What to do with all of this freetime?

Now that I do not have to sit through four hours of Spanish, I had to figure out some things to do with my free time here in Costa Rica. Do not get me wrong, I am still working hard on becoming conversational in Spanish, and my three other classes still take up a lot of time and energy. However, I now have my mornings free to explore San José. My friend Melissa lives in the house behind mine. Her host parents are the parents of my host mother. We sometimes joke that she is my aunt. We decided to start working out each morning around the neighborhood. It is a wonderful opportunity to see what is going on around the neighborhood and to explore new places within walking/ jogging distance.

On Thursday, one of our friends at Veritas was leaving to volunteer at a hospital in Nicaragua. We had a going away party for her at a pizza place near the University. It was the best jamon y piña pizza (Hawaiian)  I have ever had. We are planning to visit her sometime in March. I really loved Nicaragua, and I am very excited to have the chance to return.

Pizza Party!

Grocery shopping is also a necessity here, because only breakfast and dinner are provided by our host families. Somedays I like to go to a small soda for lunch. On Wednesday, Melissa and I met up with two of my friends from Spanish class to eat at La Musa Confusa. It is the cutest little soda with creative decor, wonderful batidos (smoothies made with milk), and sandwiches. However, other days it is just cheaper to make a peanut butter sandwich and some yogurt. We live rather close to Mercado Central del Sur, an outdoor shopping center that includes the first ever McDonald's established outside of the United States and Canada. There is also a pet store, countless shoe and clothing stores, a reasonable grocery store, a bank, and tons of other places to eat. Thursday night, Melissa and I went back to my house to look through Sophia's movie collection. We decided to watch Snow White. Sophia's Disney movies are very useful for practicing Spanish.

On Friday, I went with my group to catch a bus to downtown San José to go to the zoo. The zoo was not nearly as scary as the one I went to in Cairo (the animals were actually in cages). However, I was a little disappointed to see how small a lot of the cages were, and there were a number of animals that certainly did not belong in a small cage in Central America such as the lions. However, it was a beautiful green space located downtown with a great deal of locals. After going to the zoo, we went out to eat and looked around the food market. I had the greatest ice cream ever at this small place within the food market. It seemed pretty popular despite the fact that there only seemed to be one flavor and it was an odd gold/yellow color. I decided to try it anyway. The ice cream was amazing! It was a vanilla flavor mixed with what tasted like pumpkin spice.

We also got a chance to walk around an International bookstore where I bought a book called Mi Primera Biblia. I figured a children's Bible would be a good way to practice my Spanish, and it would be rather useful if I decided to volunteer here or at home in a Spanish-speaking setting. We also looked around a very small portion of the Artisan's Market, but I will definitely have to go back for better look. Afterwards, we walked back to the University where I met up with five friends in order to catch the train to Heredia.

This was my first experience with a train in Costa Rica, and it was much much better than I expected. The cost was only 350 colones (less than a dollar) one way to get to Heredia from San José. Heredia is the capital of the province of Heredia located northeast of San José. Heredia is much smaller than San José and a bit more colonial. It took us a half hour to get there by train, but we unfortunately got off a stop too early. We ended up in the town of Miraflores and had to walk an extra two miles or so to get to Heredia.

Hanging out on the train with Bethany and Rachel

My intercultural communications and competence professor lives in Heredia and had given us directions to get to his house. We went to his house where he served us the most amazing Costa Rican coffee and galletas (cookies). It was really cool to hear all about his life outside of class (He is an activist on the side and is actually related to a former president of Costa Rica). He mentioned at one point that he was proud that two former Costa Rican presidents are currently in jail. He said that it proves that Ticos hold their elected officials accountable for their actions, even the president. This was just another example of how different the professor-student relationship is in Costa Rica.