Domingo 12 agosto 2012 21:33

Sunday morning skype

Today I started with celebrating my host mom a happy mother’s day, it turned it to be on Wednesday… Mother’s day is a really big day here, everything is already decorated and everything is about mother’s day. 

After this little mistake and some breakfast with bread and cream cheese, the cream cheese is good, the bread is pretty bad here. I went to Orotina to skype with home. It is so nice to Skype with them, the guy who invented this deserves a medal! Skyping doesn’t make me feel homesick, maybe it will later but right now I just enjoy having contact, seeing the house and talking to everybody. On Saturday a host student from Ecuador arrived in my house in Holland, I’m not sad that I’m not there because I’m glad I’m here but I liked to meet the new family member as well, maybe I get to meet her at the end of the year.

When I went to walk back to the house I looked at the clouds and I figured it was going to rain, and it did 250 metres before I reached my house the it started raining like crazy and within 2 minutes I was soaked again. It rained really hard for like 3 hours really crazy really cool.

I should’ve gone to play soccer today but because it was raining not many people could come and it would be very expensive to play, because you have to rent the soccer hall, the less people, the more money it costs. So instead I watched the Olympic closing ceremony which was really really cool! I am so jealous of all the people who participated! It also made me miss waterpolo already. I didn’t see any of the waterpolo, instead there were some weird sports which I never thought would exsist.

1 thing that drives me crazy it that I currently think in 3 languages, Dutch, English and even in Spanish. Pretty annoying, but most of the thinking is in English. Because of the camp we had my English got way better, and also my german a little bit!

                                                       Lunes 13 agosto 2012 22:19

Run til you drop

Today I realised I really like my school. I had turismo all day, we had to prepare a presentation about frogs. Everybody got to do 2 frogs. I like this better as normal classes, I now know a little bit more about frogs but I also practiced my Spanish a lot. Doing the presentation in Spanish was kinda hard but I think I did it pretty good, and everybody was clapping and stuff because I did it in Spanish J.

After 9 hours sitting in school I had a lot of energy so I decided to go running. I ran with Ruth and I think I ran around 10 kilometres on k-weggetjes (bad roads). I ran till I dropped litterly, at home I dropped on my bed of exhaustion.

                                                                                              Martes 14 agosto 2012 22:11

New friends!

Today I had English and maths for the first time, English was very easy I just talked with the teacher for 1,5 hour. Maths looked really hard but it was pretty easy. In the time we didn’t had class we build a cool house of cards.

After school I met with Dixie and Dixie, daughter and mother who I met in Orotina. They were really nice and asked if I wanted to come to their house for dinner, I accepted immediately. They live pretty rural but have an amazing view and a very good house. We ate really nice fried chicken and I ate bread with the best butter I have ever tasted, they were very very nice. While eating some watermelon the neighbour brought suddenly there was sitting a huge tarantula beside me! The neighbour just shoved it away with a napkin, pretty cool experience!

                                                  

Jeuves agosto 2012 21:34

Probably the most important day while in Costa Rica.

Yesterday I went to the beach again with Ruth. In the morning I washed all the dishes because it was mothersday and at 8 we took the bus to Jaco. The waves were really cool and we spent the first 2,5 hour in the sea. After that we walked to this amazing river where the water goes from the sea into the river instead from the river into the sea. We had to cross this river but it was pretty so I carried our bags above my head. We made some very nice pictures of the river with Ruth her super camera. Close to the river was another small beach with a lot of rocks but it looked like paradise with a little hut included. I wanted a picture on the rocks with the waves behind me. I decided I wanted 1 more photo but then a huge wave came and knocked me of my seat and slammed me on some rocks, my wrist was bleeding pretty bad and I think my thumb is kind of messed up but it’s okey.

After we had lunch at a pandaria we went to the beach again the chill a little. Some guys asked if I wanted to play soccer and I didn’t say no to that. It were Nicaraguans, we were told they were not very good people here in Costa Rica but they were nice. One guy also lived in Orotina a few years ago. He went swimming with us at low tide which is very cool. He told his grandfather was chefkok at a good restaurant in Jaco and he works there as well, he said next time we came here we could have free dinner at the restaurant! :D.

When we said goodbye and stuff we went to the bus station to go home. After 10 minutes the bus came but it didn’t stop for us, it just slowed down and went on. I have really bad words for that busdriver because he was the last bus because it was mothersday, and it was just 19:00. We asked around 10 people about what time the next bus went to Orotina and everybody said something different, even the police was very wrong. Finally we asked a busdriver and he said there were no more busses. That was really bad because now we were stuck in Orotina. Our IEC called us and asked what was going, he was very nice and a friend of him could taxi us for ‘only’ 20.000 colones, €40. That was better as a taxi which costs around €80. But still it is a lot of money just because the bus didn’t stop for us. When we came home I was really tired and didn’t write my blog.

Today I apologized to my hostmom about yesterday because yesterday she was already sleeping. She was still kind of mad which I can understand but it was not all my fault, but I didn’t want to argue about it.

School was really cool today because my Spanish is going pretty good so I can talk more with my classmates. I really like school now! I had chemistry for the first time, I thought I would be really because I only had it for 1 year 3 years ago. But I was not that hard and I said the teacher was wrong one time and I was right so everybody was clapping again J. Also I spoke to the gym teacher and I can join the soccer team! I  don’t know what to expect of the soccer team but next week I can play in a match!

When I got home things went really weird. First you need to know that I wasn’t feeling that good the last days and I was thinking about changing family. So when I got home I went to talk with my hostmom about how things can be better and how I can be more a part of the family. When we talked for 2 minutes she suddenly said that I needed to change host family. I was pretty shocked and didn’t see this coming. But because I was kind of in between 2 choices, changing or not changing I felt relieved somewhere as well because the choice was made.  But also I felt really bad because they didn’t want me anymore and I felt a lot more and it was a really weird feeling. I didn’t really get why she said it. After a few more words I went to my room to be alone for a while. I contacted some friends and home about it. Half an hour later my host mom came into my room to talk more. She said she didn’t want me to change, I still don’t know why she said it in the first place. But we had the conversation I wanted to have for a long time. It was really hard because I just made peace with me changing family and now my mom was trying to talk my out of it. She told about how the family works and what I can do better. Also she explained some cultural differences which are really important to know. I figured out that the way I was trying to make things better only made things worse. I was trying to make things better by making my own breakfast and helping with dinner and stuff. She told me that in Costa Rica that just is the task of the mom and that the man just don’t do so much in the house. Also she told me what she appreciated about me and what she expects from me. It was a really good conversation and I changed my mind about changing family. I am really happy I had this conversation because now I feel a lot better but there is still more to talk about.