Today was so great. This morning, the moos got me out of bed again. I made my way over to the student union, where the wifi was working! It was so exciting. Then we had a feast for breakfast: pancakes, rice and beans, fresh fruit, homemade cheese, and fresh coffee. Needless to say, it was delish. After breakfast, I had Environmental Sociology with Dean. I'm seriously obsessed with the man. We had this really interesting discussion about the exponential growth of the world's population over the past 200 years or so. I won't go into it too much, but basically we are at our breaking point--with as big as our population is, the world cannot sustain us for much longer. Dean talked about the Chinese limitations on how many children you can have, and that he didn't feel that he had the right to have more than 2 children. As we got deeper and deeper into the discussion, I just found myself really reconsidering a lot of my views about the world slash reevaluating thoughts about my own future. It was great. So our homework was to check and see what our carbon footprint is. Apparently, it would take 6.4 earths to sustain our current population size if we all took the form of Sarah. Yikes. You should look at yours: http://www.myfootprint.org. Actually, mom, would you do it as me because I think you could do it more accurately than I did it.. gracias. So then I had my English class with Jeff. Today we had each picked out a poem from our anthology and we talked about those, and then we discussed what a poem is. At the end of class, we did this fun exercise where Jeff wrote down the first line of three different poems on three different sheets of paper and then passed one to each of us and we had to write a second line in response to the first line. Then we covered up the line Jeff had written so the next person had to write a line in response to the line we had written. After we passed it around a few times, we unveiled our masterpieces and read them aloud. Two turned out pretty good, actually. The third.. not so much. After class came lunch--rice and beans, pork, veggies, and salad. I dined with Dean again. We are well on our way to becoming bffs. After lunch I had Spanish with Carla, and Kathy joined us. As much as I enjoyed my one-on-one time, I love Kathy enough that our little trio worked out. Carla is all about homework, though. It's kind of rough. After Spanish, Tess took Ann and I under her wing tutoring two local girls in English. Tess will help us out for the next couple of classes, and then let us do our thang. The girls' names are Susan and Jennifer, and they are gorgeous and 15 and too cool for school. Today we worked on translating Aretha Franklin's "Respect," and Ann, Tess, and I full-on rocked out when we played it on the computer. As most of you know, I can bust a move. Susan and Jennifer were beyond embarrassed and so freaked out, but they will come around. After tutoring, Ann and I made the hike over to Dean's house for high tea. Cayman joined us shortly thereafter. It was so great. Dean and Kathy had teas and cookies and trail mix waiting for us at their palace. Their house is ginormous and backs right up to the edible garden. They have three extra beds in addition to a fat master bedroom, a kitchen, a massive living room with two dining room tables, 2 full bathrooms, and an office. Seriously? Why is that not mine? They said I can come sleep over whenever. So we sat on their back porch and just chatted for a couple of hours before we had to head back for dinner. They are just so sweet and so interesting. We did a bit of exploring in the edible garden, too. I tried munching on sugar cane, but it wasn't ripe yet. Dean told me to put sugar on it. Then we ripped a plantain off its tree, but it was hard as a rock so we didn't even bother biting into it. There were some baby pineapples growing, too. So anyways we headed back to the comedor for dinner at 6 and had rice (no beans!), pasta with this alfredo-esque sauce, salad, veggies that Abby chopped up (rockstar alert), and chocolate chip cookies, which I then, of course, polished off with a steaming cup of joe. Black joe. Then we had a carbon offset talk that Quint led. He just gave us a run-down of the program he has going on here--all of the reforestation efforts and how we can kind of begin to start making up for the fact that our lifestyle requires 6 earths.. After the talk, our crew headed back to the bungalows and just had a fat bonding sesh. I love these girls! Ann is super sweet and beautiful and great to talk to. Tess is so cool and mature and has been here a few more weeks than we have so that makes her that much more awesome. Plus she has a lover [he-who-shall-not-be-named-at-the-present-moment] already. And then there is Tia. Oh my gosh Tia. She is so freaking awesome. She plays rugby and is a nude model and has 3 fat sunflowers tattooed on her right thigh and loves Latino men and is so open and real. Our group is amazing and study abroad is amazing and I don't know why anyone wouldn't want to do this. Okay I haven't started my homework and I am waking up early tomorrow morning to go milk a cow (ah!) with Cayman so until tomorrow,

peace love and high tea

and a shout out to k yang!