National Theatre, Food and More!

This week our field trip was to the Teatro Nacional in downtown San José. The theatre was constructed between 1890 and 1897 because Costa Rica would invite performers to come, but none would do their plays there because there was not a good theatre space. They imported marble from Italy, gold leaf from Central America and a team of theatre builders from Belgium to make it. It has a president's box at the best view and the president can go and see plays. Costa Rica is stable enough that his box has nothing blocking it; no bullet proof glass, etc. They have never wanted to assassinate any of their presidents. It was full of paintings and beautiful art.

After looking in the theatre, we went for a walk around downtown. I saw these cool pay phones that you swipe your card with, so I joked by asking "What are those?" My professor actually started explaining what a pay phone was until he saw me laughing at him. We also saw some statues and stopped for CHURROS at this chain they have down here called Crispy Churros. Even though these are a Mexican treat, Costa Rica has a lot of chains of other nationality restaurants. This place will fill the churros with any filling you want and they're all served hot which reminds me of Krispy Kreme. We ordered the biggest one called Churro Chorreado which came with 4 with guayaba and dulce de leche sauces on top. It was sooo good!

Today we had our midterm exams in our classes. The literature one was very easy for me because I'm used to studying literature at Cleveland State. The linguistics one is a take home test, which I'm happy about, but I'm having trouble in that class because it's so technical. It's mostly about how people talk and different accents, but there are these weird letters to signify sounds, and they're not from the American alphabet; I think they're actually Greek symbols like the theta, lambda, etc.

FOOD:
This is food from one of the cafeterias on campus. It's white fish, beans, rice, salad and veggies, all pretty normal.
The cool thing that I bought with the dish is called a manzana de agua, a "water apple". It was pretty good and has a pit instead of a core.

This is fish, lentils, rice, plantains, cream of mushroom soup, and cas juice.

This is poached egg, coffee, beans, pineapple, banana and torta chilena, a cake with a cookie like texture and caramel in between the cookie layers.

This is beef tips, coleslaw, rice and beans and yuca. The juice is called maragay.

This is cas juice, lentils, rice, chicken and pork rinds. They also made hand-made tortillas, so I put my chicken in those taco style with tabasco sauce. The chicken was on a bone, but the other night I hardly ate it off the chicken leg because I don't like to think my food was alive before I ate it, so this time my mom shredded it off the bone for me :).

This is pizza from a place in the mall called "Amore." I got the kind with salami and gorgonzola. The sign said they sold tiramisu, but they were out that day :(. It turned out ok though, because the mall also has a Crispy Churro, so I went there for dessert :).

This weekend, we are staying in Cahuita for 3 days since we have Friday off from school. I'm excited to go back to the beach and explore another province of CR!