Our first day of Spanish school!

We both slept a little fitfully last night, likely because we were nervous about our first day of Spanish school. We were both up with the sun and drinking coffee at the upstairs bar by 6AM. Learning on an empty stomach is not for me so I fixed us each an omelette and sliced up some fresh mango to go with the pineapple we already had sliced up in the refrigerator. The fruit here is amazing.

We rolled out of our place at 7:45AM to be punctual for our 8AM start of class.

Our profesora Ana, who will be teaching us on Lunes y Miercoles (you may know them as Mondays and Wednesdays) is fantastic. She’s 66 years old and is retired but teaches a couple of mornings a week at the school to stay active. We love Ana. Today being our first lesson, Ana was base-lining what we know and teaching us the appropriate salutations and how to answer biographical questions, like “De donde es usted?” We learned that it’s important to ask people you meet these types of questions. For example, if someone asks you “Como esta usted?”, you better not stop your answer at “Bien.” To be polite the question must be passed back as “Bien. Y usted?” Those of you who know me know that I’m not super in tune with social cues so I’m paying extra close attention so as not to come off as rude accidentally.

It was obvious pretty quickly that Jill and I have different strengths in terms of where we are starting. I’m reasonably proficient with numbers, days, and months and the names of things, but I cant put a non-canned sentence together to save my life. Jill can already make sentences and was asking her questions (o preguntas) in Spanish, where I would ask my questions in English and get an answer back from Ana in Spanish. Ana picked up on the fact that at about the 2.5 hour mark we were both a little overwhelmed so she shifted gears and we finished the lesson with flashcards depicting various items of produce we might buy at La Coope or at the feria (weekly farmers’ market). We both did well at the flash cards, which made it feel like we were ending on a high note.

Tomorrow we will meet our other profesora, Maria. If Maria is the same caliber as Ana, we are golden. In summary, we both went into the first morning of school a little anxious, but we finished feeling totally at home and like we’ve found the right place for us to learn Spanish.

We stopped by the Maxi Pali, a grocery store that is owned by Walmart, on the way home from school to pick up some eggs and some dried basil (so far we have not seen fresh basil in Costa Rica; maybe there will be some at the feria on Friday) for the gnocchi I am making for dinner tomorrow night. On a flyer, at the checkout I asked if they “Vendes Kolbi recargo?” and got a nod from the checker. I asked to put 10,000 Colones on my SIM card, reading the number over her shoulder as she typed it in.

On the way home we also stopped at the neighborhood store that’s on the way to our house. It’s a cute little place and we will be shopping there to pick up little items that don’t warrant a trip to La Coope or Maxi Pali.

When we got home I fired up my mobile hot-spot and I got a green light and an Internet connection!!!! I also figured out how to check the remaining balance on my prepaid account (text “Saldo” to 8888 from the the text function on the hot-spot). I got a disproportionate feeling of accomplishment from that minor victory. I’m making this update while connected to the hot-spot just to reinforce to myself that I have slayed this particular dragon (at least for now).

We treated ourselves to a decadent lunch of Ritz crackers, sharp cheddar cheese, and sliced up Gala apples. It tasted like victory!

Jill just finished a one hour video session with one of her interns and the house WiFi worked brilliantly. We had a minor moment of panic last night when one of the online software packages Jill uses wasn’t reachable, but when we turned on the VPN to route the traffic through the US it worked just fine. Whew!

I think we are going to take advantage of the remaining daylight and walk down the hill from our house and explore the recreational options available to us. We’ve been told that there’s a putt-putt golf course on property 🙂