Saturday, January 22

Today was kind of a long day, but its a nice change from the normal face-paced stress of school. I accidentally set my alarm for 8:00 last night, so I was up fairly early, but it was nice to have some time to myself and slowly work my way out of bed this morning. When I got up I read for a little bit and then signed onto Skype where I got to chat with my mom for a little bit. Then, I did some research on zip lining for Spring Break, something a couple of friends and I have talked about wanting to try while we're here. There are lots of places to zip line here, so it took a while to figure out where we might want to go. Has anyone done this (or anything else touristy in CR) and have a recommendation for us? While tourism isn't our reason for being here, we don't want to pass up the opportunity to see more of this beautiful country!

After doing that research, I ventured into the kitchen where I found that my Mamá had left me breakfast on the table before she went to work. How sweet! I took my time eating breakfast and then dove into my homework, which consisted of reading more about GUA/USA. It took me all afternoon to read 100 more pages of the 250 page book required as preliminary research! Luckily, I only have 50 pages left, which I'm planning to read tomorrow.

I ate lunch with Mamá and her friend who had the stroke. His name is Tony and he is really funny. He lived in the US for 18 years and speaks fluent English. It was fun to talk with both of them over a lunch of shrimp cocktail. Lunch was followed by catching up on emails and working on my vocabulary list for this semester. Actually, there are so many words I had to look up in the GUA/USA book that my lists for the next two semesters are complete. ;)

I was also able to call my family, and it was good to talk to them. Dinner was much the same as lunch...lots of fun chatter and grilled cheese, my favorite comfort food. Monica and I concluded the night by watching My Big Fat Greek Wedding and hanging out for a while. While it was a bit of a challenge to avoid stir-craziness, I think I could get used to weekends like this where there's no pressure and I can just work on things at a slow pace when I want to.