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Hablas Español?


Another big day of training here at the "retreat" center in Tres Rios, Costa Rica. It POURED last night and we had another coolish, misty day in the mountains. We definitely didn't expect to be wearing so many of our long-sleeved shirts so often, but we're sure glad we brought them. It's just gorgeous here though and we're loving every minute of this adventure. It's been great getting to know the rest of our fellow trainees- we have a pretty cool and eclectic group here. Lots of talents and backgrounds to learn from.

Yesterday we all participated in our LPIs, or Language Proficiency Interviews. It was slightly scary, especially for Kevin when he had no idea what the interviewer was asking him. He'll learn though and he's hoping for some quick progression. They basically involved us sitting alone in a room with an interviewer who asked us questions about our life and tried to challenge us with tough questions. They ranged from about 10 minutes to about 30 minutes in length, depending on our Spanish level. Then today the trainers had divided all of the trainees into low and high levels of Spanish and did some more diagnostic activities to further separate us into our small groups of 3-7 people. Tomorrow we'll find out what our official groups are and the training communities that each of those language groups will be living in for the next 10 weeks. All of those training communities will be close together so that all of the trainees can get together easily, which will be great. We're really looking forward to finding out about and meeting our host families! That should happen tomorrow too and then we'll move in on Saturday! So exciting!

Thanks to all of you that have written to us! We'll keep you updated about our big move on Saturday and then we'll write again soon once we figure out what kind of internet situation we have in our host village.

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