Diego played for an hour tonight! And I watched my newest favorite show with my host mama, Latin American Idol!

And today, I had Spanish class and my weekly test. We also cooked today at school!! We made empanadas!

This weekend I am not traveling anywhere too exciting, just to the couple of smaller towns near me for the day and possibly the pool on Sunday! It shall be a relaxing weekend. The next 4-5 weekends, I am traveling to all different places so it will be nice to spend some time around mi casa (my house).

Thank you to everyone all for the messages/comments that you have been leaving me on my blog!! I love getting the messages! Its so great to hear from you all and I’m glad to know that some people are actually reading this!

Also, I would love to receive snail mail letters too, my address at my school is:

Instituto de Cultural y Lengua Costarricense
Attention to: Courtney Hancock
P.O. Box 609-4050
Alajuela, Costa Rica


PURA VIDA ~Courtney

p.s... Cultural Lesson of the Day: “Pura Vida” is a VERY common expression used here and it is used when someone asks you how you are. It means that life is great. Ticos are very happy and content people and they invest lots of time and effort into relationships thus asking how you are doing. Pura Vida!

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