1st day of school

Today was our first day of real Spanish classes.  We got here to Costa Rica just over a week ago.  Since then, we have been getting accustomed to our new home, getting to know our Tico family, attending orientation for school, and lots of other things.

This is why we are here in Costa Rica.  To learn Spanish.  We have already had lots of opportunities to butcher the language (taxi, shopping, church, birthday party with our Tico family), so we are ready to begin these classes!

We will each have 3 classes each weekday morning  - grammar, language, and phonetics. The language and phonetics classes are each an hour and the grammar is 2.  Our classes are in Spanish (obviously) and some of our teachers speak only a small amount of English.  This is good in that it will force us to not rely on our English, but it is also frustrating at times.

Mike and Ashley just before the first day of classes.

Our afternoons and evenings will be filled with homework, studying, and we are hoping to find a way in which we can serve people here in Costa Rica using the talents and gifts the Lord has given each of us.

Costa Rica

On January 3^rd, we arrived in Costa Rica in order to study Spanish.  Our flights went well and immigration and customs were much easier than expected. 

The Spanish Language Institute in San Jose, Costa Rica is where we are attending classes.  Yesterday we had our first day of orientation.  We got to meet about 30 or so other new students and got an idea of what our classes will look like.  The most exciting (and stressful) parts of the day were the placement tests.  We had both a written and an oral ‘exam’ which will be used to place us each in a class with 3-4 others that are on our level.

Here in Costa Rica, we are living with a Tico (Costa Rican) family.  Our Tico mama, Dulce, is a sweet Christian woman who cooks our meals for us and is already helping us with our Spanish as we talk with her over these meals.  Her 2 children are both adults (probably in their 20s) and live here as well. 

In just 3 days since arriving, I feel much more confident and am remembering some of the Spanish I learned in high school.