El Mercado Central

Kayla, Tammy and I walked down random side streets and stumbled upon this area that looked really sketchy. It was a building opening with a large orange sign that read "mercado central" and led into a dark alley boardered with duffle bags and lights from butchery shops. Of course, the sketchiest shops here are the cheapest so I convinced Tammy to go inside. Walking in all you could see were hoards of people packed together and weaving in and out of the maze of side alleys. We had reached an indoor city. There were buildings inside of this building and shops that had barely any room to move. From one to the other the walls were covered in duffle bags from Nike, Puma, and Quicksilver for about $6 each. The smell of food, flowers and spices dominates the air in this old and rusty ¿warehouse? in the middle of the city. Stores sold bags, souvenirs, shoes or food. The food ones were either selling spices which hung fromt the walls, in large bowls and piled to form a pyramid shape, or random butcher shops that sat a row of people that made the area resemble a Moroccan Medina. Near each shop with the hanging greens and fresh spices was usually a flower shops or a mini-farmacy. Of course it started downpoaring within the first five minutes there, but we were inside. The metal roof was old and rusting so the sound of the rain was loud and dominated the mercado while every-so-often the rain would leak through some of the holes in the roof. Walking down the winding alleys of butcher shops, food stores, and close walls of duffle-bags we stumbled upon a large statue of Jesus in a glass box. People here are extremely religious and it kind of surprised me to see something so big in a crowded market lake that. But after about a half an hour of dodging men, women, indigenous women, and police officers, we left the mercado happy and a little bit more satisfied with our experience level in San José. Oh, and by the way. As a side note with nothing relating to the market; I had rice and black beans for breakfast, lunch and dinner today...that makes 5 meals in a row hahahaha.

Cake Run

After class Kayla, Tammy, and I walked down to the Automercado in San Pedro and took the bus to Cartago: the old capital of Costa Rica. It is about a 45 minute bus ride for 410 colones (you should kind of get the currency conversion by now haha). Through the city to the country side, and to a new city we got off at a church and I remembered the way to the ruins. I can't remember if I wrote about this the last time because there was so much I did last weekend, but if I didn't it was the place that is considered damned because an earthquake destroys the church right before opening to the public. From some photo opportunities, we walked to the Basilica in downtown Cartago (Cartago is not apart of San José). and was able to go inside and make our way around the church. It was really beautiful today and I kind of joked that we were actually in Heaven. The sun was shining behind this white basilica giving it a type of halo, the clouds were low and actually at city level so we were in the clouds but without the fog, and since this is a Latin American country there must be a guy named Jesús there. From the basilica we walked down and blessed ourselves with and drank holy water from the fountain and headed off to a bakery. There was one that we went to last week with AMAZING cakes so that was the main reason for returning to Cartago: buying a cake. Really, that was the only reason for going. We were able to find the place and the cake for 7100 colones or about $12 We returned to school at about 5h30 and Kayla went home while Tammy and I went to the Hipermás in Guadaloupe (San José). Hipermás is run by the same owners as Walmart and looks almost exactly the same. There we bought Disney princess plates, princess cups, a question-mark candle, and soccer party hats...it is an "under-1000-colones-per-party-item" themed unbirthday party hahaha. It's pretty ridiculous. From the Hipermás we dodged traffic and stood on the dotted white lines in the middle of the street sometimes getting passed by two buses in both lanes at once (which is super scary btw) to get to our bus stop 5 lanes of traffic across the street. I got home and ate chickpeas and rice!!!! (I love chickpeas!) and am on my computer now facebooking and blogging. Kind of can't wait to leave in less than 3 days, but then again I don't really want to leave. It is so amazing here and I feel right at home. I just miss the people that aren't here.

San José 10K

The protest got moved back to a different date so this morning was very uneventful. I walked down to Moravia and did my homework in the park and soaked up the hot morning sun. I then took the bus and got to school about an hour early so I walked around for a bit. class was as boring as ever. I do not really like my teacher and I have a feeling he doesn't really like me. He makes little jabs at me during class during the excercises but smiles while doing which usually means friendly sarcasm but it feels a little more colder than that. Today I asked 3 times to learn the "vos" form of speaking and he said all three times that we would get to it, and in the end we didn't. He went on a 15 minute tangent on animal sounds, repeated 3 lessons that we did last week, and (I guess) because of those more important things we didn't have enough time to learn the less formal way of speaking in Costa Rica and the Americas. It sucks because a big portion of my grade is attidude and he just bores me to death and makes me feel neglected/angry. After class I had my 2000 colones casado and then went shopping in the mall san pedro while Kayla and Tammy went to the salon. I bought new headphones there because mine are 80% totally unusable and then walked down to the automercado to buy some cookies for my returning gift to the softlines staff at target. I then walked down to San José and bought some new shoes! It's a Costa Rican brand that takes after the Gola Style (big name british brand). Best part was that they were 10000 colones with tax which is $17!! That was one of the best prices I have seen in San José so far for shoes. I was thinking about some puma's but they're about 45000 colones or $78 which is just too much. I only mention them to compare prices haha. Of course I bought some other things too but not as exciting as my Navy and Red shoes lol. I like 'em different =P After I returned to school and took a cooking class. We made gallos! Picadilla I think: potatoes, hamburg, and spices in a small tortilla. It was pretty good. Then Tammy, Kayla and I went to the movies to see UP. It was better than I thought it would be and also a lot sader than I thought it would be. It was honestly a tear jerker (lol). I didn't think a Disney film could be that depressing. But now I'm home and ready for bed...it's 11pm =(

