Last night I thought it wasn’t going to rain but sure enough, about 9:30 I was doing homework in my room and then bang, crash, lightning over and over again and the usual pounding of the rain on the roof. At least this time it had the decency to wait until I had finished all my stuff for the day. It was nice to be dry for once!

It feels weird doing homework again. We have alternating morning/afternoon classes so that means when we have a morning class, we get a lot more homework because we have all that day and all the next morning to complete it. Sometimes I almost forget it.

I hate to think what our teacher would say if we didn’t do the homework, as she’s very strict. She corrects every single mistake we make no matter how small, but that’s actually a good thing, because how else do you know if you’re doing something wrong! She’s very energetic. Yesterday I was going to be a minute late for her class and I pedalled my heart out on the bike to ensure I was there on time, and just as i was pulling into the bike stands the bell started ringing so I was just on time, but rather than risk being 30 seconds late to class I decided to forego filling my water bottle.

My homestay is quite a nice place. There’s Norma, her husband and her 16 year old daughter. She also has 3 sons living in San Jose (the capital). I had quite a bit of trouble understanding her at first, but Norma and I had quite a nice talk last night about families and food and a couple of other things, and it went really well. I can’t understand a thing the husband says but there’s another student of the school from America living here and she is the same – can’t understand much.

For some reason I expected all the locals on the street to say hi every time you pass them, but it’s not true, and whereever we go as a group of students, nobody ever talks to the locals. I wonder if that’s because we’re too nervous because our spanish is so bad (that’s the case with me) or whether the locals have a genuine dislike for the foreigners. I think it’s not the latter because the few locals I’ve seen talk to me every time I see them. I’ve only been in the town 5 days and you keep seeing the same people everywhere every day. Being in such a small town is weird, but nice!

I feel I’ve been a bit negative in my last few posts, but I think it was the rain and adjusting to the new place! Everything is going well. I love the classes, and when it’s not raining, the beach is beautiful, and there is not much better than having a drink for £1 right on the beach. My homestay is getting better as my confidence in speaking spanish improves and the time goes really fast every day, I thought I would have lots of spare time, but I don’t – it’s all taken up with activities, lessons, and socialising. Yesterday I saw someone I know having a drink at a bar on the beach (that in itself was awesome enough) but it doesn’t take long for other people to stop and say hi and end up having a drink as well. It’s this sort of reason that I chose a small town for learning Spanish in, and I think I made the right choice.

Although I still think that when I go to Mexico and Peru that I’ll study spanish in a city. I want to see both sides!

I managed to go into a shop yesterday and ask the checkout girl where the bug spray was, and I succeeded. And then I understood the other guy there when he asked me if I wanted a bag. Woohoo! Also, I got an icecream and little milk drink for 550 colones, which is about 75p, although they were very small. I went to a restaurant with the girls from my class and you could buy a massive drink of real fruit juice mixed with milk for about £1.70, it was the best drink ever, kind of like mango lassi but with real mango (also papaya and other juices too). They have so many tropical fruits and they’re all real cheap – my homestay mum has massive plastic bags filled with all sorts of fruits.

Today we went on a bike ride, we were going to go to Carrillo but people had already been there so we set off for Buena Vista instead. The name sounded good (“good view” in english) but unfortunately we couldn’t make it there because the roads were impassable because of all the rain. I was told before I came here that some of the roads on the west coast are impassable in the rainy season and now I see why.

HERE’S THE PHOTOS OF THE BIKE RIDE.