Alive and Well!!!

I´m in Granada, Nicaragua for a couple days of rest and reflection at the end of our two week trip here! It has been an incredible time and was difficult to leave my host family this afternoon! I´ll blog more about the trip when I get back to San Jose this weekend! Thank you all for your prayers!!!

Off to Nicaragua!

I'm leaving my house in 9 hours to meet up with everyone in LASP and hop on a bus for a 8-10 hour drive to Nicaragua! We are going to be there for two weeks, and I won't be able to have contact via internet. But I'm still alive! ;) The first few days we will spend in the capital city of Managua hearing different speakers and such. Then we will be divided up into groups of 4 - 5ish. Each group will live in the same community with each person having their own family/home for 1 week. This will be in a town outside of the city and most likely in a poorer area. FYI: Nicaragua is the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere (Haiti is the first). So who knows what kind of conditions I'll be living in. Adventure!!! The last couple days we spend in Granada reflecting on the trip and relaxing! I'll have pictures and stories to share when I return!

BUSY BUSY, but GOOD week!!!

This past week has been crazy! We had a fair amount of homework due this week and I got to spend some time with my Costa Rican friends as well as American friends. I’m sooo glad it’s the weekend though because I did write 2 papers in Spanish, which were each about 4 pages long! My brain was fried! However, I’m definitely improving, which is a main reason I’m here. I also worked really hard on Tuesday to finish my first paper because I knew I would not have time to do it Wednesday night because my hermana tica (Andrea) told me that I HAD TO COME to this big surprise 30^th birthday party for a guy from our church here. The party was great! Pizza Hut pizza, cake, and candy from the piñata! Best thing ever was watching all these grown adults (25 – 40) clench their party bags while leaning forward ready to pounce on the candy as soon as it fell, and that is exactly what happened!!! (pic above) Of course the good Latin music was playing the whole time and one of my friends (Esteban) was showing me how to salsa. They all definitely make it look a million times easier with all their spins, but now I have something to aim for! After most of the people had left, Andrea’s close friends who I’m always hanging with decided to take a bunch of pictures. If you look at the picture of me laying across their arms their names from left to the back and then to the right front are: Carla, Andrea, Esteban, Edgar, Carlos, Ellen. Anyway, got home at about 12:30am and I had to get up at 6:00am the next morning! Whew! So I walk into my room, shut the door, and there is this fatty cockroach on the wall in the corner behind my door. I got Andrea who can and killed it…ick! Then I moved some clothes in my closet to grab my pajamas and these white bugs scurried out from under my clothes. Needless to say, I shake everything before I put it on now. Haha! I’m pretty sure it’s just cause the bugs come out late at night and I’m usually asleep by then. HOWEVER, I remember being woken up the other night by something that was crawling on my arm! I brushed it off and realized that it was rather large…so…in putting two and two together…I’m pretty sure a cockroach was crawling on me while I was sleeping the other night! NASTY! (Holguins, you can probably empathize!) So that was my fun story for the middle of the week. Friday morning all LASP people met up and we spent the majority of the morning sharing brief “life stories” or some story that went below the surface, so we could start to get to know each other deeper. Great time of sharing, being vulnerable, laughing, crying, and being in community with one another! This time was topped off with HOMEMADE CINAMON ROLLS that LASP had brought to us!! Soooo incredibly delicious!! Friday night I got to go to a Mexican restaurant with a bunch of my American friends. It was great to continue our being in community and getting to know one another better! I’ve gotten pretty close with a handful of people from all over the US! It’s also always nice to be able to carry on a deep meaningful conversation with someone (obviously in English) after you’ve been constantly TRYING to have similar conversations in Spanish. However, my Spanish is indeed improving! Some days are definitely harder and more discouraging than other, but I just have to keep going for it and messing up in order to fix it and move on. I think I’m beginning to be able to show my personality more to people through my clever statements in Spanish here and there as I try to incorporate my humor in another language! Here’s a neat story for you: My host mom’s dad is not doing well health wise, and this has been hard on her and the family in general. This morning, she randomly comes into my room and starts to tell me how she woke up at 4:30am cause she couldn’t sleep (sounds like someone else I know…cough – mom – cough). So she got up and read this devotional, which she then proceeded to read to me. After she finished reading it to me, she pretty much just started to pour her heart out to me. Talking about how she’s just been asking God why he’s put this situation in their life and what are they supposed to get out of it. She was telling me how it’s been so hard on her and the family to just be waiting around and hoping, but not knowing if her dad is going to die or what’s going on, all the while she’s crying as she’s telling me all this. What do you say and how do you respond?! So…I just told her that maybe God will use this to make her stronger in the end, and I reassured her that I was praying for her and her family. Anyway, kind of a random shock and yet neat experience, and the best part was I pretty much understood everything she was saying. In addition to that, I sat at the table after dinner with my host parents and had a long conversation with them about their previous students and all sorts of stories that went along with that. The incredible part was when we were done talking and I was walking to my room and I realized that I had pretty much understood EVERYTHING they were telling me in their FAST pace talking! Woot Woot! My Spanish is improving!!!! All in all, a great, very full week! I leave for a 2 week trip to Nicaragua Monday morning, but I’ll blog about that tomorrow!

