Today was our first full day in country! Yesterday was a packed day of traveling and getting to meet our host families. When we arrived we were greeted by our amazing tour guide and got driven to meet our momma’s. Something I was excited yet nervous about being in Costa Rica was using my Spanish. Even on night one I was getting so much practice with the language.
This morning our momma made eggs and tortillas with mangoes. It was delicious. I gave her my gift from home, which was a mug with Pennsylvania based things. Once we left our home stay we embarked on a walking tour of Heredia. We explored the market that had so much fruits, vegetables, fish and meats. I had heard of these markets before but I never expected them to have so much variety! There was many different kinds of produce, bakeries and much more. We learned about some plants that we don’t see too often in the U.S. I even got to try some passion fruit!
Heredia is famous for its colonial architecture and we got to see some of that architecture as we walked around. We went into a beautiful Catholic Church that was in the Central Park. It is of the neo-romantic style. We also saw lots of different shops around the town and learned about the music scene in Costa Rica. Something I enjoyed seeing the most was the Central Park area as it was a beautiful spot in town and many locales were around which should me a glimpse of what everyday life is like in Heredia. There were shaved ice trucks and live music which added to ambience.
After exploring, we were all hungry and headed over to La Candelaria to get lunch. There was so much good food. This was another opportunity for me to practice my Spanish as I ordered in Spanish and was able to communicate with the staff. After lunch we headed over to the mall called Oxigeno. This was really cool and reminded me a lot of the King of Prussia mall near my home. It was unique to anything in the U.S as it was open air, had a lot more than just stores and had a lot of out door green space to enjoy. Once we headed back we enjoyed dinner with our families and then joined together to celebrate our group member, Jake, birthday.Overall it was a great day and I am looking forward for the next two weeks!