Today's events were far from boring. We woke up early this morning for breakfast and then headed off into the city. Our tour guide and program coordinator for CCS, Santiago aka Santi, showed us the heart of Cartago and its neighbor San Rafael. Both cities are centered on Catholicism and the social history is vibrant. The Basillica was one of the most important, and beautiful places within the city. It was amazing to be emersed with the locales as they ventured off to church and to the market and various other activities. The market was a large, indoor, busseling maze! Merchants were excited about their products...literally everthing from fruit, veggies, and fresh meat...to hot-plate, readiserve food. It was so cool to walk within the confines of the market and hear people yelling "tenemos naranjas," or "compre billetes de la loteria!!" In addition to Santi we also made friends with Papita, a friendly and beautiful stray dog. FYI Cartago has a lot of stray dogs who are surprisingly not aggressive. Papita literally followed around the city, to the homebase, to the Basillica for mass (HAHA), in addition to waiting for us outside the home-base until our next venture. She was an amazing travel companion!!
Now on to the food because I am sure you all our wondering what wonderful local delicacies we enjoyed! For lunch we were served exotic fruit such as guanabana and caimito! Then we stopped at a delicious local ice cream shop and these fruits were incorporated with the flavors!! UUUmm delicioso!!!! For the evening we enjoyed rice and chicken, with fried beans, homemade pica de gallo, chips, and fresh mango...perfecto!
The last portion of the evening was spent learning spanish dialogue to incoporate in our conversations with people...especially people at the nursing center! Many of us suffered greatly but by the end of the week we will be semi-experts of the spanish language (HAHA). Until then we will just smile and nod along with what people are saying :)
We are opening our eyes to a new culture, our ears to a new different tune, and our hearts to the people of Cartago. We hope to leave as much of a lasting impression on someone in Cartago as the whole community has left on us. And to think this is only day one..stay tuned...
Hasta Luego Amigos!!
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