6 Enero
This morning I got my other suitcase (which is good because mi mama told me that a lot of times it takes more than a week so that’s awesome) and had a phenomenal breakfast.. fresh pineapple, grapes, strawberries, and toast. Jennifer was making fresh lemonade (but with their limes, so limeaid?) which is absolutely fantastic and we drink with almost every meal. All of the food is so fresh down here which we love. After breakfast we went back up to the roof (nuestro lugar favorito) and read and began writing down all the new words we’ve learned so far. I also did a little yoga session.. yoga on the rooftop with the entire city as your view is quite relaxing, even with my old man back. For lunch we had fabulous rice with vegetables and fish, tostones (taste similar to French fries), fresh avocado (from the trees in the backyard, salad with tomatoes, and the chocolates that Rosie and I brought as gifts. This afternoon we had our first orientation at the ISA office (ISA is our program, International Study Abroad office) which was kind of dull but gave us a better idea of the city and what we’ll be doing. I got to meet all of the people in our group, it’s a wide range of Spanish speakers, some are fluent and are just visiting a different country, and others are closer to my level. We just had to sit and listen to a lecture so I didn’t get to know any of them but we have our first trip this weekend to La Romana which is an important historical place and also has beaches (estoy muy emocionante para ver la playa) and caves and other cool natural things that I’ll learn more about because I missed some of it in padre’s lesson about the country last night. After orientation we came back and our family had to leave to go look at pictures of my sister Jennifer’s quincenera (celebration when you turn 15, similar to turning 16 in the US but you get to wear a prom dress and have tons of people and basically a wedding cake to celebrate turning 15.. Jennifer is gorgeous and looked older than Rosie and I by a few years) but we were tired because thinking in Spanish takes so much more brainpower than we’re used to for normal conversation so we stayed home to rest. We watched Harry Potter with Spanish subtitles and wrote down words that we should know or just wanted to write down for future reference (“you know who” = ya-sabes-quien, mago = wizard, etc) along with reading our verb dictionary to write down important words in our palabras journal to try to improve our vocab. We’re going to try to do this everyday so we can keep getting better. Our familia got back around 9 and we at sandwiches at like 9:30 (dinner is usually way later, lunch is the big meal of the day) that for some reason tasted way better than back home (mama loves to cook for us, she’s perfect). Then Rosie and I did some exercise DVDs that she brought so we can be hot on the beach this weekend. Tomorrow we have more orientation at 8:30—first morning we’ve had to get up before 10—but we get to see the university and the city so I’m pretty excited. I hope all is well, hasta manana!