Domingo

 I realized Saturday was a post all to itself. So, what happened to my lazy Sunday?

I have made friends with a pretty awesome 7 year old and her Mom who are in the Families program.

She mentioned going to the children's museum, and I agreed it sounds awesome, so Sunday morning, the 3 of us went into San Jose. This time, I was very ready and I knew EXACTLY where we were going when it came to getting on and off the bus (turns out I just got lucky and the bus company we happened to take happened to take was the one that ends up at the same station I'd finally found the day before...) After a quick stop outside the Starbucks from Saturday (same internet password) we started off to the Children's Museum. It was a bit of a walk, and the little one was getting a bit antsy, but finally we see a building the shape of a castle in front of us. There's a HUGE line, so she and I grabbed a stop online while her Mom went to make sure this was the line we needed to be on.

The GIANT cactus on other side of the street
from the botanical garden

It wasn't. It turns out folks reserve tickets well in advance for specific hours to visit the museum. And that day was sold out for the rest of the day. Woops. We start discussing where else we can go. My "San Jose list" of things to see were all museums but the boring ones I'd have hated as a kid. I remembered I'd seen a botanical garden when I was staring at maps of San Jose in an attempt to minimize my total cluelessness in this foreign city, so off we went. I led us to, what looked like, the nearest entrance, and you know what that "looked like" means.

In my defense, it was an entrance, but it was locked. There was a path along the fence so we started walking to the right. The walk just OUTSIDE the fence was a botanical garden in itself. Honestly all of Costa Rica is nothing but incredible plants and flowers everywhere.

Anyway, we keep walking the path until it looks like it peels away from the park entirely. We find some folks hanging out outside their house and, in our strongest 5 days of 4 hour Spanish classes and Spanish with host families on top is that, ask about getting into the park. In flawless English, they tell us to walk to the left.

I'm telling you, I leaned it at camp when we were lost, when in doubt always go left!

This was the actual exhibit! 

We FINALLY reach the park, yes of course we can come in and that's when we find out it's actually a zoo. I really enjoyed seeing a raccoon as one of the exhibit animals as that is one animal I definitely don't need a zoo to see. We saw all kinds of animals, monkeys and such, but my favorites were the birds. So so many birds with so so many colors. One bird looked a bit familiar so I went to read what it was: LAPA VERDE! Lapa Verde is the name of our Spanish school. And sure there's a green bird as part of the logo of the school, but there's an animal as part of a million other logos here. I was very excited to discover that the school was named after the bird. I got to speak with the school founder and ask about it, and she shared that both Lapa Verde and Lapa Roja were endangered and all the focus was going to the Lapa Roja so she wanted to name her school after the other. 

One of the birds was eating but I noticed another animal "just hanging around"

One of these things is not like the other. One of these things just doesn't belong.

When I got back to the other side of the exhibit I saw that it's patience had paid off.

Finally we reached a bridge over water that was BRIGHT green from the pollen of the trees surrounding it. On one side of the bridge we saw turtles sunning themselves but there was a crowd of folks looking at something on the other side.

Ok, y'all, I thought I had a handle on the different animals of the world.

What?!

We had a great time, AND I paid attention and saw when we got to Santo Domingo and got off at the right place. It helped that when I realized where we were, I looked up at the driver, who I'd previously asked to help make sure we ended up at the park, and he smiled and nodded.

I really love this country.