Pictures from CR life!

All right, so here are some pictures from the beaches in Guanacaste my first weekend here, downtown San José where I spend a fair amount of time, and hanging out at classes with people. Also, there are a couple picture of my room in my house in Moravia. Enjoy!

Weekend Group Trip to Limon, Costa Rica

I just got back from a weekend trip with everyone from the LASP program to Limon, which is a city on the South Atlantic coast of Costa Rica. It’s a major port city for CR. There is a strong African influence and also a large amount of poverty in the region. This was a trip for learning, experiencing people, seeing the beauty of the beach, and bonding with staff and students in LASP. FRIDAY morning we met at LASP and listened to a speaker talk about Limon and racism. He was Afro-Costa Rican and had lived in Limon for a good chunk of his life. After that “chaula” all 42 students and 5 staff PILED into two buses and hit the road. We stopped at a coffee plantation, pineapple plantation, and banana plantation/factory. All 3 of these things we had talked about a great deal because they were significant to Costa Rica’s history, especially with the indigenous people, so it was really neat to see these places first hand and learn a little bit about the production and trade of each crop. We also stopped at this restaurant about an hour out of Limon for lunch. (Rice, beans, meat…the usual, but so delicious) We got to Limon, moved into our rooms at “Hotel Miami” (no joke), and then were free for the rest of the evening to roam around Limon in groups of at least 3 and preferably with a male in the group. ;) I went out with a group of my closest friends down here, Tristen (my roomy for the weekend from MI), Shelby (WA), Miranda (TN), and Jake (TN). Keep in mind that we do have an assignment woven into this trip. We have to interview 3 people from San Jose and 3 people from Limon (at least) about poverty and then write a reflection paper about it. We asked this lady at an ice cream shop if we could talk to her about it for a little bit and she brought us over to this older woman (we call her the matriarch now). We ended up sitting down with her and 3 other women and having a great discussion with them on poverty and their views on it. We also got a chance to talk to another younger guy and two homeless people who were living on the street. Talking about this with people and hearing their opinions on it was EXTREMELY interesting and enjoyable for me! I believe that one of the best ways to learn about anything or anyone is to talk to people who have personal experience. In addition, it’s all part of trying to learn what the people in Costa Rica are like by talking to them and hearing their stories! I LOVE IT!! Anyway, we walked around, talked to people a bunch, ate dinner at Pizza Hut (only thing that was open…and so delicious!), and then came upon a drum line and dancers who must have been practicing for Costa Rica’s Independence Day this Tuesday (14th). They sounded incredible! After we listened and watched for a little while we headed back up to the hotel, sat out on our balcony, drank glass-bottled coke, and hung out together. This trip was the first time that we (students) have gotten to all hang out together, so we were really excited to spend some quality time getting to know each other better! SATURDAY morning we were on our own for breakfast and just had to meet back at the hotel by 8:00am. Tristen, Shelby, and I found a good ole Mussmani bakery and got some delicious pastries with apple, strawberry, or pineapple inside of them! MMmmm! So Good! As a group we went to an indigenous tribe reservation. We meet and listened to a woman from this BriBri tribe talk about her tribe, their beliefs, their interaction with the government (negative), and how they raise these iguanas. Afterward, we got to see their iguanas, a couple hogs, and roaming turkeys, which are NOT NICE by any means. haha Then we loaded up the buses and headed to the beach! The forest literally went right up to the sand! We saw a sloth on our way to the beach and there were a few white-faced monkeys hanging in the trees around our table of food. We had beef/chile filled empanadas, sweet plantain filled empanadas, fresh cut watermelon, fresh cut pineapple, and bananas! SOOO