Every year Atenas hosts “La Fiesta Sabana Larga”– a three-day festival about fifteen minutes from the Center of Atenas. The fiesta holds dancing, food, souvenirs and most importantly bull fights and horse shows. People from all over Costa Rica come to Sabana Larga to participate.
After spending all day Sunday in “El Parque Nacional de Carara,”some of us had just enough energy left to go to the Fiesta that night.
Watching the bull ridings was absolutely terrifying. Locked in the ring, five guys attempted to taunt the bull by running as close to the bull as they could without being attacked. When the bull did chase after them they had to escape through tiny holes in the fence. Outside was a dance floor and a DJ. One of the reasons for going to the fiesta that night was to practice our salsa and merengue dancing which we learned in our dance class at school last week. After watching an empty dance floor for a while we decided it was time to start “el baile.” For sure, we thought, everyone will come join us if we start dancing. This was sadly very untrue, since while we jammed to “Gangamstyle” and Spanish pop music everyone else at the Fiesta seemed to silently judge us for making fools of ourselves. Although it was disappointing, we still had a blast.
We have now spent one week in Atenas! It has been absolutely phenomenal. We are all getting more comfortable conversing in Spanish. I think we will all be sad to leave our host families and Spanish teachers on Sunday but we’re excited to begin new adventures in Panama. Hasta luego!
–Meike