Failed movie trip, church, volunteering, and Thursday night

So on Wednesdays, there is a 2 for 1 special at the movie theater in the nearby mall, so some of us went with hopes of seeing the Snow White movie. However, we learned that we needed to get there MUCH earlier because the entire theater was sold out! :( So instead we kinda just walked around the mall and shopped around, which was interesting because we realized that a lot of the stores here look the same as American stores but with slightly different names. There was an Urban Outfitters look-alike and a Pac Sun look-alike, along with others that I can't remember. It also kinda sucks because clothes here are expensive!! I though everything here would be cheaper, but a basic shirt here is like $30 where in the US I could get it for much less. It's also really awkward to shop because the stores are a lot smaller and you're often the only one in there. Plus, the workers will get up from where they're sitting and kinda just watch you, so it's kind of awkward to shop and I feel so guilty if I don't buy anything. It's not necessarily a bad thing, just different.

Thursday morning, I went with my Tica mom to her church. We went early because she had to read a passage for everyone and wanted to prepare. This allowed me to walk around and take a couple pictures on my phone and just observe. The churches here are beautiful, pretty long with very high ceilings. They're usually more open than US churches too, which isn't surprising considering it's much warmer here. There is a large presence of stain glass windows, beautiful alter displays, and countless statues of Jesus, Mary, and a number of saints that I don't know. Needless to say, it's gorgeous. When church started, I was caught off guard when the pastor? (I'm not catholic so I don't know the name. Sorry if that's horribly wrong) looked at me and said he didn't know me and asked me my name. My name is kinda weird here and very uncommon, so of course after saying it like 3 times myself he still didn't understand it, and after my Tica mom saying it about 3 more times he finally got it. He then asked me where I was from I guess, but I was so nervous (this is in front of the entire congregation, remember) that my brain wasn't working and didn't know what he was saying. Nela eventually said Chicago for me so I could figure out what he was asking, but it was a pretty terrifying 10 seconds. At first, though, he thought I was from Germany before she had said anything! Then he asked me to come up to the front, but luckily my friend Claire was there with her mom so they had her come up too. Funny how she's gone about 3 times already and the one time I go all this happens! But he was actually really nice; he just welcomed us to the church, showed us the choir, and asked for the congregation to give us applause. Not too bad, but I was still pretty embarrassed. The rest of the service went pretty smoothly.

Thursday night, I went with Claire to volunteer at a class she has been working with. It's a night class for Ticos to learn English. It was actually really fun because the students were awesome and it was good practice for my Spanish. Being there was fascinating for me because I've never seen people trying to learn English. Let me tell you, our language makes NO SENSE. There were so many times when they would ask us why something has to be a certain way and all we could say was "It's just the way it is." English has so many crazy rules that are impossible to teach and make someone understand. It was especially interesting though because I was able to see some rules that I didn't really know existed because I am a native speaker. If you just sit down and look at an English workbook like they had, you'd see how crazy our language is. I admire these students for tackling such an insane language. There was one point though where I was able to explain in Spanish why a certain sentence had to be structured in a certain way, and they actually understood! It was such a great feeling, because I was able to explain it in Spanish well enough so that they understood! I was on Cloud 9 :) It also felt kinda good being there because I felt smart for once, not like the stupid American struggling to string sentences together. Of course, I didn't go too long feeling like that because at the end the teacher had them ask us questions in Spanish so that we could practice too. I've definitely decided that my speaking skills are a lot better than my listening skills. Half the time I know the words they're using, it's just hard for me to decipher what they're saying. That's what I really need to work on.

After volunteering, we met up with some friends at our usual bar, Boulevar. We didn't stay out too late but it was fun! We met some other Americans from Texas who are studying here, so we talked to them for a while. Then later a live band started playing, so we listened to them. We saw some Ticos our age just kinda standing in a circle and dancing, so me and Corie-Ann went over and joined them. It's funny because in the States, if someone did that you would probably be a little weirded out, but they were so cool about it! Everyone here is so nice, especially to us! I think they might be amused by our struggles to communicate, but whatever :)

I'm still not sure what we're doing this weekend. We might go camping, we might not. It's up in the air. Either way I'll update with out activities!