Semana Tres (week three)

My spanish class with Liannette

What a week this has been. After spending a spectacular weekend up at the Arenal Volcano in the north and the Baldi hot springs, I have had the most interesting week of school yet. It all just keeps getting better and I wonder if I will ever come back home at this point… I feel like my life has done a few somersaults and now nothing is the way it once was. Time has flown by here and it is hard for me to believe that I’ve been in Costa Rica for 20 days already.

Probably the most exciting part of the week happened in the middle of the night on Wednesday. A little after 1 AM I was jolted awake by a 5.2 magnitude earthquake. My bed was shaking and I could hear the house moving around me. Oddly, I just laid there more excited than scared that I could actually feel an earthquake. There have been several quakes since I've been here, 2 of which I have felt. The other quake I felt was when I was doing homework with Diego. It didn't register to me that it was an earthquake until after. I had thought it was just someone very large marching through the house...
The week began with my Espanol written midterm promptly at 8 AM. My miniature teacher, Liannette, has pushed my little class of 10 hard enough that we all did well on the exam. Sometimes I feel like learning a new language is a lethargic, drawn out process, however if I look back on where I was three weeks ago, I have learned more than I thought would be possible. I can have very basic conversations with people and I have begun to understand a significant amount of what my host family speaks to me, although I have a difficult time responding.

The same day as our Spanish exam, my Costa Rican history and culture teacher took my class on a walking tour of San Jose. The more I explore this city, the more I see and the more I appreciate. As she marched us through the chaotic traffic and bustling streets, she narrated the stories of every statue we passed and each significant building. By the end of her tour, I had learned about several different presidents, heads of state, and other important people in Costa Rica’s rich past. We wandered through the judicial district with the tall marble buildings with wire woven in circles covering the windows. Neatly manicured lawns with rows of blossoming rose bushes incased the imposing buildings. We walked through the humble china town neighborhood and deep into the streets of downtown. We walked through the Social Security park with a statue of “The Doctor” or Calderon, full of pigeons and loud little green parrots flying overhead. We maneuvered the maze of walking streets bounded by little shops. We walked to the Teatro Nacional and Gran Hotel located next to the pigeon-and-street-performer-dominated Plaza de la Cultura. It felt like there were many more people around us than when I had gone on the CEA city tour. Maybe I was just more aware of my surroundings. We circled around and headed towards the national museum and the artisan market. Helen, our British teacher, pointed out a pre-Columbian stone in the shape of a perfect sphere that was encased in a protective structure near the museum. To this day it remains one of the great mysteries of Costa Rica’s past as to why or how the spheres were created.

Basilica de Los Angeles

After a week of studying Latin names for my land vertebrates class and Spanish vocabulary that has accumulated after a total of 56 hours of Espanol class, I can easily say that I am tired. In a good, satisfied way. My mommy here still lavishes love on my roommates and me. Another girl in my program, named Michele, moved into our humble little home this week. Myrna, my mom, was ecstatic all day for her arrival. Now there are six of us living in the tiny house and Myrna cooks for at least 10 people a day. I don’t know how that woman does it. Macey asked her the other day what her favorite trait about herself was and she responded that she loves to take care of people. I have never met anyone like her and I love her very much already.

The Cartago market

The week ended with an exciting field trip in my Spanish class to Cartago and an exploration of downtown San Jose with Macey, Michele, and Anita. The class excursion to the former capital of Costa Rica was intriguing. All the Basic I Spanish classes took a large bus deep into the old town. We stopped at a basilica deemed Basilica de Nuestro Senora de los Angeles (Our Lady of the Angels Basilica), a beautiful old cathedral connected to an ancient tale from 1635 about a little girl and a black virgin doll that mysteriously would return to a specific rock even when taken away. Churches have been built on that rock ever since. The second portion of the field trip consisted of a vibrant market where our teachers told us to talk to the vendors and purchase new kinds of tropical fruits that we didn’t recognize. The market was noisy and exotic. Fruits and vegetables surrounded the exterior of the unassuming building where rows and rows of little shops, restaurants, and butchers were crowded inside together. Back in San Jose, four of us ventured down into the heart of the city to explore. We found beautiful parks and museums and shops. Sometimes it is hard for me to believe that I live in the capital city of a country. And what a wonderful city it is.