San Jose

Sarah: You all know that I now go into the city for 2 nights a week to receive extra Spanish tutoring and to work part-time for the Latin American Studies Program (LASP). Here is what that looks like: every Tuesday morning David drives me up to the bus stop, about 45 minutes away, where I catch the bus heading into San Jose. Once the bus reaches the city, I get off and take a taxi into work. I stay with a family nearby on Tuesday nights and Wednesday nights, and then after work on Thursday I catch the bus back out to the valley and David picks me up at the top of the hill. Often it works out for David to join me for part of the week as he uses the time to run errands in the city, and I always enjoy that!

My family that I live with is wonderful. They are a Nicaraguan family, and they live relatively close to the office. It’s only about a 20 minute walk for me every morning and afternoon. Aminta is my mother, and I have a brother, Sergio, and a sister, Claudia. AND a really great dog, Ramon. We usually sit around and do homework in the evenings while watching TV, both in Spanish and English. They are a super laid-back family. Aminta works incredibly hard (she works for the Nicaraguan Embassy here in CR), and she’s up before all of us cooking and usually goes to bed fairly late as well. Almost every single day, after she gets home from a long day of work, she goes to put on her red sweatpants. And almost every day, she receives a bit of mocking by her children for wearing those red sweatpants! Claudia just about had a cow one evening when she went grocery shopping in her red sweatpants! They are a very loving family, and they pick on each other a lot and laugh a lot. The dog provides for a lot of entertainment as well – he seems to think he owns the bean bag chair, and will push anyone off that tries to sit on it. He has a great personality and is a really fun-loving dog.

The Spanish tutoring has been such a great experience. I meet with two different teachers, once a week with each of them. Harold and I meet Wednesday morning, and we go through some Spanish exercises using pictures or situations to get me using new vocabulary or a certain tense in Spanish. Harold keeps a sheet of paper in front of him, and every time I make a mistake, he is quick to write it down for me to see. :) Eli and I meet Thursday mornings. I always have homework waiting for me when I get into the city on Tuesday – some reading about politics, religion, or other topics – and then we use the time Thursday morning to discuss it. Both teachers draw different trouble areas out of me, and I only wish that I could meet with them every day of the week!

Work has also been going well. I work in the afternoons Tuesday – Thursday, and it’s been really great to work with the LASP staff. And I have found that I also really enjoy working on “administrative tasks”. It’s also fun being in the city. I’ve had some interesting taxi rides – most taxi drivers don’t say hardly a word, but some are fairly entertaining and seem to want to have a full conversation. One taxi driver ended up talking about how he loves languages, Portuguese in particular. I told him that I had spent some time in Brazil, and that was enough encouragement for him to speak in Portuguese to me the rest of the ride. I tried my best to respond in Portuguese, though most of what came out was Spanish with a Portuguese word thrown in here and there. He even went so far as to start singing Christian praise songs for me in Portuguese! Another taxi driver and I had a conversation about politics, languages, and economics on our ride. He actually told me he thought I was Russian…I’m not sure what that says about my Spanish accent!