Tuesday y Wednesday

TUESDAY

I woke up early Tuesday morning, had some quiet time, and then put on my running shoes and headed out for a little walk around town to wake me up. I walked for about 45 minutes and watched the town come to life! It was pretty chilly, and I just had on shorts and a t-shirt, so I was cold and will definitely remember to take a sweater next time. The walk was pleasant anyway. I walked up the street a good ways from my house and explored some neighborhoods up there. There are some REALLY nice houses up that way, some that I wouldn't mind living in! I also discovered a baptist church that I have never seen before! They have service on Sundays at 9 and on Wednesdays at 7, so I am going to try to make a service ASAP!!!! I was so excited to find it, even though we are already three months into the trip. I really enjoyed the walk and will go again tomorrow. I want to go up high into some of the hills so that I can see out over the city, and out toward the Pacific Ocean toward Puntarenas.

I came back and got ready and headed to school to meet with Claudia at 9 for internship stuff. We 'met' for about 2 hours. During this time we got some stuff done, but she also was doing other things too so it was nice for it to be laid back. We shared a pot of coffee to celebrate the end of our meeting....coffee grown and processed right here in San Ramon! After the meeting I wanted to head back home to wait for lunch, and I ran into Julio! We walked a ways and talked for a bit. I really enjoy speaking Spanish with the ticos, especially one on one, because I think when I am around other gringos I feel intimidated sometimes and don't want to talk in front of them. I don't know why. Anyway, it was fun! I made it home and worked on pharmacy school applications while I waited for lunch to be ready. We had yummy spaghetti!

I headed back to school, to go to class at 1. We had a good class and we talked about prepositions which have always kind of given me a hard time, because the preposition you think you should use based on its meaning in English is not the one you use, and sometimes it can be confusing! About halfway through we piled into teacher's car to go to the bookstore to look for a book for us to read, since the other was out of order. We were unsuccessful. We then went to Aroma's Cafe to have the rest of our class. I ordered the Aroma's Cafe cold coffee special drink which was DIVINE, and a strawberry crepe covered in ice cream, sent straight from God's table in heaven!!!!

After class we went back to school. I did some work and checked e-mail. I left around 5:30 to head home. At home I continued doing homework with my host sister. At 7:30 KL and ES came over to have Bible study. We sat in the sala and each talked about where we were coming from, why we believe what we do, things like that, just to get to know each other better spiritually. It was fun to talk about. We talked about Ecclesiastes too because ES has been reading it and was confused about a few things. We also had prayer with each other, and it was really nice to have the fellowship and talk about the Lord. We are going to make this a weekly thing! I called a taxi for them and then went to bed as soon as they left.

WEDNESDAY

Class from 8-11. We watched a movie about female factory workers in Tijuana, Mexico. It was kind of depressing, and made me understand why so many people try to come to the US from Mexico. These women were paid little, had to deal with pollution and contamination - at work and in their homes and neighborhoods - and then their companies would move locations without giving them any severance pay, leaving them with little to no money. The conditions were terrible, and they tried to fight against it, but companies there have so much power. It was really eye-opening.

After class I went to the library with AK to check my email and such to kill some time before 11:30. Yesterday instead of having Cultures class in the evening, class was cancelled so that we could have a field trip today! We left school at 11:30 to head up into the mountains - Piedades Norte, I believe. It was REALLY rainy all day today, so we weren't able to see views of anything really well while in the mountains. We headed to a trapiche, which is used for processing sugar cane, a huge thing down here in Costa Rica. We were able to see the whole process in action, from cutting the sugar cane down, to processing it to get the juice out, to heating and boiling it to get all the junk out, to making sellable products out of it. I didn't have my camera unfortunately, but DB took pictures and said he would send them to me, so I hope to get those ASAP and post them so that you can better understand what was going on, or you could probably google it and find lots of good pictures. I'll work on that! Anyway, it was neat to watch, and the people who owned it were brothers and were very nice! They knew Silvia because many years ago she did some work with the museum here in town to recognize and preserve traditions like these and to bring attention to them so that people would recognize their importance and appreciate them. So they had a photo of her on the wall because she is special to them!

After visiting there we went to Cafeteria Flory to eat (we were in La Paz, by the way). We had casados that were out of this world, with pineapple fresca, and coffee afterwards. There were also SO MANY beautiful flowers there, and more species of orchids than I have ever seen in my life! Again, I am going to get pictures from DB so that you can see.

After our scrumptious lunch we drove further to see more of the country side and another small trapiche that wasn't running today. We then went back toward SR and stopped at a nice souvenir shop on the way. It had a lot of neat stuff but it was way overpriced! TOURIST TRAP! Afterwards we proceeded back to town and the driver dropped me by my house. We had cafecito shortly after I arrived (cup 4 of the day).

I spent the afternoon studying and doing homework. I had to read a long story that I still don't quite understand, so hopefully I will get some clarification tomorrow in class.

Around 8:15 KL called me and invited me to go see a movie, "Gestacion," with some of the others. It is a film made in Costa Rica with Costa Rican actors, all in Spanish, so of course I said YES! In my opinion it was like a Costa Rican version of Juno. Anyway, the ticket was 1200 colones (just over 2 dollars, yes, only 2 dollars) and popcorn and a drink was 1200 more. Nice, right?! Anyway, I liked the fact that it was Costa Rican, because I could understand some of the slang and things that are said a lot here!! The movie was okay overall. The whole movie was about her pregnancy and such, but at the end we didn't even see the baby! Crazy, right? We took a taxi home after it was over (and pouring down rain STILL), and now I am in bed about to fall asleep. It has been a great couple of days, and I hope tomorrow is equally as good! Vamos a ver!

Buenas noches!!!