Day 4: Children's Museum

Today we took the tour bus in to the heart of San Jose to visit the much awaited Children's Museum. Our ISA guide, Pri, explained that it used to be a police station that was later converted in to a jail, which was then converted in to the Children's Museum that it is today. The museum was a beautiful structure with iron windows and high arched ceilings. The first thing you notice upon entering is the colorful light displaythat leads you into the museum.The museum was essentially a gigantic play room crossed with a science center. Everything in the museum was hands on, which made the fact that our Spanish is minimal seem obsolete. We were able to capture our shadows on the shadow wall, examine dinosaur bones and test our archeological skills in the sandbox as well as pretend to be pilots

in the cockpit of an airplane.

The range of displays the museum had to offer was astonishing.

We were able to record our own song (soon, we will become rock stars), and try our hand at dancing for a somewhat strange music video.

We saw a mummy in his sarcophagus and we were even able to become mummies ourselves.

There was so much interaction between the museum staff and the visitors and everything was very lively. Every room had so much to offer, it was hard to take it all in. We all felt great being able to act like children at the age of twenty!

After the Children's Museum, we took our little blue bus further downtown to the market district. Everyone seems to be amused by how lax the rules of the road seem to be here. There are hardly lines separating the traffic lanes and the people walk dangerously close to the streets, crossing without a care in the world.

The market district was filled with venders selling a variety of fruits ranging from pineapples to mangos and huge bushels of bananas. Pri explained that right now, it is mango and pineapple season, which means 3 pineapples should be sold for roughly 500 colones or $1.

The district was incredibly busy and sometimes we had trouble deciding where we wanted to go. We went inside a shop that sold everything from wild birds in little cages to butcher shop meat and fish beside it. Again, the fruit selection was extremely abundant.

A lot of the girls are very excited about the beautiful selections of flowers we seem to encounter everywhere we go. They light up the

streets and smell wonderful! If only we could

bring them back through customs, I know we would all be purchasing these amazing plants.

We made it back to our hotel just before the rain set in. Everyone is quite exhausted from our long day of city touring, shopping and exciting museum adventures. Tomorrow, we will be going on our first school visit!

-- Sarah & Deonna

Day 3: Rafting the Pacuare and Sightseeing

Our third day in Costa Rica the group split up. Five of us went white
water rafting and the rest of the group stayed behind to explore
downtown San Jose. However, due to an afternoon shower and hail storm
the group that wanted to explore wasn't able to. They said it "hailed
sideways" and they ended up getting ice cream and staying at the hotel.
The rest of us woke up at 5am to go white water rafting down the
Pacuare River on the Caribbean end of Costa Rica. We had an hour and a
half bus ride to the site, where they cooked us a typical Costa Rican
breakfast consisting of rice and beans and fruit. Then, we boarded
another bus for 40 minutes to the actual river. The five of us had our
own boat and guide, who learned quickly we were very much beginners.
His extreme patience paid off as we successfully made it through
multiple rapids with no one falling out. We stopped for lunch, which
was prepared by our guides and delicious. It was really nice how they
made us feel comfortable and tried their best to use English when in
fact we should have been making more of an effort to use Spanish,
seeing as we are in Costa Rica. Overall the rafting was amazing and was
an experience we'll never forget.

The
whole group regrouped for dinner later at the hotel and we tried a
local restaurant featuring traditional Costa Rican cuisine. We all had
very good meals and left full and satisfied. So far, Costa Rica is
proving to be an incredible adventure!

-Lindsay and Lauren

Day 2: San Jose Tour and National Museum

Bienvenido a San José! Today we woke up early to go on a tour of San Jose and visit the National Museum of Costa Rica. Before we could get going, the girls got together for our first breakfast: eggs, fruit, toast, mango juice, and coffee. On our way to the Museo Nacional de Costa Rica, our tour guide pointed out various historical sites in San Jose. One of these sites is the Casa Amarilla that contains a piece of the Berlin Wall that was given to Costa Rica. After our bus tour we finally reached the national museum where we were able to see several different species of butterflies and various other pieces of Costa Rican history. We also learned so much about Costa Rica and how Jose Figueres was able to overthrow the government, abolish the military, and create a new constitution. We also learned about Aboriginal Costa Ricans who treasured Jade and masterfully carved burial stones outof volcanic rock. We ended our museum visit by souvenir shopping in the local mercado.Our guide also showed us an interesting tree that is used to make cork. All of the girls were able to get out of the bus and feel the amazingly soft bark of the cork tree. Our second day in Costa Rica was extremely fun and we are so excited to see everything else that Costa Rica has in store for us!

-Joanna

Day 1: Arrival

We made it to San Jose, Costa Rica (not even one
bag lost) we could tell we were in the right place the moment we walked
off the plane and felt the humidity in the gate area of the airport!
The hotel we are staying at is perfect for our group as it only has 18
rooms and we fill up almost half of them. We have this little pod all
to ourselves with an open sitting room which will be nice to gather in!
It also is in a great location as we have a supermarket right next door
and the San Pedro Mall is only a block away!
Off to bed early so we can be prepared for our first day of exploring
San Jose with a City Tour as well as a visit to the National Museum!