Summing up Samara

10/17/2019

By Haakon

Here is my surfing update and how Spanish school is going.

In the past couple weeks I have really been advancing on the surfboard. First I switched from an 11-foot board to an 8¾ ft board which allows me to turn. Second, I am now able to go on way bigger waves. Lastly, I can go across the wave not just forward which makes my surfing a whole lot more fun. For the next couple days surfing conditions will be bad because we had a full moon the other night, which was cool but it’s unfortunate at the same time. For our last week we are here I think it would be cool if we (my dad and I) could go surfing on the back end of this island 200 meters from our beach, the only hard part would be paddling out there and catching the waves.

Spanish school is not what I expected it to be. In the past couple weeks, I have had 4 teachers because every week we switch teachers. It seems that the school is focused on grammar more than vocabulary which is good because I can learn vocabulary when in other places and use the words properly. I get my favorite teacher this week, Darihana, who is fun to be taught by because  time passes quickly doing  activities like going to the roadside fruit stands and stuff like that to practice our Spanish.  I thought there would be more kids not just my sister and I, most of the students are 19-22 year olds taking a gap year. This final week we met a family from Santa Monica who are doing the same thing we are – learning spanish for a month and then traveling the world for a year. The two daughters, age 11 and 13, are close in age to us and we have been having fun going to the beach before and after class; better than the last weeks hanging more around the house

That has been my last couple weeks in Samara summed up, next we are going to the Osa Peninsula in southern Costa Rica; after that the Galapagos!