I Survived! =)

Yes, that's right! I survived my first FULL week of student teaching in Costa Rica (but barely!) By the time yesterday after school rolled around, my head hurt sooo incredibly bad the only thing I felt like I could do was lay in my bed and watch friends. I was feeling a bit homesick because I think it finally hit me how far away I am and how long it will be before I see everyone. The schedule here is starting to get to me as well (5:30 wake up call, cold shower, school, lunch at 1, "homework", and we usually don't eat dinner until like 8:00 - which is SO extremely late for me) and all I kept saying yesterday was, "Hey, at least the food here is fantastic!" So yesterday I just laid in bed until dinner and then the dinner we had was actually the first meal here I didn't like, so that just was no fun either! But at dinner, Lindsey (Emilia's daughter) who speaks fantastic English and works as a translator was telling us how even when she was in the United States her head would just hurt and she would be soo mentally exhausted by around 8:00 that she would just want to go to bed (which made us all feel better because she is so great at English!) Anywho, I slept for almost 10 hours last night and that seemed to help quite a bit. Then today after school we went to a Costa Rican Swing Dancing Class! It was FANTASTIC! It was definitely something we all needed.. time to burn off some pent up energy and get out of the house for a night for a change! It lasted for about an hour and a half and I actually worked up enough of a sweat that taking a cold shower actually felt good! So that was very nice too. =)
Back to that school thing.. haha I seriously cannot believe how many different activities these 3, 4, and 5 year olds are exposed to! Today, the little girls had ballet class! It was so adorable to watch, made me miss dance terribly, though. The days are getting easier and I think my Spanish is coming back to me? Apparently I flow better in my sentence structuring (which here is insanely hard because they have what seems like 839,335 different conjugations!) but I can definitely tell I am understanding even more when the teachers around me are talking. The most difficult thing of is trying to discipline my students. I definitely need to learn the phrase "don't throw sand" in Spanish. As well as "don't hit", "don't scream", "don't push", etc. etc. ya know, the usuals! The month of September is going to be particularly challenging because it is National Costa Rica month (their independence day is September 15) and everything that is scheduled to be taught is about Costa Rican history and vocabulary and such. I have already started my research, but I know I am going to need a lot of help from Gaby in order to teach it correctly to my students. Other than that, the Montessori period will stay the same and the math topics that are going to be covered I have already taught in my other practicum placements. That's why I love math, it's the same in every language!
Tomorrow we are going to go to the Irazú Volcano. It is in Cartago and what we attempted to go to last weekend (this time we know the bus schedule! ha). After that, my cooperating teacher, Gaby, invited me and the other student teachers (Meghan, Kelly, and Linsey) to a party she is having for her boyfriends birthday! She said she wants me to meet him and the rest of her friends so we can make some friends here in Tres Ríos. Gaby is fantastic and I am so happy that she is my cooperating teacher because she makes me feel so welcome and comfortable and always tries to get to know me even better. It helps that she is only 24 (almost 25) so there isn't much of an ago gap. Anyway, I have heard this volcano is absolutely awesome and it will be good to get out of the house again and out exploring as well as having some fun. I am already realizing how important it will be to have fun on the weekends because of how stressful the weeks are! On top of student teaching and culture shock, my brain hurts sooo badly every day working on all of this Spanish. All I have to say is that I hopefully will come back to the US extremely good at Spanish =)
I definitely miss everyone and home A LOT! Skype is such a fantastic invention that allows me to actually SEE people, and I love that a lot! If you happen to have it and would like to talk (I can show ya my house and the mountain right outside) just look me up! Just search for Sarah Mikels and my username is 'samikels'.
Also, for those of you without facebook that would like to see the rest of my pictures, I am going to start uploading them to a picasaweb site.
Here is the link:

http://picasaweb.google.com/116304399512979294076

There aren't any there right now, but probably after dinner I will work on getting them posted! Thanks for reading, and I hope it is at least a little bit entertaining!