Luego, Ty y yo andamos en un taxi a el centro commercial en "down town." El taxista no sabe donde este centro commercial, entonces yo dice "esta cerca de KFC." Soy Americano! El maneja nosotras cerca de KFC, y caminandos al centro commercial! Hacemos camprando por varios horas. Compramos algunas cosas para nuestro familias y nosotros!
Despues nuestro camprar aventura, Ty y yo caminamos a nuestro casa! Y nunca estamos perdidos! Estamos mas feliz! Entonces Ty y yo necisitamos una siesta! Pues, nuestro mama Tica pregunta si nosotros queremos cafe. Yo quiero cafe siempre!
Tomo cafe y Ty tomo agua. Pues, Ty y yo fuimos a iglesia con nuestro padres Ticos y estudiante nuevo. La misa era muy buena. La musica esta fuerte y las personas son muy amables. Pero, Ty y yo no intende mucho. Esta bueno Ty y yo compramos los diccionarios!
Cuando regresamos a la casa, mi mama Tica preparar una comida para nosotros. Mama Tica siempre cocina buenas comidas para nosotros! Anoche tiene arroz y frijoles y tortillas y salat y guacamole. Esta muy delicioso! Ahora Ty y yo tenemos sueno. Era dia bueno y dia prepara Ty y yo para suenos buenos.
Some days I am happy... other days I'm really really happy. Yesterday was one of those days. It was a fun day for Ty and I, and if you read this all the way through, you'll be lucky enough to know why. ;) (Just kidding, but stick with me, because it would be horrible if no one read this.)
We started out the morning with another great breakfast of cereal, fruit, toast, and a fruit smoothie with bananas, strawberries, and milk. After our good breakfast, Ty and I ventured out into the vast unknown.
Okay, well it's not that unknown, but every single time Ty and I have gone "exploring" we've gotten lost.
Our first mission was to find a Spanish to e
Some of our host sisters - other students at Universidad Veritas--had gone, and bragged about the shops set up in tents. One girl bought a bag that had two other smaller purses in it for twelve dollars. A great buy for a souvenir in Costa Rica! Ty and I had unsuccessfully attempted to go to this commercial center two times. So, we decided to take a taxi, but, go figure, the Taxi driver had no idea what we were talking about. So, my grand solution was to tell him it was close to KFC... Whoops, my American is showing! Luckily he knew where KFC was, so he dropped us off in the general area. Since the third time is the charm, we tried again to find the market, and of course we found the place totally on accident the third time--a small and unimportant detail. ;)
This is a picture of a store, with Ty shopping. This little market has everything from homemade crafts to souvenir shirts. The shop owners can get aggressive in their attempts to get you to look around in their shops. In that scenario...
After shopping, Ty and I walked around the downtown area for a while. Everyone suggests going to a museum in San Jose, but honestly, we saw wonderful art on the walls! Everywhere we looked there was graffiti, but not your typical, run-of-the-mill bad-word-spraypainted-in-black graffiti; this was actually art.
Some of it was scary art.
Some was extremely beautiful.
Some of it strange...
And all of it was interesting.
On our way back to our homestay, we took a closer look at the neighborhoods. Over twenty percent of Costa Rica's population lives below the poverty level, which means they live on less than 300 dollars a month. Can you imagine? There are many things that I take for granted in the US, but one of them I never thought about was playgrounds.
This is a pretty common sight for a playground in Costa Rica. Children actually play here, and when you see children play, they are happy. At this point, I get what I like to call "First World Guilt." I feel guilty for always taking my pristine, plastic, safe playgrounds for granted, and I feel guilty that these children may never get to play on one.
But, there is beauty everywhere. All of the houses in Costa Rica are surrounded by fences, some with barbed wire at the top, but somehow beauty always seems to work its way through the rough edges. Here's some beautiful flowers growing through the fences.
This is a flower after a rainy afternoon. It was so pretty I couldn't resist taking a picture of it!
This is our view on the way back to our homestay. We turn right at the 40 KPH sign. It is our "punto de referencia" as my mama Tica calls it.
By the time we got home we were exhausted. We were basically in zombiehood before our host mom knocked on our door and asked us if we wanted a snack before we went to church with them. So, of course... YES! I mean! SI!
For the snack we had pokeballs!
Just kidding.
That's not a pokemon. It's actually called a "mamon." (I don't know the English word for it.) But it is very sweet, and it's somewhat similar to a Concord grape. It's my host mom's favorite fruit, so I'm really glad she shared it with us!
We rode to church with Cecilia, Herbert, and Isa (our host parents and a student that is living in the same house as us). The church was simple, but beautiful and modern on the inside. What struck me the most was how loud the choir was. You could hear the music from the street, and everyone in the church joined in and sang loudly along. In the US, or in Prague, mostly everyone mumbled the songs, but here, everyone sang proudly. It was really nice. Cecilia bought me a program so I could follow along with the service, but even with that I only understood about half of it.
After we got back home, we had supper together and had fun talking with our host parents and the other student. Even with our limited Spanish, and our host parents' extremely limited English--like nonexistent, we still manage to communicate well and have a lot of fun with our host family!
After a long day, we were ready for sleep!
Look at that cute Tyburrito! :)
Thanks for reading!
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