Veintiun de enero del dosmil seis

It's been a good couple of days.

First off, for anybody wondering how that test I was talking about went, I can say with great ego that I did much better than I had thought I would. I got a 94 on my first ever Spanish test, and next week I will be placed accordingly. This just gives me the warm fuzzies all over.

For some general Conversa/Costa Rica news, regarding myself and Bryan, we have taken it upon ourselves to ease the load on the school buses that take the students from Santa Ana (the town we live in) to Conversa (the school we go to). In other words, we are walking to school every day. This may sound like no big deal to you, but you have to believe me when I say that it's a bit of an undertaking. You never really appreciate the difficuly of walking uphill until you have to do it. The walk from my house behind the Coco to the trail itself is proably a little more than half a mile, and the trail is an uphill hike of about 3 miles to Conversa. It takes about forty-five minutes to walk to school, at which point we take some very cold showers at school. Why a cold shower? Because hot water heaters, it turns out, are a relatively newfangled thing and have not yet made their way to the mass populace of Costa Rica. Thus, the school has no hot water available. We are getting freezing cold water from deep within the mountain in which to shower. It is both a reminder that I am alive as well as a reminder that I don't like to be cold. But anyway, it's getting me in pretty good shape (I'm seeing my ribs for the first time since high school), so I'll keep doing it until I go home. In fact, Bryan has made it his goal never to take the bus to school, so I suppose we'll be walking to school for weeks to come. It's a good time, lemme tell ya.

And now for storytime.

All week long, one of the older students here (also named John) has been planning to have his 54th birthday party in the bar I'm living in. We've been talking it up amongst the other students, including the 25 or so college-aged kids from Samford who have been here for the past three weeks. We were all pretty excited about it because it would be an opportunity for us all to hang out a bit outside of school before all the Samford kids leave on Monday, and to get a pleasant buzz going on while we were at it. John (or, as we have come to call him, Don Juan) paid for everything, including drinks, food, bocas (appetizers), and karaoke. It was a qualified bash. I even did a little karaoke duet with one of the Samford girls ("Fly Me to the Moon" if you're curious); it was good times all around.

But the most remarkable part of this story would have to be the dancing. I don't remember who it was that dragged me onto the dance floor after the karaoke, but I remember wanting to fight it the whole way but also being a little too buzzed to properly recall how to do so. I started dancing to some of the salsa music, and was having a great time, and as my buzz wore off I realized that I was still having a great time even without the aid of alcohol. Turns out dancing is fun. Who knew? Before last night, I hadn't made a serious attempt at dancing since Sarah's prom my senior year of high school. But last night was an adventure. I did a little bit of swing, a little bit of salsa, and I think there may have been some disco involved, but the lines are kind of blurry in regards to musical styles down here and so it was hard to tell. The weirdest thing about it was that all the teachers, who had come to party with us, kept sliding up next to me and doing some moves that will make me feel very awkward looking them in the eye on Monday. They seemed to be enjoying themselves, but there were a couple of moments where I just kind of slid away and hoped they wouldn't notice until I was across the floor. In retrospect, it's pretty funny, I suppose, so we'll just let it be funny and leave it at that.

In unrelated news, I have started introducing myself as Juan without even thinking about it. The people down here just can't wrap their tongues around "John," so rather than fight through it I have simply become "Juan." It's kind of nice, really, because it makes me feel like a real live Tico (local). It's fun.

And on a kind of frustrating note, you might notice that I am writing this entry on a Saturday morning. "Why," you may be asking yourself, "would a person in Costa Rica who has the day off spend his Saturday morning in an internet cafe writing journal entries?" The answer, of course, is the snooze button. I was supposed to go rafting with a few of the older students and Bryan today, but I set my alarm clock too early. Trust me, that sentence does make sense. We were supposed to meet at the bus stop at 5:50 to head to wherever it is we were supposed to go, but since I was up late last night I left myself vulnerable to "subconcious alarm clock manipulation syndrome," a condition with which I have been struggling since early in my high school days. I only needed to set the alarm seven minutes before 5:50 in order to be there in time. My clothes were laid out, I hadn't planned to shower, and the bus stop is a block from the Coco. For some reason, I set my alarm clock forty minutes before 5:50. Thus, when it went off, my subconcious mind said "I have much more time to sleep. We will snooze." And so I snoozed. Then, it went off again, and my mind says, "That is annoying. Snooze." So I snoozed. Once more it went off, and my mind said, "Damn you, clock, and all that you stand for," and simply turned the clock completely off. This was what got me into trouble. My concious mind awoke at 6:00, aware of what the subconcious mind had done, and in a panic. I threw on my clothes and was out the door by 6:01, but it was too late. I missed the bus, and I didn't know where we were going rafting, so I couldn't simply get a cab to take me there. So here I sit, in the internet cafe typing journal entries. It's a little frustrating, but I've got several weekends left and I will make it onto the river before I go.

So now I will probably go buy some book in Spanish and attempt to build my grammar and vocabulary by reading it. I'm thinking I'll hike up to the school and read in the hammocks, because it's much more quiet and peaceful there than in town. Either way, I reckon I'll end up having a nice, relaxing weekend, and I've never been one to complain about relaxation of any kind.

And now I go to the bookstore. I'll see you guys later.
-Juan del Coco