Aqui!

Hi!  So I’m finally getting settled in and figuring everything out, which will honestly take a month in itself but oh well.  It has been super fun getting to know the other students that we are with- I think they are like 27 of us: 3 from a school in London but 1 in from Brazil and another from France, 1 from Denmark, and lots of kids from around the US (Michigan, Vanderbilt, Clemson, Milwaukee, UVA, Hopkins and of course Duke).  Its really great.  I’m living with 3 other girls in my home stay:  Ali lives in a room by herself and Julie, Jane, and I live in one room together in bunk beds.  Our host family is wonderful!  It is a mother named Rocio who works to keep the kids behaving on the school buses, Daniella who is in her first year at university studying advertising (and knows some English), and Mari who is 10 years old and very shy.  They are wonderful!  We have been trying to speak Spanish, but seeing as I don’t know hardly any, it has been super difficult.  Rocio, my house mom, said that we are only allowed to speak English in the house until Monday and then no more even amongst ourselves.  Yikes! I’m kinda glad though because then I will have to learn it.  I definitely am picking things up fast because I have to.  I feel bad though that we can’t talk to them more and ask questions, but it is hard for me to speak Spanish and them to speak English.  I’m hoping that will improve though because they seem to be very interesting people.

We started Spanish classes today, and I am in the beginner class.  It was actually really fun because there are a bunch of us that don’t know anything, so we understood a word, we all cried “Ohhhh” in unison.  Our teacher may or may not know English, but she won’t speak any either way. She acts words out like charades as we all try to guess what it means.  Just learning some common phrases has helped though.  We do have some people that have great Spanish skills though, so that helps when we are going around and trying to find food or someplace.  I really cannot communicate yet without someone else who knows more Spanish, but I hope to be able to do this by the end.  We also have had 2 classes on medical equipment which luckily are very similar to the BME 154 class I took at Duke.  Our labs are pretty crazy/fun though- very hands on!   We have our own tool kit and tools that we are use to actually do hands on stuff. I learned how to solder and desolder today!  And without burning anything up!  It was pretty frustrating though as the irons kept breaking and I did not have a clue as to what I was doing but I’m learning.

We are going water-water rafting tomorrow, and I am very excited!  Supposedly, Costa Rica has some of the best rafting in the world!  We are going to take pictures, and I will definitely post them once we get them.  Well it is off to bed for me, but I will add more soon!