August 24, 2010: A Looooooong Day

Today was a loooong day. I had Spanish class this morning from 10 – 12 (it went a half hour longer than the official time) and ate lunch at school. I had forgotten to tell my host mom that I wasn’t planning on coming home for lunch so I had to buy lunch at school in the “Soda,” which is what the call a little cafeteria. I got a plate of rice and beans (of course), salad, suflé de palmito (quiche that has a vegetable that comes from the fruit of mountain palm trees), and a couple fried bananas with mango/carrot juice. YUM! I didn’t have my next class till six in the evening, but decided to stay at school to do some work in the library instead of walking the half hour back home and the half hour back. I wasn’t very productive as far as homework goes this weekend, so I have some catching up to do : ) At 3:30 I met with Abby and Corrylee to work on our project, which is coming along nicely. Then went to my night class, Pablo, and was really sleepy! I really enjoyed the class though. The professor, whom I might have already talked about, is from Brasil, so Spanish is her second language. This is very convenient for me since she talks slowly and clearly. I can even pick up on a few of her mispronunciations and Portuguese-isms. For instance, for lots of words that should be pronounced with the letter “b” she pronounces with “v.” Also, a lot of her e’s (which should sound like ‘ay’) sound more like ‘ee.’ I also heard her say “veentitres” instead of “veintitres.” I’m not being critical of her in a bad way, I just think it’s interesting! Anyway, we have finally moved from the introductory phase of the class into examining books of the Bible. Tonight we just did an overview of I Thessalonians and next week we’re going to get into the themes. In doing the overview, she assigned pairs of us to read and summarize small chunks of the five chapters in I Thess., which meant that I had to talk out loud in front of the class! I instantly felt a wave of nervousness come over me, but calmed down and waited my turn. My friend in the class, named Karina, explained her part and then I went and did fine. Phew! We didn’t get out of class in time for me to catch the bus so I grabbed a taxi, since there is always a bunch of them lined up in from of the school. When we pulled up to our house, the driver said, “You live with Gidgeth!?” It turns out that he knows my older sister well, because she calls him specifically to take her places when she needs a ride late at night or in sketchy places, and because he is her trusted taxi-driver friend. She gave me his number when I went to San José for the ballet this past Saturday so that I could call him for a ride back to Mercedes Norte where I live. So I called him, but he wasn’t working that night. So tonight he realized who I was and introduced himself and now I have a trusty taxi-driver friend named Marvin! What a strange coincidence. When I went inside I had a nice chat with Mom, Xinia. The first thing she asked me was, “Tiene hambre?” And of course, I was indeed hungry. She told me it was bummer that I hadn’t come home for lunch because she had made “olla de carne” (I’m not sure if I spelled that right), which (I feel like I’m repeating myself) is a soup with huge chunks of meat and veggies and is delicious! She showed me some pictures of a place that her family went to that I might try to visit in Costa Rica and then I ate the stew she made, which although it wasn’t fresh out of the crockpot, was still “muy rica”! I have been working on homework ever since, and now it is definitely time for bed! Thank goodness I don’t have class till one tomorrow!