Fun in the Sun

It's been a couple days... Sorry to those of you who have been checking everyday and anticipating a new blog!

I came home exhausted on Friday night and slept for a long time. I felt much better on Saturday.

We went to the feria again! I spent about $7 on a zucchini, a cucumber, lettuce, a carrot, cheese, and 2 potted plants. Awesome deals! Here's all of our loot after we washed it...

yum!!
Kim V. (5th grade teacher) waiting for us again... She's so patient when she is waiting for us to be ready to go ...

Then Tricia, Kim, and I headed into the city with our neighbor Diane, another teacher Kim V., and two new ILE students, Sunshine and Becky. Gringas in San Jose make quite the spectacle. We make a spectable when it's just one of us at a time, let alone 7 of us! We visited Mercado Central, Cafe Latino, Mercado Democracia, American Ropa (ha, a secondhand store from brand name stores in the U.S. -- they don't know that their "charitable donations" to foreign countries are being bought by Americans!), and Museo Nacional. Whew, quite the excursion! All that for a 175 colones bus fare one way... making it about 80 cents both ways. My kind of travel :)

Diane at Cafe Latino.

The gringas making a spectable...
ha, Tricia with a big fat woman statue. I think the story is that she will bring you good luck if you touch her. The statue, that is, not Tricia! :)
A cool window at Cafe Latino. :)

A small victory in speaking Spanish: I struck up a conversation with a vendor at Mercado Democracia, and Sunshine was looking at her purses. I was able to translate for Sunshine about the costs and colors of the purses. The vendor and I talked about how easily we forget words in the other language (she in English and I in Spanish), so we bonded over our forgetful minds.

Then, the supermarket again. I felt so much more comfortable asking questions about where to find items. Yay! Another victory...

Church is extremely humbling. My notes are a jumble of Spanish words that I hear and understand, but I can't make out the message yet. Oh well, that will come. For now I focus on what I do understand, no matter how little it is. I wrote 2 pages front and back of random Spanish words I understood. The pastor said "Perfectamente posible!" a lot, so I wrote that at least five times. ha.

Today after church we journeyed a whole 4 blocks to Kim's house. (It's so confusing with so many Kims. This Kim lives with a tico family and is the 5th grade teacher at Sojourn. She's in some of the photos from the trip to San Jose as well.) Her family was gone for the day and had told Kim to have some friends over. We ate lunch and then took advantage of their back yard and sat out in our swimsuits :). We also painted our toenails and had great conversation. Wonderful relaxation time for hard-working teachers, trust me!
the back view of the house.
Our beautiful toenails!

Oh, and Kim V. has a pet rooster in her back yard that was cockadoodling all afternoon. Strange but true.