So I did a thing

So I did a thing.

I'm going to Africa -- for awhile.

Quite awhile.

Blog update -- South American travels moved here

 I've moved the blog of my South American trip and merged it into this one. This blog has all of my travels.

Una semana más

One more week. 5 more days until I’m totally fluent in Spanish — that’s how it works, right?

My class I’ve had for the previous week. The guy beside me is our teacher. I have him again next week, but in the afternoons I have a different private teacher. Be interesting to see how that goes.

I permanently have “Que significa…” and “como se dice…” stuck in my head, phrases that mean “what does… mean” and “how do you say…” respectively — we say them so often!

I’m going out to get some stuff tomorrow that I’ll need for the next few weeks, but they are only minor items. I’m still lugging around lots of my medication — I brought 6 months worth and it’s only been 1.5 months, it’s bulky and annoying. In hindsight given the rather easy availability of medications in Costa Rica, I could have saved myself a lot of baggage space by simply buying what I needed here! 

I’m looking forward to the next part of my trip, given how much mental energy doing these classes has taken from me, it really feels like I’ve done nothing else (and I really haven’t). There were lots of weekend trips I could have taken advantage of, but my brain needed to vege out — speaking the weekend speaking Spanish with strangers would have killed every last brain cell. But from here onwards, hopefully it’s all about the travel. 

I've lost weight, and not long to wait!

 

It's not long until school finishes -- 6 more school days. In preparation for the next part of my trip, I took everything I want to take on the road from Guatemala to Panama and put it all in my shiny summit pack. This is a 36L backpack that is very comfy to carry. 

Since I'm not having to take all my winter, hiking, and climbing gear with me on this part of the trip, I can shed all that weight and volume. This smaller backpack should feel very nice carrying around -- first measure is that it's only 10kg and will easily fit in an overhead locker or probably even at my feet on a plane.

I don't need hiking poles, sleeping bags, jackets, gloves, etc. all of that stuff is remaining in my big backpack. And all of that weighs a lot, so now I'll have less weight on my back. How much? Of course I had to measure, so I used the trick of standing on the scales with and without my backpack. 10kg, not bad, but I also noted that my personal weight is now down to 100kg. Wow!

Classes and glasses

This week (esta semana), I am repeating the previous weeks class (repitiendo la clase de la hace semana), however this is a good thing, because that sentence above says “me repeating the class from a week ago.” 

Next steps confirmed

Late February I'll be continuing my adventure to Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and then back to Costa Rica! Yes, these aren't countries people normally line up to visit, but I'm not over here to visit the big destinations -- I'd have stayed in Europe if I was.

Poco a poco

Poco a poco — little by little, a favourite saying around here, meaning that you learn spanish a little bit at a time, but with only 3 weeks(!!) left of my time at Tico Lingo, I really need grande a grande else I feel I’m going to still be saying lo siento, sólo hablo un poco de español — I’m sorry, I only speak a little Spanish. I probably will always say that, even if I magically got to conversational level in the next 3 weeks.