Pointing and laughing probably means something different here...

February 3- The longer that I’m here, the more frustrated I am about the language barrier. I honestly thought that I would probably be ok with my 2 years of high school Spanish and the online class I bought, that took me only about a month and a half to complete. So more or less I believed that I could get by with small talk, a few verbs and how to ask where the bathroom is. There are only a small handful of people who speak English who are in the group of people Sarah and I ever interact with. The whole process of just integrating into Costa Rica has been a little difficult. We’ve been painting the church the past few days and some of the boys from the youth group have been coming and working to pay for camp this weekend. I wasn’t really listening to them talking, but I looked up and I heard one of the boys saying “gringa” and laughing and staring at me. Now I’m use to the people laughing at me here, but I was pretty sure I wasn’t doing anything stupid this time unless I had paint on my face or something. Either way I should have just used my scorpion killing/wax on wax off moves on them…


Rebecca just amazes me. She has picked up Spanish so quickly and knows tons of verb tenses and all of that. It was kind of funny, the other day Sarah and I were at her house and as we were leaving she came close to me so I thought it was for a hug, but she was leaning in to kiss me on the cheek which is really weird for me. But anyways, it was really awkward because I was trying to give her a hug and she was trying to do the kiss thing and it was just uncomfortable ha ha. She laughed at me (See, even the Americans laugh at me) and told me that she is a Tica (Costa Rican) now, and that’s what they do.

Anyways, I was trying to figure out what I could bring back my little sister for her birthday. Not that they would allow it, but they have trucks that drive down our street that sell chickens, 3 for $2. Now that I’m an expert or anything, but I’m pretty sure all you could get in the States for $2 is a hot pocket or something. I just might try to catch one of the locusts and just tell her it’s a puppy.