Yeah, lets go to the art museum!

Today class was better, were still doing the subjunctive so it’s all relative right now… On the bright side I did find out that they have te con leche in the second Café at Veritas! After classes we (Julie, Nicky, Holly, Jason and I) went downtown with the intent of eating and going to the national art museum.  However, we left thirty min late since one of the classes got out late and missed first bus. We also had problems deciding where to eat and ordering (it was a-la-carte and some of the girls didn’t speak Spanish), but the major hold up was that two of the girls only had $20 bills. You can use US bills under 20 here but they have to be authenticated because there is a counterfeiting problem.  This meant that both times they had to run the bill downstairs and check it out, making us a bit unpopular with the hungry locals. I can understand if you don’t want to use you ATM card here to take out money if your bank charges a lot, and some people are afraid that it will get stolen (although is more dangerous to have a large stash of cash), but I think you should at least change your money over to the national currency. It would have been so much easier, and drawn way less attention!

                After lunch we decided to walk through the national cathedral since they were having a mass last time we went by. When we left the cathedral we decided to walk through the many parks in San Jose to people since we weren’t sure we would have time for the art museum. We went to Parque Espana, Revolutionary Park, and Escuela Metalica. While we were in the Revolutionary Park we meet up with a group of Ticos who were about our age. One was going to college in Argentina! It was really fun to meet up with some locals our age and practice our Spanish. We made it safely through the afternoon without rain, it was especially nice, since we were pushing our luck in not bringing umbrellas since we would have to carry them around.

                In my SD class we spent the day learning about the pineapple industry. It’s safe to say I am never going to be able to eat pineapple in the US again unless its organic (not that I was super into pineapple before…). Pineapple is a relatively new crop here, introduced to diversity the fruit exports (largely dominated by Banana). The problem is that pineapples need very specific conditions to produce fruit industrially. This means that the land must have very good water drainage and be cleaned (burned) of all other species between each crop cycle. Since they must burn to clean the soil they lose most of the nutrients and therefore apply lots of toxic fertilizers and pesticides (to ensure perfectly pretty produce for North America; the US buys 60% of CR’s pineapple crop). Due to the fact that the soil must have very good drainage, all the run off from the farm (the carcinogenic pesticides) are easily washed into the river where they poison the water table of the surrounding communities and eventually run to the sea killing ecosystems along the way. Some of these pesticides are illegal to use in the US since they are so dangerous to both workers and the environment, but they are allowed in CR (partly due to large fruit conglomerate lobbying). On the bright side, we also learned about the banana industry (which has a much longer history in CR) and due to consumer pressure from the EU is actually pretty sustainable, and are rainforest alliance certified. To be certified they must have water table plans, safety training, and use all parts of the banana harvest (paper, crates to ship the bananas) among other things.  

                After class I lightened things up a bit by going to the tropical dance class again! We learned the salsa, and Costa Rican Cumbia, which is a mixture of swing and Latin dancing!

Rain Forest Fact: A place that is home to 5 % of all the worlds biodiversity is being slowly poisoned by consumer’s demand for cheap tropical fruit.