Felicitaciones

When will I ever learn that waking up before the sun rises is especially not fun when I don’t sleep?! Yet here I am, the night before my 7 am class (now, my only 7 am class ^_^). This certainly didn’t happen when I didn’t have Internet…

So, this will be quick. Today was St. Patrick’s Day, though you wouldn’t know it here in Costa Rica. The other student in my house and I were both wearing green, so our tica mom pointed it out as a coincidence. When we told her it was a tradition for St. Patrick’s Day, she hadn’t heard of it before. I hadn’t even thought of it until the student pointed it out to me yesterday. Funny that a guy from England is bringing up some Irish spirit :)

I went to another dance class today, same class on the courses guide just a different day and professor, and it certainly was a whole new experience. We played some PE-esque games as a warmup (just like the good old days, right, kids?) and then danced in partners. It was really fun, just in a different ways. Learning random PE/relay games in another language is tricky, but even some of the natives weren’t entirely sure what to do so it was okay.

The two highlights of my day happened one after the other. The first was when I decided to shop for snacks (I always want to eat here, so I figured I may as well try some native food instead of depleting my small supply from home) and had to sneeze while browsing the cookie aisle. I almost always sneeze into the crook of my elbow, but I had things in my hands so I sneezed into my shoulder instead. Right afterwards I hear a voice, and see a little old lady speaking to me (she turned out to be quite adorable). At first I figured she’d seen my not-so-perfect manner of preventing the spread of germs and been offended, but when she repeated herself she said ‘bien educada’, which basically means I’m well mannered. I gave her a quizzical look, and she told me that I was the first person she’d seen sneeze the right way, and told me ‘felicitaciones’. I told her that people in the US rarely do it, either, and thanked her. We smiled, it was adorable.

The I walked to the yoga studio and bought myself an organic yoga mat. I recognized the girl behind the counter I had met before and she recognized me, which was nice. I told her I’d be back next month to start, and lugged that thing home (it’s much more heavy than my non-organic foam/plastic one).

I almost forgot! I tried opening a coconut today using the hitting it with a blunt object in the right place trick and failed. Eventually, I let my tica mom get out her hammer and hand the coconut over to her ex-husband (he’s around a lot because they’re still friends and he plays with his grandkids and visits his daughters) to make quick work of it. He told me about a place I can buy coconut pieces, as opposed to the whole fruit, but I saw that the coconut split where I had been working on it once he hit it with the hammer. Maybe I’ll try again, or maybe I’ll just go find the coconut piece vendor.

After dinner I went with the student to see Shutter Island, which was fairly trippy and overdramatic. It’s also the book someone in my group is reading, and I made fun of him after reading the back cover…I would say I feel sorry about that, but it was silly for most of it. The end made up for the beginning, I think.

And that was my day! A wonderful day, filled of lots of exercise (I decided to walk instead of taking the bus, as well as try out my yoga mat after dance). Hopefully I can keep it up, even when I have homework and fieldtrips, at the very least so I can eat all of the awesome fruit here.