Cinco de Cico

Friday- The day started off as a typical day. We woke up at 6:30 as usual due to the lack of window shades in the hostel. After a morning of exploration, we hit up the cafe del mundo, not to be confused with cafe du monde. mike had been quite anxious to experience the abmbience, which we believe was the reason for the excessive service charge. however, for three tyes of bread, real napkins, and  a wall of bamboo, ten percent more was nothing. The bread was by far the best in costa rica with some great olive oil that had a lttle kick from the peppers.If you were curious our trip strictly revolves around food and finding people in Costa Rica that actually want to speak spanish with us considering there are many gringos and English speaking ticos. After lunch Katie and I decided to try our hand at intense yoga/pilates/ballet/dance due to Katies previous encounters with yoga masters. As if the leg/glut/hump/abs exercises werent already intense enough for us the tectonic plates decided to hit us with a 6.2 earthquake admists the 400 reps of legs and thrusts. Although we only thought it was a karate class upstairs making the building shake with their awesome jumping side kicks and hiyaas we made it out just fine mentally and physically....until the next day when the downtown yoga workout hit a level of unbearable soreness.  In order to properly understand the epicness of the yoga experience, the proper set up is necessary. Sitting in the Hostel del Parque, an intense lightning store poured onto the excessive quantities of windows, the same ones that let the light in at 5 am. Naturally, the only option for what to do was to read the map, looking for somewhere to go once the rain ended. The number for downtown yoga was listed accompanied by a peaceful picture. So Brooke and I (not mike) slipped and slid down four blocks of lightning pelted road in search of any building willing to identify itself as a yoga studio. On the way, we happened to notice a pavillion full of people who seemed to be there just to make me feel at home. Why, you ask? They were juggling! The People of the World (tulane kids, you get this) evidently have a not-as-benevolent San Jose chapter of our wonderful Juggling Club, where the unusually pierced, dreadlocked, tattooed, hair dyed, skinny jeans'd weirdos meet to spanishly juggle and ride unicycles. A few introductions were made and I made sure to inform them of their Tulane counterparts before somewhat-failing to juggle with them. The told us about their evening demonstration and we were off to the yoga studio, first really weird occurence completed. The second was the mat-filled room of beautiful, yoga-ripped hispanic women all being really talented inthe back of the studio. the front was reserved for Brooke and myself, so the Beautiful Women were given not only a multifaceted workout class but also the entertainment of watching us suffer. Cuatro cientos de piernas, cuatro cientos de abdomenales! With all instructions in spanish, we stretched and crunched and prepared for our new lives as flexible hippievan-riders. For about five minutes before literally falling down (not from the earthquake I might add). After the yoga lesson, disheartened by the fact that we had to hold on to the handrail to descend the three flights of stairs but inspired to be both bendy and spanish speaking, we returned to the pavillion to locate some temporary spanish novios with with to converse. Jorge and Kevin stepped up to the plate, regaling us with stories of their forest studies before we noticed that we had left mike in the dust to eat three pizzas and be stared at by the strangely high number of transvesite prostitutes in the park. So back to the hostel it was where we encountered the frightened version of michael and awaited Roberto's call to check out the night life of San Jose (not the park night life although michael seemed to enjoy himself there). The call came around 10 pm as we were all taking "catnaps" again. This time however i  (brooke again) refused to succumb to the temptation of sleep and live it up in the town. Katie had to be slightly beaten and dragged out the door but we eventually made into Robertos third car for some country club drinks before hitting up Nena. (Now it's katie again) Like any good Renaissance Man, Roberto is a multi-talented, perfectly rounded individual and provides a Friday night as such. We went from sweater-draped soldiers and classy cocteles to the depths of the Spanish salsa-club scene. After learning about the wonders of the limy salty spanish version of what boring life calls beer, Brooke and I left Mike for some man lessons with Roberto The Wonderful God of Classyness and went searching for more novios to teach us to salsa dance. Novios are the best means of learning new things that aren't yoga, and we were provided with salsa and limy-heaven beers to the tunes of the Greats of noventa dos punto cinco, maxima fm like Aventura. I personally found myself a tico named Byron and was provided witha personal cuatro hour spanish lesson. The next time I saw Brooke she had successfully managed to gain the attention of every tico in the room by showing off her American girl moves on the tables, per her usual style (according to Euro stories). NOTE: these are not the moves that the classy bobby deigned favorable, although every other rican man was completely, as brooke would say, in "agreeance" with her performance. jajajajaja. I had a lovely rest of the evening with Byron and discovered just how sketchy San Jose is outside of the world of Roberto's lovely country club when Byron gave me about a five foot radius of not-getting-murdered walking space outside of the classy Rock Latino, where might I add I sang along to Ashlee Simpson's song "LaLa" for the first time since the seventh grade.