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