¡¡¡Escandalo!!!

My day started off amazing with my absolute favorite costan rican food of all time: gallos! It was salchicón grilled and wrapped in a mini tortilla...the only thing to make them better would be pineapple slices, but you can't ask for everything...Oh and chocolate milk which we have a lot. that would be the best breakfast ever =) But after breakfast I walked up to the bus stop in Moravia because the San Rafael/Moravia to San José was all sorts of messed up today and wasn't running. So I did my normal route to school and found out am I back with my old spanish teacher, Pablo again, sigh. But he still is a good teacher...just not as good as this last one was =( Kayla and I walked down to the Center of town for some McDonalds today...it was pretty much the same as in the States only a girl walks around with a wifi enabled PDA and takes your order in line and then you pay when you get to the front of the line with your food there. It is a lot more efficient when it is packed with people and it was like that all day. We then walked outside to the plaza and sat down to eat and was greated by swarms of pigeons...the most I have ever seen in my life. The lady's were yelling Corn! Corn! Get your corn! at both ends of the plaza and a family decided to sit right next to us and feed the pigeons...I love people. From there we walked back to school, picked up Tammy, and then headed back to the same spot to visit the Museo de Niños. Let me tell you, this place is in a sketchy place. It was obviously closed and it obviously started raining, and there were obviously the stray dogs out that look sickly and dangerous. One guy got attacked on our way back. He used his umbrella to keep the dog away and it worked very well. On the same street we saw a man on the sidewalk with police over him and some onlookers. He might have been dead, but I'm not 100% sure...I didn't see blood but he was not even close to moving and seemed almost like a frozen statue. I didn't want to find out so we kept on walking past the hobos in their soaked raggy clothes and cardboard boxes. Some boy tried to sell me pencils and the rain gradually got harder. We did a little shopping while we were there. I am saving my shopping until tomorrow for when Kayla and Tammy are getting their haircuts and I can shop without worrying about other people. It's better that way. When I got home I cut out foam board corsettes for one of Jenny's neices parties and was taken to a town meeting in Moravia. It was intense. There were people lined up down the stairs, where I was, and every type of person: old, young, and nuns. It got extremely out of hand and noisey so the police were called in to monitor. It got so intense that there is a protest/ riot scheduled for tomorrow at 6h30am in the center of Moravia. Maybe you will hear about it on the news lol. William tells me it shouldn't be as bad as other colonias that burn cars and stuff. All I kept on hearing was "¡escandalo!", "¡ladrones!", "¡corruptos!", and "¡Mañana, vamos por las calles!" We will see how things turn out =)

