Santa Ana

We took a pleasant trip to Santa Ana on Saturday afternoon. It is a close little town (only about 15 minutes from us, over some windy hills) and a lot of our students live there. Santa Ana has an American part of town and an authentic part of town, and we checked out the latter.
A little street dog started following us around the moment that we hopped out of our taxi. It looked like it had heeler or collie in it because of its blue-merle spots. We walked by a local school that was decorated with many Costa Rican flags for the upcoming indpendence day (September 15). The school's playground was very muddy from all of the rain, and part of the swing set was broken and wrapped in the razor wire that ran accross the top of the chainlink fence that surrounded the school. We went by the central park and heard what sounded like a marching band. When we got there, about one hundred children or so, ranging from about ages four to eighteen, were playing percussion instruments like drums and xylophones, and performing a dance routine. The kids were doing the routine it was the day before "el dia de los ninos."
From the park we walked to a little soda to get lunch. Allie was not hungry, but I ordered a large fried chicken meal for only a few bucks. It included a coke, beans and rice, a salad, half of a fried chicken, grilled plantains, and even spaghetti with cut up hot dog in it. After this we walked to the local church, which was really beautiful. It was surrounded by a stone wall, and many pine trees were planted on the grounds. Also, there was an old water pump and a wishing. The church had beautiful stained glass windows, and a neatly-kept garden with many flowers. My favorite part was what looked like a very oldOn wall made of crumbled, mossy stones. The back side of the wall had statues of saints tucked into its niches. It was a shame that the gates were locked and we could not get a closer look.
After seeing the church it started to rain, so we decided to look for a taxi home. The one "rojo" taxi that we found had a driver who said that he was off-duty. He pointed down the hill and said that we could find "piratas," or pirates, which are taxi drivers who don't work for a red taxi company (their rates are a little better, too). Unfortunately, we could not find a pirata, and after lots of waiting, we decided to look on our own some more. We walked past a mother and her chubby little son who had a cowboy hat and looked like a really friendly little guy. We asked them where the taxis were, and they were a lot more helpful. Finaly, we found a cab, headed home, and watched Lost on DVD for the rest of the day.