Can gringos dance?

Today was my first day of classes, this means that I had to get up at 5:50 this morning in order to eat the breakfast my host mom prepared for me at 7 and walk to school by 7:45 for class at 8. The only thing that is okay about being up so early is the sun comes up so early that it's not hard to be up early and it sets so early that it's not hard to go to bed early. I had three classes today; Advanced Spanish, Spanish convo, and dances of latin america. Two girls in my group also have the same schedule as me and it was nice to be able to pass the time between classes together exploring Heredia and working on homework (yes, HOMEWORK).

My first class was relatively easy. I really liked my professor and she was very easy for me to understand which made the class much easier and time passed quickly. The Spanish convo class which is suppose to be an easier class proved to be a bit more difficult. But this was only because my professor was hard for me to understand.

The hardest class by far was my dance class! I by no means consider myself a good dancer. BUT, I do have rhythm and can keep a beat, yet this class kicked my butt! It was so difficult! The best part was watching a room full of white kids (gringos) try and dance the typical dances of Costa Rica. When one person messed up, which was every other step, we all were able to laugh at each other which made it much less nerve wracking when you messed up. I wish I could have video taped our first class because I'm pretty sure we could have won an award for the worst group of white kids dancing ever. But seriously, picture the worst white dancer you've ever seen and multiply that by 10, that was what we looked like. IT WAS GREAT! Haha, I really did enjoy myself though and definitely am going to be feeling that work out in my legs tomorrow! I'm really going to be in great shape when I get back from here. I walk every where, which entails walking up and down the mountain side and around the city. And now to top that off I have this dance class twice a week and man! does it wear you out after and hour of dancing! After those three classes I ended up finally getting back to the house around 7:20.

I see my Spanish improving every day whether it be in how quickly I can comprehend a conversation, how much vocabulary I understand, or how well I can communicate in Spanish with the locals and with my host family. I was able to communicate everything that I needed to today with more ease, which is really rewarding! I bought some ice cream, Trits, at school today and it was so delicious! I wish we had something like it back in the states!

Another funny story: Me, Josie, and Carly are trying to find a volunteer opportunity and were told to talk to Martin today about going into his classroom and helping students who are learning English. Well, we went to find him and see if he was in his classroom before class today and the following picture is what happened. The classroom he was suppose to be in had a class in it and Josie and Carly decided it'd be a good idea to make sure there really was a class by looking through the window but Carly couldn't stand up and see through it. It was quite humerus and many of the students were probably laughing at the ridiculous Americans....

(Try to see past the horrible quality)

The biggest news of the day: me and Josie (another girl in my group) are organizing a trip this weekend to Manuel Antonio which is a BEAUTIFUL beach about two hours from Heredia. And after talking with our USAC director we figured out that if we get enough people together we can rent out the USAC bus for only $35-$40 per person for a 12 person bus, which is only about $10 more than it would cost to take the public busing. So we decided we would feel better doing this that chancing taking the local busing system (it's kinda scary to me still, though I've been told it's very safe). Plus, we figured out that the hotel we had been looking at wouldn't be worth the extra money so we're looking into staying at a hostel while we're there. Which is like a large room full of beds where everyone sleeps and we each get our own locker for our stuff and use of the bathroom along with hot water (which is hard to come by here!) and all of that is only $12 a night! We're going to leave Friday afternoon and come back Sunday afternoon. Carlitos (the USAC director) said that if we go we have to go to the national park there which is $10 to get in for the day so we're going to do that as well. My thoughts are: if I can go to a gorgeous beach and get there, find a place to stay, eat, and explore all for under $200 for the whole weekend then I'm happy. And it looks like it's only to be well under that! It's sad that I'm in such a beautiful country and still think of all the money I'm going to spend before I can commit to going somewhere...Please note that I really had in my mind that I was going to go on this trip no matter what the cost was, it was just the math major in me that lead me to figure out how much it would actually cost...

Two facts of the day: Did you know Costa Rica was the third country in the world to get electricity?
Also, I still can't get over the T.V shows here. They're all the shows we have back at home but with Spanish voices played over the English ones. It's quite funny to watch a show, such as America's Next Top Model which I've seen every episode, in a different language with different voices. I just can't get over it, it's hard not to laugh every time a show I know comes on!

Well, though nothing terribly exciting happened today, I really enjoyed another day here in this beautiful country and cannot wait to see what tomorrow has in store for me.

Until then,
♥SEJ