Craziest/Most eventful weekend of my life

I have no idea where to even start. This weekend was ridiculous. I mean RIDICULOUS! From School we packed 6 people into a car that could only fit 5 and drove down to Central San José to pick up a car that we rented. We ended up with a Hyundai Tuscon 4X4 for Tammy, Kayla and I. After battling our way through Tican Traffic, we made it to the country roads of Costa Rica. If you look on my facebook you will be able to see said-pictures (lol). The view is AMAZING here in Costa Rica. It is mountainous, green, and full of cows. It was about a 6 hour drive up to Santa Elena in the upper part of the Central Valley on the boarder with Guanacaste (a very historic and cultural region of Costa Rica). We drove through sketchy small towns of scrap tin houses, barbed wire (for cows instead of people), and of course cows. It gets dark by about 6pm here so we drove up the mountains at night. It was so beautiful though. Costa Rica is so mountainous that the roads cork-screw up and around the mountains CONSTANTLY. Because of that we actually drove above the clouds during the later portion of the ride. It was breathtaking. We got out a few times to look DOWN on the clouds and it was just awe-inspiring. I've never seen anything like it before in my life. We drove through the clouds a lot too, which was just like fog, only sometimes you could see the bottom of the clouds or where you're going to drive into one. But anyway we made it to Sta Elena and to our Hostel...that's right. HoStel. It was run by young people with dred-locks, or even the guy with the red pony-tails, make-up and women's clothes with a nordic accent. This was European central of the town. We met girls from Germany, a guy from Poland, French, Americans, and others who spoke English but with accents. We got some Salchicharon and tortillas to make Gallos with a bag of tortilla chips and Margarita mix for Tammy. We cooked the Salchicharon but burnt half of it on the pan while doing it causing plumes of smoke to fill the kitchen...yes...we were THOSE people. Washing it just added to the smoke, by the way. But anyway, we enjoyed our wonderful gallos outside with the cutest dog and spent our wonderful night in a Hostel with European youth. Best part: I paid $10 for the night. We made our way up to Monteverde after to go to the cloud forest. It was very beautiful and the whole tour was in Spanish since it was just Tammy, Kayla and me. I can comprehend fluently now which REALLY makes me happy. It feels kind of weird because I am learning all of this new information but in Spanish. After the cloud forest we took a ride down to the bat exhibit which was kind of cool, but overpriced. Not going to go into it. And finally we headed off to La Fortuna to Arenal again. Now the problem this time was that the hotel was not what we were thinking at all. We thought this was a repeat of last week's accommodations at the volcano...instead we were in the city with no view. So because of this I called up the old cabins and reserved us a spot while canceling our reservations at the new place in the city. We paid $2 for the most beautiful view in all of Costa Rica (and I got to practice my Spanish on the phone and breaking some poor hotel lady's heart lol). The view at these cabins is spectacular. Each one is facing the volcano and is almost at the base. What makes it even better is that this place is also a fica (or ranch) so there are cows, horses, chickens, and dogs running all over the place. You can hear the Howler monkeys in the background mixing with the exotic bird songs and the dinosaur-esque grunting of the cows. Absolutely beautiful. And the room was HUGE! For $20 a person with breakfast. Plus the lady that owns it is overly nice. This place is legit ridiculous and you need to see pictures on my facebook. That night we watched the volcano let out smoke while drinking Margarita mix with sprite (cause I needed it to be watered down...too much tequila) and sangria while listening to the monkeys, cows and night-bugs. The morning was also amazing because I explored the field with the animals. I sat there for 2 hours watching the cows and horses and didn't realize until last minute that they let a bull in...and I was wearing my new red sweatshirt. It stared me straight in the face and I just bent down behind a tree and had to sneak out of the pen. The cows seemed pretty timid too. They stared at me and almost began to charge, but then I would step back, fearing my life hahaha. From Arenal Volcano we headed out on a TREACHEROUS trip to the Vernado Caves. The roads are unpaved and wrap around mountains. We were tossed around and heard scary clunky noises that made us wonder if we were going to blow up a tire or pop a hole in something. Worst roads I have ever been on in my life and lasted for Kilometers. We got lost, constantly, because each map has different roads and different towns. but we finally got to the caves and I finally had one of the freakiest experiences of my life. I put on my galoshes and entered to pure blackness of the cave. Water came flowing out from the underground river filled with no-eyed fish and sometimes scorpions. We entered a large cabin in total darkness...nothing. Then looking up I saw tons of bats moving and flying around mixed with stalagmites...then the worst part came when he looked at the wall and picked up a spider...the grossest spider I have seen in my life. We continued along the slippery rocks guided only by the light of our flashlights to a tiny opening that we had to squeeze through that was no bigger than 2 of my heads...it was really, really freaky and claustrophobic. Once through, all 3 of us fit in like sardines in this enclosed space and had to scale up the cave into a more open space. Still not open enough to stand in, we made our way to the upper level surround by water and less desirable creatures. I could not shine my flash-light on the walls and the best advise I would give would be not to look at the walls or touch them, because every time all I would see were long legged spiders and crickets larger than your hand...I only know this because he would pick them up off his legs and clothes and show us. I don't want to think about what was on me, so I will continue. So we made our way in darkness; Kayla, Tammy, me and the guide through the cave looking at stalagmites, bats, poo, and spiders and swam through spaces twice the size of me and scaled up and down slippery rocks spotted with bat droppings, spiders, and monster crickets...they had legs like spiders too. I actually thought they were spiders during the trip. Soaked, dirty, blind, and freaked out I was able to make the best out of this experience and enjoy some of what the cave had to offer...I appreciate it more now than when I was actually in it haha. Scary, but worth it...would I do it again? No. but worth it. Then from there we got lost going back to San José. We pulled over and I asked for directions. The lady said she was going the same way and said she could show us so we said yes. We pulled over and the car she was next to drove away and she opened the door to our car...we had a hitch-hiker...we all just stared in shock as the other car drove away and she said that she needed a ride there anyway. Thinking it was around the corner we left...with a hitch-hiker, freaked out...but she was an older woman and constantly smiled so we just drove. We dropped her off in Toque and tried to find our way back to San José...again the maps are all different and many roads are not marked so we were constantly lost on never-ending-un-paved-roads. We finally made it back to the car rental place by the airport in Alajuela and took a bus to San José. From San José we took a bus to San Pedro. We were going to get off at the mall and take a taxi back to Kayla's house and then to Tammy's and my houses in Moravia but the bus never stopped at the mall...instead it ended up in Europa: a random district in San José in the suburbs. Thank God when we were forced to get off (thinking it would loop back around) there was a taxi letting out people because this was not a place for taxis. We then were able to head back home for 5000 colones. A ridiculous week of stress, adventure, stories, and new experiences...there's probably more, but it's all too much to remember.

