Sunday, June 14

Sunday we got up about 7 so that we could go to the National Gym in Sabana Park in San Jose. The daughter of my mama tica, Caro (short for Carolina) was in a competition. She competed in the floor exercise, the bars, balance beam, and the vault. She won quite a few medals, including best overall in her age group and level.

Here is a picture of my Costa Rican (Tica) family

Gaby, the 17 year-old is on the left, Caro (14) in the middle, and

my "mama tica" on the right.

To celebrate, I took the family out to eat. Since Caro was the guest of honor, she got to choose and chose Pizza Hut. Either I just haven't been to Pizza Hut in a very long time, or it's different here in Costa Rica, because they actually had quite an extensive menu, with salads, pastas, lasagna, and other dishes besides pizzas. It was quite good. We even had Cas juice instead of Coke, which was wonderful. They make a lot of fresh juices here, in all the restaurants and homes. Cas is a fruit that is green and the juice might remind one a bit of lemonade or limeade, but I think it's bettter. Muy Rico, as they say here! Oh - and here´s something I thought was very interesting - they were using motorcycles to deliver pizzas!! I forgot my camera, but one of the girls took a picture, s0 hopefully I can get it from her and put it on my blog at some point.

After lunch, we went back to the house to drop off the girls and Laura (my mama tica) and her friend Marco took me for a drive up one of the nearby mountains to see the view of the city. It was quite spectacular, although this picture doesn´t do it justice.

Below is a picture of the typical Costa Rican dish called casado. It consists of rice, beans (sometimes black, sometimes red), usually chicken (although this one was fish), salad, and fried plantains. This one also had a tortilla and was served on a banana leaf. Delicious!