Slang, Surveys, and Jambandland

OH MY GOSH. How on earth is it this late?

I suppose that whole dancing for two and some hours to an awesome Costa Rican jam band had something to do with that. Chalk my bar adventures up to three. Great trombone and sax player, and the lead and the bassist had –excellent- voices. We ship out tomorrow around seven, so I’m going to try my hardest to keep this to mostly pictures. 

Today was a “Humans in the Tropics” class day. I suppose that I should mention that on top of that, my other four classes are tropical diversity, tropical community ecology, Spanish, and our independent field research (bellbirds, anyone?). After lecture from 8-9 AM, we were given until 4 PM to conduct interviews (23 questions IN SPANISH from myfootprint.org) on three 20-somethings from the mall, the central market, and the University of Costa Rica. Much exploring, bad vocabulary, and delight ensued. 

Captions. I must sleep soon!

As we went towards the mall and away from our hotel/the inner city, the buildings got bigger, with more barbed wire fences and spiked gates. Also more greenery. And treeeeees. 

The mall was actually pretty typical. They had some funny store names ...and a lot of barbershops,  stores with "ropas americanas", and "sexyshops."

Some...interesting incense. 

Minimalist?

Two funny things. I played translator for a friend yesterday while she attempted to buy a SIM card (and succeeded , I may add), and the clerk kept saying "No, no claro que si, solo claro"--while I ignorantly insisted that yes, I did think that buying a SIM card was OK (claro que si means (roughly) of course),,,,Claro is a phone company. Also...guava is slang for something that is not guava. I love guava, and so do a few other female students on the trip. It's gotten many laughs in the market and we finally found out why today. So remember. guayaba. No guava, por favor. 

We walked from the market to the mall to the university...

Overzealous prospies? Probably not. 

Mountains in the distance. Yeeeee can't wait...

Colorful apartments on campus.

I walked around the Academia de belle arte  and chased birds while we waited for the INSECT MUSEUM to open. 

Art building courtyard.

The farmacia had a "soda"--basically a diner, a cheap dining option---that we were considering. We also visited the university cafeteria, which had cheap prices, too. However, we ended up getting casados (which we had for dinner the previous night: arroz, frijoles, platanos, carne/pollo/carnitas/etc, yucca, y ensaladas) in the central market. I got Horchata for friends to try. Nomnomnom. 

Statue outside the music building.

The insect museum! And Audrey. They had soooooo many specimens. Drool. 

They liked to arrange them creatively. See the grasshopper?

Meta. 

Prettayyy sweet. 

BIGGEST BUTTERHOPPER I HAVE EVER SEEN (If that's only Pittsburgh/Wisconsin /Becich termonology, I apologize.)

So cool. They had an extensive scarab beetle collection as well. (the ones with the huge horns.)

Some battle scenes. Looks like the wasps are winning. Poor tarantulas...

The public transportation is really easy to use, and pretty cheap. Taxis, too. We only paid 170 colones for a ride from the university to the market. 

Obligatory picture of foreign religious establishment. 

Obligatory photo of foreign park.

When we had about an hour left to finish our questionnare, I decided to go feed the pigeons in the market square! I'd been wanting to the whole trip...but apparently some people on the program took Hitchcock to heart, so....hmmph. 

I heart winged rats. 

When I started picking up pigeons/getting them to land on my shoulders, I started making friends. 

I shared my crackers and showed them how to keep their arms up so the birds would land on them to eat. Yeeeee citybirds. I vowed to spend $15 of my money during the entire time we were in San Jose...so with my last 60 colones I went to a candy/news stand and asked the guy what I could get that would feed the birds. He gave me two packs of soda crackers and a smile. SO MANY BOOTED pigeons and cool feather variations and slkdaslgkdfjs birds.

Gosh darn it hypergraphia. Anyhoo, super great day. And now I'm spent. 

Goodnight, peoples. New post in a few weeks!