The one where the students arrive.

I know, I know, I've been a slacker lately. I haven't updated my blog in weeks. Oops.

But I have a REALLY good excuse! Or rather, many really good excuses. You see, first we moved onto the campus, and I didn't want to update my blog until we were fully moved and living in our own spaces.
Then two tech guys came from Whitworth to help us set up our computers, server, network, phones, etc, and I didn't want to update until that was all set up.
And then our students came and I was insanely busy forever and ever, amen.

But now our students are all moved in with their host families, so things have calmed down a little bit. And all of our computers are now set up, and my father the computer programmer would be proud of my cable patching skills. And Bean and I are fully moved in to our room, which is great.

So now I have a little time to update you all.

But lets focus on whats really important these days: our students. As a Student Life Coordinator (yes, besides "volunteer" that is my technical title) work gets a lot more exciting when you actually have students around to coordinate. Bean and I led them on plunges in San Rafael, Heredia, and San Jose, which were all very exciting. Every time we have a spare minute we are busy planning the next exciting event for our amazing students. And let me tell you, they are amazing. Because this is the first semester, we only have 8 students. (Don't worry, we won't ever have this few students again!). Did I mention the gender ration? 7 females and 1 male. Poor male. Or rather, lucky male?

All of these students are spanish majors and minors, which makes our job a lot easier. Even though they haven't all experienced spanish immersion experiences before, just having 300 or 400 level spanish skills is soooo helpful! They have all done an amazing job of jumping right in and getting excited about becoming a part of the local Tico culture and community.

Last Wednesday we officially held the first ever Whitworth Costa Rica Center class session: Latin American Culture and History, a 400 level spanish course. Since then we have also started Spanish Linguistics, Latin American Theology, and Core 350 (or, as Lindy has nicknamed it, Corazon 350:-). These are going to be some great courses! And the best part is that I don't have to do any of the homework since I'm not technically a student, but I get to sit in on them and get a great review on all these super interesting topics.

Now that the students have moved off campus and in with their host families, Bean and I are looking to the rest of the semester. In about a week we are traveling to Nicaragua to scout a trip the students will be taking in October. We are so excited to be going back to Nica finally, after three years of missing her! We're also continuing to find more host fams for Jan Term and spring, planning ecology trips around the country, and figuring out lunch every day since our kitchen still isn't quite ready, which means our Sodexo cook can't start cooking yet.

Ooh, which brings up another exciting part of our lives here. We now have our full Sodexo team, complete with maintenance man, gardener, cook, cleaning woman, and program assistant. They are all so great! They work 5 to 6 days a week (depending on the position) and they are all so much fun. Its great to have them here working on campus, becoming a part of our Whitworth family. Good times.

Also, a few anecdotes about life on a construction site.
1. My favorite thing to do is watch the guy who drives the giant Cat tractor thing around. He is always either super concentrated, sticking his tongue out as he manuevers this giant machine, or he is super laid back, like he isn't even working at all. I think he was a little weirded out by us just watching him do his work in the beginning, but now he's used to us and just waves whenever someone accidentally makes eye contact. (Come on, who wouldn't watch the giant machines moving mud beneath their windows?).
2. Bean and I have to work hard to make sure we're up at a decent hour these days. If we accidentally sleep in at all (like we did this morning) we get woken up by construction guys working outside our window. "Oh, hey guys". Thankfully, all the guys have been super respectful, and pretend like they can't see us until we're showered, dressed and ready to go every morning.

Well, thats all for now. I'll try to start updating this more often again, but things have just been so busy lately! But, as we like to say around here "life is good!" I love my work and am so thankful that I'm living in such a gorgeous, amazing place!