Pizza and Chocolate

February 22, 2007
Thursday I experienced Costa Rican pizza. Quite a process really. They sell it by the huge slice, and a particular piece with Canadian bacon was calling my name. I asked the lady behind the counter if they had one with pineapple and she said no, but that she could add it. I gladly accepted and watched as she loaded the slice onto a tray and then got on the telephone mumbled something quickly, and then hung up. I stood bewildered as she loaded the tray with my pizza slice onto another larger metal tray, which then proceeded to raise itself up through a hole in the ceiling. When my pizza returned it was toasty warm and had 50 cent sized slices of pineapple on top. It was amazing! It also seemed amazingly normal but sometimes I find something as simple as familiar food is comforting and relaxing to the mind.

February 24, 2007
I feel like one of these days I need to write a time unspecific blog about any little weird thing I’ve seen or heard or experienced here in Costa Rica. Sometimes our brains are so tired after a day at the ACM that the smallest little thing is enough to send me overboard into fits of giggles. For example: Riding the bus home from ACM one day with Steven, having a conversation about technology with Steven (the new iphone, silly I know), and all of the sudden a little kid on the bus starts meowing. Oh my gosh. I could hardly control myself.

So on today I went into the ACM to work for a little while, more to use the wireless internet to call my family from my computer, which is way cheaper than any calling card that either of us have encountered. Then, later that night I accompanied my neighbor student Steven to the ‘Multiplaza del Este’ (a sort of mall) to shop for a jacket. I had been there once before with my host family, so I knew my way around pretty well. Except there was one problem…the smell of chocolate. Once you step off the bus and carefully cross the busy street you’re hit with it, the smell of freshly melted chocolate, or baking brownies, who knows what, but it is intense. I have yet to encounter a good solid high quality chocolate here so I instantly went into hound dog mode and insisted to Steven that we had to find where the smell was coming from. We wandered around a good 20 minutes, and were eventually led outside again, following our noses, mouths watering and eventually foaming, wondering where that heavenly scent was coming from. Our emotions changed from enamordos de chocolate, hope, and joy to anger and frustration that we couldn’t find the source. We concluded that it was a torture device installed into the ventilation system, and we continued on our shopping trip heads hanging, energy draining from our bodies from the exertion, and sadness taking over our brains.