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Published: December 31st 2015
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First day of classes today! I am taking Intro to Tropical Marine Biology. I am super excited to finally take a Marine Bio class. Bad thing is that it is at 8AM - 11AM and 2PM - 3PM everyday... except we don't have the afternoon session on Fridays. My teacher is pretty chill. It's kinda crazy how much he looks like my electric fish lab professor. Same eyes and similar beard and they both have a similar sense of humor.
He modified the syllabus to a much simpler one and we spent majority of the class time talking about watching videos about ocean currents and sponges. When 11AM came, I took a long walk with a few USAC students to buy some towels. We were drenched in our sweat...it was very nasty and humid out. Afterwards, I went home for a
siesta, an afternoon rest or break. Many Latin American countries have these mid-day hour-long breaks for people to return back home to eat lunch with their families. In my case, I went to my parents'
soda, restaurant, for lunch (and breakfast) with Kaitlyn. The food was delicious but was salty and heavy as usual. Lunch is their biggest meal
of the day. Today's lunch consists of gallo pinto, chicken, cole slaw, carrots, potatoes, pasta, and sweet plantains. It is served with an iced fruit juice on the side. Breakfast can be served with a fruit juice as well or a coffee.
Kaitlyn and I were pretty stuffed after the meal, go figure haha. When we finished our big meal, we headed to the kitchen to wash our dishes. Before heading out, we hugged our host parents goodbye and said "
Hasta luego/ Nos vemos." Being the fatass that I am, I had to go try out this smoothie place my professor and Kaitlyn were recommending, called Smoothys. So I bought a
mango helado smoothie before heading back to the second session of my class. It was awesome. So refreshing. Looks like I know where my daily go-to spot will be from now on ahaha.
We just continued watching documentaries in class when we returned. I was having intense food coma and heat just tires you out even more. Thank god our classrooms have airconditioning. I was falling asleep pretty badly LOL oops. After a couple hours of chilling in school and waiting for Kaitlyn to finish with dance
class, we headed back home for dinner. We had tuna stir-fried rice with potato chips with our host dad. We were chatting here and there. It was a nice,
tranquil dinner 😊
After dinner, we headed out to the restaurant & bar next to USAC to meet with the other students. We sat and socialized for a good half hour before we started walking to the other end of Puntarenas for an actual bar. After a 20 minute walk, we arrived there to find out it was closed already.... lol. On the way, all of us females got cat-called and hollered at with no shame whatsoever. This is very common in Costa Rican culture. And of course, us looking American af contributed to it haha. Either way, it was a fun walk to and back.
We ended up going to a different bar on the other side of the Puntarenas. There were about 20 of us. Majority of us got shots of tequila and chasers, to celebrate first day of classes? just being in Costa Rica in general? Pura Vida? haha No reason needed actually. It was nasty. Yuck. Good thing there was some juice to mellow it
down. But nonetheless, it was great company and vibes, even though I didn't dance with all of them haha. The bartender purposely started playing all this mainstream American music.
Many of them were dancing and having lots of fun. That made me really happy that so many of us get along already. A girl named Elisha was so sweet. I was just sitting there, not dancing, but still enjoying the vibes, She kept checking up on me to make sure I was okay and having fun.
While they were dancing, I was observing all the local Ticos in the bar. It was hilarious - they were all amazed by all these
bonita chicas from the US. They were cheering them on to dance and taking photos and videos of them...kinda creepy but eh it's whatever LOL. Many of us stayed there til midnight because one of the girls, Agnes, turns 21! That was super cute that here we were, a bunch of people who just met, but we decided to all wait til midnight to celebrate a fellow classmate's birthday 😊
After that, we all parted ways. We walked home in a group. T'was a fun but super
tiring night. How's that for a first day of class? haha Costa Rica you're looking pretty alright (y)
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