Another day in Costa

This post is by Kate. (I have had a request to write the author of the post at the top so that readers know who's writing.)

Today I walked with Eric and Nicole to class and then ran through town back to the villa. After doing some more exercises and taking the laundry off the line, I showered up and went into town. I didn't have much of a purpose, so I decided to go buy a notebook and grab a coffee so I could sit and work on some Spanish. Nicole brought this awesome guide to Costa Rican Spanish, so I brought that with me and our Spanish/English dictionary. I mainly looked up parts of the body, because I noticed here that not a lot of ticos exercise. I think it is definitely something that's lacking in their quality of life. I thought that maybe I could volunteer at the community center teaching some sort of aerobics class. So, I started on that and got most of the parts of the body down, but then I started on exercise phrases like "lift up" or "look at me" and those were a bit harder. After sitting, drinking coffee, and sweating a bit, I went into the market and bought 2 red onions, 1 zucchini, 1 avocado, 2 tomatoes, and 3 bananas for less than $5. I thought that was pretty good. 

When I got home around 1:30pm, I was going to wash our sheets and pillow cases, but the power was out. Apparently that happens occasionally for a couple hours at a time. By the time it came on at 3:30pm, it was too late to do the wash b/c there would not be enough sunlight to dry it (sun sets around 5:30/5:45pm). So... I spent most of my afternoon working on school stuff for ECU and looking up possible housing and jobs/internships. I sent off my resume to 4 places and have heard back from 1 so far. The one I heard back from is in Nicaragua and it is an unpaid internship working at a school. It would be good to do something like that for a couple months to get experience and then possibly getting a paying job. Eric should be able to get a paying job no problem when he gets certified. I am going to get my certification as well online... just don't know when. 

Eric got home today around 5:45pm. We did not have dinner per se, just a few beers with Steve. Eric made himself a sandwich, but I had eaten something around 4pm and wasn't hungry. The big excitement for tonight were a couple people who parked their truck under the streetlight outside the house. Steve was all suspicious, so he and Eric went to go investigate. Apparently the people were just hanging out there for some reason. Steve told us about a neighborhood up on a hill that we can see from our villa that, in the past, would constantly get robbed. He said if someone gets robbed around here, the people go out on their porch and shoot their gun off in the air a few times. This lets the neighbors know that they got robbed and if the robbers come back that they will get shot. Steve said he has never had a problem at our place, but that the people down the street got a microwave stolen. What used to happen when the economy started booming and a lot of development was going on, was they needed more workers. So, they became a little bit lax at the boarder, and let all kinds of people from South America in without much regulation and w/o checking passports. That led to a lot of problems and crime, so they've tightened that up. People from many countries can only stay in Costa Rica for 30 days. We are lucky to be able to stay for 90 I guess. 

So, either way, nothing too crazy happening today. I helped Eric plan out his lesson plan. He is teaching upper beginner level for his first class on Friday. On their first time teaching, you do it with a partner. His partner is Ana, a 60 something year old lady from Romania. They have to teach with forms of "to be going" phrases that have a general time period. For example, a son asks his dad, "What will we do next weekend" and the dad replies, "We will be going to the beach next weekend". 

Anyways, we are getting ready for bed here, so buenos noches and pura vida!

Kate