Costa Rica Day 3

Today was the most interesting day so far. We had to be at the school early this morning so we woke up around 6:30. For breakfast, Leticia made fried eggs with some sort of tomatoes paste on top. I wasn’t sure by the looks of it, but it ended up being pretty good. Jasmia and I will normally ride the bus by ourselves to school every morning but Leticia rode with us this morning so we’ll know how to do it next time. It was about a 12-minute bus ride (I timed it so we would know about when to leave the house by from now on) and about a 5 minute walk after that to the university. I’m sure we’ll find a few different routes we could end up taking.

We got to school and first went to a lecture hall where we had a slide show presentation about the university, the instructors and more in depth as to how the program will be. The presentation was all in Spanish so I was a bit lost besides the pictures on the slides. However, they did tell us several times in English that Universidad de Costa Rica is by far the most prestigious school in the country, which I thought it pretty neat!

We were then broken up into groups where we had professors give us tours of the campus. This was really the first time we got to interact with the other students not from Memphis and I loved getting to know everyone in the group I was in. The campus is much larger than I thought it was! My feet hurt by the end of the tour. The grounds of the school are so green and lush. They said it’s not unusual to even some certain tropical animals roaming around campus. They also showed things to do on campus and in the surrounding area so it was nice to finally get the hang of where things are.

 

I found the TV studio on campus during the tour! 

This gives you a good idea of how green the campus is

After the tour, we had the placement test that I was not looking forward to. Not to my surprise, I had to leave the majority of the written portion blank, which they said was okay to do. We then had one-on-one oral exams and surprisingly I did okay and the instructor said she thinks I’ll be able to pick up the speaking part pretty quickly. The school provided lunch for us after our test in one of the buildings where most of our classes will be. Like everything else I’ve had here, very delicious.

Once we had all finished lunch, it was only about 12:30 so we wanted to explore around a little bit and go see the San Predro mall that’s near campus that a lot of people had been telling us about. A big group of us walked over there and looked around for a bit. It was huuuuuge. The best part was the food court and the movie theater! On Wednesdays, movies are 2 for the price of one (there really cheap either way), so we’re planning on going when we get out of class on Wednesday. A lot of them are even in English. After the mall, we walked back towards campus and got some ice cream at “Pops” which is a pretty popular ice cream place around here. About ten of us ended up hanging out there for about an hour and a half just talking and getting to know each other better. 

Inside the mall 

Pops Ice cream 

We all decided to head back to our houses and Jasmia and I went back to where our bus had dropped us off and waited and waited for a bus that had “Cedros” on it. This was quite the guessing game until we finally saw a bus that said it was going to our neighborhood. It was quite the ordeal not only finding the bus but also trying to pay for it. Apparently I handed him the wrong amount of colones and had to dig in my bag for my wallet, which kept the whole bus waiting. I hate when I look like “that American.” Jasmia and I got the only 2 seats left so it was a crowded ride back home.

When we got home, we realized our internet was still out from the storm. We needed to contact our parents and stuff so we asked Leticia where the nearest internet café was. It ended up only being about 4 blocks away but she told us she wanted to drive us there so we didn’t get lost. We spent an hour there and coincidentally ran into some other people from our group whose internet was also out from the storm. It gets dark pretty early here (a little before 6) so we headed back to the house around then. It was nice to finally walk around to see what’s in the neighborhood. We got back to the house and had dinner that was something I actually knew the name of--spaghetti! I also learned tonight that in Costa Rica, dinner is typically a small meal and lunch is much larger. There was a pretty big soccer game going on today between two rival teams in the Costa Rican league and all day we saw people in the streets honking, waving flags and chanting. During dinner we could hear the neighbors screaming at the TV which I thought was pretty funny.

After dinner, we did what we did the night before and tried communicating some more with our dictionaries. She also brought out the cookies from my parents that came in the basket. She said they were muy delicioso and she was right. I could have eaten the whole packet.

Tomorrow the school is taking us out of the city and we’re going to one of Costa Ricas active Volcanoes (they have 7) and then to one of the national parks where some huge waterfalls are. I’m really looking forward to it!