Me encanta Costa Rica!

Hola amigos y amigas!

After 2 full days in Costa Rica I am so tired I could die, and its not even 8 PM! I would like to share with you a brief schedule of what our days are like here (or at least what they have been for the past 2 days) and after I will share some thoughts and opinions of my time so far!

A typical day so far:

6:30 AM: wake up, get dressed eat breakfast. Breakfast consists of fresh fruit like pineapple, papaya, melon, and bananas, coffee with milk and "azucar negro" which is essentially brown sugar, and a tiny quesadilla with cheese. It sounds weird but it all is so good! Especially the coffee!!!

7:30: catch the bus about 2 blocks from our house and take about a 25 minute bus ride to ILISA (the school). The traffic here is out of control. If you thought the bikes/trams/cars/buses in Amsterdam were crazy, compared to San Jose they are nothing. The roads are more steep than the hills I go skiing down in Michigan. And the drivers are the definition of loco. I will try to take a video of what the streets are like because it is just downright dangerous.

8:30: arrive at ILISA. After the bus ride we have about another 20-25 minute walk from the bus stop to the school. The past two days we have had activities at 8:30. Today was a walking tour of San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica. Even though the scenery is incredible and unlike anything I've ever seen, the city was very dirty, with trash literally everywhere. It's also extremely loud with all the traffic and multitudes of people. I've definitely decided that a crowded city is NOT for me.

12:00: eat lunch at school and get ready for our tutoring session.

1:00: a one-on-one tutoring session. Yesterday we had a small interview and then they paired us with a teacher who can help us most with our problem areas or levels of Spanish. My tutors name is Ilse and she is great! We work in a workbook, but we also have lots of conversations and I have found it very easy to tell her stories and important aspects of my life at home in the states.

4:00: the tutoring session ends and we either go home or have an after school activity. Today we had a dance lesson of Merengue and Salsa! It was fun, but in a very small room with about 30 people and no ventilation! But I learned how to move to the Costa Rican music, and hopefully I will get to try it out this weekend!

After the dance lesson myself along with a few other girls decided to try to find a place to have some margaritas before returning home for dinner. We asked for directions but inevitably got lost and wound up in a "bar" with a bar tender who didn't know what a margarita was..... So we got the heck out of dodge and decided to just go home.

By this time it was about 6 and near dark out. The instructors at ILISA told us not to take the bus after 7, and today was the first day we had to take the bus home alone....

My roommate Katie and I were kind of freaking out, but we managed to find our bus stop, and recognize where we needed to get off the bus by our house. I can not even begin to explain how big of a miracle this was. God was holding our hands because there is absolutely no stinkin' way we did this on our own!

For dinner last night we had the most delicious carne asada steak I have ever had, with fresh, homemade pico de gallo, scalloped potatoes, and freshly made mango juice. I could have eaten for 4 hours. It was unbelievably fantastic. Tonight we had a cream of squash soup, a fresh salad with lettuce, tomato, onion, cilantro, corn, and pineapple, and a sort of chicken pot pie kind of dish. Can you believe I ate every last bite?! I didn't think I liked squash but this soup was incredible, and that salad? I never eat salad and I had 2 platefuls. Sandra is a wizard in the kitchen, I want to bring her back with me to cook for me next year!

After dinner Katie and I take quick showers and try to be in bed by 9! It sounds early but after a 14+ hour day it's not early enough because tomorrow we get to get up and do it all again!

While at times it is difficult to speak with Sandra especially (she is very strictly only Spanish with Katie and I) I have been trying to talk with them more, and I think I am getting through to them. However, Katie has less experience with Spanish and so our host parents mostly only talk to me! No pressure though...

I can't believe only two days have gone by and I'm in love with this country! I am so excited to see the beach this weekend and other places outside of San Jose. I have even started thinking in Spanish! In fact it has been kind of hard switching gears to English in order to write this post, so I apologize if my grammar is a bit off ;)

I hope you have enjoyed, hasta mañana!

Bienvenidos a Costa Rica!

In case you haven't heard, I arrived in San Jose, Costa Rica this morning at about 11 AM local time! I thought it would be a good and efficient way to keep track of my journey here if I try to blog/journal everyday, especially today being my first! I think I'm going to do a bit of a bullet-type synopsis and add more details when necessary, and don't spell check my work because I'm typing on an iPad... Hello carpal tunnel!

Well this morning I woke up at 3 am after staying up until 1:30 watching Kristen Wiig's SNL comeback last night, which solicited what I'm sure was the most unattractive sight ever of me face down on an airplane tray table just trying to stay alive.

After a brief layover in Houston, we made our way to Central America and then took a shuttle to ILISA- our school for the next 3 weeks. Standing outside the school were our families, holding cute little signs with our names on them! I along with another Butler student, Katie are living in a beautiful house (pictures will come) with Gustavo and Sandra and their daughter, Luisa, who lives in a connected apartment in the back yard.

