Dia Cincuenta – The Countdown Begins

5 de Julio del 2009

So this week, I went to see Up. One of my fellow classmates told me that at the mall, they had one theater with English and the other with Spanish. So I took a trip to the mall, and unfortunately they only had the Spanish version. I debated it – I had taken the time to go to the mall, I had paid the bus fare, I had set aside the day, and I figured that this would be the only time in my life to see it in 3D...so I went and saw it in Spanish. :-/

I’m still not sure whether I made the right decision. I enjoyed the movie, and I followed the story, but the dialogue was for the most part lost on me. The montage of Carl’s early life and marriage were absolutely amazing. After that sequence, though, I was only able to follow generally what was happening. Pixar is good enough to tell a story almost without words, but for me, it was a good movie...and I know that if I had understood the dialogue, it would probably have been a GREAT movie. I guess I’ll have to wait for the DVD to find out. I can’t wait to see it again (in English).

My other adventure this weekend was trying to find cream of tartar in this country. NOBODY has it. I’ve been to five supermercados and no one had it. A few had tartar sauce, but for snickerdoodles you really can’t use that ;-) I talked to my mama tica about it and she was surprised that that one of the supermercados did not have it, she suggested I try another one. I’ll try to go there soon because I have a Snickerdoodle craving.

Tomorrow, we get a new professor. Adonis (my classmate) left this weekend and so now I have been at the school longer than any other student. Steven got replaced and now there are two students from the Bahamas in the two houses across the driveway. David and Roxanne actually speak a lot of Spanish already so I can speak to them in Spanish, which is good because I am trying to avoid speaking English. (Yes, I do feel a twinge of guilt as I write that sentence in English.) We will start in Book 2 next week as well, so it will be interesting. Supposedly Book 2 is mostly a review of Book 1 in terms of concepts but now applying those grammatical concepts to new words and using them in new ways. I look forward to it.

For the fourth of July, I watched Apollo 13 since it was the most American movie I had available to me. That is such a good movie. As it happens, I am now in a countdown of sorts myself. I am here for twenty more days in Costa Rica. Twenty short days. Twenty long days. Twenty days left to learn, to explore, to be in Costa Rica. I am thinking of going to Volcan Arenal either this next weekend or the weekend after. We'll see. :-)

That’s all I have for today! See y’all tomorrow.

God Bless,

Gregory