CR – Friday March 25, 2011 Day 14

Day 14

On the way to school each morning, Ginger and I get a kick out of the electronic street sign that shows a person “running like mad” across the street when the light turns red. No joke—there is no time to cross without running. We’ve finally figured out how to cross streets like a local here (first you say a prayer and then run like hell).

We’ve successfully completed our second week of classes and are looking forward to some R&R this weekend. Ginger and her classmate, Lucas, had a laughing jag during their end of the class exam – they were so nervous. We are grateful to move up to the next level in Spanish. I spoke with the school director today and I will earn some college credits.

Every Friday morning the school holds a graduation ceremony for students that completed their schedule of studies and are ready to leave the school. Verna from Germany was the only graduating student today. Students are asked to give a brief presentation and her presentation was very good. Later they served a treat of various fresh fruits. The director of the school (Intercultura), Marcello, requested that we include a salsa demonstration as part of our final graduation presentation. Luckily, budding DJ Lee has all his salsa music with him.

I had a conversation with another student at the school today who use to live in the US and has retired to Costa Rica. He and his wife have been living in CR since October. He said that in order to to establish a dual citizenship here in Costa Rica and in the US, he had to file all of his expatriate papers in the US and then is required by Costa Rica to hire a Costa Rican attorney to guide him through the process of citizenship. He said that there is a growing community of American retirees in Costa Rica. This is happening partly due to the mild climate, but also for the fabulous free healthcare system. Currently, he is building a house outside of San Juan.

On the way home from school today, I was able to carry on conversations with shop owners and all spoke with me in spanish. The reason this is noteworthy is because sometimes when speaking spanish, I’ve noticed that if I struggle too much, some english speaking ticos will just start talking to me in english. If they continue to speak to me in spanish, I think that this is good feedback to me of how well I’m progressing with my spanish. Ginger understands 70% of what people say to her —-today she bought some shirts (camisetas) and was pleased to understand the concept of 2 shirts for the price of one and a half.

Last night, we went to a Disco Tech in San Jose with a group of 11 students from the school. San Jose is about 20 minutes from Heredia. The name of the club is Castro’s. While the club is in a really bad neighborhood, the actual club itself is really nice. It has two floors with a lot of marble artwork, chandeliers, lot’s of tables and a very nice dance floor. The music was latino music typical to Coast Rica. The DJ played a mix of latin tunes and kept the crowd on the dance floor all night. There were many good dancers at the club. Again, we we’re watched by many of the regulars given that they don’t often see LA or New York style Salsa. At one point during a particularly long set of Merengue, we decided to switched to East Coast Swing. WE WERE SURPRISED! It actually worked. What a relief it was to do one of the first dances we ever learned.

Also, several of the better Tico dancers asked my permission to dance with Ginger. She never got the chance because the Merengue, Rumba and Tico Swing sets were so long that we had to leave (It was 12:30am) before the next Salsa set started.

At one point during the night, a Tico approached me to introduce himself. He said he and his girlfriend had been admiring our dancing all night. We’d also been watching him and his girl friend dancing earlier. They both are fabulous dancers. After conversion in spanish for a while, we exchanged business cards and as it turns out, the guys name is, Maurico Otarola Molina, a well known Costa Rican tennis player and instructor. You never know who your going to meet. Maurice and his girl friend invited us to attend a fiesta on Sunday, but we declined.

Tomorrow, We’ve hired a private tour guide and will visit a volcano near Heredia and then visit the Coffee Britt Plantation. Coffee Britt is the Costa Rican version of Starbucks coffee. We had four other tour options this weekend, all sponsored by the school, but decided we wanted to stay closer to home.

Disfrutar su fin de semana!

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