Salsa like there's no tomorrow!

I had quite a weekend! Our last day at La Selva we went out dancing at this bar in the little town. It was a little harrowing when we first got there... Karaoke night(shudder), but I asked them to play dance music, so eventually we got just about everyone in the bar out on the dance floor. We had just had a salsa lesson, so we managed to pull off all kinds of spins and things with a little style... and its a lot of fun!

After that we headed back to San Jose, got shown around the language school, and met our host families. I have a room in this colorful house with lots of skylights and only one bathroom. I still haven't figured out exactly who lives there because so many people are in and out all the time. It's very exciting. My host mother Ana Maria is the matriarch of it all... and there's her husband, two daughters that I know of and another couple of girls about my age who arrived last night and are related somehow, the boyfriends of the daughters, and two of their kids, the maid in the mornings, another spanish student from germany, and various friends and cousins and things all drift in and out of the house. Ricardo, the four-year old is the cutest thing ever. I read his little picture books with him, and he thinks I'm stupid because I'll be trying to learn the names of things while he's making up all kinds of stories about what the rollerskating dinosaurs are having for breakfast. It's fun. The family is very warm. They took me right in as soon as I arrived. To say hello and goodbye to friends here they put their cheeks together and make airkisses... it was a little startling to me at first, but I'm getting to like it. My first night my tica sister took me out with her and her boyfriend and another friend to the Jazz Cafe for a live concert. "Roc Classica" is popular here, so this Costa Rican band called the Tortugas was playing Floyd and the Beatles and singing in english. I spent a lot of the night explaining songs because they had no idea what they were about. I got to play trucks with Ricardo, explore around downtown SJ a little better and snagged myself a most delightful sunburn(should have known, Loren) with the rest of my weekend. Today is my second day of Spanish classes. The language school is pretty awesome. It's big and filled with people all the time. They have salsa and cooking classes on the side, and some organized activities. The other big event... the Costa Rica/Mexico soccer game, which is supposed to be jam-packed and crazy with a huge party after whether they win or not. I'm in a lit class with only three students in it.. we're reading a lot of magical realist short stories and getting an overview of literary history. I love it so far! So that's life so far. I'm making my family lasagna tonight for a much-needed reprieve from rice and beans. Ciao!