After our orientation yesterday our program took us for a drive through tour of downtown San Jose. It is the rainy season here (Aka their winter) so it rains every afternoon. Because of this we weren't able to get off the bus and explore but I took over a hundred pictures. I went a little crazy but I enjoyed it. About halfway through the tour it started raining and it came down so hard that I had to stop taking pictures because the camera stopped focusing. For the poor people that actually look through all of my photos on Facebook this was probably a blessing in disguise. ^_^
Parts of downtown San Jose are pretty . . . um . . . iffy and is not a place for people to go wandering around by themselves. However, it was pretty interesting to see it from the safety of the bus.
I got this picture of the man carrying the biggest bag of plastic bottles who tried to sell me a basketball through the bus window.
The men here try to sell anything downtown. I saw stuff either laid out or just dumped in a pile with people looking through it. I reminded me of a yard sale without the yard!
Definitely different than Pullman or Spokane! At one point I took this picture of a guy either sleeping or passed out on the sidewalk. With his dog! People would just step around them and go on their way. If it wasn't so sad it would have been funny. Maybe.
By the time we got back to our university it was pouring out. It was the last day that we had to wait for our host families to pick us up so we all tried to hide under a ledge as we waited for them. All except my housemate and I! Not that I can claim the intelligence behind this because although I brought my umbrella to Costa Rica I forgot to bring it with me to class. :( It may have been because at 8 am it was somewhere around 80 degrees and sunny. Anyway, the important part is that our host mom was smart enough to leave us one when she left the school that morning.
Our host brother came and picked us up in a taxi and we were back at our house by one with nothing to do. We waited until the rain slowed down and then we went exploring. We mostly ended up walking in circles or running into dead ends and backtracking. But we did find an ATM! I didn't bring my debit card out with us because I'm paranoid about getting robbed but my roommate did. We also saw a gas station where the attendants that pump the gas are all cute, dressed up women. It was different but cool.
We did more exploring today but we had an escort. Our host brother Jorge showed us a shortcut to the bank and took us shopping for shampoo and other essentials. The bank is much more secure than the banks in the US. When we went to walk in my housemate went first and I went to follow her in. A guard stopped me and locked the door in my face. My brain went blank as I tried to figure out why I would be locked out of a Costa Rican Bank but I was pretty sure that I wasn't wearing a stocking cap over my head. It turns out that before you can walk into a bank here you need to be screened and wanded one at a time. So bizarre.
Security is so tight here. Hopefully it works to deter crime!
When we walked over to the shopping mall earlier it started to rain cats and dogs and thunder like crazy. It was raining so hard that the water was two inches deep in minutes. I was soaked from my ankles up to my upper thighs because I wasn't wearing rain boots. (Yes I know that you bought me a pair of really cute ones Mary but I didn't think to pack them. Yes, that was dumb.) I had my umbrella with me today and I was wearing my raincoat so it wasn't as bad as it could have been. My poor housemate was wearing a white shirt and the umbrella our host mom gave her was broken.
Jorge was awesome while we went shopping too. He took us to like four or five stores and patiently held our umbrellas as we looked at stuff and tried to find what we were looking for. We dragged that poor man through rain and mud and malls. Brave man Jorge. ^_^ You know forgetting my shampoo cost me twelve dollars! My usual brand was even more expensive. Strange when Tressime costs 16 dollars!
Oh! We had our oral placement exams today. It was very intimidating but I placed into the class I wanted to get in to. I start tomorrow and have spanish from 8am to 12pm and then I have my middle eastern politics class from 3 to 5 pm. A long day but thats what I get for cramming 4 months into 5 weeks. Oh, and get this! My politics class has only one other person! That is what I call small class size. They say that they will not cancel it which is crazy to me! But good since that is the class I want. ^_^
After we got our class schedule, two girls and I decided to head to a local bar and have a beer. Unfortunately we only knew of the two bars closest to our house which were the two out of three places our program told us not to go to. However, our host brothers had told us that those were the places that everyone went to. So we decided to chance it since it was right down the street and it was still daylight. It was great! We all had the local beer, Imperial, and it was pretty decent. When we got there it was almost completely filled with Americans but by the time we left there was mostly Ticos (Costa Ricans). My housemate and I walked with the third girl to her homestay and then we ended up taking a taxi home because it was getting dark.
We have decided that since we don't want to be stuck inside our houses after dark (which because it is so close to the equator means it gets dark at 6pm!) and since I have a class with only me and one other guy that I need to make him my new BFF so he'll chaperon us around at night. All evening they'd tell me "So you need to meet your best friend 4-eva tomorrow and see if he'll go with us here." It was great. Poor guy has no idea what he got himself into.
Well I have to wake up in 6 hours so I'd better stop this book I've got going on here and go to sleep.
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| My room |
So, How was your trip this weekend???
ReplyDeleteThis is Jesse, I clicked anonymous so that your blog would let me post a comment!!!