Costa Rican Word of the week: digamos
I don't give this a translation because I'm going to explain. This word/phrase might be very close to being tied with mae for the most overused word/phrase in Tico Spanish. Literally speaking, "digamos" means "we say", but here they use it as we use "like". Except it's as a middle school valley girl uses "like". It's much more apparent when talking to girls as they will start every new sentence or phrase with it, or variations of it, but I have caught pretty much every Tico using it. Honestly speaking, it's kind of annoying ever since I started paying attention to its use, but I'm pretty sure I have no right to criticize as I probably sound 500x as dumb to native speakers.
Percent complete: 39%
I'll try to keep it short again this week, not too much new. Classes are almost in full swing. They all picked up pretty quickly (since we only meet once a week), so I have been busy with homework already. The enrollment process actually went very smoothly for me... super lucky there. I only had to change out of one class but the new class is one that I get the same credit for at KU so it really wasn't too big of a deal. Portuguese is going to be fun, Natural History of Costa Rica is going to be very insightful and interesting, Costa Rican literature will probably be a nightmare, Morphology (the study of the formation and structure of words themselves) is going to be great because I have never had a class like that before in Spanish, and Written Expression will definitely test my elementary vocabulary while writing about very in-depth topics of past and current events. The most exciting part about all of this, though, is that hopefully my Spanish improves exponentially throughout the semester because I certainly have the course load to be able to practice it. Wish me luck.
One thing that UCR does exponentially better than KU that I want to mention: books. There are probably a hundred photocopy shops around campus and each professor will send their book, or even just the relevant articles for that week's class, to the photocopier and then the students get all of it there. The books even come with plastic covers and spiral binding! My Portuguese book was $3, and I just had to get some articles printed for about $2 total for the next few weeks for CR Lit and Written Expression. My Natural History and Morphology books are online, and I don't need an access code to get to them. So KU should take note of this and do the whole "photocopier" thing, so I don't have to spend $400 on a Biology book anymore.
This weekend was just full of basketball for me. I watched every Big 12 tournament game, whether it be on the computer or at the American bar that we have spent way too much time and money at (and where we will spend even more time and money at in the next 3 weeks). A few people went to Jacó this weekend, which is the closest beach to San Jose, but I chose to stay in town to watch Elijah Johnson do this to Will Spradling. I also found out that the CBS website for the streaming of March Madness works here so I watched the Selection Show and analysis on that. It's the little victories at this point. I'm super excited for the tournament, as tough as our bracket may be though. To be the best you gotta beat the best.
Also, Josh and I went to eat at a Pizza Hut on Sunday. Not exciting, right? My same thought, until we walked in and it looked like an upper-class-sit-down restaurant, complete with waiters with button-up shirts and a wine menu. The pizza was incredible as well, but there were more non-pizza things on the menu than there was pizza.
My family is coming in 5 days! I'm beyond excited to see them all (minus Tom and Mal, as they are busy with wedding plans... apparently that means they can't come visit). We are going to be in San Jose on Saturday night and having dinner with my host family, and then we go to La Fortuna (rain forest) for 3 days and Tamarindo (beach) for 3 days. It's going to be an awesome week.
As promised, the very nice Canadian man that took pictures for us while surfing in Puerto Viejo sent us some of them! I'll post some of them below, with a couple of extras, for the pictures this week. Also, with my family coming next week I won't have a blog post until after that vacation, so no post next week. It should be a fun one so stay tuned! I will actually get to have some more fun with the camera since we are going somewhere.
Last thing, make sure to vote for my good friend Victor Ortiz, the professional boxer from Garden City, as he is competing on Dancing with the Stars this season! You can follow this LINK if you want to vote. I think the limit is 12 times a day, for those of you who would want to do that. His partner is also quite attractive...
That's it for this week (pictures below). Talk to you after a week off, and, as always,
¡Pura vida!
Playa Negra, where we learned to surf. It was raining when we had our lesson, unlike the picture from last week.
Seth, Duncan and I. The board is that long because the longer the board, the easier it is, so it's obviously for beginners.
Caption this.
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