« Birthday Parties Costa Rican Style! | Home | Meeting Caroline’s Family »
Our Homework Trip Downtown
By Scott & Sherry | November 7, 2007
Click Photo to Enlarge
Our homework assignment this week was to take the bus to downtown San Jose and seek out a few parks, national monuments and museums. This is where it got tricky…our task was to ask the locals for directions to our assigned places and once there, ask what their operating hours were and the cost of entry. As you may have read in a prior post, asking directions in Latin America may get you lost, so one important lesson we learned was to watch the way their hands were pointing, instead of listening to “go east 3 blocks…” We had to stop twice and ask directions to the first destination on our list because we thought we’d gone far enough, but it turned out the first person did give us correct directions! 
We saw some interesting sights along the way, such as men sleeping on the sidewalk covered with plastic bags to protect themselves from the rain, plants growing out of the side of a wall, and a protest outside of one of the government buildings. We also ate a delicious meal at one of the local restaurants where vendors would come inside the restaurant and ask the customers if they want to buy anything from sunglasses to lottery tickets. One day soon this will all be so normal for us, but for now we’ll continue thinking, “it’s not wrong, it’s just different!”
If you would like to see more pictures related to this post, click here
Topics: Language School |