Today was my first day to sleep in. We had an abnormally busy week where we had our Tuesday/Thursday class also on Monday and Wednesday... however today, we only had the language class.
This week has moved by pretty fast.. we talked about family roles mostly in our language classes and had some interesting speakers at the core seminar. On Tuesday we had a guest speaker (who normally wouldnt be here) talk to us about his time in Africa as a missionary that works with Wycliffe Bible Translators. He told us about the African community he lived with and helped to translate the Bible for and gave us a bit of a view of tribal life. The community pretty much operated in a way where everyone did their job and shared with one another if there was need. It was cool to hear what he had to say about this village but I couldn't help feeling like it was a bit romanticized and wouldn't work at a large scale in this world.. he even admitted that it had its problems and that selfishness existed even in a society based on sharing with one another.
The Thursday speaker was an El Salvadorean who was born and lived in an El Salvador trash dump with his family for many years of his childhood. He explained how he was always hungry and would dig through trash in search of food.. food became such a huge theme in his life that much of his imagination revolved around food. He also explained that many of the people that lived around the trash dump and spent their time searching through the trash would also look for things that they could repair to sell. He loved (and still loves) drawing, painting, and writing.. after the civil war in El Salvador, his family was put on a government "hit list" for people that participated in protests so his family was forced to leave or face likely death. They came to Costa Rica and today this man works as a neighborhood guard (48 hours shifts) and spends his free time and even his guard shifts painting and writing poetry. All of the students got a chance to buy some of his stuff paintings which was cool. He has a pretty powerful story and carries with him a huge sense of humility.
Not much out of the ordinary has been going on other than that we had a Spanish test today which went pretty well I think? I never really know...
Tomorrow a group of us are going to try to take a bus to the Playa Jaco which would be the first time that I'll have seen the Pacific! We'll see if it works out but I'm pretty pumped to be on a beach...
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