San Marcos

So I changed families on Tuesday. It is so much better now. I live with Alicia, who was my liason and now is my mom. Here are some new points I would like to share with you...

I am hopefully gonna start playin handball this tuesday with the team here in my new town of San Marcos.

I still go to the same school in Santa Maria. I jus take a bus in the morning.

There is a ping pong table in the gymnasium that is 100 meters from my house.

I got my haircut really short, people say it looks good.

I went to Monster Jam yesterday with
Erla-iceland
Helen-Iceland
Zach-US
Gunnar-US
Mitch-New Zealand
Erika-US
Magdelena-Austria

and it was so much fun. It wasnt so much the actual trucks and car-crushing that was fun, it was more the great, hilarious, company and dialogue.

Next weekend is the second orientation and that will be AMAZING! im looking forward to it so much.

School...Again

So today marks the first day of school after Holy Week. My week off was absolutely fantastic and it felt SO long. I dont remember school. I went to San Jose for two days, San Isidro de General for two days (INCREDIBLY hot) and I stayed with my liason in the next town over, San Marcos, for 3 days. She hosted an American girl two years ago from Vermont and she was here visiting when I was there. I spent a lot of time with her and it turns out she is JEWISH! Her mom also sent her matzah so we made matzah pizza and it made my day. When I got home on Saturday, Carmen and the boys arrived and i played with David for a while. Sunday, me and Erla went to Cartago and visited our friends there, two americans and an Icelandic. Thats always a good time.

Next saturday I am going to San Jose with them and we are going to Monster Jam which is a Monster Truck rally. I find it ironic that the first time I will see monster trucks is OUT of the states. There are about 10 of us AFSers all goin together so it should be a blast.

San jose

today i took the bus to san jose with my AFS liason Alicia and Erla. we went to the Teatro Nacional, Museo Nacional, and the Museo de Oro. It had to be above 102 degrees all day so i didnt really enjoy it as much as i probably should/could have. We are spending the night at our Liasons other house here in San Jose. It is a good house; comfortable, nice, has internet, and i dont have to buy my own juice and milk. haha. Actually, I might be living with her permanantly. She is a tad on the older side. She has two kids that live half at her home in San Marcos (the town near my school) and half in San Jose where they go to university. I wouldnt have any brothers or sisters in my house, it would be kinda like being an only child, another experience I have never experienced. Also, she travels to San Jose a lot so i have more travel time myself. She has had more than 5 exchange students in her house. I think it would be a great move. I will know before the end of spring break.

Tonight we are going to dinner and a movie. Itll be us three, and Alicia´s daughter and son. We will stay the night tonight, go to mass in the morning (yup, im going to a mass at the san jose cathedral), and get back to Los Santos by 5 on sunday.

PICTURES

My Mom

Another Angle

Another Angle

My Room

David (with my notebook)

Jeaustin

Erla the Icelandic with Hannah and...I dont know

Artur and Colin, a Brazilian and an Argentinian

THE AMERICANS

Waitin at San Jose International

Guns, Jessica, and Hannah on the Plane

Erika, Hannah, and Jessica in the miami airport

Erika would kill me if she saw this... (oh p.s. her last name is Bro!)

Elizabeth, Jessica, and Hannah in Miami hanging out in Me and Zach´s Room

20%

Well, yesterday marked my one month anniversary away from home. Cuz I am constantly doing stupid mental math in my head i am done with 20% of my Foreign Exchange experience. I cant decide if that is a lot or a little because I mean, when you are waiting for something to load on the computer and you see it says 20% done you are like "shit this is gonna take a while..." but if you are at the hospital and the doctor says you are gonna lose function in 20% of your brain you are like " shit, thats a lot." I guess its all perpective. Things are a lott better than when I posted last time. I am over the whole depression thing. I know you are all thinking " No, this is impossible, gabe can´t ever be depressed, hes just too awesome!" but I was a little. If you read the last one then this one though you will see I am back to being my smartass self.

I signed up for the gym here in town. I went there on monday for the first time. Then again on tuesday. I skipped yesterday because I was incredibly sore. But im gonna go back today. It really helps to keep myself in check.


More Later. I will try to get the photos up. Its a pain with the whole not havin internet in house.

Struggling a Little

So I guess nothing is perfect forever. I was in class yesterday, estudios sociales to be precise, when I stumbled upon a revelation. The way the teachers at my school spend their time is dictating us lines from their notes and having us jot them down in our notebooks word for word. An example, We spent the 80 minutes of social studies just writing down what she said and by the end we had a copy of her notes. Now i get the fact that making us write it for ourselves might let us get some of the information, but i really havent heard of that tactic being used since my parents were in school, inscribing on tablets under stonehenge (sorry ma and pops, I had to (: ). It is especially difficult for me cuz I only get about 75 percent down on my paper and understand significantly less. But its the weekend now. Im gonna try to have a lot of fun and have a fresh start on monday.

Coffee

So today at about 11 AM my uncle comes over to our house (he lives next door) and asks me if i want to see the coffee fields. Oh keep in mind these fields arent really fields, they are hills. They grow the coffee on the sides of hills. So we take his 1970-something toyota 4x4 up to the hills. On the way, we run across a couple hitchhiking. He pulls over and asks me to ask them where they are going. They are from france, it was easier for them to talk in english so we did. We ended up giving them a ride for a little but they were goin a lot further than we were so we dropped em of where the road split. Then my uncle turns on the extreme 4 wheel drive. We drive up a slope about 75 degrees. Not an exageration. The first one was the steepest but noy by much. We drove for 10 minutes before we stopped at a shack where a kid hopped in the back. He couldnt have been older than 16 or 17. We then slow down in front of a creek. I thought we were turning around but in fact he was adjusting my mirror before we plow STRAIGHT through the creek. In 10 minutes we reach a couple of guys who had sacks of what i thoguht must be coffee. Did you guys know that when coffee is freshly picked, it looks like berries? they arent beans they look like fruit. This was new to me. There were shades of yellow, red, and purple. It was kinda beautiful. We take all the coffee back with us to the factory in town which is a couple blocks from my house. THey measure it and dump in onto a MOUNTAIN of coffee. It must have been 30 feeet high. Just from today i think and it was midday.

Next time i go up I will brign my camera because that area is the most beautiful area i have seen thusfar.