beach life

Well, it´s been two weeks now that I´ve been in Samara, which is kindof astonishing to me, because it hardly feels like it´s been that long. Perhaps it´s having a routine that makes time go by so quickly... I´m absolutely delighted with my trip so far, and really, things couldn´t get too much better. The daily grind includes waking up to roosters and monkeys outside, eating a fresh fruit breakfast, walking to school on the beach, taking my classes and spending the rest of the day on the beach, reading my book or studying Spanish. I´ve made some really nice friends here in town, which makes things all that much better. Just this afternoon one friend with a car drove a few of us to a neighboring town for a change of scene and we spent the afternoon at a restaurant with an amazing bar-terrace, where we drank cold beer and admired the view and the breeze. Again, not too hard to take. At all.
My new tico "family" couldn´t really be sweeter, either. Alice is a jovial old woman who cooks amazing food and trys her hardest to help me understand her jokes. Some mornings I´ll wake up to blasting salsa music and she´s cooking away in the kitchen, singing and dancing all the while. Hilario is Alices husband and is also really sweet. He makes a real effort at meals to hold conversations, which are sometimes painfully slow, but he still sticks with me, and trys to teach me things I might not know, like names of animals I´ve never seen and suchlike. In addition to these two, there´s a constant flow of family and friends who come and go all day. They definetly have a very close family and value family above just about everything else. They like to sit around and joke and tell stories, and although I only get about 60% of what they´re saying, it´s just a nice glimpse into a lifestyle very different from my own. They´re becoming more and more comfortable around me and I already know I´ll be really sad to say goodbye not only to them but to this whole town, when the time comes. One of my best friends here is an 84 year old man named Elmer, who lives down here half the year and spends the rest in British Columbia. He´s originally from Hungary and has traveled all over the world and is a wealth of wonderful stories, which he willingly and enthusiastically recounts to any listening ear. I´ve spent quite a few nights sitting with him in the rocking chairs on the porch, listening to his tales and just enjoying the good company. It´s indeed amazing the characters you meet when you´re new to a place.
School itself is really great, and I definetly am understanding a lot more now than I was when I arrived, which was my objective, and therefore, I consider the whole trip thus far to be a success. My classmates this week were more into the whole thing (last week I had some really immature and unfocused girls who were basically just here for a tan), which really helps, because the enthusiasm just sortof brings the whole class up.
All in all, things are just about perfect, and although this is on the short side, I cant think of much else to say besides that it´s not too shabby livng in paradise. Not too shabby at all.