Friday. The most beautiful day of the week. Not only was the weather gorgeous (sunny with temps in the 80s), but I also had a full day of goodness. We did not have a lecture at LASP today, but I decided to wake up early anyway to go to the library and read the book I've been assigned for my GUA/USA paper. I got up at 6:30 and was at LASP by 8:00. There I read all morning, until 12 when I ate lunch and then headed over to ICADS with a couple of other girls. It was a wonderful day for a walk and we had a good talk about homesickness. Mostly we talked about how its okay to miss people at home and to know that we're missing a lot but the most important thing is to invest in what we are doing so that we don't go through the homesickness for nothing. I can already see many ways this experience is molding me and I want to make the most of it. Honestly, I haven't been as homesick as I was anticipating, probably because I have been blessed to have easy access to the internet and thereby a connection to home.
Spanish class was a lot of fun too. We discussed gender roles in society, comparing Costa Rica to the US in that regard and played a vocabulary game that was a lot like Scattegories. Our first quiz was a breeze and I feel like I actually learned the material well enough to use it. I've actually been able to apply my better understanding of the irregularities of the past tense in many conversations this week. Its so fun to be able to apply the things I'm learning in Spanish class every day!
The walk home was the perfect clincher to my week. We all talked about our plans for the weekend and I'm really happy to be part of such a great community of students here. I didn't have any plans in mind for the weekend, but when I got home Monica asked me if I would like to go to the movies with her. We went to the mall and saw Tangled. It was really cute and I loved listening to the Spanish. Its funny that I couldn't even understand most of what was said in a movie for little kids, but I did get the gist of the story and listened for verb conjugations I was familiar with. That sounds really nerdy, I know, but its exciting for me to be able to understand how words are being formed after having studied the language with little application for so long.
A friend of my Mamá recently had a stroke and has come to live with us for a while. I'm not sure how long he is staying, but its kind of fun to have a new face in the house and I really enjoyed talking to him this afternoon before we went to the movie. He lived in Los Angeles for 18 years and speaks perfect English, but we talked mostly in Spanish and I'm always grateful for anyone willing to endure my butchering of the language. Hopefully I'll have more chances to use Spanish in casual conversations throughout this weekend.
I can hardly believe that it has only been 10 days since I left home and part of me can't fathom another 3 months here. The other part can't imagine being anywhere besides here, and I'm so grateful that God directs my path and sustains me every day.
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