Monday, January 31

My feelings of unproductivity from this weekend didn't stand a chance today. This morning I got up early to work on some of my homework for this week and to finish writing the postcards that I bought last week to send home. When that was mostly finished, I headed over to LASP to meet with Don Antonio once again about my thesis paper. After an hour long discussion about what my paper should be about, I think we are mostly on the same page now and I am ready to move ahead with my outline.

At ICADS we switched teachers today, which was fairly interesting. Some of the classrooms at ICADS are in the garden, and when we got where we were sold to have class this week there was already a class sitting there. It took a while to get locations figured out, and once we actually started class it was slow moving. Apparently our teachers didn't communicate very effectively because our new teacher started class with the same lesson our previous teacher taught on her first day with us. Class was also frequently disrupted by a very brave squirrel who smelled the fruit some of us had brought to class and wanted a piece for himself. In all, it was a fairly random class period, but once we got going I felt like I was learning a lot. Our new teacher speaks much faster than our previous one, so it was a challenge to understand what she was saying. I was happy to be able to pick up most of what she told us.

Another miscommunication around ICADS seems to involve the presentation and paper assignments that are supposed to be due in the upcoming weeks. The due dates for these projects have been fairly ambiguous, and in talking to the other LASP students, it sounds like everyone has gotten a different explanation of the assignment. My class is supposed to research the Huetar people group for the project, and we're having a hard time finding information. I guess we are going to meet at the LASP library tomorrow or Wednesday to figure it all out.

After Spanish class, Haleigh and I stopped at a little store on the way home to buy Trits, an ice cream snack that everyone at LASP has been raving about for the last two weeks. Its like an ice cream sandwich made up of cookies and vanilla ice cream with chocolate swirls. I don't think I'll be buying one every day on the way home like some of the other students, but they were pretty delicious. We met up with another LASP student on our walk, and in order to get some more Spanish practice in we spoke in Spanish for most of the walk. It was pretty cloudy and the sun was setting, which created some of the most beautiful mountain views we have seen yet.

When I got home I found that both Monica and my mamá have been hit with seasonal allergies, so it was a pretty quiet evening. I did a whole bunch more homework and we ate a giant dinner similar to a pot roast in the States. I can't believe how quickly the day passed and how tired I am again already!