Early Morning

Hola Todos,

It's 5:30am here. I've been getting up really early like this all week. The sun rises around this time, and I guess I'm just not used to daylight coming through the window. Last night when we finally got home, (the bus ride was like 40 minutes, because of traffic, and had standing room only.) Ericka made vegetarian lasagna, and Wilbert talked to us for like two hours about soccer, and all the other host students he's had, and poker, and movies, and he even taught us a couple card tricks.

A new host student just moved into the house yesterday- she flew in from England. Her name is Sarah. I haven't met her yet because she was asleep all yesterday evening, but sometime during the night she locked our door to the shared bathroom to pee or something, and then never unlocked it. So, I'm going to have to go wake her ass up shortly. I don't know what I'm going to do now- I was using the empty bedroom to dry my hair in the morning- everything echoes here, so the hairdryer is too loud to just use in the bathroom.

Today we are going on some tours. I don't know what, but our whole weekend is planned out. Tonight, Crystal, Jacque, John and I are planning on going to a Karaoke bar in our neighborhood. I think it will be fun, and John said that even if you don't drink, it's fun to listen to people sing.

However, as fun as it is to go out and do stuff every minute of every day, we have to study as well. I have about 25 new verbs to learn to conjugate this weekend, as well as vocabulary and sentences to write for homework. We are learning all the irregular past tense verbs, like decir and traducir. It's beat up. I need to find a cafe and just study for a few hours, but it's hard when you aren't really able to go anywhere alone, and you don't know which cafes are even close or what their names are. I guess I'll just take my book on the tour today, and try to study when we have a bus ride or something. I really want to do well in the class, and I don't see how other people make time for studying if we are always going out.

Yesterday, we went to the mall and bought some shampoo and stuff, and I bought a shirt with a monster face on it that said "What are monsters afraid of? The Dentist!" lol. It was like 15 bucks american, which is 7500 colones. The lady asked me if I wanted to try it on (en espanol), and I understood the gyst of what she was saying, but I didn't recognize a lot of the words. That's the hard part about talking here- I know a lot of grammar, but not a lot of vocabulary. It's hard to even understand Ericka sometimes. And it takes so long to form sentences. You're just like: Quiero aprender... um... mucho espanol sobre... um... es muy facil y divertido. lol. That translates roughly to: I want to learn a lot of Spanish, because it is very easy and fun. Edward, my teacher, assures me that in three weeks, we'll be speaking Spanish very smoothly and we'll know more than we ever thought. I told him: Como se dice contract? Tiene escribir su nombre en un contract con mi, y entonces sabemos es verdad. Which, hopefully, translates roughly to: How do you say contract? You need to write your name on a contract with me, and then we know it's true.

Anyway, enough spanish. I've got to go wake Sarah up so I can get a shower. Also, fun facts: Ketchup comes out of a pouch here, no one has a clothes dryer- they just have a special room that has no ceiling and has lines to dry clothes. There is no personal space. Rush hour traffic is worse than at home. They don't cover anything in the fridge. You only get hot water for maybe 30 seconds. When there's a futbol game on (soccer to us), if Costa Rica is playing, everything stops. Everyone watches. If Costa Rica wins, people are given the rest of that day and the next day off. And I mean everyone. The coffee is delicious here- that is not just bullshit that people say. It really is delicious- I could drink it black. It's smooth, never bitter.

Anyway, I'll definitely get some pictures today- I got some of our house, but I haven't had time to post them. Maybe sometime this evening between studying and karaoke and bed. Let me know how you guys are doing!! Oh, and thanks for the email, Kat!! Glad you guys had fun. I'll reply asap.

-Mal