What do we do with all of this time?

 It's only Thursday night and I am one day into the weekend. Spanish classes ended yesterday and I only have two more elective classes left. Last night, 4 million Ticos walked to Cartago for the Dia de la Virgen de los Angeles celebration. I knew a couple of people who walked with them. We decided to stay away from all of that traffic.

It's kind of sad seeing everything wind down. There's so much we want to do before we leave, but we are ready to go home and see our families. It's bittersweet.

On Tuesday night, we had our farewell dinner with ISA. Some of the students are going home this weekend because their program is only for four weeks. It was at Restaurante Tequicia in Escazu and overlooked the city. It was a gorgeous view, and they served us comida tipica. They also had traditional Costa Rican dances for us. Then we did the wobble. It was a fun night.

Above is a picture of the view from the restaurant. My camera isn't really functional after last weekend, so I have to rely on other people's pictures. Photo credit to my beautiful friend Kathleen Graham.

Last night, instead of walking to Cartago, we went to the movies and saw the Dark Night Rises (with Spanish subtitles), got mini donuts, and POPS ice cream. Today, we went to lunch at our favorite restaurant Las Lenitas, then took a cab to the Simon Bolivar zoo in San Jose. It was a very small zoo, and mostly just somewhere that locals go with their kids, but they had a wide variety of animals from Costa Rica, such as toucans, macaws, monkeys, ocelots and margays, a jaguar, and turtles. They also had one lone lion... and raccoons, as if those rodents were exotic.

Afterward, we walked to the artisan market and looked around. We will be coming back to buy things when we go to the National Museum with ISA on Wednesday. We also walked to central market, and, even though it was closed, bought things like bread, flan, chocolate, and arroz con leche.

We want to see more of the city before we leave. There are several museums, including a kid's museum, a jade museum, and an art museum that we can see. There are also a couple of national parks close by where we could go. We also might be going back to Jaco beach in Puntarenas tomorrow for the day. I will also be going to downtown San Jose a couple times this weekend. We have a lot of free time, so we want to fit as much in.

I can't believe I will be packing in a week. It makes me so sentimental.

In other news, I have gone into turbo mode on applying to medical schools. TMDSAS is almost all filled out, and AMCAS is getting there. My personal statement is getting an extreme makeover, and I have figured out the list of 18 medical schools to which I am applying. Sometimes I hate that I have to do all of this before I return from a foreign country, but I don't think I'll ever regret it.

Chao!