Quick entry from finicky internet

Internet was down last night so I had to get up a little early to do some stuff =/ I've got to get ready soon so this is gonna be short, lol. Yesterday I ate cauliflour...and...it was actually not that bad. I am finally accustomed to fried plantains too, which I have everyday (because a "casado" comes with it, and a casado only costs 1800-2000 colones which is a little over $3 for rice, beans, plantain, some type of meat, salad (but I get more rice and beans), juice, tax, and tip). It's kind of weird because there are somethings that cost nothing here, like that, and most of the other prices are the same as in the US. After lunch Kayla, Tammy and I went back to the school to make the final reservations on our trip today. I am going to Cartago today with my class, and then after that we rented a car that we are going to take up to Monteverde tonight. I'll keep it a surprise, what we are doing, but I should be back by Sunday night...Not looking forward to the bugs up there...Last time I was up there I can't remember if I mentioned it but there were bugs EVERYWHERE. In the morning I remember waking up, taking a shower, and then seeing little bugs crawling over the sheets (not the bed cover) and all over my bag and stuff. I mean they were little (like the size of those microscopic ants) so it didn't bother me as much. After lunch Kayla and I went for a walk while Tammy had dance lessons sponsered by Intensa. We walked to the grafittid part of town (not that there is a specific section hahaha). I should say super-graffitied part of town. It was beautiful! We did basically an art walk and it was so interesting. I really like grafiti and would conscider it art as long as it is a picture and time went into it. These pictures were pretty elaborate too. Of course there were A LOT of stenciled things (which is kind of fun) but it was amazing. Ok, need to shower and take the bus to school. Excited for fieldtrip/vacation...should have some amazing pics when I get back =)

Cocinando and a partido de fútbol

The past two days I have been doing something that I have been looking forward to doing since before I got here. Cooking. It turns out that my host mom went to cooking school and keeps a couple of handwritten journals of recipes. So yesterday and today I sat down with her and wrote some of them down to bring back home. The rice here is pretty amazing, so I am going to have to get a big bag of it when I come back. Today I helped her cook. We made mashed potatoes and chicken. It was pretty good. And after that I went over to Tammy’s house and then went to a Soccer game in Guadalupe (still apart of San José). It was their son’s game and it was kind of interesting and a cool thing to do. I’m writing this at 10h43 but I’m already tired. I have been waking up at around 5h30 every morning which probably explains it. Yesterday Tammy, Kayla and I took a walk downtown and bought ourselves some Costa Rican Soccer Jerseys for around $11 each. They are pretty cool and a nice novelty to have, and plus I think there is a game coming up soon. We walked back to Intensa after and then took another cooking class where I learned how to make tortillas. It was pretty fun to do, but really simple. They also didn’t taste that good but we took the class with the people we went to Arenal with which made it fun. I played Jin Rummy with them after the class while Kayla and Tammy used the computers. I am really liking the classes now that I have a new teacher. She is extremely interesting and teaches us a lot of history about Costa Rica. One day she just broke out in Japanese and told us that she used to teach it in Japan. She also told us this story today about how she used to be a volunteer that would bring supplies to Nicaragua during the cold war. One day she wasn’t let through and had to wait at a checkpoint in “no-man’s-land” until security would let her through. She stayed there until before night fall and had to flee back to Costa Rica before dark. Since this was no-man’s-land, she had to walk and was caught in gun fire and had to hide out in an abandoned restaurant where she was found by arms smugglers and taken to their camp. It was really interesting. Friday she is taking us to Cartago which is just outside of San José and the old capital of Costa Rica. She’s pretty awesome!