DELICIOUS! Everyone chilled in the warm water and smooth waves, hung out on the beach, or played ultimate Frisbee on the shore. Once we got back to the hotel, everyone showered and got ready for dinner. We went to this upper level large room where a woman had made dinner for our group and there were 5 men on the stage playing Caribbean/Jamaican sounding music for us! After eating, of course, there was a long period of dancing!! We were all having a blast, but needless to say, our showers were pretty much pointless because we were all sweating FAR worse that we had all weekend because it’s humid there to start off with! After our older bus driver show us some moves, working on new dance steps, and doing the limbo we ALL headed a few blocks over for some ice cream to cool us down!! After this I headed back up to my room with Tristen and got to talk for a long time with her and exchange life stories and such. She is in the same concentration as me and is becoming one of my best friends down here! SUNDAY morning Tristen and I hit up the bakery again and then our half of the group went to a Catholic church serve in Limon conducted in English because it’s actually fairly prevalent there (through education and such). It was soooooooo incredible hot and STICKY! We were sweating through our nice clothes and fanning ourselves with the programs. haha Anyway, after church we loaded up, ate at the same restaurant on the way back, and arrived in San Jose around 1:30pm. It was an incredible trip! I got a lot closer with some students, learned a lot about and from the people of Limon, and got to enjoy a beautiful tropical beach!

El Partido Entre Costa Rica y Mexico

On September 5, I got to go to the Costa Rica vs. Mexico soccer game!!! I went with my host family! We were on our way to the game as my host papi was holding the Costa Rican flag out the window to show off the pride as it blew in the wind while we drove through neighborhoods. We got to the stadium at 3:00pm, but the game didn’t start until 8:00pm. The stadium itself didn’t even open until 4:00pm, so we stood in massive crowds and lines of people yelling, cheering, chanting, and screaming at any Mexican fans who walked by. There was a mariachi band with a bunch of Mexican fans around them singing while ALL the Costa Rica fans were heckling and yelling at them! What energy and enthusiasm; I loved it!! So we finally got in and sat about 6 rows behind the goal!!! There was a legit band playing music for a good couple hours, so we sang and danced along. There were a bunch of other random entertaining things that occurred out on the field, such as people on stilts with animal heads on because the FIFA World Cup is in Africa! haha When the teams came out to warm up, Mexico was warming up on our half of the field and in the goal right in front of us. This resulted in a TON of yelling, taunting, and swearing at them by the fans around us. However, once it came time to announce players everyone is cheering and swinging flags around in their hands. There were a number of times where the whole section would be jumping or rocking back and forth as we all sang or chanted the various “Tico” cheers! Oh, and my host sister and I were holding up and waving around our HUGE Costa Rica flag we brought with us. During the game it was so fun (until Mexico started scoring at least)! Every time CR would get close to the goal, everyone in the stadium would stand up and then when they screwed up or got denied, everyone would sit down and groan in sync! There was a lot of standing up, sighing, and sitting down. When Mexico scored, the green section of the stands would go CRAZY and every other person in the stands was dead silent with an angry look on their faces. Right when Mexico scored their 3rd goal, about 2/3 of the stands stood up and walked out, even though there was about 25 minutes left in the game. We stayed for a little while longer and left about 10 minutes before the end. There was a frustration conversation between my host papi and host hermana the whole way home. haha Obviously last Wednesday’s loss to El Salvador also didn’t make Costa Rica too happy. My host family just keeps telling me that I have hope because the US is still on top! Oh the passion and love of the game for futbol in Costa Rica! Gotta love it!

