buenos.

Today was really really great.

First and foremost was the food served. Obviously. We had my most favorite breakfast this morning: coffee, scrambled huevos, toast con jam, gallo pinto con natilla, y frutas con bananas. I was so immensely satisfied afterwards. I couldn't wipe the smile off my face. My emotions are heavily influenced by food.

In Ecology today we talked about conservation, which was cool. Scott ended class early, leaving me with 25 minutes to copy my composition by hand from my computer. It took me 30 minutes, so I ran from the indoor classroom to the comedor. We're talking maybe a block's worth of ground covered. I couldn't catch my breath for probably 10 minutes. Seriously. Carla was trying to talk to me and I was so freaking winded I could barely keep up. It was so great.

Rachel was MIA for class today. She didn't come on Thursday because she was pale and sickly, but over the weekend she asked both me and Carla about the homework that was due today so we assumed that she was coming, but she most definitely did not. Whatever. Carla and I had a great talk about having too high of standards for men and the disposability of friends and spouses. I love Carla. So much.

Lunch was the greatest lunch we have had in the history of LLC. Three words: MACARONI AND QUESO!!!!!! AHHHHH!!!! So good. It was so creamy and cheesy and perfect in every way. Since the cheese is so bland here, they added onions and peppers, which were delicious. Best lunch ever.

After lunch I curled up in my bed and watched the Tinkerbell DVD from my care package. The movie is made for children much, much younger than I am. So obviously I enjoyed it tremendously. It's about Tinkerbell's identity crisis at the beginning of her fairy career. Heavy stuff. Lucy Liu, Raven Symone, and Jesse McCartney were all in it. I smell an Oscar nomination coming on.. Is there a "Best Straight to DVD Picture" category?

Then Abs and I went through all of Anne's Costa Rica pictures on her computer and died laughing at the immense awkwardness we found there. Glorious.

Dinner was really funny. Cayman, Abby, and I sat with Katie, Scott, and Valerie. Scott was cracking jokes left and right, and Valerie was casually tossing out various juicy details about her personal life for all to hear. Katie perfected various usages of our new word: guam. I was talking to Scott and apparently was not enunciating my words because he heard "guam" when I said "cool." I told him I felt like they were interchangeable because guam sounds like a word that means cool in English. I had the hand motions for this elusive word and everything, and before long I had the whole table trying to figure it out too. We were cracking up, but could not for the life of us figure out what the stupid word we were thinking of was. After consulting urbandictionary.com, I still cannot find the word we were thinking of, but you can't leave urbandictionary.com empty-handed. Here are my finds:

guamming: To ostracize or exclude oneself. To move over into an area where nothing else is. To make oneself antisocial. ([Suppose a pillow is off on the other side of the room by no other pillows.] "Why is that pillow guamming? Can someone toss it over here?")

guamo: word for someone who records their farts and listens to them multiple times and thinks its funny

I really thought there were going to be fried yuca patties for dinner, but it ended up being country-fried steaks. Ew. Massive letdown after such a delicious breakfast and lunch. I ate the corn in the ensalada, rice, beans, and veggies. Just before postre came out Scott was talking about how he's going to make us brownies and milkshakes for a study break on Thursday night ( I can never tell if the man is joking or not--none of us can). We were fantasizing about chocolate chips in the brownies and chocolate peanut butter milkshakes and six jars of peanut butter with six spoons when Esmerelda brought out chocolate cake! It looked a lot better than it tasted amidst my dreams of chocolate chips and fudgy brownies, but it was still good. Valerie really wanted a candle in hers to celebrate her birthday that was two days ago. She was upset because no one sung to her on her birthday and wanted it to happen tonight. She asked Sylvia for a candle and Sylvia laughed at her and told her that her birthday was over. Sad times. Sylvia kind of sucks.

Oh and mi familia came to dinner tonight!! It's Michael's last night and he was their homestay baby before I got here so mi familia came to meet Michael's real fam. I was so happy when I saw them! They are the greatest people in the world. I didn't sit with them at dinner because I figured I could let Michael hog them on his last night, but then after postre I sat and talked with Marielos for a while. I asked her if I could come and stay with them this weekend after my program ends and before my real fam gets here. She said of course! I can't wait. She wants to have dance lessons every night, and we're killing the chickens on Saturday!! Woo!!! I pulled aside Kaylor and made sure he understood that he would be dancing with us this weekend. He agreed. Kevin was pretty pumped about it too. When he was leaving, he was like "we're dancing together this weekend, right?" and I told him of course! I got a double kiss goodbye. I am in love.

When I was talking to Marielos, Valerie came over to talk for a little bit and mi madre was so freaking cute. She was telling Valerie about how we are so the same because we both love to sleep and we love to dance and we don't need men. She kept hugging on me and talking about how pura vida I am. Best tica madre ever. Then Michael's parents wanted a picture of him with the fam so I got up to get out of the way. Mi madre was like where do you think you are going? You are my daughter! Sit down! So I cozied in between mi madre and Kevin for our family portrait. I need to get Michael to send that to me.

After dinner I discovered that Boggle has reappeared on campus! Apparently Sarah had an extra stashed in her office.. and Michael told her about how we lost the first one then didn't tell me that he had told her and watched me squirm under Sarah's inquisition about the whereabouts of the original Boggle. You're killin me, Michael.

Except I really love Michael. He is my brother now, after all. He had to go pack after dinner, but he wanted to come hang out with us afterwards so I told him to come find us in D2. I thought we were going to go play Boggle, but he ended up telling us this great story about the conflict of his tica crush and his girl back in the states that is now with a friend of his. He also gave us the scoop on his group's feelings towards LLC. Apparently Lauren legitimately hated us and would give Michael a hard time for talking to us and all that, but the rest were indifferent slash ended up liking us. So yay. We talked until Abby needed us to evacuate her bed for sleeping purposes. He's leaving in the morning for Arenal with his parents, but promised a road trip to UGA in the near future.

peace love and guam