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A sunny and very interesting weekend is over. The whole weekend we did sightseeing. On Saturday we walked through the city. Our trip started at the mercado central, it’s San José’s indoor market. It’s not very big but has a lot of little shops that sell everything from fish to medicine. I didn’t felt too comfortable in there because I was afraid of pickpockets and I really don’t want to be there when a fire starts because the alleys are very thigh and if you are in the middle there is no way out!
After the marked we walked through the streets and passed a few buildings from the colonial time. San José has allot of those buildings but most of them are in a bad shape.
We stopped by the main square with the banner of Costa Rica and the basilica witch is not very big but very beautiful inside.
We had some lunch in the city’s first hotel, the Grand Hotel Costa Rica. The hotel is next to the main square and right next to national theater. At the theater, the pride of Costa Rica, we took a little overpriced tour. Everything the theater is made of has been brought from france. It’s very european style.
On the same square there is also the Costa Rican Gold Museum. This museum contains a lot of pieces, made of gold, from the time before Columbus discovered the country. It’s a very impressive museum.
At last we walked through different parks of the city before we did some shopping because my dad needed some new shoes.
The thing with shoes is that in Costa Rica they cost about the same as at home.

The basilica of San Jose

More about sunday in the next blog.

Our last day of school for this week is over and I am a little tired. I learned a lot in the last five days. I also learned the I should have done more homework in Switzerland because my vocabulary could be much better then it is. Over the weekend I will go over a few things I learned this week especially the vocabulary so next week, hope, will be less frustrating then this.
Actually there will not be that much time to do homework since we’ve paned a trip on sunday to the a coffee plantation, the volcano Poas, waterfalls, a butterfly garden and a riverboat ride. This trip will take over 12 hours and start at 6! in the morning. On saturday we’ll take a look at San José. Now we head to the travel agency to book our sunday trip. I’ll be back, the latest, on monday with some impressions from our weekend.

Yesterday we did the first part of our homework for the week which is going to a travel agency and talk about it on friday. At school they told us that it supposed to have three travel agencies in the mall nearby. After over 30 minutes of searching and asking two security guards who didn’t know any agency in the mall we decided to look for one in the center of the city. This was our first trip to the center of San José. We finally found one with very friendly people. Since we are planning a trip for sunday anyway we could use the information very much. First he told us about a two day trip to the volcano Arenal. Since we are going there during our trip after the school we asked for others. There is one tour to Poas that starts early in the morning but includes a visit to a coffee plantation, the volcano, a butterfly place and a boat ride on a river. The second one is much shorter and includes the volcano Irazu, Costa Rica’s old capital Cartago and an orchid garden. We haven’t decided yet but both sounds really nice.
Tonight I have to prepare to speech tomorrow about the trip to the travel agency as well as to speech about the movie Volver.

Third day of school is over and I have to do some homework. My day at school starts at 8.15 with morning class. In the morning we have four hours mostly grammar but only verbal. We don’t write much in class, only my notes. My notes are mostly the words I don’t know or I don’t remember. This means I’m taking notes all the time
In my morning class we are six students. Four of them are from the US, one from UK and me. I think my father and I are the only Swiss at this school.
At noon I go with my father and an american couple to lunch. The school offers free dance lessons but since we have afternoon lessons starting at 1.15 pm there would be no time for lunch.
The afternoon lessons are private and it’s basically conversation. It’s more or less talking to someone, who corrects you, for two hours about different subjects.
Now my dad and I are going to a travel agency to ask about a daytrip to a nearby volcano. Going to a travel agency is our homework but since we want to go to this nearby volcano it’s weekend preparation as well.

Our second day of school is over ant I’m tired even though I slept for about 10 hours last night. Yesterday after school we went to check out the mall near our school and I had to get me some soap and toothpaste. After our little shopping trip we took the bus. Sadly we took the wrong one so we had to go back to the center to get the right one. Our little detour took us about one hour. Back at our family’s home we had dinner with Carmen, our Host mom, Raul, here husband and later Jimena, the daughter joined us as well. After the dinner I tried to do some homework but I fell asleep so I didn’t enjoy more family live. I hope tonight I’m a little more awake.