Making friends at my new school : )

Apparently, November is a rather slow month for Spanish schools in Costa Rica, especially the school in San Jose. I arrived at the school today to find that there are only two other students at the school taking Spanish language courses right now. One of the students, Veronica, and I have class together. She is from Taiwan and is also a Rotary scholar. She received a three month language studies scholarship. I am very impressed with her level of fluency, because she more or less began studying Spanish as a way to fill her free time! I also like looking at her notebook, because her pages are filled with characters. She says that Mandarin is easier because you don't have to conjugate anything....I don't know if I agree with that one. Interestingly, she is living with a Buddhist Tico (Costa Rican) host family and gets to eat delicious vegetarian food. I can't wait to go over there for dinner!

My host family is also wonderful, a single mother and her teenage daughter. She has a son who is currently in Spain completing a double major in Math and Economics. Her daughter is your typical teenager, spending most of her days instant messaging on the computer with her headphones on and the music blasting. She told me yesterday that her favorite bands are Iron Maiden, Pearl Jam, and Nirvana. I made her a CD yesterday with about 130 songs on it...we will see what she thinks of it. The weather is San Jose is a little more gray that I had anticipated, as it is warm in the morning and then cloudy/rainy in the afternoon. I am looking for a gym, so I can get out of the house and get some physical activity in. There is a private tennis club about three blocks away, and I stopped by the inquire how much a one month membership would be - $177. Yup. Dollars. Yikes. I am going to keep looking! Nonetheless, this will be a more indoor month, in that it is still the tail end of the rainy season, as it is not really safe to be out and about in the evening. My friend Mauricio was kind enough to come pick me up last night and take me to a movie. We saw "Caramelo"- A Lebanese film. It was an absolutely beautiful movie - I highly recommend it.

My host mom, Carmen, is calling me to lunch. One surprising thing - I have been here almost a week and have not once had rice and beans! I am not going to mention this fact just yet...I am enjoying the pasta and vegetables, and rekindling my love/hate relationship with papaya.