18 Hours of Veritable Costa Rica: Written September 6, 11:00 am

The last 18 hours have been full of good Costa Rican experiences. Yesterday was Maria, my host mom’s birthday. She spent the latter half of this week preparing for the party she was hosting to celebrate with her friends and family. She moved all of the furniture out of the living room, cleaned the floor and set up table and chairs for twenty (or so) people. She planned to feed her guests tea, bocas and then a meal of chicken lasagna, salad and a cake from Giacomin (famous Italian pastelería in San Pedro). We had class at OTS all day, so I arrived late to the festivities, but when I arrived, I asked where I could dish up a plate of food for myself. Maria told me not to be silly, to sit down and to wait for the waiter to bring me my plate of food. I sat down with Caroline, the British woman who rents the apartment next door (who was thrilled to see a friendly English-speaking face when I arrived). I enjoyed my meal with a glass of wine and absorbed the spirit of the celebration until the mariachi band walked in. They played a selection of songs, took requests and got Maria and all her friends singing and dancing along. And a little later, Marcela busted out her belly-dancing outfits and demonstrated for everyone. It was quite a spectacle I wasn’t expecting at all. It was no wonder that José and Mauricio, Maria's husband and son had escaped to another room in their house. Kind of a hen party. Oh, and the cake was fabulous.

Maria’s guests left around seven, which gave me the chance to go meet my classmates at the bar down the street to watch the Costa Rica vs. Mexico soccer match. I heard about this game a couple weeks ago from Maria. I immediately wanted to look into trying to get tickets to go see it live, but Jorge told us that all the tickets sold out two months ago because Costa Rica-Mexico is such a bitter rivalry. It’s so fun to be in a place where people actually care about soccer. All day long we saw people everywhere sporting red and blue national team jerseys. Taxi drivers drove with Costa Rica flags waving out their windows. Many restaurants and businesses hung banners or flags proclaiming their pride for their team. People generally admitted that Costa Rica’s chances of winning were not terribly high (Mexico has won the majority of their previous meetings), but in many cases, that did not put a damper on the country’s enthusiasm for its team. Turns out that Costa Rica’s defense got severely outplayed by Mexico’s strikers and they were never able to generate any particularly strong attacks, but really, it was fun being at the bar with the game playing on all of the TVs with people cheering for their team regardless of the game’s odds.

After the game was over, I went out dancing at Castro’s with Rachel and Victoria. We went out on Thursday night, but had to leave just as things started picking up in order to get enough sleep before our 8am class on Friday. With a rest day today (Sunday), we were free to stay out a little later last night. Castro’s is a super fun place to go – there is a huge dance floor with Latin music all night, every night, and people are there to dance. It’s great fun. I’m reaping the benefits of dance classes at the language academy, and I even picked up some cumbia last night, which was so fun. Like I said before, it’s really great to go out with a small group of friends because when we go, we don’t feel like obnoxious tourists. Sometimes we’re the only Americans there, and that’s really cool.

We only have three days left of language school (a very good thing, in my opinion) and just one week left in San Jose before we return to Las Cruces next Sunday (I think). I need to be sure to bring my camera with me this week, so I can capture important aspects of life in San Jose (language school, my Costa Rican family and their house, bus rides home in insane traffic, crappy drivers in general, la Universidad Costa Rica, Mall San Pedro – which is quite a monstrosity, but right down the street from language school, all of these things) to share with you.