A day of dramatic contrasts

So I’m sitting in the bank - which you go through an enclosed metal detector to get in, to get my exit visa. Lines in CR have chairs - as the person in front goes up, everybody moves over one chair, or up a row. Lol.
We’ll see - the security guard seemed to understand what I was after and pointed me to this line, so fingers crossed ;)
Last class this am was mostly conversational. It’s tradition here for students to give a speech to the school on their last day. Over the years I’ve trained myself to be a reasonably good public speaker, but let me tell you, switch languages and that all goes out the window. Lol I was very definitely reading from my paper with little to no inflection *sigh*. Ah well - they’re definitely used to that and I wasn’t the only one on my last day.
Chair line is moving quickly - I’m in the front row (of 2) already. Which is good cause I’m supposed to meet friends in 15 mins and since none of us have SIM cards, coordinating things is a bit more of a challenge.
We got a report card and a certificate :). Lol also got a textbook recommendation from my prof for a good book that had answers in it (v hard to self teach w no answers!)
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So the bank experience was a horrible fail. Apparently there’s a form you need to fill out but they don’t have it there and I couldn’t understand her rapid-fire explanation. I did ask her to speak slowly because I’m learning but she had zero patience for that. So 30 mins of beautiful sunlight wasted and I still don’t have an exit visa. Fail.
Next effort is public transit - hopefully this goes better than the bank!
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So public transit was a win! Made it there, and home again. Although home again took significantly longer due to traffic and the bus was standing room only. I got the last seat (sorry Emma!) and even still it felt claustrophobic. But - got on the right bus, had the right fare, and made it where we intended to go. Win.
San José was an interesting experience. Our goal was two different bus stations for the girls to buy tickets for their weekend adventures, and a book store our prof had told us about.
Well - turns out the bus stops are not in particularly good areas of town. Despite the fact that it was broad daylight, we were warned a couple times that it was dangerous and we shouldn’t be there. Somewhat scary. One girl stopped us when we were looking at our map sort of on the edge of the good area (it was a very clear delineation) and A - gave us directions, B - warned us to be back before dark or take a cab, and C - told Emma to carry her backpack on her front or things would be stolen from it. Yikes!
But we made it to the station, got the ticket purchased, and made it back w no drama. So that was good. Was interesting to me though the dramatic difference between the good part of town and not. Nice, clean, colourful, populated (and didn’t seem to be tourists at all, although certainly had a tourist vibe), lots of art/sculptures/murals/etc, people hawking goods, open park space, car-free walkways, lots of shops, etc. Vs deserted except for bus stops with long lines and tons of traffic, buildings in disrepair or falling down, cracked or non existent sidewalks, colourless, etc. Very dramatic difference basically from crossing the street. Certainly I wasn’t particularly comfortable being there - and had it been dark or I’d been alone, I definitely wouldn’t have. We’ve agreed that the girls going back there tomorrow will take a cab all the way.
However - the nice portion was really interesting. By far the biggest store we found was the first bookstore, so that was awesome :). Sculptures everywhere, murals on the walls, interesting cafés, every kind of shop you could imagine. Yes first bookstore - we may have gone in two ;). Disappointed you can’t browse books?!?! They all have plastic wrap on them. But I’m disproportionately excited I found Harry Potter in Spanish lol. Was way too expensive on Amazon. AND I could easily read the first paragraph. Win! I also bought what I thought was the book version of Siempre Bruja, which I watched a little of on Netflix, but it’s not actually. Lol so I’ll just have to read it and find out if it’s any good. Came from the teen section so prob a stretch for my abilities at the moment but I often enjoy YA fiction so here’s hoping.
Anyways - after that we mostly just wandered. Sophie knew of some good cafés so we headed there and got some food. There was also another bus station there in a much nicer part of town, so we didn’t have to walk back anywhere scary ;)
Sad to say goodbye to everybody - it’s amazing how fast you connect in circumstances like this. And I’ll definitely miss the lessons - they were really amazing. But tomorrow morning I head home.