Live - Costa Rica - Weekend fun

So my 'c', 'd', and 'e' keys have been working on and off lately so if words start to have an x where any of those letters should be then you why! And my enter key isn't working. Too bad there are no Apple stores here. 

This past week has been more of the same on our project. We have just been painting... completely backwards. Let me explain... the upper half of the walls are white, and the lower half is dark blue. When we got there we were instructed to paint a four inch border around the bottom in red. So yes we made a Costa Rican (or American) flag. So we taped everything off an tried to make a nice neat border around the bottom. I suppose this is in place of baseboards. I have to admit it did look a lot more polished when were finished. However, after we were done with the red we were told that we would now be putting a fresh coat on the blue. Which meant all of our nice straight red line were now going to be dripped on and ruined with the blue, no matter how hard we tried to keep our brushed straight. It did keep us busy though. I think that the current project should be completed tomorrow, unless they ask us to do the white! We would have been done on Friday but it seems like volunteer attendance is a bit lower on Mondays and Fridays. This is a little bit frustrating for me because at orientation they told us specifically that they don't like for us to take days off. However, they are aware that sometimes people get sick, and if you are here for months it is not the end of the world to take a long weekend to travel. Despite the warning there are no repercussions, so it is meaningless to mention it in the first place. That ends my rant.

I took a picture of my dinner the other night, and this is pretty much the usual...

The mashed potatoes on the left were a surprise but the rice and beans are a staple and I have yet to identify the thing between the potatoes and the beans. (UPDATE! It is called Chayote) It tastes less starchy than a potato, more watery. It is always nice when we have avocado because they are always perfectly ripe! 

Breakfast is by far my favourite meal here; we usually have bread, an egg, and some kind of fruit. The fruit here is yummy! I mostly receive mandarins, watermelon, and mango. Mango day is always my favourite! 

I also tried manzana de agua ''water apple'' yesterday. It is a very odd fruit that has a pit in the middle, has red skin and white flesh, and tastes like nothing. Apparently it grows in Costa Rica. 

Yesterday a group of volunteers and a few people that teach English at the centre went on a hike. It was hard on the way up but I enjoyed and the view from the top was incredible!

That is San Jose

On the opposite side of the mountain from San Jose

On the way up there was an actual path, but on the way down...

It was a bit more treacherous. We were walking thorough tall bushes with thorns and uneven ground that you couldn't see. I fully fell twice and I just got so overwhelmed from everything, frustrated that I didn't know where we were going, and upset that they thought it would be okay for us to go that way, that I just started bawling. I was and still am pretty embarrassed but that is typically when I cry; I wasn't hurt I just wanted out. I was glad I went because the view was priceless but because of the descent I wouldn't go again. 

However, on Saturday I took a tour of the National Theatre and it was spectacular and the guide was very informative. Did you know that San Jose was the third city in the world behind New York and Paris to have electricity? I can't seem to find any sources to back it up though. The Italian artist Aleardo Villa painted the Allegory of Coffee and Bananas. However he wasn't familiar with  the  Costa Rican culture so he painted the women in European style clothes, and apparently the guy holding  the bananas, in the middle, has them upside down. 

This is the president's box

Apparently the president is super accessible in Costa Rica. She travels on regular planes, and lives in her own house and people can knock on her door, no problem. I guess when you are the president of a country with no army, your security isn't really a big concern. 

The inside of the president's box. I have no idea why that one chair is facing the opposite way.

This statue was originally on the roof but they replaced it with a replica because is was being ruined but environmental factors. This the the lounge area outside of the most expensive boxes in the theatre. They are the most expensive because they are at eye level with the stage.