Lantern Parade

School. I keep forgetting that I'm in Costa Rica to go to school, until we have days like Monday. We had three straight hours of Natural Resource Management and then a lunch break before an hour of Language, Culture and Society and immediately after that another three hour class for Tropical Ecology. The classes are interesting enough, but I've found out that my attention span for learning about the different types of soil in Costa Rica is much shorter than the class length. On Monday we also started our pandilla system, which is translated literally as a gang, and we have chore rotations each week. My pandilla drew the short straw for the first rotation of chore assignments...we are cleaning the bathrooms this week after they've had little to no attention the past week. It was a bit rough yesterday, but hopefully it will get better.

Today, Tuesday, we had three different Economics class sessions, although ony one was actually a lecture. We got some basic intro information to Excel and how we're going to need to use it. After another lecture on how to write a scientific report, our professor brought in a scorpion to show us that has a neon glow to it when its under a black light. That was definitely an exciting way to end a lecture.

A young girl with her lantern



2nd grade girls performing a traditional dance



Its been a full few days of classes, so tonight we went into town to watch the lantern parade, which precedes all the independence day activities that start tomorrow. Most of the program was done by the local elementary school kids, which ensured that it was an entertaining and very cute parade. There were a lot of songs sung and dances danced before everyone paraded around the square holding their homemade lanterns proudly in front of them. We saw evidence to much creativity in Atenas, with lanterns ranging from roosters and songbirds, to Costa Rican flags and houses. We all got quite a shock when they even set off fireworks from the square. After the end of the parade, in our search for a taxi, we decided that a holiday was definitely a day for ice cream. So we splurged at a local heladeria and got an ice cream cone for a dollar. Tomorrow we should have another full day of festivities for the actual independence day, and in celebration the only class we have tomorrow is a dance class in the evening.

Some of the lanterns for the parade