Ejercicio en Costa Rica

Tonight was my first introduction to ejercicio (exercise) in Costa Rica...and lets just say I am very sore. Mi familia tica love to exercise. Last night as I was talking with mi padre tico (host dad), he invited me to go for a walk with mi madre tica tonight (host mom). On Wednesdays mi madre tica has an aerobics class in the front of her house. I have to post a picture to better explain, but the house in Costa Rica have a front gate and then a covered section of patio that functions as additional living space. So, after walking back from ELEC I ran inside to mi casa and changed so I could jump into the aerobics class. It was very similar to aerobics in the United States except the directions were in Spanish of course. Right after the aerobics class I jumped into the car of mi madre tica's sister who then drove us to Heredia. Heredia is a town that neighbors San Isidro but it take about 10 to 15 minutes to drive to. I started to get worried. We were going up and down, up and down because the area we are in sits on a mountain side. In Heredia, the community has built a park that contains machines to exercise every muscle in your body, The park was completely full of people on strange exercise machines talking (its dark at 6 here). The lifestyle here is so much healthier than the United States. So far most of my breakfasts and dinners have consisted of several types of fruit. This morning we had a presentation about diabetes by a local doctor, and she mentioned that the government in Costa Rica banned french fries from McDonald's Happy Meals and from schools.

After using several of the exercise machines we started our walk and I would say for the first 5 hills I was fine. I even started to run some of them to rest my legs, but they were never ending. It turns out the walk was 9 km of MOUNTAINS, which is 5 miles. I had a good time and I will do it again, but I know I'm going to hurt tomorrow.