Shannon Costello

The taxi meter was interesting.  I knew that the decimal point worked like a comma, so I thought I was going to pay 60,000 colones, which, at an exchange rate of 500 colones to the dollar (more or less) was pretty high.  But no, it was 6,000 colones.  The taxi driver was somebody the hotel owner knew, and he seemed honest and like he knew what he was doing.  He told me that many roads in the area are being repaired (true- there is roadwork everywhere…it is normal to see huge holes that look like the edge of the road just crumbled away).  The rain must have something to do with it.

I arrived at the host family´s home soon after my mother-in-law (hereafter referred to as MIL, by mutual consent) and Colleen.  The home is beautiful and, like all the homes, safely esconced behind layers of iron bars.  They also have an alarm system that is quite talkative.  And they have a LOT of little dogs as well as a cat named Manuel.  Manuel is as aloof as one might expect.

The house is actually in San Lorenzo, about a mile from San Joaquín de Flores.  We decided to walk into town and get a snack.  We ended up at SuperSnack, where we ordered three appetizers (fried yucca, tortillas, and candied plantains).  We also had blended fruit drinks (water and fruit, at least) called licuados, only one of which was a flavor we recognized (mango).  The others were called mora, which appears to be mulberry, and cas, which is a tropical fruit I have never heard of.

We got caught in serious rain on the way back and I, scorning the umbrella, was drenched to the skin.  I had been lulled into a false sense of security by the rain from the day before. The water poured down across the roads.  A surprisingly large number of cars slowed down to avoid drenching us.  At one point we saw three or four teens running toward us on the sidewalk, clearly hoping to pass by a certain puddle before a car got there.  Their forlorn oooohhhh when they were unsuccessful was funny- and understandable.

Our host mother (our mamá tica) cooked us a very nice dinner last night.

Today we spent a good deal of time in various orientation activities.  It was 10:00 before we were actually in classes.  I am in a class with two other students.  We spend a good deal of time talking and then some time on grammar.  The goal for this week is the subjunctive (which did not show up on the placement test, though I found a way to use it in the oral interview portion of the test).  I had thought I would be disappointed to study it here, but it is a good thing…reinforcement, filling in the cracks.  I intend to have it down by the end of this summer.  And, as the teacher said, one might spend months on the topic.

We went on a walking tour of Heredia today, where we went to a very nice market and tried lots of different tropical fruits- jocote, mamón chino, granadilla, guanábana, anona, manga, and cas.  Guanábana looks sort of like a white watermelon with the same type of seeds.  It is very sweet and pulpy.  Cas is bitter…Colleen had thought the flavor like grapefruit when we tried it yesterday, not knowing what it was.  The mamón chino has the coolest look…sort of like a sea urchin.  Then we tried tortillas de queso….more like a pancake in thickness, a corn flour dough mixed with cheese.

We walked through the catholic church.  The decorations were very beautiful.  We had to be quiet because there were a fair number of people praying…