CR – Thursday March 24, 2011 Day 13

Day 13

We’re nearing the end of our second week in Costa Rica and I’m hoping that you haven’t been bored by the postings. I’m doing all of the writing and Ginger is serving as editor in chief, as well as investigative reporter. She takes her job seriously, she talks to everybody…err…I mean she interviews everybody. Yeah that’s it….she “interviews” everybody (LOL). I type using my own typing method and as a result, I type very slowly and make lots of spelling and grammatical errors so please forgive the liberties I take with my words, etc.

Classes were much better for me today. The professor, as always, started the day off by having us tell what we did the night before and once I got started, I didn’t want to stop. The content in the class is still very challenging, but today I felt like I made a break though. Ginger continues to make progress as well and shared with me that she hit a little mental wall while studying today. In her class, they are learning future tense and she says that she too is forgetting past tense conjugations. I comforted her by telling her to “Suck it up” and she’s okay now. 🙂

After class Ginger, Lucas and I had lunch at a little Caribbean restaurant named de Mami. The food was out of this world. Without a doubt I had the best fish dish I’ve ever had. We’ll definitely go there once more before leaving CR.

For the last two nights we had the opportunity to converse with other members of our CR family. Jessica, the youngest daughter has stopped by with her two year old daughter, Sofia, a few times and has been gracious enough to carry on lengthy spanish conversations with us. Two year old Sofia and Ginger are best of buddies. They play games on Ginger’s iPone. Patricia (the oldest daughter) and her husband Fransico also stopped by with their two children, Christina and Frankie. In an earlier post I mentioned that Fransico was in the hospital with pneumonia. He’s doing much better now and looks good.

Tonight I had a good conversation with Bernie, Sonya’s brother-in-law. He’s an interesting guy and gave a lot of useful tips to help me retain my study material. He also shared with me was is was like for him to learn English in the US. We walked around the house and as he pointed to things, I said their spanish names. Two year old Sofia is doing the same thing, but in English! 😦

More news from the Costa Rican front:

Sorry to rub it in but the weather pattern is really nice. Today the temperature maxed out at around 84 degrees and now it’s cooling off a bit. This is the end of the winter season.
There are only two seasons in CR, winter and summer. Summer is the rainy season and that’s the only major difference between the two seasons. During the summer in Heredia, you can basically do everything you want to do outside before noontime then you have to deal with the rain up until about 6:00pm when the rain stops. This is the predictable weather pattern most days of the summer in Heredia, CR.

There are tons of cars in Heredia. We’ve seen cars that don’t exist in the US as well as vintage US cars that US collectors would love to have. Orlando (our tico) just picked up his restored truck from the painter. It looks great. Mopeds are plentiful here as well.

Tonight we head out to a club in San Jose with a bus load of students from the school. The name of the club is Castro’s…we’re looking forward to dancing but are not looking forward to all the cigarette smoke. There are no laws about smoking inside restaurants in Costa Rica.

Tomorrow morning we both have exams but of course, we’re out late tonight. Send us your bets wishes for test success.

That’s all for now.

C-yah later…

CR – Wednesday March 23, 2011 Day 12

Day 12

At breakfast I spoke with my mama tica about how I was feeling in class and she gave some great advice. She said that I should be patient and just relax. Whatever I learn, I learn and whatever I don’t, I don’t and not to stress out over it. She said that the way I am feeling is normal and is a feeling shared by many students. I know all of this but sometimes you just need to hear it again.

We got to school early today so I was able to speak to my professor. He basically said the same thing as Sonya but added that I should not compare myself with the other students who are all much younger than me.

It’s amazing to me how fast some of the students are picking up the spanish language. Lucas has only been studying Spanish for two months and he is already at Ginger’s level. Anika of Holland from last weeks class also demonstrated similar talent for learning Spanish. Even Akira from Japan is also picking up spanish rapidly.

My professor also said that this language acquisition ability is due in great part to the fact that most Europeans and Asians are multilingual. Being multilingual makes it much easier to acquire new languages rapidly. Basically he was saying, “Get over it.” I did and am now back on track.

Tomorrow night we’re going to San Jose and plan to visit the volcanos on Saturday.

That’s all for tonight.

Later