Dinner and a Movie

 7-22-11

                Today in Spanish class we spent the first hour giving presentations on the food we researched at the market, which was fun as it involved samples and tons of really weird fruits that I had never eaten before. This is such a novelty for us temperate people. Some of the students even have fruit tasting parties where everyone has to bring the strangest fruit they can find for everyone to try. For the second half of class we watched a movie with the advanced one class. The movie was called the City of God (Ciudad de Dios) and it is about a favela by this name in Rio de Janero. The irony is that this favela is very poor and in the center of gang and drug activity and it had one of the highest murder rates in the 60s-70s. The movie was very poignant and moving although very violent. What made it challenging was that the movie was all in Portuguese with Spanish subtitles… I actually did really well! I understood almost the entire movie from reading the subtitles and some from the spoken Portuguese. However, Portuguese has such strong French-like pronunciation that it’s difficult to understand even though it is very similar to Spanish.

                After the movie I met up with my friends who had been on their field trip today, they went to the basilica and market as well, for lunch. We ended up eating at the pizza place again, which was fine by me since they have the best pizza in the western hemisphere. Jessica (from API) and Jason were there as well as the other girls. We had originally planned on going into San Jose, but the weather wasn’t ideal, and most of us still had a lot to get done before our weekend trips. So after lunch we went our separate ways to pack and made plans to meet up at 4 to go to the mall and see Harry Potter (Julie still hadn’t seen it). In the meantime, I packed and finished my homework so that I wouldn’t have to do much over the weekend. When Sophie got back from school we with mama tica to her boss’s house where Sophie is pet sitting. We took the dogs for a walk around the neighborhood, which was really nice since I am having dog withdrawal. My mama tica and I also walked to the Pali, super market so that I could buy a flashlight to use patrolling the beach for the turtles.

                I met up with Holly and Julie at 4 (in tico time, so really 4:15) to take the bus to the Mulit Plaza del Este to eat dinner explore and watch Harry Potter.  I had never taken this particular bus by myself before and Holly and Julie hadn’t ever, so we were a bit nervous; especially since there is not a marker for the bus stop. Everyone just knows that you sand on the concrete drain in front of the red building and wave when you bus goes by.  Using our acute sense of vision we were able to track down the bus that went from San Jose to Curridabat. As soon as we got on the bus we hit Friday afternoon traffic. We hadn’t really thought that one out too much… It actually worked in our favor since we weren’t exactly sure where our stop was, and the traffic gave us time to look around for the sign before we had to push the button. For all who care, you press the button right after you see the McDonalds playplace sign.

                The Multi-plaza is what we would call a mall, but it to the Ticos it’s more of a shopping center. it has an open courtyard in the middle and the stores inside are more like what you would find at Stone Crest that at South Park or Carolina Place. We decided to get our tickets early since it was a Friday night, which turned out to be a good idea (thank you Julie!) since the theater was very full, although we managed to get relatively good seats off to the side. Afterward we walked around comparing the difference between the US and Costa Rica as far as shopping went. The options are about the same, Costa Rica is very globalized, although the prices are higher here. Before the movie we went to POPs, a heladaria here that has lots of native tropical fruit flavors. It’s my new favorite place! I got Cas, a type of fruit, flavored ice cream and it was delicious. We also went to the food court to get some dinner before the movie. First off, it is Ironic how popular Taco Bell is here and how expensive fast food is. It costs about 6 dollars for a Taco Bell meal in CR. The same applied to about all of the food, except for McDonald’s, which is, sadly where I decided to get some French fries. I don’t know why, but since I’ve been here I’ve had a craving for them, and I don’t really eat fries that much in the US.

                After eating we went down to the theater early to take some touristy pictures with the gigantic cut outs of Harry Potter, since my last pictures didn’t go so well. The movie was really awesome, the second time. Since I knew the story and had already seen it I was reading the Spanish subtitles as the characters spoke which really helped me relate how idioms and expressions are translated.  Afterward we headed home because all of us had to be at Veritas at 6 AM to meet up with our classes for our field trips on Saturday. We called it an early night, but I hung out with my host family and watched the Costa Rican premier of Modern Family (in Spanish).