Email Me!!

I've been told that people who are not Google members and become a "follower" of my blog cannot comment on it. I'm sorry if this has confused anyone. Please feel free to email me at amclellan@apu.edu

New Thrilling Challenges!

Well, classes started this week and now things seem like they are going to be REALLY busy and start to fly by. Between taking at least two buses to classes every day and being in class for at least 3½ hours or more a day, my day is “poof” gone before I know it! It’s only going to pick up faster as we have a bunch of papers and assignments due in the next 5 weeks, which I HAVE to do all in Spanish! Which brings me to a BIG change that I have made for this semester. There are 3 different concentrations for the last month of the semester that students chose to do in LASP’s program. This past Tuesday LASP told us that they had about 20+ people in the Latin American Studies concentration and only 7 – 10 in each of the two other groups (International Business & Advanced Language and Literature). They asked people to think about whether or not they would want to switch to even out the groups, but nothing was at all required. So I decided to inquire of the Advanced Language and Literature (ALL) concentration. After talking with the advisor for ALL…I decided to switch over and go for it!!! This kicks up in the intensity of my semester a huge amount and completely changes how I will be spending my time from October 27 – Dec 8! Here are the new adventures and challenges that I will be facing. 1) All of my work for our Perspectives on Latin American History & Culture class must be submitted only in Spanish. This includes a few short reflection papers, two biblical reflection responses, and…………a 7-10 page research paper on the critique of globalization! Oh boy, what am I getting myself into?! Haha (Keep in mind this is on top of all the other Spanish papers and presentations I have to give for my Spanish classes) 2) I will be spending the month of November in a town called La Grecia (I’m not exactly sure how it’s spelt), which is outside of San Jose in another part of the country somewhere. Each ALL student will be living with a new family, and all of these families are from the same church that we will be in community with. In addition while we are there we are assigned some sort of “community involvement”, which is kind of like a service project/internship. And we will be doing all of this while at the same time studying Spanish twice a week together and reading a selected amount of Spanish literature (poems, short stories, and a mini novel) for our other class focus a few times a week as well. 3) While many of you may have heard from me that I was probably going to go to Cuba at the end of the semester, which is another thing that has changed since I switched concentrations. As ALL students, we will spend our last 10 days in Panama. We go to an island in the Caribbean and live with an indigenous Panama Indian tribe. I will once again live with another family in their grass hut. Quite the adventure! The neat thing is that this tribe’s SECOND language is Spanish just like all of us, so that will provide an incredible bond with people who have the same 2nd language as us. However, English is not their first language (obviously). They speak a tribal language that we will be trying to learn some of as our 3rd language. My advisor said that when we are in Panama, Spanish becomes our “comfort” language! How crazy! The ALL students are the ones who are usually apparently the “go getters” who are willing to live anywhere and be put in any situation where they can work hard and benefit greatly from every trying experience! Living in community alongside of other people in order to walk in their shoes and relate to them is exactly what Christ did and calls us to do, so I am extremely privileged to have received this incredible opportunity that I couldn’t have found anywhere else! So, all of these crazy, new, last minute changes have altered my semester DRASTICALLY! It is going to be 10 times more challenging than I had anticipated in preparing to come down here, but I want to make the most of this experience and push myself to the bitter end! In the end it will all be so worth it, the experience, the language, the struggle, and the numerous opportunities to humble myself and serve in ways that I had not even thought possible before! Please continue to keep me in your prayers! (I might need it a little more now) haha I am once again so excited to see what God has in store for me in the next few months, and I can’t wait to share more with you when I return!

