I should've brought my safety glasses

We've only been here for two days, and already I feel like I've learned so much! The mornings start at 8AM with Spanish language class and surprisingly, I ended up being (mistakingly) placed in the most advanced level. Today we went through pretty much all the nonsubjunctive tenses/conjugations while I just sat there and tried to absorb as much as possible. o.o; I may have to drop down a level, especially since I couldn't even understand what Gladys, our instructor, wanted us to do for homework. She seems like a really no-nonsense woman, but very competent and funny when she wants to be. I think I'm going to fight it out and stay in this class though, stay intense about my Spanish learning. Lunch breaks involve wandering around for an hour and eating whatever strikes us, and it's so cheap and muy delicioso! Since our class is so expansive (there are almost 30 of us, including 9 from Duke!), we naturally split into smaller groups... I've been hanging out with pretty much the same people, but I do want to get to know everyone gradually. After lunch we have engineering class, during which our instructor Rob spits out information at rapidfire pace in two hours. Yesterday's lecture on ECGs and electrode placement and today's on pulse oximetry was stuff that I've gone through before so I could keep up more or less, but I worry that others that haven't may not be able to, including Julie the bio major. She's a real trooper. Afterwards, we have my favorite part, lab until 5PM. Today we learned how to (de)solder!, (dis)connecting wires together using heat and melted metal. The whole experience was quite electrifying and kept me on the edge of my seat as the power circuits kept shorting in the room or people's soldering irons got too hot and just kept sparking ! Didn't help that one has to keep one's face close to the work for better accuracy. Luckily, no one's eyes burned off and no fires were started - I'd call it a good day.

I love our homestay! I’m living with two baller girls (literally - we all like playing basketball and played in high school.. hoops are hard to find around here though!): Hannah from the Imperial College in London and Sharon from Georgia Tech. Our family is really nice and super-patient with our broken Spanish. It takes so much effort to try to understand what is being said and produce coherent sentences all the time though, so that just contributes to our mental exhaustion and we end up sleeping really early every day. The mother works for a lawyer, and the father is a taxi-cab driver. They have two boys, 12-year-old Mauro and 14-year-old Federico, grandpa, and another (much older) university student. And the most adorable dog ever, and two chickens! The house we're staying at is roomy and I can tell the family is relatively well-off. They have a big TV and internet, so luckily we can get online pretty easily with an ethernet cord. San Jose, Costa Rica has an uncanny resemblance to Taipei, Taiwan for me, though the weather is much cooler and bugs less bugging than expected. The three of us gave our gifts to the host family last night; besides the food, tea, and baseball hats, Hannah got the boys a propeller vehicle kit with purely English instructions. It made me so happy just to sit at the kitchen table watching Mauro try to figure out how the heck to put all the parts together. Tonight, the three of us played Colocho (Twister!) with the two boys. El pie derecho verde almost killed me, but I came out la ganador! :P I really appreciate the family, how they want to spend time with us... I have a feeling that these times chilling at home with my temporary family will be the ones that I'll cherish the most. ^^