Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Relaxing Weekend in San Jose

This weekend, I stayed in San Jose for the first time all weekend. I went to the San Pedro Mall last Friday, which is a 3 story mall about a 15 minute walk from campus. They have a giant food court with both American and Costa Rican food, clothing stores, she stores, bakeries, Mrs. Fields, a movie thater... everything you would expect to find in a mall. I went with a friend who was on her one month program and was leaving the next day, Saturday, to return home. After walking the mall and grabbing lunch, we decided to see "The Book Thief", which was in English with Spanish subtitles. I heard about that movie, but never saw it or read it, and didn't know what to expect. Overall, it was an amazing movie, but what I liked best was that with the Spanish subtitles, I could usually read what they were going to say just before they said it!

On Saturday, I waked to San Jose to get a Tour of the National Theater and Gold Museum. I decided to do the Gold Museum first, which was good since I wouldn't have had enough time to go to the theater! The gold  museum is basically two different museums. The bottom two floors are pre-Columbian gold exhibits along with stories of the pre-Columbian tribes and some of their rituals, such as the burial ritual, and how they made clay pots and gold figures. The other half of the museum was on the first floor and was the half that I was most interested in. It was a history of Costa Rican currency since the 1500's and the arrial of the Spanish. Both exhibits were written in English and Spanish, so I took a lot of time to read the Spanish, understand it, and reference the English to make sure I understood it. It was interesting to see how their money has developed over the years. The two most interesting types of money they have had was when they did not have their own method of making coins, usually from lack of material, so in the 1700's they used coffee beans as a form of currency. Later, they took foreign currency an stamped their own symbol on it, making it their own. They also drilled one small hole in each coin, whose metal was used to pay the stamping workers.

They also had a small exhibit that descrbed the creation of the museum since it is three stories underground. From an architectural viewpoint, it was really cool since they put up tilted walls (which are clearly visible from inside) to keep the structure stable and then built the plumbing, electrical, support beams, and additional walls at the same time; talk about a joint effort! The museum also has a spiral staircase that was apparently quite a feat to build as well.
 





On my way back, I managed to get lost in San Jose for about two and a half hours, which was fine since it was daylight, but did get frustrating after awhile! I was following their street signs since I knew the streets of the school (all street numers go east and west and all avenes go north and south) but what I didn't know was that odd roads are on one side of San Jose and even roads are on the other. As soon as I figured out that and figured out where I was I had no major problems. Needless to say, I was super happy to see the school again.

On Sunday, they had their National elections for their president and entire legislature. They use a direct vote system for president, so whichever candidate gets 40 percent or more of the votes wins the election. This year there were thirteen candidates and no candidate got all forty prevent of the vote.  So, the top two candidates will go into a second voting round, taking place in the first week of April, and whomever gets the most votes, even by one vote, wins. I went with my host family to the polls to vote and then I went to the South Mall with them afterward. In the evening, they went to the children's vote at the East Multi-plaza, just for fun, but it seems to me that everyone in Costa Rica has their children vote as well. Talk about national pride! I liked that. There were a lot of kids there and the line to vote was really long. I saw a lot of children's games there as well and got to see a new mall. This one was a little fancier than the others I had been to, and was about a mile and a half walk, so I probably won't be going their much, but I hope to go back at least once.

Monday, we didn't have school since some people were out of the country for their mandatory 72 hour time period to renew their visas. I hung out with another friend on Monday and we went to a supercenter to buy some groceries and then to the South Mall to grab ice cream I met her Momma Tica, a very nice grandmother who only speaks Spanish that I'm pretty sure has had many study abroad students before. In fact, I believe there was another blog that I read before coming here that took place in her house. There are three students lving there.

Tuesday was time to start my new Spanish Course, Techniques of Oral Expression, which I will write about more in a future blog post. Pura Vida!

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