WOW!! The first week went by very fast. I love it here. I am living with a family of four. I have two sisters named Maria Jose (age 8) and Laura (age 3). They are the sweetest and funniest girls. Maria goes to the school where I teach and is actually in one of my classes.
My father is Santiago who has three jobs and is a great dad. He is very smart and definitely knows more about space and computers than I do... My mom is amazing.
She knows only a little English so we laugh a lot. My mom is the secretary at San Ambrosia, where I teach. The first weekend here my dad was able to borrow his mom´s car so they took me around Costa Rica to show me great places. I went to a river, Samara beach and Carrillo beach, and then we even went to the pool. They took me out to eat at a great place where we all ordered fruit drinks!! They are amazing here. The fruit is RICO (delicious) here and I cannot stop eating it.
Did you know there are three different kinds of Mangos.... well I did find out that I have to stop eating one kind because I guess I am allergic to it. Oops. The food here is great. I really like their spices. It is not spicy though. They have rice with every meal!
My house is great. We live a couple of blocks from downtown so I have walked there a lot with Sarah, Kirbi, Megan and Mel (the other girls on the trip). It is so hot here that I do not have any sheets, which is nice because I do not have to a bed to make in the morning. The second day that I was here the town shut off the water, which was very interesting. Apparently the town can do that without letting us know!
San Ambrosia Catholic School is not like I pictured the school to be. I thought it would be a closed in building but it is not at all. This is better because of the heat here. The classrooms are all open to the outside. The cafeteria is much better here than in the US and that is great!
The kids are great. The first thing they did was practice their English. They would all say, "Hello! How are you?"
Now, I am involved in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades. Second grade is going to be my hardest class because the students are very rowdy, and right now I cannot tell them in Spanish to settle down. In the 2nd grade I had a boy climb through the back of his chair and he was stuck for a good 5-10 minutes. My cooperating teacher was having a hard time getting him out!
I have only been in the school a couple of full days because when any grade goes on field trips the five of us girls get to go with them. One day we climbed a nearby mountain while stopping along the way to talk about each station of the cross. One night near Easter the whole town comes together at night and participates in the ceremony. I was able to go with the 10th and 11th graders, and we had a great experience.
Another field trip that I went on was with sixth grade to the Santa Rosa National Park. I have learned a great deal already in the first week and cannot image how much I am going to learn by the end.
The five of us girls are getting along great and I could not have asked for better strangers to come together! This next week is the school's spring break so we are going to travel!!
