LAURA CHINCHILLA-mi tarea turned blog

LAURA CHINCHILLA WON.... the first woman president in Costa Rica. :)

The 7th of February was elections in Costa Rica. Costa Ricans voted for the president, senators and regidores. I am not sure what regidores are in English. Maybe mayors, maybe governors or they can just be the council men. There are just councilmen... I just asked my teacher. (I am translating this blog in the computer lab. Aka air condition center :-) They vote for mayors a year later- or every year, I didn´t exactly catch that part. Each person they voted for has four years in offices. The elections booths were open from 6 in the morning until 6 in the evening. Just like us. There were SIX major candidates... can you imagine? There were nine candidates in total. I don´t know if everyone followed the politics of each candidate. I know in the U.S. most people have trouble following the political history of the 2 major candidates. I am pretty sure it was the same here. I never heard my tico family discussing politics around the house. I went with my tico family to observe the election process, (so I could do this homework). Coincidently, I wore un camisa verde just like mi madre, padre, y hermana. Mi familia they voted for el partido PLN. The colores del partido son verde y blanco. The current president, Oscar Arias belongs to the same party. Many people not only had t-shirts with the name of person running for office but also other people wore the colores de su partido. There were also cars that had flags with the colors of their party. In the same manner of the United States, people went to the school to vote. Outside of the school there were little tents for each party. Also, they were people selling food. I only saw two or three police outside of the school keeping watch. In the school = escuela there were six classrooms that people used for voting. On the wall in front of each class there was a list of 500 names. Similar to us people went to the nearest school to vote. I think overall elections in Costa Rica are not a big thing. Every presidential election in the U.S. is a big thing will people debating over each candidate and their policies. Here, your best friend and you could each be for a different candidate. My “tico aunt” was voting for another party different from her sister. At the same time, the week before elections the church that I have been attending prayed about the elections and gave us pamphlets at each service.