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Thursday was an early morning so I could study for another test on verbs. I hopped on the family scale – no lose or gain since I left home. It was yet another day with the rooster determining what time everyone in the valley needs to get up. Later today, I got within 6 feet of him and his bride, but only to take a picture. Fortunately, I didn’t have any other plans as the family that lives in the rooster house drove up. He was still announcing his presence at 5pm.

After school, I walked home and decided that it was too early in the afternoon to start studying more verbs. Verbs seem to be the key to this phase of my learning. I took a bus to Heredia, the capitol of this Provence located about 3 miles away from San Joaquin. Since I wasn’t sure where the bus ended, I did my best to guess when to get off. THEN I had to figure out where I was in a town that doesn’t have street signs, an interesting problem. Also, I didn’t get off the bus at the same place everyone else did, outside a grocery store. It just didn’t feel like the right place.

The next major stop half a mile further felt about right if not a little early. So I headed north up a hill towards the center of town until I found a Big Building with a name on it. It was a Ginasium de Regional – Regional Gym but more importantly, it was on my photo copied Heredia map from CPI. Bueno! I was only a few blocks from where I wanted to be AND I’d gotten off at the best bus stop possible.

In every Costa Rican town, there’s a Church, a Futball field and a school – usually side-by-side. Heredia was different. They have a church (actually more than a few) – HUGE church. It is next to a central plaza which was full of people walking, talking, meeting, and people watching. It really was a nice plaza. I took lots of photos of both the church and the plaza.

As I was walking around, I stepped in to an entry way to get a little better angle for a photo. Then this old lady from the street started talking to me and telling me all about the church – in Spanish. I told her my name and that I was a new Spanish student. Any way, I think that’s what I said. Well, it turns out that she simply wanted to get into her house and I was standing in her doorway. I honestly believe that she asked me my name and said that the church was beautiful. Her manner was pleasant. I took a snapshot of what she called her house – it didn’t look like a house to me and was surrounded by other businesses.

Next I headed to the tourist section of town only to find them selling clothes (mostly womens and intimates), tennis shoes, and used ipods. There appears to be a huge market here for ipods. The government taxes imports heavily, so if you are an adventurous traveler, you may be able to earn an extra $100 off a new 60GB model in good condition.

Following the map on the walking tour, I entered the central market. This is a 2 full block building full of vendors selling different types of food. Fish, meats, chicken, sausages, Jansport backpacks, and a very few leather and other knick-knack goods. It was about an 5×10 grid of rows with 5 vendors per side and all the way around on the outside. It appeared to me that people were there buying food for the next day or so. Very fresh – except the fish didn’t look or smell very good. I only snapped a few pictures from outside. If you’ve ever been in a foreign country and in a market like this, you know the feeling – locals don’t really want to be in snapshots in places like this. Don’t get me wrong, there didn’t appear to be anything illegal happening and there was a police presence at every entrance. Still, I kept my hand on my bag around front. My wallet was double buttoned in a front pocket and I only had $20 in US and CR currency total. You don’t carry your passport with you here. Rather a photocopy is used except at banks and when you leave the country.

My impression of Heredia is a 20k person town with a vibrant center with shops to support all the surrounding towns. Heck, they had 2 Pizza Huts that I saw! Ah, and the women were a mixed bag. One of the female vendors in the market actually approached me like the men do with every woman, girl, and lady here. I’ll just say, she was extremely forward and extremely large with more facial hair than I have after a week.

Next was the adventure of finding the opposite bus back to San Joaquin. In my search, I found another church and another plaza. Neither were very nice, but the bus pickup was on the far side of the plaza.

The bus had a line forming outside it, so I got into the line. There was a sign with 2 different city names on them, so I forced out enough Spanish to verify I was in line for the correct bus. BTW, the other city (cuidad) was to Santa Barbara. As I got on the bus, I handed the driver 200 colones and he handed me some change – I asked if that was all and showed it to him, since I couldn’t figure out how 2 coins would provide 65 colones in change. I was short changed, but didn’t think any more about it until later that evening. 25 cents is still money.

For dinner, I had rice, soup (beans y chicken y potatoes) and fried green beans. To wash it down was fresh cass juice. Very tasty. Cass is a fruit that I’ve never seen before, but I understand it is grown in Florida. Think of a walnut sized citrus fruit with a pear/lime taste. Yummy. This fresh juice was provided at a number of meals and tasty.