Our trip to downtown San Jose yesterday was both entertaining and educational. We stopped at market central, which is like a huge indoor flee market flooded with souvenirs and items more suited for the locals such as raw and dried meat assortments (it seemed like every kind of animal and body part were there), live animals (hundreds of little chicks), used and new clothing and footwear. We noticed many differences from American practice such as 1) female mannequin's have larger thighs and are more curvey than their American counterparts, 2) you can negotiate at all of the stores for a better price, 3) stores showcase merchandise in the store window with price stickers large enough to see without coming in, which might be practiced to prevent people from coming in and touching all of the clothes to find pricing, and 4) The store workers were so accommodating.
Next, we visited a coffee shop to interview the salespeople and observe the pricing and display. One of our students tested his broken Spanish and asked questions for the group. We learned that organic coffee was almost double the price of regular coffee, and that single seed (very rare) coffee beans sell for the same premium. It was great to see the retailing perspective of the coffee industry. 
We were very lucky to take a tour of the National Theater. This beautiful theater was built by coffee farmers as a place to enjoy culture and the arts. The architecture screams Italian and French influence, and even the women depicted in the paintings on the ceilings are very fair skinned, misrepresenting Costa Ricans. We assume the painter didn’t do his homework! Regardless, it was refreshing to know that coffee farmers had such a strong influence on the culture of the Costa Ricans as the theater is still active.
To continue our cultural journey, we headed to the Pre-Colombian Gold Museum to admire gold pieces of art collected for centuries. We found out that although Costa Rica is rich in gold the conservation of the Rainforest is their number one priority. We also viewed a special exhibit featuring large cats like the Cougar. Can you tell what kind of cat this is? 
We completed the day with dinner at a local San Jose restaurant. Everyone seemed to enjoy their fresh-squeezed fruit drinks (like guava, passion fruit, strawberry) and large platters of traditional Costa Rican cuisine (steak, chicken, seafood, rice). One student even claimed that her seafood soup was the best she has ever had! Muy Bueno!Bryant University Sustainability Marketing 385
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