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Today has been much less busy than the last couple -- so much so that when I was given a free afternoon, I started to get stir crazy. We went to Walmart this morning and found everything just great. We encountered a number of fruits that neither of us had ever seen before. One, called a guineo, is like a tiny banana that is really high in iron. Another, called a "Mamon Chino" looks like a cross between a strawberry and a sea urchin. I haven't bought one yet, but I'm told that the urchin part peels off and there's something resembling a large white grape inside.
If you click here, it is a Google Images search for the fruit.
When we got back home, I asked Shelley what we needed to be doing next. She said that the day was ours to do with what we wanted, so I went back to the room and put in all of the Spanish flashcards that I've made over the last couple days into my flashcard program on my computer. Then I went through and reviewed several stacks of Spanish flashcards that I had put in earlier. While doing that, Liz did an amazing job of putting away the groceries and tearing apart a whole chicken to make several meals worth of amazingness.
After lunch (rice with some veggies), I saw a fútbol (soccer) game going on across the campus, so I grabbed the umbrella (it rains almost every day from May through December) and went to watch the people playing in the field. I always bring my little stack of half-index-cards with me, so I wrote down a few of the things that I heard from the soccer game. When the game seemed like it was winding down, I wandered off to see if anyone was in the offices during the weekend. When I didn't see anyone there, I kept wandering, seeing if the library was open or if I could find someone that I knew. When I got to the front entrance, I saw Franklin in the guard shack, so I waved and went over to him. He pointed at the drizzly weather and said, "Pura Vida!" which is a catch phrase for everyone in Costa Rica. It's something along the lines of, "Hey, such is life!"
After we exchanged a few pleasantries (all I have in my repertoire is just a few pleasantries), I told him that I had been watching the fútbol game. He nodded (I'm pretty sure that he saw part of it before his shift at the guard house) and I pulled out my stack of flash cards. I said that I had a new word and said, "They say [the word that I had found] when they... uh... [at this point, I made a Time Out signal with my hands, because I didn't have the right words]" He told me what the word should have been and helped me spell it for my card. I left the guard shack and headed back for my apartment right as the sky decided to change from drizzle to downpour. But I had a Spanish conversation and got a couple new words for my collection, so I went home beaming under my umbrella.
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