Day 9¨: Tuesday 9-2-08

Today was a long day of classes. As always, I was up bright and early to make my 6:30 bus. When I came out for breakfast, my milk was already poured into my cereal. Living with a family has been wonderful, but in some sense a loss of independence (something I´ve been used to for the last 3 years). Here in Costa Rica, there is less privacy and personal space, which also comes with a lack of independence. Beyond just little things like pouring the milk in my cereal, Mami always comes in a sweeps my floor, rearranges my clothes, goes through my stuff, etc. Although at times I just want to say ¨I can do it on my own¨, I simply just smile and say thank you, as I know that culturally things are simply ¨different¨. After the second day of classes my professor decided to move me to a more advanced Spanish class as these last two days have been a bit to easy for me. After lunch, a big group of us decided to walk instead of take the bus from ICADS (where we take Spanish) to LASP (where we take our Core Seminar). It was a long trek, but well worth it, as it was a nice form of exercised plus beautiful views of the mountains. Seminar ran long which meant that I would get stuck in rush hour traffic. I spent my 1.5 hours on the bus doing homework. By the time I got home, I was exhausted, but perservered and kept doing homework. The rain and thunder have been especially loud today (which coups us up inside for most the evening, but also a good motivator for staying on top of homework). Not much of day, unless anything extremely eventful happens tonight (which is highly probable knowing my crazy family)