Clases y: la tica

As I am finishing mid-terms, my friends are finishing their finals. And yesterday, we all GRADUATED from college! Before getting into my Costa Rica stories, it's definitely worth mentioning graduation. Surprisingly, I wasn't too bummed about missing the ceremonies and festivities. I know it's a big deal for most people, but it's not the end of my education. What I look forward to more than anything, academically speaking, is graduating from optometry school, so that will be the time to really get hyped up for completing my schooling.

Handball is going really well. Last Monday during the scrimmages I scored 8 of the 11 goals throughout class. You see, I can anticipate the other team's passes, so once the ball's in my hands it's just me and the goalkeeper. I'm fast, what can I say? :)

Music appreciation is fun. We've watched more operas in class and even part of the movie Amadeus. Last week, I gave my presentation over my favorite music, and thanks to Kassy's presentation ideas, the class loved it! First I played the song "The Haunting" by Anberlin which might be my favorite song ever. Then I explained marching band to them because from what I found out from talking to previous ticos, they don't know what it is. They know about bands that march in parades, but I made sure to tell them about how high school marching band competitions, marching band performances during football games, and Band Day are an entirely different world. So, after playing a quick clip of Led Zeppelin's "Black Dog", I showed them Part 1 to the Pride of Arizona's Band Day performance that matched Zeppelin's original tune. I figured I'd choose a song they would know, and they knew this one. Lastly, I showed them a YouTube video of Man Overboard playing with Less Than Jake, explaining how I play trumpet and piano in a Tucson ska band. A few students were really impressed that we played with LTJ.

My literature and film class is also going well. In fact, I was super nervous for my HOUR long INDIVIDUAL presentation that I had to give, but it actually went fairly smoothly. I had to discuss the themes in the movie "Fire". I made a powerpoint and a worksheet with discussion questions for the class, so time flew by. Plus, we got deep into a few discussions that resulted in my presentation lasting not 60 but 80 minutes! Yikes! I'd never done anything like that, let alone in Spanish!

My dialectology class, as I now call it, continues to be challenging. We had our first partial exam last week and I'll find out how I did on Wednesday...

Linguistics has been smooth sailing. Our overall grade is just a mid-term and a final, so obviously I wanted to study a lot for the mid-term. And of course, being the linguistics major that I am and having taken a few linguistics courses, I already knew the International Phonetic Alphabet pretty well. We had to know IPA symbols for the test so I worked up the nerve to ask the girl who sits in front of me if she wanted to study. I got a big "Sí sí! Me encantaría!" So we exchanged phone numbers and studied at 7:00 later that week. Good thing she clarified am/pm because I was totally thinking pm...darn ticos and their early morningness, haha. Turns out she schooled me on the test: 93% to my 85%.

ouch...

Anyways, we've been texting a lot (oh...didn't mention I have a cell phone yet did I? :) well I do) and are going to have lunch on Tuesday after class. Woo hoo!

Next post - the beautiful beaches and rain forests of Mal País