Karen's journey into the unknown

I felt like my Spanish was coming along really well until today. In class we started to learn the past tense today and I realised what an absolutely huge task this whole language learning business is. So I feel like I have a good grasp of the present tense now. But that took 3 weeks. It feels really sad to be leaving the school, when I am learning so much everyday. But I can´t really stay here for the whole time. I need to use the language I´ve learned to talk to people and build on it from there. The school and staying with Felicia gives me such confidence, I hope that I have the nerve to keep talking when I leave that security net.

So my last class tomorrow, and then at the weekend I´m going with some North American girls to the carnival at Puerto Limon. I wasn´t sure wether to go, because the big weekend is the following weekend. I´ve heard it´s dangerous too....well I´m drawn there anyway...I´ll be with other people. People say Notting Hill carnival is dangerous but I managed to stay safe and have fun there. So I´ll give it a go anyway...

I was feeling sad about the bird project not working out, so have been going all out to contact them, but there´s no reply. The phone line is disconnected, the emails bounce back, the website has gone. Well at least I tried all possibilities. So I´m off to the butterfly garden in Monteverde to be an english speaking guide on Monday. I have my own room in this really beautiful, remote area so am looking forward to that. I´m a little nervous about giving the tours, but just keep thinking that I´ve been speaking almost completely in Spanish for the last 3 weeks so how hard can giving tours in English really be? I might have to pick up tarantulas too! Wonder if I´ll be able to do that.....I´m looking forward to being in such a lovely, peaceful location after all the traffic and craziness of San Jose.

The photo is a typical scene of my life from the last few weeks. I sit at the table with Felicia and we chat and often she paints and I try to learn verb endings, but often get distracted by the amazingly tacky soap operas you get on Latin American TV. I think watching tele is a better learning style anyway, writing and rewriting verb endings doesn´t really stick in your head for too long...Haha that´s my excuse anyway....

Tonight I´m going out for dinner with some North Americans. They´re nice people but one of them seems to constantly talk about the price of things. He keeps announcing in a really loud voice how "that´s absolutley nothing" to him. I just cringe in my chair and hope that noone around can speak English. But of course they probably all can, and can understand every word of his arrogance.