my personal favorite patriotic Cuban song

Obviously there are many, many cultural differences between Costa Rica and the United States. One I find rather interesting is music. In the United States, the most popular music genre is hip-hop. Here it's reggaeton which sounds sort of like hip-hop mixed with reggae (resulting in a genre of horrible music). Not to knock either hip-hop or reggae because I'm a fan of both (some hip-hop and a lot of reggae), but this hybrid, which can be heard all over, is just terrible. It's interesting because they've sort of taken their own spin on hip-hop, combining it with the Carribean culture. Hip-hop by itself is somewhat popular, I heard someone listening to Snoop Dogg the other day and my host siblings like Outkast and reggae is popular near the Carribean, but reggaeton dominates the airwaves.
What I've found most interesting about music in Costa Rica is they seem to be stuck in the 80's. If it's not reggaeton then it's 70's or 80's pop music, which is frequent in restaurants. I had a short conversation with my host brother about music and one of the first bands he asked me if I listened to was the Bee Gees. He also had KC & the Sunshine Band on his iPod. Disco is still very much alive here. The other night I was walking home and I passed the bar at the end of my street and heard "Take My Breath Away" by Berlin, the Top Gun love theme, drifting out. It was a magical moment. Another night Brendan and I ate dinner at a different bar close by. There were four big screen televisions in the place and they were playing the music videos of, in this order: The Police, Aerosmith, Toto, and Phil Collins. This is what it must be like to be in a bar in the U.S. in the 1980's. At a different place we went to, the walls were lined with records of Billy Ocean, Culture Club, and my personal favorite: Andy Gibb's album Shadow Dancer. Although 80's pop music is popular, you won't hear it in bars where people dance, you'll hear reggaeton instead. I would kill to hear "September" by Earth Wind and Fire or "Keep It Comin' Love" by KC & the Sunshine Band one night when I'm out. In away 80's pop music is to them what classic rock from the 60's and 70's are to us, bar music but not dance music. My host mother loves music and the radio in our house is always on but her choice of music is different, she listens what I guess you could call Latin oldies. I kind of like it. "Guantanamera" is actually one of my favorite songs to hear when I'm still waking up at breakfast.

As far as television goes, they watch the same shows here as we do in the U.S., except now that David Schwimmer's voice is dubbed in Spanish, Friends is actually a funny show.