… And Then, My Taste Buds Exploded.

This morning, the majority of our group headed out to see the Harry Potter Premiere. Greg, Emily, Brandon and I, however, headed over to downtown Heredia at 8:00am to see what entertainment we could find. And of course, the first entertainment we found was pigeons, for which we spent half an hour looking to buy bread. Finally succeeding we allowed ourselves to be fascinated by the swarms of pigeons that flew at us at the first drop of a crumb.

To continue our morning we made our way down to the market, this time with the intent of purchasing some sort of food. We began with mamones chinos, this strangely spiky fruit that we'd seen our peers eating for lunch. It's small enough to comfortably fit in your hand and is of a dark red/pink color. We bought a quarter pound (about 6 mamones chinos) and each of us cracked one open. On the inside was something that looked similar to a lychee. There is a seed on the inside around which you have to eat, and it is absolutely delicious. It is such an intensely sweet and soft flavor, if that makes sense.

Our next round was blackberries, or moros. In the market they sell this mixture of small just ripe blackberries and unripe ones. Once we finally got to try them, after doing a good rinse and such, they were extremely tart, but regardless tasted like candy. Emily went on to purchase a mango and avocado. The mango was essentially butchered so that Emily could eat it and the avocado was eaten hummingbird style. Emily poked a hole in it and started digging it out with her fingers. She also bought a guanava, but when she broke it open it wasn't yet ripe. We knew we were safe eating these though, as we'd talked to our host parents before hand to check. We also purchased these sweet, hard circles from a bakery for our snack. They were very similar to the Russian Bubliki I love so much (if that's the right name for them?)

In general, the food here has been amazing and unique. This morning I tried this spaghetti egg pancake food. I think it was essentially spaghetti with an egg omelet around it to make a sort of pancake. On my first night I tried this amazing black soup with egg and last night in particular was delicioso. It was a sort of yuca dish. Yuca is a lot like potato and it was this sort of lasagna like dish, but without the pasta part, leaving just yuca, meat, and cheese. As for the drinks, just like Mexico, most everything is freshly made. Ice cream is equally amazing, I've especially come to love blackberry (moro) ice cream. I've tried strawberry juice, guanavana juice, among many others, and there will be many more to come.