"You're not Costa Rican"

Today was a good day. There's a two hour time change and since I went to bed so early last night, I woke up at 5:45am and was wide awake. I got on the computer, typed up the entry before this and then got ready for church. One thing I love about being Mormon is, no matter where I go, the church is always there and always exactly the same. I can always count on it. In my past travels, if I ever was starting to feel a little sad about being gone, the church makes me feel right at home. I love it.

When I got to church there was a girl there from Pennsylvania who is doing her masters research. She speaks spanish already because she served a mission for our church in Chile. I didn't get a chance to talk to her before church started. She sat with my host family and I and when the first meeting was over I asked her where she was going to school and she was all surprised and said "oh, you're not Costa Rican." Haha, I asked if I looked like it and she said yes because most Ticos are light skinned and with my hair I could pull it off...sweetness! That's great news to me. Now, I just have to get my spanish down so I can pull it off completely. There were quite a few people at church that spoke English and I know that I'm here to learn spanish but when you are surrounded by everything different than what you're used to, it's nice to have something familiar.

After church we came back to the house and had a delicious lunch. It was spaghetti with a Costa Rican twist. All the food I've had here has been delicious and I told Maribel she has to help me learn how to cook. I can cook but I don't have a huge variety of dishes yet. With the amount of traveling I've done and plan to do, I need to start writing down recipes. I love international dishes. When we were done eating, I played a game called "packasel" with Raquel, the 9-year-old daughter of the family I'm staying with. She is so cute. The game requires you to stack sticks on the donkey. She was a little shaky and couldn't do it very well so she made me stack them all by myself...luckily, I had steady hands. Now, if I could only get steady hands when I take pictures...I'm always shaking. But, my new camera has a stabilizer. Day two was good. I start school tomorrow and I'm excited!