Well, another week or so has gone by since the last one of these, and it was a pretty eventful one. On friday we had a field trip to downtown San Jose, which was pretty eventful. There were some beautiful buildings, but all of the buildings in the guidebook were kind of surrounded by more modern architecture, and looked more than a little out of place. In the guidebook that they gave me at the beginning, they said that 18th century Europeans referred to San jose as "a national theatre surrounded by a village", referencing the relative decadence of the architecture of the theatre in comparison to the tribal lifestyle of the rest of Costa Rica. Now, it seems that San Jose is a national theatre surrounded by not entirely attractive modern architecture.

But, to be sure, there were a lot of interesting things in San Jose. We went to a huge marketplace, which was actually really reminiscent of some places I had been in Europe over the summer. It was indoor, and had everything from a pet shop to a seafood store to an incredibly touristy t-shirt store, but was a lot of fun to look around in. After that we went to a very beautiful church that was painted to look like it was marble on the inside, like a lot of churches in italy. Right after that, however, we got onto an air conditioned, private bus, which promptly yanked us out of the culutural experince. Following a delicious lunch of sandwiches and a failed game of "beach ball", we headed back to the ACM.

That night about half the group headed out to a kind of club called "el jazzcafe" which featured expensive drinks and a kind of pop jazz band playing songs, including some american ones. I sang along to a michelle branch one that i knew (which, I was later informed, was actually Vanessa Carleton).

Then the weekend came, which was pretty fun. Apparently there will be a house painting project going on while I'm here, and this weekend we started with the gate, which took much longer than it would seem. Also, we can only paint until about 2 pm, at which the downpour starts, without fail. Its gotten to the point that I'm a little uncomfortable if its not raining after 2. I think my family is getting to like me a little better every day, which is a good sign, and which probably goes hand in hand with the improvement in my spanish, which is slow but steady.

This weekend we're going to Sarapiqui y Guapiles, which is like a protected tropical forest, so I'll finally be doing what everyone probably assumes that I'm doing when I tell them I'm going to Costa Rica. Hope its fun!