another day, another post!

Hello Again dear friends ~

It’s been merely two days and I’m writing to you again. Can you handle it??

Things are still going well here. We talk about how when we’re learning, we should be “paddling to keep our heads above water.” Our director keeps remind us that this means that we shouldn’t be drowning, nor should we be floating on our backs drinking a piña colada.

Well, then, following that analogy, I’m treading water quite rapidly. But it’s a good water tread, I think. I’m not quite sure how to describe it. If I were at Dordt, my class load and homework would be considered “light.” For yesterday, I had to read about 30 pages of articles, write a 2 ½ page summary in Spanish, and do 2 exercises in Spanish. But here in Costa Rica, I end up with about 3 hours or less of working time each day.

The rushed schedule in terms of homework is worth it, though. Getting to know my Costa Rican family has already been a wonderful experience, and I’ve only been with them just over a week. The experience of culture, learning, and living is definitely one that I won’t ever forget.

Communicating with my family has been going fairly well. I´d wager a guess that I can probably communicate with them about 60% of the time. Intense conversations and Spanish TV are the hardest to understand, but they´re pretty good about explaining things if I get a "I have no idea what´s going on" look on my face!

Yesterday we had our first guest speaker in class and he presented in Spanish and a staff member translated. My notes were written in mostly Spanish, but some English. I’m probably the only one who can understand what I meant by everything I wrote, but at least I probably know what it meant!

My days are long, usually starting between 5:30 and 7:00 every morning and ending around 9:30 each night. It’s been an education in getting everything done. But it’s been good. A few things are unpredictable, like arriving anywhere between 5 and 30 minutes early for class depending on the buses, but having a traveling partner is a great blessing!

As always, I hope that you’re all doing well, staying safe and blessed.

Hasta pronto…