I love to dance!

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Today I had my first dance class and I loved it! Who knew I was meant to dance? It was funny though, because for some reason, I expected the class to be in English (even though I am in Costa Rica) and it definately was confusing at first. They don't teach you dance vocabulary in Spanish class in the US! I must say, though, that I'm pretty good 😊 We learned the basic steps of salsa, merengue, and ballero. Turns are called vueltas and are the most fun thing I have ever done. I just dance all the time now from when I wake up until I go to bed. My mamacita gets a good laugh out of it. I also know the guy part for all the dances because there were too many girls in the class and I'm tall, which I guess automatically makes me the guy...oh well! It just means I'll know how to teach Brandon his part! It's funny because I love all the music down here that I dance to, so I can just see me being that gringo when I come back blasting the reggaeton in my car...

Other random things down here that I love: every fruit is unreal, especially mangos and papayas and we get to eat fruit with every meal. They make jugo, or juice, from every single fruit imaginable and it is SOO unbelievably good. Oh, and they have this stuff called queso creama, which traslates like cream cheese but is so different...so rich and wonderful and probablly unbelievably fattening, but I don't care. I could eat it every second of my life! Go figure most of my loves are about food! lol. Okay, one more about food and thats it....they call everything here that has a sause salsa and it is really hard to figure out what type of sause it really is but I basically want to swim in all of them so I don't care!

Lastly, I love the attitude of all the people here. Tranquila y calma are all everyone ever says and it's amazing how relazed and layed back everyone is. My computer erased my essay right when I was trying to save it to my jump drive and I started crying and my teacher was so nice and clam about it and just told me to turn it in tomorrow. In the uS, I probably would have gotten a lot of points taken of or something, but she was just telling me it wasn't a big deal. Pura vida sums it all up and it is amazing and a great thing for me to learn. I have become a calmer person here and am learning how to be more independent every day. I am so grateful for the opportunity to come here and experience everything Costa Rica has to offer and I know that I will remember this trip and the things I gain from it for the rest of my life. I actually took the bus by myself in a foreign country to a foreign house with foreign money...who would have thought I could ever do that?! I'm learning how to survive without a cell phone or computer because both are luxeries here. I am also learning not to take anything for granted and to live every day to it's fullest. Also, I went to an international club meeting (all in Spanish, let me remind you) all by myself because no one else wanted to go. I'm learning how to put myself out there and in uncorfortable situations, but it is paying off and I know I will be a better person in the end.

¡Pura Vida y hasta luego!

Jules

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