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!