Música y Ciudad

     On Friday my coworker/neighbor/friend Allan from Costa Rica took me to the fruit market. This is where a lot of local farmers sell their food. One of the most noticeable aspects of this market are all the smells--not because people are cooking, but rather because there is a lot of garbage. I bought some vegetables and a mamey. I ate it with a spoon--it was pretty good.
     Later that night we hung out in his apartment and he has a guitar! I played it, of course, and we ended up playing together for several hours. He taught me a lot of Latino songs.
     On Saturday I explored some of the city on my own. My plan was to catch a "diablo rojo" and get a ride to the big mall so I could buy a cell phone. A diablo rojo is a popular form of transportation around here. It is cheap and ubiquitous. There's a fleet of retired school buses that people paint extremely elaborately and drive around, charging twenty-five cents per person. I wanted to find the plaza to catch one, but I only had a vague idea of where the plaza was, so, naturally, I just wandered around and hoped to find it, secretly hoping that I'd get hopelessly lost and confused and come home with an exciting story to tell. I ended up in the Avenida Central, central avenue, which is a long street closed to cars and contains a huge market. There were at least a dozen cell phone stores, so I just picked one and got a $20 phone. I proceeded to wander around for the next two to three hours. My favorite part was finding a coconut water vendor and drinking my favorite drink in the world! I then realized there were coconut water vendors all over the place, which made me happy. I found some produce markets and bought some more vegetables, looked for a few other groceries, and went home.
     Later that night I went to see a Japanese film with Allan and another coworker, Eva (from Panama). We took a bus that was supposed to take us right to the main mall downtown, but it instead took the most roundabout route possible and it took us about 40 minutes to get there. It was cool to see the city, though, so I didn't mind. It's a very busy place.
     The movie was really good! It was free, in Japanese with Spanish and English subtitles, which was perfect so I could practice reading Spanish and have a translation directly below it. It was about two sisters trying to get each other married. It reminded me of Shakespeare because of all the misunderstandings and scheming. After it was over we took a diablo rojo back home and Allan and I played more guitar for several hours, during which time I met his roommate and another person moved in with them. His roommate is latino (I forget where he is from) and his new roommate is from Wisconsin.
     Now I just finished reading several of Dr. Collin's papers and her grant proposal and am feeling good about myself, so as a reward I am going to take pictures of the natural preserve behind the apartment. Stay tuned!

Hasta pronto,
Gina