Sunday Shopping Day

June 5

We got up this morning and got ready to go to the Feria (Farmer’s market). The bus that takes us there is a little further away so the 8 of us walked over to the bus stop taking pictures along the way and singing merrily. About 20 minutes later, we got to the fairgrounds that host the weekly farmer’s market. I have never before seen so many different fruits and for so cheap. I can’t even keep track of all the native fruits that they have and use for food and juices. Of the familiar ones, mangoes were about 3lbs for $1, tomatoes 5lbs for $3, and $0.50 for a fresh coconut to drink. You could even take it back when you finish to have it cut open so it could be eaten! I just took a lap to see everything and compare prices before we started choosing things to buy for our lunches for the week. In the end, Arielle, Liz and I settled on avocado, mango, and tomato. All of the walking and looking at food made us hungry so we stopped by the hot food vendors to get lunch. I have a tortilla queso special and empanada con pollo. I thought I ordered a regular tortilla but my bad habit of nodding and smiling when I stop listening may have gotten me more than I wanted. Here, as in a lot of food places in Costa Rica, even if you order at a register, food is brought out to you at a table. Only if you request to take the food with you will they do anything other than serve you- with a free fresh juice in most cases.

Continuing our Sunday shopping, we walked to the Multiplaza mall next. Unfortunately, I had no luck finding the high speed SD card that I discovered yesterday was absolutely necessary to work my Nikon. I did however enjoy the search and my lunch dessert of a sprinkle donut from the local favorite Doña Dona (roughly Lady Donut). Liz’s computer was in need to resuscitation but the technician wasn’t due to come in for about an hour so Arielle and Caitlin decided to take the bus home while the rest of us waited with Liz and got some snacks(not me this time promise) and drinks at Longhorn. Good times.

We had Wal-Mart still on our to do list but decided to return home to drop off our current haul. Upon our arrival, we found that Caitlin and Arielle still hadn’t made it despite leaving about 2 hours prior. This caused a little tension but with a strong Spanish speaker, the address, and little we could even do, we just hung around. The two arrived about ten minutes later in a taxi after apparently taking the wrong bus and walking about 10km back to Wal-Mart before taxing home. Needless to say they were tired and they crashed while we trudged on. Wal-Mart was uneventful. I did struggle to find sliced bread- they usually just buy bread from the bakery here but the kinds I wanted weren’t fresh. Zeidy premade dinner so we heated it up and ate when we got back. Dinner was followed by an epic game of Taboo. Maybe it’s because she’s pre-vet but Emily was good at yelling things like “elbow!” with to clues of “so this is” and “hepatitis!” to “when you have”. In general, the delirious state of all those involved helped make for a memorable game.