Viva la Vida

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.

After our new experiences with the children's museum, we finally went to our first traditional museum – El Museo Nacional. The museum began with a walk through a butterfly room. Though it wasn't as impressive as the one in the InBioParque, it was still beautiful. In the InBioParque, there were a lot of butterflies in a very small amount of space. Here, there was a large amount of space which was tastefully covered with vegetation and a relatively small amount of butterflies, which made encountering one that much more special.

As we moved through the museum, there were various artifacts from Costa Rican history and their descriptions, classic museum design. Apparently, throughout Costa Rica, round balls of cement like material have been found in all different sizes, ranging from being the size of me to being small enough for me to pick up without exerting too much effort. They have yet to definitively figure out the purpose of these balls. There are many theories that fly around. One suggests that they were just for decoration. Other theories suggest that they were used as a method of keeping track of time and date, which was important for growing crops and keeping track of the rainy seasons and such. Often they were found arranged in lines to make angles or other formations.

Once we got to the basement of the museum, the style changed. In the basement was various rooms that the army of Costa Rica used (back when they still had an army). Though I don't remember for sure, apparently the building used to be some sort of headquarters for the leader of Costa Rica, and the army stayed in the basement. There was a hallway with small rooms stemming off. There wasn't a door covering them and the graffiti on the walls was the original graffiti from the soldiers who stayed there. These rooms were used for people they held hostage or for soldiers that needed to be punished. They would only have a wooden box for a bed and few other luxuries. Another room contained the bathrooms of the army men, which at some point were built over to display more artifacts in a museum that owned the building before El Museo Nacional. Another room involved the cafeteria and another the showers. Just a walk back through the butterfly room and a step over a couple of the famous balls and we were off to school for the day.