Beach Weekend

So, my first weekend in Costa Rica was fantastic! My hermana tica (Costa Rican sister), Andrea, took me with her and 5 of her friends the the beach! We drove about 5 hours to the most Northwestern edge of Costa Rica! Her friend's dad own a hotel (kind of like a little lodge) really close to the beach so that is where we stayed. I went kyaking on an inlet of the ocean and then hung out at this GORGEOUS beach with hardly anyone there. We drove down a long bumpy road through many palm trees and pulled our cars in under the trees up against the beach. We swam, climbed on the rocks, played futbol, raquet ball, and hung out! After that we drove around to like 4 other beaches to see the beautiful view! We could see the cliffs of Nicaragua from the beach we were at because we were that close. On Sunday, Andrea and I headed to another resort place at Samara beach. She had to get some signatures from the employees for the National Bank (her job) so I got to walk to the beach, watch people horseback ride, journal, read, take pictures (many of palm trees), and enjoy the beautiful surroundings. This weekend at the beach and seeing the beauty of Costa Rica while hanging out with Costa Ricans brought me a peace that was very much needed! Thank you God for that gift! Needless to say I spent the entire weekend ONLY with Costa Ricans who spoke ONLY Spanish! It was great! I'm also a lot closer with my hermana tica too!! Ahhh adventures...que fantastico!!

I´m in Costa Rica!!!

Buenas dias!!! Well, after much traveling I finally arrive in San Jose at 9:30pm on the 25th!! They don´t really tell us a whole lot at orientation except for a couple legistics. They had us ask a bunch of questions, but then they didn´t answer them. The idea is that we can ask them of our host family and pretty much mess up over and over until we figure out how we are supposed to live a "Costa Rican lifestyle". My senora is so sweet. She had a HUGE boquet of flowers for me when I met her and she gave me a few gifts that were waiting for me in my room including, a mug, chocolate, key chain, letter, a bag that she made, and a few other things. I got to help make dinner, eat dinner, which included some cartiledge in the chicken that i chewed and ate (uhhh)...that was a stretch and I thought that I might not make it through, but i´m alive. haha Anyway, today I had my spanish interview at ICADS for my language study starting next week. Oh and because my name is Abby and they do things alphabetically by first name around here there have been a few things where i have been the LUCKY FIRST person...haha I guess I´m the guinea pig from now on! I´m exploring San Jose with two other students as we walk around, ride buses, take taxis, buy a few things, find a post office, figure out how to exchange money, find an internet cafe, etc. All of these things the program DOES NOT tell us, but we have to venture around and figure out for ourselves...what an adventure (confusing at times tho). So far, my nerves have still been rather high especially at certain moments, so please keep me in your prayers and pray for peace and confidence. It will continue to be a struggle for me to NOT KNOW what is going to happen next, but hopefully an incredible experience for someone like me who likes to know her schedule. I hope that all is well in the "foreign land" of America! Talk to you all soon! Feel free to leave comments on here as well because it will be the main thing that i check online. Love to all!

The Journey Ahead

I am spending my fall semester studying Spanish and Latin America on location through Best Semester's Latin American Studies Program!!!! I embark on August 25 and return to Minnesota on December 10. When we are not traveling, I will be living with a Christian family in San Jose (the country's capital). My goal is to make my Spanish as flawless as possible by being engulfed in the language and surrounded by their culture! I will be trying to update this blog as often as possible, so family and friends can see and hear about some of my amazing experiences!