Days 107 - 110: Alegrate

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

It rained all night again, and was still raining during the walk to school. After lunch at Naty’s I went home to take a nap again. I was only going to sleep for a little bit, but I ended up sleeping for about 3 hours. Then I woke up and tried to read some of my packet for class, and ended up falling asleep again. Before dinner I managed to get off my bed and shower. My host mom didn’t even know I was there so when I came out of the room she was shocked to see me. Dinner turned out to be interesting, especially when my host Dad (who got back this weekend) called me gorda, which means fat. Everyone was shocked when he said it, and my host sister Karol kicked him underneath the table, but he just didn’t understand that in the United States calling someone fat is a faux pas. I was politely able to excuse myself, and Lisa, Katie, and I went upstairs to talk. I don’t think any of us could believe what he said, and we all just kind of laughed about it but I still felt pretty bad.

While we were up in Katie’s room talking about silly stuff and laughing a lot, my mom called to talk. Part way into our conversation, however, she told me she had to call me back because Jenn had called and she needed to talk to her. At that moment two things went through my mind: 1) someone had died, or 2) Jenn had gotten engaged. While waiting for my mom to call me back, Katie, Lisa and I continued our chat of obnoxious stuff and laughed so hard I ended up wheezing. Finally, when my mom called me back, I asked her what Jenn had wanted and she told me that Jenn was going to call me tonight – at hearing that I couldn’t help but hope she had good news to tell me. Even though we had just gone through the fact that I had put on weight since arriving, Katie and Lisa wanted to go find candy so I went with them. We ended up stopping by Pan de Casa and got little treats there. Then we continued to walk around town, visited the sea lion kindergarten, and eventually headed back towards home.

I wanted to stop by Iguana Rock to say hi to Sam, Rachel, and Jon because they were hanging out there. As we arrived, I got a call from Jenn. She told me she and Scott had gotten engaged and I think I probably busted her ear drum screaming into the phone and congratulating her a million times. She started to tell me about it, but eventually the phone cut out. Regardless, I walked home Tuesday night very happy because Jenn was engaged. Scott is a really great guy and I am excited for him to be my brother-in-law, and even though I had been having a rough day and it had rained all day, I was able to go to sleep with a smile on my face.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

After class today the sun had finally come out, so I went to the beach to study. I was worried that there wouldn’t be any sun during the remainder of my stay on the islands because my host mom said it was going to rain straight for the next month. Luckily that turned out to not be the case. The water was much warmed than it had been a week or so ago, so we went swimming several times. I tried to be productive on the beach because we had and exam on Thursday, but that didn’t work out so well. I ended up only getting some of my reading done, but had a nice day relaxing in the sun and getting skin cancer. After dinner at tropic bird (it sucked, again), Rachel and I headed back to school to get some actual studying done. I ended up being pretty productive and studied at the school until about midnight. Back home I was too tired to continue studying, so I just went to bed and set my alarm for early the next day.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

I got up at 6 am to continue studying. To wake myself up I hopped in the shower first, then continued my reading which still wasn’t 100% complete. After breakfast at home I walked to school with Lisa and Katie where I tried to study a bit more but was not that successful. The exam was not as bad as I was expecting to be – the hardest part was the definition section, with each word/concept being worth 2 points (we had to define 15 of the 17 provided). Two hours later I walked out of the exam actually feeling pretty good about it, but my arm felt like it was going to fall off. I spent the rest of the day (after lunch) hanging out on the beach with friends. Having just taken an exam no one wanted to load their head with any more information, so we just took it easy and had a designated beach day. Dinner at home was pretty good, and after dinner I was able to shower of the salt and sand that still covered my body. I even got to blow dry my hair using Lisa’s hair dryer! (I haven’t used one of those in months).

I then spent the next 45 minutes getting ready and trying to decide what to wear out tonight. There is an Arkabuz concert at Iguana Rock because they wanted to play again for us before we left the islands. Katie had to go to the ATM, so we walked down to the malecon so she could get money first, then hustled up to Iguana Rock to get Happy hour drinks. Unfortunately, when we got there we were informed that there was no happy hour tonight because of the concert. We were all pretty peeved, but I ended up getting one drink anyway. I think they were trying to make up for the fact that we couldn’t get two for the price of one because my rum and coke was more along the lines of RUM with a spritz of coke. At least I got my money’s worth, right?

Although the concert did not start until late, it was really good and they played a lot of songs this time. At one point, the strings on Fede’s guitar broke and he had to re-string the guitar mid-song. However, when he went back to get the string, he knocked over a fan and tripped over it, somersaulted into our table, popped up and hit the microphone and knocked that over and fell again, and then managed to re-wire the guitar. Very impressive. After the concert ended I stayed to hang out with some people. It ended up being me, Rachel, Charlotte, and a bunch of locals at the bar really late, dancing to crazy music. Some crazy Southern hick music came on and we square-danced and dosi-do’d, techno music came on, old 90s music from the U.S. came on, and tons of other stuff. Then Hernán tried to teach me how to dance to Reggeaton much (definitely not my favorite) and we also danced some merengue. Finally, Rachel and I excused ourselves and walked home smelling like smoke (I HATE cigarettes!) and exhausted from a lot of dancing.

Friday, December 12, 2008

Class was the same today: interesting and yet monotonous. After class and lunch at Naty’s (we had delicious ceviche!) I went back to school to go to the beach at Playaman. It was a beautifully hot and sunny day and we took full advantage of our minimal time left to soak up some vitamin D and endorphins from the sun (and probably some skin cancer and wrinkles and age spots too). We spent the day swimming in the water which was extremely refreshing, especially in the hot sun.

We suffered through our last supper ever at Tropic Bird (the most disappointing restaurant we have eaten at), and then I ran home to shower really quickly before heading back to school to watch a movie. Shawna S, Rachel, and I set up my computer at school so we could all watch the movie Elf. Tom Naylor joined us and it ended up being the four of us enjoying a nice Christmas movie on the couches at school. Rachel fell asleep about half-way through, however, and then Shawna fell asleep towards the end. It ended up being just Tom and I who were able to stay awake through the entire movie. It really is a cute movie and put me in the mood for Christmas. Rachel and Shawna headed home to go to bed when the movie ended, and I did some stuff on my computer before heading home. We all needed a good night’s sleep because we had scuba diving at Leon Dormido the next morning!