We all woke up pretty early so that we could go and explore La Fortuna! Most of the day was devoted to our assignments, in one way or the other. The good part about these assignments is that they are more about learning on your own. So some of our assignments are to walk around the city and write about little restaurants or things like that. Eric, Sarah, Jessica, and I all decided to rent bikes today so that we could explore more! We rented them for 3 hours and rode all around. We rode out to one of the sites for our assignments to look at different farms/agriculture, but then we rode past it. WAY past it. It was so much fun because we obviously had no idea where we were, but we didn't have anywhere to be! I loved being able to just go whichever direction we wanted to. It was a great way to explore the whole city! It was so relaxing and fun... even though it was HOT. I was rockin a tank-top, and I have the WORST sunburn ever. It looks like I'm wearing a white tank-top, but it's just my skin. I'm in a little bit of pain, but o h well. No pain no gain! One of the places we ended up was a little bitty grocery store. It is called a "mini-super", but mini is an understatement. These stores are a cultural aspect of Costa Rica, but are sadly starting to disappear because of larger businesses. They are basically little stores (usually attached to the owner's house) and are just a bit bigger than a pantry. The one we went to only had 2 isles in it, and it was probably about 15 feet long. I of course had to buy a drink and snack there, and attempted to talk to the owner, even though he only spoke Spanish. It was an awesome experience!
The rest of the day was pretty much devoted to working on assignments. They suck... but I like them better than the ones that we had to do in the rainforest! Brandon and I hung out at the hotel bar for a while and talked to another guy and girl (who were about our age and from Florida) for a few hours. It was Gabby's 21st birthday, so around dinner time, everyone got dressed up and we all went to dinner together. Surprisingly, Costa Rican pizza is really good! Everywhere here is really tourist based. One of the "friends" we made was the part-owner of a restaurant that served Tex-Mex and pizza haha. We saw him all over the city and he was very friendly so we always stopped to talk to him.
But back to Gabby's birthday... after dinner, most of us went to a discoteque! A discoteque is a club/bar, and it wasn't too far from our hotel. We rode a bus to get there, and that was an adventure in itself. The whole language barrier thing has been difficult, but made things that much more exciting. We were told the bus would pick us up in the square at 10, so we went there to wait. There were a few other people waiting so we knew we were in the right place but we got worried when it was 10:25 and the bus still wasn't there. It ended up eventually showing up but it wasn't what we were expecting. It was pretty much one of the vans that we have been taking everywhere for just the 20 of us study abroad kids... but there were a bunch of natives going also. We ended up having to sit on each other's laps for the ride, and some people had 2 people sitting on their lap. We all died laughing the whole time and I'm sure all the Ticans on the bus were making fun of us.
We finally got to the club and there were hardly any people there to start out. We kinda hung out for a while and just talked with each other, but then we started to migrate towards the dance floor. Surprisingly, there was NOBODY dancing. In our group, there were probably about 10 girls and 4 of us guys. A lot of the girls went out and just danced by themselves on the floor, but then a few of us guys went out there and joined them. We basically got the party started! We were the only people on the dance floor (keep in mind that we were dancing to Mexican/salsa music most of the time) for quite some time! Then the natives slowly started to join us and before we knew it, the dance floor was packed. I never though I could have so much fun at a Costa Rican club! I loved dancing to the salsa music... mostly because none of us really knew how so we were just having a great time being goofy. I was pretty much the only guy from our group that danced the whole time, so I got to dance a lot with all the girls in our group OOOHHHHH YEAAAAA! I don't think I've ever danced so much in my life. It was so much fun that we didn't want to stop.
One of my favorite parts was when the Costa Rican guys would come up to the girls and start dancing with them. The girls had it coming... a large group of American girls, dancing in groups with hardly any guys. I would sit back and watch the Costa Rican guys start to make their move on the girls, and I start to crack up laughing because some of the girls felt awkward dancing with them. Watching their facial expressions and watching the girls trying to escape after not too long was priceless. All in all, it was an AWESOME night. Way more fun that I expected. Today (Sunday, June 19th) we haven't really done much. We are leaving La Fortuna to head to Liberia in about an hour, so everyone has been walking around and getting everything packed. Hopefully the internet is better in Liberia so that I can update this more often!
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| On top of the sign at the Soltis Center on our last day |
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