Perfunctory Passing Pucker

I have sent out postcards, but I have MANY extras--if you want one, email me your address (kali.mccullough@gmail.com) and I will be sure you get one. Let me know when you get it, too, so I can feel that glow of accomplishment :)

Last Friday we hd our first exam, as we are slated to have every Friday...and i got an A! I got a 97%, to be exact, which always comes as a surprise to me--now, I've gotten in the habit of translating from English to French to Spanish, so I'm continually shocked that none of what I'm thinking is getting lost in translation.

I've noticed something since being here which I think is hilarious. It's closely related to the insane honking (cab drivers, men in dump trucks, motorcycles, even bikes). This phenomenon I have lovingly dubbed the Perfunctory Passing Pucker. It happens frequently--you walk past a guy and he just puckers his lips in your direction--but yesterday's PPP really stood out to me. I was walking out of the school to get lunch and I passed a man outside a shoe store. He was up on a ladder, repainting the trim, and he PPPd me--then almost fell of his ladder and caught himself only by sticking his foot in the paint can. In your face, chauvinist pig.

A couple of days ago I went to Mami for lunch, which is this incredible Caribbean (<---I always misspell this--is it 2 r's or 2 b's?) restaurant that ALWAYS has a line. It opens at 11, and by 11:05 there are no tables and you have to take a number and wait. After dance class I walked there by myself (a lot of my friends thought there wouldn't be anything they'd like--but who doesn't like chicken and rice and beans?!). It was about noon, and I got a table all to myself. My Professora had recommended "rice and beans con pescado," which is a completely different thing from "arroz y frijoles con pescado" and, to drink, agua de sapo, or hiel --a ginger-and-honey drink that rocked my world--and everything was awesome. About halfway through the meal I swore i heard someone calling my name, but I brushed it off'--who in Costa Rica knows my name? Turns out it was Dr. G. his son, and his brother , who joined me for lunch. Yessssss, I no longer feel like such a loser!

We passed a park a few days ago with my Professora and she told us it used to have a lot of trees, which is funny because now there's nothing--a couple of poorly-placed park benches and some shrubs. Apparently, in its heyday, it was known as Parque de las Embarazadas--Pregnancy Park--and they cut down all the trees because too many people were having sex under them. Hilarious :)

It rained--HARD--yesterday for the first time; we're talking sounds-like-hail, thunder-and-lightning, car-alarms-screeching, six-inches-of-water-in-the-road rain. It was really refreshing. Of course it happened while I was in class, but I'd much rather it be beautiful weather in the morning (when I'm out of class) and rainy in the afternoons when I'm attempting to be productive.

Yesterday in class we were using the simple future tense and we had to create some futuristic object and describe it using the simple future. I designed a robot named Sakura that has a toaster for a face. It's pretty novel :)

Yesterday a girl in our group got "robbed." Normailly, I wouldn't air-quote it, but this girl totally asked for it. She was texting on her iTouch in the middle of the sidewalk of Heredia, not looking where she was going, and someone took the iTouch right out of her hands. She started yelling at people in the Internet cafe as if it were their fault, screaming for the police. Simple solution: leave it at home. Now she's talking about leaving, which means she's going to go back to the states and tarnish the name of the program because of this one tiny glitch that could SO EASILY have been avoided. Americans.

Today, cooking class at 10, dance class at 11, regular class at 1:30, and tonight we're going to San Jose to see an Opera at the Teatro Nacional. I'll be sure to tell you all about it :)