La Playa

Today we decided we were going to find out how to get to the beach, which is almost always first priority when I study somewhere. We made friends with the guy in the subway station, so we went back to check with him about the route to take.
So we wait at a stop, that is really a small green sign that says you can get a bus there, for the #40. Bonus: during the weekend of el Festival de San Sabastían, the city takes a lot of the normal buses from their routes to transport people to the festival, leaving each route with 1 or 2 buses. So we were on the side of the road for about half an hour before having to wave down the bus to stop. That's right. You have to be standing up waving the bus as if you were telling an airplane where to land. I mean, it makes sense that you shouldn't get a ride unless you look like you really want it. Otherwise, keep your 75 cents for the subway, because that will just come to you without questions.
Anyways, we had a little help finding out where our stop was from the driver and an American man in his swim trunks and a Hawaiian shirt who was evidently going to... the airport. We were there in less than 10 minutes. So we just decided to walk straight down a side street near the stop at which we were left off and finally saw water. It was the beach! and we were so excited to see it. The sand area itself was kind of small, but after walking a little bit closer to the hotels we found a comfy palm tree to put our stuff by and lay under.
The water was kind of chilly but easy to get used to. We laid out and ate our PB&J's and bananas and decided that we would like to try to swim in a pool. If there was a sign that clearly said "RITZ CARLTON hotel guests only," I must have completely missed it. That, or I looked at it and decided that I would play hotel guest. It was so pretty in there with chaise lounges and cabanas and lions spitting water into the pool. But when we tried setting down our colorful towels, which contrasted against everyone else's white ones, we were offered different towels and then told if we weren't hotel guest we had to leave. We were relieved to get back to our luxurious palm tree in the sand where we could be appreciated. After swimming a bit and taking pictures, we had to leave to make sure the bus would still be running since it is a holiday and weekend.
Javier, the guy from the subway station, told us how good Puerto Rican chinese food was, so we decided take-out would be good for dinner. Then we needed to stop at walgreens to get crackers for our Sour sop marmalade, you know, made of the fruit that comes from the sour sop tree. And I'm not kidding, you can look up pictures of this thing and it's very tasty. Ok, Chinese food. We ordered "mofungo" which is something made with corn and plantains that Puerto Ricans love, which was actually pretty tasty but probably not the best mofungo, but we needed to try it. Jenn got sesame chicken which apparently only means sesame chicken and no rice. I got chicken lo mein with all appropriate condiments: soy sauce, duck sauce, and an american favorite, ketchup. I also ordered a taco because, as most of my friends know, I have an unhealthy obsession to a proper Mexican taco complete with cilantro, onions, lime and hot sauce, since I spent the last 6 months working at a Mexican restaurant. I was so excited for my taco until I bit into it and got a mouth full of tortilla, chicken, mashed potatoes and cheese. Good effort on their part though, they got the tortilla and chicken right.
Well, I gotta go sour sop my crackers.