Intercultura Class Fair

In the Intercultura, the school where we studied Spanish, we had a fair at the end of our studies.  Each class was assigned a different province in Costa Rica and decorates a portion of the school to represent this province.  Then, while the heads of the school and guests tour through the school, we perform a presentation about our province.  We also dress up in order to appear as townspeople of our province.

presenting the rural side of San Jose

My class (made up of the three of us... Erin, Matt, and me) was assigned San Jose, Costa Rica's capital.  For our decorating, we had a rural side and an urban side, since there are two distinct sides to San Jose.  

On the rural side, where I presented while wearing an Amish-looking outfit of a white blouse, a long black skirt, black shoes, a tan shawl, and a bun with a flower in my hair, we had a coffee section with real coffee beans and a really great scarecrow we made to go with our carreta (oxenberg).  The scarecrow was meant to be a "bouyero," or the man who pulls the carreta.  In my presentation, I spoke of how San Jose hosts a national holiday with a carreta parade every year in March to celebrate the tradition.

el bouyero

In the coffee part of my presentation, I talked about how the tradition of Costa Rican coffee began in San Jose in the 18th Century and how it used to be a huge export, but now it is really just for tourism.

Erin and Matt presented the urban side of the province.  Erin dressed as a modern girl and danced at our remake of the discoteca called Castro's, which we actually visited earlier in the trip.  Matt stood beside his great drawing of the Teatro Nacional and spoke of the history of the capital of San Jose.

Erin presenting the urban side of San Jose at Castro's (we painted that dance floor by hand!)

We also decorated with a SAPRISSA jersey, which is San Jose's number one soccer team.

Our group name was "Las Vacas Chingas."  This was meant to be humorous, since this name is translated to "The Naked Cows."  "Chinga" is a local dialect meaning naked, while San Jose is filled with decorative painted cows.  It is so fun to go through the city and see how many different types of cows you can find!  There are 120 in all.  We even had a homemade cow pinata hanging from the ceiling out of paper mache. 

our class, "Las Vacas Chingas," and Nuria, our teacher

It was really interesting to visit everyone else's presentations, too!  It really helped everyone learn about all the different parts of Costa Rica.

The Limon group

...and Cartago's presentation!