Our host family has been instructed to speak solely in Spanish with us, but with a pretty significant language barrier, Gustavo told us he's ok with some Spanglish. Thank The Lord!

We enjoyed a small meal after having a tour of the house, but it was very quiet and kind of awkward. I feel like I have so many things I want to ask and say but I just don't have all the words I need to do it. While that has been a bit frustrating this evening, I will say that I have done significantly better communicating with Gustavo and Sandra than I expected and I'm proud of myself for that!

I took a little siesta after lunch, then drowned my first GIANT spider in a quick shower before watching How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days in Spanish with Sandra and Katie.

For a light dinner Luisa and her husband (whose name escapes me at the moment) came over and we had delicious tomato, pesto, and mozzarella sandwiches! Yum!

Even though it is only 9:00 here, I am ready for bed to getup for a 7:30 wake up call! I know this post is brief and not necessarily up to my usual caliber, but I promise there will be many more interesting and fabulous posts to come!

Hasta mañana!

So you're a Spanish major...

By now as an avid follower of my blog, you must know I am a Spanish major.  When I first came to Butler I was Exploratory (fancy word for undecided), then I declared a double major in Spanish and Communication Sciences and Disorders (fancy for Speech and Language Pathology), and then shortly before departing for Amsterdam I dropped to a minor in CSD and am solely a Spanish major.

Whew.

Now, mind you I did not switch to being solely a Spanish major because I have some wildly ambitious desire to become a citizen of South America, or a sudden passion to teach the Spanish language to our Nation's youth.  I actually dropped my CSD major because it is an extremely competitive field, and I didn't have the passion and intense interest necessary to devote my undergraduate and subsequent graduate careers in this field.  At least not right now.

Well, this little switcheroo flew over like a lead balloon in the Peters household as my family has a hard time understanding why I would switch from a focus in a field where I am guaranteed a specific job in a demanded market, to one of the most general Liberal Arts degrees with millions of possible career routes, which might not even have to do with Spanish at all.  

Cue the question that makes my hair fall out, my fists clench, and my eyes roll back into my head...

So, what are you going to do with a Spanish major?

Well, quite frankly I'm going to do whatever the hell I want with a Spanish major.  

Yes, I know that's a broad area of possibility.

Yes, I understand it might be hard to find a job that will utilize this skill in a field I am interested in.

And for the love of all that is holy, no, I am not fluent in Spanish.

If I had a beer for every time someone asked me something along these lines I could stock the Hofbrauhaus for a year, including Oktoberfest.  So, in honor of such a heated and apparently interesting topic, I have devoted a vlog to this constant source of frustration and clarification in my life today.

Towards the middle of the video there is a movie reference, so please don't become confused with the transition/slightly idiotic remark.  It's all part of the effect :)

My Vlog debut

Alright folks, here it is...

My debut vlog..

How it makes me feel when my bike gets stolen.

If you haven't heard this story, which would be a surprise.. because I tell it every 5 seconds... you can now watch it at your own leisure!

So, lemme know what you think, if you like it, ideas, whatever!  I'm not super familiar with iMovie so I just kinda messed around, and yes that is Gilmore Girls in the background.

A New Endeavor

If you're reading this, thanks for being patient!  It's been at least 3 months since I've blogged and I have been asked approximately 1,000,000 times when I'm going to blog again!  So here I am!  I'm back and so excited to fill this summer full of witty, fun, and hopefully inspiring posts :)

This semester has been all kinds of interesting.  From classes, to being 21, to work, to just adjusting to the American lifestyle I have barely had time to breathe.

One awesome thing that did happen this semester, was that I had the opportunity to take a creative writing class!  I took it just as a general elective with a mixture of English majors among others.  The professor was awesome, to some he might have come off as rude or arrogant, but I was usually intrigued by his knowledge and his passion for writing.

One of the projects we had to do for his class was to make a video.  That was the only requirement.  Just a video.

He mentioned that it should be a form of personal essay, so basically something you want to make a video of, and could only be 1 minute long.  Sounds easy?

I probably came up with 100 ideas, but nothing really stuck.  I wanted this video to stand out, to be powerful, to resonate with people.  Then it came to me.

I began to pool my little ideas, and collectively they came together to form a movement.  Similar to my attitude here on my blog, I will use my wit and my charming sarcasm in a series of short little videos under the theme:

How it makes me feel when....

I'm busting with cute little angsty ideas, and I'm going to debut them here on my blog, and also on YouTube.  Who knows? This could be my ticket to that far fetched dream of being on SNL.. only time will tell.

Keep your eye out for more posts and my YouTube debut coming soon to an interweb near you, and if you have any suggestions for video topics, let me know!