Neither Jill or I slept well with this morning’s live fire exercise looming.
We took our coffee up to the upper deck and quizzed each other on directions for 20 minutes before beginning our respective personal hygiene regimens. I’m betting today’s phrase that pays is: “Disculpe, podria decirme donde esta X?” I’m also practicing “Puede hablar mas dispacio por favor?” (Can you please speak more slowly?)
We have also been practicing our numbers on the premise that we will have to ask how much things cost: “Cuanto cuesta X?” Apparently the numbers involving fives are my kryptonite. For some reason I have trouble transposing quince and cinquenta. And don’t get me started on quinientos (500). Trouble with numbers is particularly frustrating because I learned all of this stuff cold back in sixth grade (hace cuarenta y tres anos).
We met our profesora, Maria, at the appointed location and she sat us down to give us our mission briefing.
Our job was to go to the market and visit each of:
- A macrobiotica (health food store)
- A tienda (a shop that sells clothes or shoes)
- A carniceria (butcher)
- A verduleria (a fruit and vegetable stand)
- A pulperia (basically a convenience store)
After introducing ourselves as Spanish students. We had a set list of questions we were to ask the proprietors
One of the questions we had to ask each shop was “Que hay…?” (What do you have/sell here?). The sweet lady at the macrobiotica took us literally and walked us around her entire store showing us every thing she had on offer. I mean EVERYTHING she had on offer. We were probably behind the counter with her for 10 minutes. We learned that she and her daughter ran the store and also that her top selling supplement is Morenga followed by Omega 6 capsules.
We went from shop to shop and the people could not have been friendlier or more patient with us.
Jill and I alternated taking the lead at each type of establishment.
We did it! It wasn’t as scary as it could have been, but we were both still exhausted when we got through. Jill and I agreed that now that we know about la mercado we are going to try to shop there to support the local community. On Monday we have to do an oral presentation of our findings with our other profesora, Ana.
Off to the airport to pick up Jill’s parents!
We navigated to the airport without incident and collected our parking ticket as we entered the structure. Parking ain’t cheap at Juan Santamaria airport. It’s $3.50/hour or $45/day.
We are now in possession of Nana and Daddy Bill!
I had another victorio pequeno in the parking garage. I left Jill and her parents where the crosswalk entered the garage from arrivals and went to get my parking ticket validated. The San Jose airport parking setup is where you take your ticket with you to pick up your party then get your ticket validated at an automated kiosk when you are headed back to your vehicle. I left Jill in charge of her parents while I went to pay for parking. When I got there there were four people ahead of me in queue. I watched a Costa Rican lady struggle with the process for what felt like 5 minutes. groaning inwardly (and maybe a little outwardly. I trotted out my nuevo Espanol and said “Perdon…” and stepped forward to show her how to work the machine. 30 seconds later the line was flowing again 🙂
Everyone was hungry so we bee-lined for La Fiesta de las Pupusas where everyone had a pupusa mixto and, per Alfonzo’s prior suggestion, we each had one of their homemade juices. I had a juice made with “cas” which is a Costa Rican sour guava. I declare cas juice at La Fiesta de las Pupusas to be my new favorite thing and will be shilling it to all of our future guests! Everyone enjoyed their lunch and we will likely stop in for another go while Jill’s parents are here.
Now for the update you are probably all waiting for. Jill’s parents arrived with my Google WiFi endpoints and within a matter of 30 minutes or so I had our new mesh network up and running. We’ve now got 30+Mbits down and 5ms pings all over the house. My work is done here.
We are now sitting on our upper deck watching the lights come on out in the valley.
Tomorrow morning we are going to take Jill’s parents to experience the feria at 8AM. Jill has a client session at 11 and then at noon we are going to head for Sarchi (home of the world’s largest ox cart) and we will finish our outing with PriceSmart. Then we will go down to our landlord’s restaurant for dinner.
I’m pretty sure life could not be any better….
Jill and Todd in Costa Rica 