Yes, I did arrive!

Hola Everyone!
 This blog was suppose to have been sent out long ago, but that couldn´t happen without a computer.  Shortly after arriving my computer had a short and basically started smoking.  So, not having a computer of my own to use is sometimes more difficult to keep in touch.

So where am I?
   I am here in San Jose, Costa Rica with 33 other students from the U.S. and Canada.  We will be here until mid-December studying Spanish and the Latin American culture. 

Host family:
   I am living with a host family the whole time I am here.  My family consists of my Papi, Lucas, my Mama, Lilliana, and three sisters in the house.  Lucas is a pastor at a community type church next door.  Lilliana is a micro-biologist and besides being home she works in health care with youth, as far as I understand.  My sister, Ana Laura, is 21 and studying to be a Spanish-English translator at the University of Costa Rica.  She studies a lot so I don´t spend all that much time with her.  My sister, Marcela or Marce, is 20 years old and studying Education at the University of Costa Rica, as well. My other sister, Tutu as my family calls her, is actually from Honduras and lives with the family during the school year.  She is 19 years old and is studying Medicine at a University here. Then, there are two older sisters who are married.  Roxana, the oldest, is married and works in a rehab facility with drug and alcoholic abusers.  Carolina is the second oldest and is married and has a 3 month old girl name Sofia, who is adorable. 
   We live in a gated condominium community called Agape.  Most of the people that live here are a part of the community church my dad is a pastor of.  Basically, every Saturday afternoon there is a 2 hour church service where everyone comes together as Christians to worship.  However, people are from different denominations.  My family for example is Catholic, others Pentecostal, Evangelical, etc.  The people participate in small groups and have other events they join in on as well.
Classes:
   There are two classes that all Latin American Studies Program, LASP, students are taking right now for five weeks.  One is at the LASP building every Tuesday and Thursday mornings for 3 or so hours.  It´s about 25 minutes from my house. We have speakers come in a share about their experience with the Latin American culture.  Yesterday Elmer came in a spoke about his childhood in living at the dump.  Discussing poverty while seeing it, is super intense and challenging.
   Then, every day in the afternoon we go to ICADS, a Spanish language school.  It´s about an hour walk or 15 minute taxi ride to ICADS from LASP.  There, we are broken up into groups of 4 or 5 students with a teacher to improve our Spanish.   When that´s done at 4:30pm  it´s another 25 minutes or so home.
   I´m really enjoying the classes and the staff are awesome!  There´s definitely a lot of homework right now, but still manageable.

Well, that´s probably enough reading for now.  At least you´ve got a gist of where I´m at and what I´m doing.  I´ll hopefully send out another post soon.

Take Care,
Laura