♪ Oh, the weather outside's delightful... ♫

So far, so good. This semester is looking like it’s going to be a pretty good one. Once again I have very small classes this semester (I think the average is something like 4). That having been said, I didn’t really get a chance to meet as many people as I would have liked in class. Nevertheless, we had our first group weekend trip yesterday (Friday) which was originally supposed to include a tour of the Café Britt plantation (more or less the coffee giant down here) and then Volcán Poás. Well, the route to Poás was completely destroyed during the earthquake last week, so they changed it to Irazú. Shortly after that decision was made, the government shut down the route to Irazú as well for safety reasons. Finally they decided to go to INBIO park, the wildlife preserve that last semester’s group visited.

Long story short, I went to Café Britt in the morning, mostly just to get acquainted with some new faces, and walked back to Heredia with the other Costa Rica “veterans” (as we occasionally call ourselves) who had already been to INBIO. Although I didn’t get to meet everyone, it seems as though we have a pretty good group. It’s larger than I originally thought it would be, as many people added the program at the last minute and weren’t on the original list of Spring semester students that USAC sent out. I also finally got to see Derek Harmon yesterday morning (another Augie student) after an entire week of being within a few miles of each other and not seeing one another! We talked about Costa Rica, I told what to expect in different aspects of the culture and academics down here, and he told me how much he loves his host family and everything else. He seems to be settling in nicely.

Wednesday evening a few of us went to the movies, where we split up to see different things and had dinner afterwards in the local mall’s food court. Some of the girls went to see “Marley and Me” (aka “Marley y Yo”) while my host sister Jessica and I saw “Yes Man” (“¡Sí, Señor!”), which we loved. One of the nicer things about being here so far is that Jessica has finished her classes and is not so bogged down by homework every night. She’s currently looking for a job (with her soon-to-be-official business administration degree), but until then she’s had a lot of free time to spend with friends and her little host brother. She started English classes again today, which she takes apart from her university classes, and I’ve been forcing her (kindly) to practice with me.

We also have a temporary addition to the family this month, which I failed to mention in my last post. Angie, the daughter of one of Elizabeth’s nieces, has been living with us since a couple days after I got back. She’s 14 or 15 years old, fairly shy (particularly the first few days we met), and very hard-working. In February she’ll move back to her home in Limón (east coast) where she’ll be taking some very important standardized tests in math and science. In the meantime, she’s living with us, helping around the house whenever she can (certainly much more than I do!), and studying all day long. Jessica has been tutoring her in math (and maybe some of the science, though I’m not sure), which more or less is why she’s here. We don’t talk all that much, but she seems nice enough and we get along well. Sometime this semester my host family and I supposedly are going to go out to Limón to see Angie and her whole family, but when I’m not sure.

I’ve certainly heard plenty of updates from back home about the weather! It seems as though I got out of there just in time to miss the really cold stuff. Some nights here when the wind keeps blowing it gets a little chilly, but in light of the weather conditions I was in just a week and a half ago I never complain (though everyone here does!). Nevertheless, during the day it’s usually pretty steadily between 65 and 75 degrees...not that I’m gloating or anything ;). This weekend my friend Ashley and I were going to go to Sámara, a beach town/popular surfer destination on the Guanacaste coast (west side), but she got a call from a friend of ours who was there and said the waves weren’t that great this weekend, so we postponed it. Some of the new students here already are already traveling – I think a bunch of them rented some private buses out to Puntarenas this weekend.

As for me, I’ll just be laying low this weekend. I’ve got a couple of Skype appointments to keep, and some reading to do. I’m about halfway through reading Les Misérables (one of my Christmas gifts – thanks Santa!), and it’s quickly becoming one of my all-time favorite books. This afternoon I’m going to go play basketball with my friend Ashley (a different one) and some other people. As for classes, it’s looking as though I may well have every Monday and Friday off this entire semester – there’s a lot to be done in Costa Rica with four months of four-day weekends! This isn’t final yet, but it’s very possible. The administrative folks here are still doing some class shuffling to resolve scheduling conflicts that everyone’s having, so we’ll see what happens.

I’ll let you know if anything exciting happens. These are both some ways off, but I have a couple of tentative week-long excursions planned. A few of us are currently either trying to cancel or have canceled our group trip (through USAC) to Nicaragua and travel on our own for cheaper and longer, which we’ll likely do at the same time the group goes (because there’ll be no classes that week). Also, a couple of us are planning on going up to Guatemala for Semana Santa (Holy Week), which is also our spring break. Like I said, I’ll let you know.

Thanks always for the emails and support, and for keeping me in your prayers. I miss you all, and I hope some of this nice weather heads your way soon. Take care of yourselves.