Day 2: CEA orientation and San Jose tour

Our internet was down yesterday so here's my post for July 8^th:

Hola! Today we had CEA orientation. CEA is the company I went through to do this program so today was when I met all the other international students that are going through CEA, and also they told us some more details about San Jose and our excursions, etc. Which was much needed J Everybody is really nice and the group is actually quite large! There’s 40 of us through CEA! So it was fun to meet everybody. Then we went on a city tour of downtown San Jose, which was very interesting! Downtown San Jose is a "grid" so it’s pretty easy to find your way through town as long as you know what street you are on (which is actually hard sometimes because street signs are not on the corners and instead on the side of buildings on the street—not necessarily at the corner) But “Avenue’s” go West to East and “Calle’s” (Streets) go North to South. Then the center street and avenue are named “Central” and the north side of streets are odd numbered least to greatest, and the south streets are even numbered least to greatest. Same with the avenues except instead of North and South it’s West and East. They wanted us to know that because San Jose is just like Minneapolis during the day on safety level and everybody walks everywhere. J I wish Zapote (the part of San Jose I live in) was numbered like that…instead it’s curvy and turned out to be quite confusing. We live close to the University so we all are supposed to walk to school…so today was a practice run--after our activities for the day we were dropped off at the University to go home (cause our host families “explained” how to walk there—but that was more like mira para la calle con muchos carros! = look for the street with many cars because the street that we turn on to go to school has a lot of car repair and sales companies) Well, anyway my two roommates and I kinda got lost going home and ended up going in a circle for an hour. We eventually called our host dad, Victor, and he came and got us. In conclusion, the walk home that was supposed to take 10 minutes ended up being quite the adventure, but now we know our way around better J

For lunch today we went to a restaurant called “Nuestra Tierra”= our earth. It was VERY good! We had another rice and bean dish with chicken and a fried platano all on top of platano leaves! It was delicious! They keep a dish full of spices (my brother would LOVE this) including a dish of hot peppers and jalapeño’s on the table to add to your dish . Our camarero was hilarious! He tricked one of my roommates to eat the pepper and she started tearing up cause it was so spicy J but it was funny cause he also pulled a couple girls up to dance the merengue and salsa with him! It was fun and entertaining! J I’ve learned in my short time hear that Costa Ricans love to eat fresh food and it’s actually cheaper for them then buying frozen food! I actually am just realizing that yesterday in the supermercado that they didn’t have a freezer section! Not one freezer! (they did have some refrigerators...) but EVERYTHING was fresh! And you can definitely taste it in all the foods here! They also eat a HUGE meal for both lunch and dinner. My tour guide was joking with us… he said that even though they eat a ton here, that we won’t see many “overweight” people here because they walk everywhere which is true. J Then he said that the few overweight ticos (Costa Ricans) we’ll see is because they drink too much beer… haha J

Well, that’s about it for today…so Buenos Noches!