Today I want to post a blog about some of the things I have been doing other than the weekend excursions.

Even the little things are an adventure in a new place.

One awesome experience was going to a place called El Mundo Musical to buy some guitar strings! It has been a bummer because I brought my acoustic to play, but the change in humidity has made the guitar go haywire. So I went to the store and struggled to communicate about a subject I have never tried to talk about in Spanish. But in doing so, I learned some valuable vocabulary and communication skills.
       Unfortunately, the change in strings seemed to make the buzzing and strange sounds worse. So I have another adventure to go on--finding a place to fix my guitar and attempting to understand the terminology.

Another experience that I really appreciated was going to the central market in San José with my Spanish for health professionals class. We each were given the name of an herb and we had to ask the vendors about the medicinal properties of the plant. The plant I studied was Juanilama:










(I'm sorry about the poor quality of photos; I was trying to be discreet)

I found out that Juanilama is used for stomach pain, arthritis, and rheumatism. Natural home remedies are very popular in Costa Rica; the variety of natural remedies is vast and as soon as I asked a vendor about the properties of an herb, they were able to list all its benefits and uses.

Herbs to help with impotence and breast milk production

The experience of walking around in a market like this is one of a kind: you can smell the herbs and fish before you even get to the stall. It is a simpler way of getting produce into the homes, and by cutting out the transportation, the food stays much fresher and chemical-free.

I found my new favorite fruit: Mamón chinos. They remind me of sea anemones. To eat one you peel off the red skin and inside is what looks like a peeled grape.  

Thank you for reading!

P.S. It's been raining every day for the past two weeks! October is the rainy month.