July 4th, 2010
I haven't been journaling as much as I should be, which really saddens me. But by the time I get home every night I'm usually exhausted and can't get the will to write anything. So I've decided that I'm going to journal on this [my iPod touch] because I can type much faster than I can write.
Last night I got to meet with my family, and on the bus waiting to get to the village was completely nerve racking. Since I don't know much Spanish I knew it was going to be challenging, but it's going a lot better than I ever expected it to.
When I met my family they were very enthusiastic, and started speaking rapid fire Spanish at me. That's when I informed them that I study French and not Spanish, and that I came here to learn Spanish. My mom's name is Olga, and she is a teacher at the school we are working on. My dad's name is Alvaro, and he does leche [dairy farmer]. I have three sisters. Natalia is eighteen, Monica is sixteen, and Tatiana is eleven.
The house is absolutely beautiful, with four bedrooms plus a ton of other rooms. They have a dog named Lucy, a bird named Coolio [I later found out his name was Cuyo, the Spanish name for the type of bird he was], and a bunch of fish that don't have names.
After breakfast Natalia, Monica, and I went to the supermarket to pick up some food for the next week. They asked me if I liked papaya and I said I didn't know. They thought I meant I didn't understand them, so I tried explaining that I had never had it before, so I didn't know whether or not I liked it. They didn't understand that, so they got the papaya anyway. I have yet to try it.
We went to la escuela [school] to meet our foreman and see the projects we were going to be working on, but he wasn't there. We made the best of it and played some futbol [soccer], talked about our host families, and chilled with our new brothers and sisters.
We had a fiesta at two for the fourth of July, and the main focus was the football game. The fifteen of us pretty much got our asses whooped by ten eight-year-olds. This one kid, Esteban, was nasty at football. We're all convinced he's going to be in the world cup someday. I stopped counting after los chicos [the kids] scored twelve goals, but I did manage to score one goal. Take that family who thinks I'm not athletic!
At five we went to the town next door to meet up with the discovery group that just arrived yesterday. We tried to blend with them but every attempt pretty much failed, and it seemed like they didn't like us very much. We think it's because we all have very strong personalities and different senses of humor than most others, but whatever.
Yesterday was absolutely awful. On Friday we went to Manuel Antonio, but my sunscreen must be expired. It didn't matter how many times we reapplied, Morgan and I both got burnt wicked bad. I ended up skipping the trip to the national park yesterday morning because I was sick, but most everybody said they wished they had stayed with me because all they saw was a monkey, and the sweat and heat and pain wasn't really worth it. Next time I will have to check the expiration on my sunscreen. I'm still in major pain, and I don't even want to think of what the peeling is going to be like. Looking on the bright side, the burn makes my eyes look wicked blue, and it's going to turn into a totally awesome tan. If it doesn't I'll most likely cry.
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