Beware *El Gripe*

Day 13, Monday, July 16^th

So... if I have Mono again, someone is going to get a punch in the face... even if it is me. My coughing wakes me up within an hour of going to sleep, but when I wake up, there is no trace of crud. Is it over?

No. I take a shower, and the standing and hot water break it all up. Soon I’m coughing and hacking with the best of them. My abuela and mamá tica ask if I’m feeling alright, and the weird thing is, I am. I have an awful cough, and my body feels like I did a hundred more crunches again in my sleep, but other than that, I’m fine. My head isn’t cloudy, but I am tired. And all these symptoms are what happened when I had Mono. So I’m going to wait it out. If it moves up to my throat, and my nodes swell, I’m going to be upset. Hopefully though, it is as my abuela tica says: just a bad reaction to the climate change. Ojala.

I am pretty excited to see Alicia this morning; it is the first weekend we have done different things. As we board the bus, she tells me all about Montezuma. The beach is less crowded than most, so it would have been wonderful if not for the cloudy skies and dangerous waves, one of which apparently almost swallowed her whole. Goodness. Then it’s my turn. I give her the blow by blow as we walk the last block. Methinks I might talk too much.

When we get to school I remember the little exposición we have tomorrow. My plan the whole time has been to write a story... I just have to figure it out. Last night I came up with a few ideas – a girl named Lili LaRou – but nothing beyond that. So now I try to come up with a story.... Lili has a rabbit and a grandmother, one big, the other small. However, they both are hairy and have little brown splotches. Yes, this will be good.

Class this morning is a little slow – Ronny is apparently quite sick with el gripe. Though this is just the flu, I think it sounds so much better in Spanish. El Gripe. Oooh. The first thing we do is watch Hannah’s bungee jump. I am once again impressed and have to point out that everyone should notice her perfect form. I will be demonstrating how not to jump off a bridge on Wednesday.

So we finally get around to doing some work, though not much, before break. No one really seems into it. We all know that we have two days left, and the fever is gripping. But still, I can’t help letting that old grievance resurface:

You know, I wish I didn’t like school so much. Because really, I am not a great student. Few things come easily to me, and those that used to do not anymore. With every year I seem to be able to logic less in classes, a skill that is becoming more and more important. As such, often I feel like I’m grasping at straws – things that once made perfect sense no longer connect.

And that makes loving class hard. I want to understand, so I ask too many questions. I want to hear, so I mentally will people (and sometimes ask them) to shut up. And what good is it? I still don’t make the As I want. And with each B I get more and more frustrated and disillusioned, until last year, for the first time ever, I found myself not liking school. And as much as I like school here, I find it being the same. Music and languages – two things I love and two things I find I’m no good at.

Break itself does not help my dismay. People keep asking me how bungee jumping was. “Okay,” is always my answer. They seem surprised... and disappointed. Sara put it rightly: “You went bungee jumping, and it was okay?” I guess I shouldn’t feel that way. I suppose I should either hate it or love it (like Hannah). But I don’t. It was okay. How do I explain that although I am glad to have the experience, my lack of form, the roughness of the fall, and my fear keep me from loving my memories of that jump. I told Alicia that I would probably need to do it once more (to get my form right), and then, never again. But I would like to try skydiving now.

After break, we play scrabble. Work Hannah and Marissa are on a team, Hannah and me, and Allison and Ronny are teams themselves. It is a great game – Hannah and I win by points and would have in all if we didn’t have a stupid ‘x’. There are no Spanish words with X, it seems. Instead we had a lot of fun joking about what words to put x on: heroex?, reconozcasx?, six? But we never do find anything to work with, so Allison wins. But I’m not upset: we still got the most points.

We decide to try that pizza place again, y’know, since their oven was broken last week. So we mosey on over and fill up on jamón y queso pizza and Té Frío. Things I will miss from CR # 1: Té Frío. :(

Ronny’s all about the activities today, and after lunch he pulls out some photos of people from Costa Rica. These are big laminated things, meant to spark conversation and such, but Ronny just lets our imaginations run wild. This poor old lady becomes victim to our machinations; she is now a goose murdering black widow, who feeds a goose to each husband she acquires... and then those husbands to other husbands. We have rather demented minds. But it was great fun. After thoroughly ruining the elderly woman’s reputation, Hannah quips “So, is this your grandmother or something?” Remember her unbecoming comments of Ronny’s child when she saw it on his T-shirt? I laugh. “No, but that is his goose!” Yeah, good times.

After school, I catch up with internet as it hits me: This is the last week of school! And although everyone around me is thrilled, I am quite saddened. I figure this is only due to the fact that, besides Beth and I, the rest of the crew is headed home on Sunday. And the knowledge that I have another week away from home is kinda sad today. So I want to cling to school, for many reasons, but mostly because it is easy repetition.

When my computer dies, Hannah says she wants to walk to the grocery store to get some coffee and chocolate. Chocolate? That’s all I had to hear. I get a bar and some cookies (Things I will miss # 2: Chiky cookies and coffee). Then we catch our respective buses home.

My mamá tica is now taking classes at the University in English, so she’s not here for dinner tonight. So instead, I eat in the kitchen with my abuela. The food is especially delicious tonight: she makes me a meat that tastes suspiciously like deer meat. I know it’s not cow, but I can’t place it. But no matter, with rice it is delish.

After dinner I settle in to read Harry Potter. I have the sixth book, and I’d like to finish it so I can give it back to Alicia this weekend. So I tuck in. But there is so much I have forgotten! I’m glad I am rereading it; if not, I may not understand the seventh book at all.

But reading doesn’t last to long as I am really really sore. I must have done more crunches in my sleep last night because my core rejects every movement. So pretty early I decide to turn in. But first I write a bit more of my speech (as in three lines) and set my alarm to finish it en la mañana. Just like me: putting it off ‘til the end.