Karen is my savior. My guilt was clouding my judgment and I didn't realize that maybe other ticos hate the same things about their culture as I do (and they do) and I am perfectly capable of both loving and hating my culture. Of course I've probably known that deep-down all along, but my feelings get clouded when I'm being consistently harassed and it's always nice to get confirmation from someone else who has different opinions and experiences. People sucking the life out of me aren't targeting me as a female non-tica, but rather are indiscriminate of whom they choose to latch on to, since it is a common occurrence here...but I'm not so sure that's a good thing.
The boy who told me my experiences here were out of the ordinary was either absolutely wrong or has been blessed with a very different life than most people in the city. Either way, I feel much more positive (I've been a super sneak around the house and have avoided negative interactions)and less guilty. Long live the 'good' parts of any culture around the world, I hope those parts that promote humanity and healthy lifestyles are able to spread and grow :)
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Germenes y La Sirenita
Hey, I had a entry half-done! I'm just going to post it as-is and continue with Fri-Sun as a weekend entry.
~
So…the week after that didn’t have many interesting events until the weekend. Then, oh boy, THEN I had some experiences. And the week after that…I love typing this and knowing that all of that nonsense is over. :D success!
On that Tuesday I got a bit of a surprise walking to the bus stop, and I was just thankful it was directed at another girl and not me or I would have caused a scene screaming like the gringa I am for sure. There was a man dressed in a green body suit, with ‘German’ written on his chest (I think I just didn’t see all of the word, and that it really said ‘Germenes’, or germs) hiding in a garbage bag on the ground behind a partial wall. He jumped up and out of the bag, as if from thin air, and then just stood there smiling. I guess he was proving some sort of point about public health and germs being everywhere? I think he was also wearing a green mask, but that might just be my imagination making him more awesome than he was. Don’t get me wrong, he was awesome, but he had the potential to scare me half to death with his activism. I had very mixed feelings on him at the time.
On Thursday, there was a decently long temblor (tremor, not earthquake). I was cutting up a pineapple at the time, and continued along with what I was doing after briefly noting the quake, but then got a bit more nervous when a friend of one of the guys in my house asked if we should get under a doorway or outside or something. I told her that these happened all the time because Costa Rica was made of three tectonic plates that were fairly active (score one for my Natural History class!) and that we shouldn’t worry, but right as the words were coming out of my mouth it got stronger, and didn’t stop after the normal 30 seconds. Way to make me look like a fool, earth’s natural processes. But then it did stop, and everything was fine.
Later that night I went to el Teatro Nacional for the first time to see a saxophone concert and then a ballet. The concert was amazing, and I was just a liiiiittle too tired to be awake for the entire hour (^^; whoops). It was part of a program they have called ‘Música al Atardecer’ wherein they have cheap ($2) concerts at 5:10 every Thursday. I love that concept, and I’m definitely going back. The whole thing was Latin rhythms, and the Salsa one definitely kept me awake while the soothing Bolero let me drift back into semi-consciousness.
Afterwards, I decided I needed a coffee before seeing “La Sirenita” (THE LITTLE MERMAID! I was so excited when I learned Sirena meant Mermaid and put two and two together), but couldn’t find the coffee shop I wanted. I braced myself for horrendous prices and entered the theater once more, but was pleasantly surprised that my coffee only cost a bit more than coffee at McDonalds, and was way better. I felt all refined with my fancy raspberry chocolate coffee and journaling my thoughts on the previous concert, waiting for the ballet…Then I met some other Americans, who were just sitting down to eat before the ballet (we were all very excited). They asked me how the prices were, and I was happy to bring them the good news. Certainly that café has higher prices than the nearby fast food places, but spending less than $10 on any item I wanted off the menu, in the most prestigious theater? I definitely think that’s surprisingly reasonable.
After some worry that the girls I was supposed meet up with wouldn’t come, they showed up and we got our seats. The ballet was good, and a lot shorter than I expected, but apparently I’m not a ballet person. I kept waiting for them all to sing, and that never quite happened…So from now on I’ll stick to musicals, unless it’s The Nutcracker, which has amazing music.
There was a screen that projected lights and bubbles on the stage, and at one point the prince (there were only female dancers…and then there was the projected prince? The lead still ‘danced’ with him, I’ve never seen or thought of that before). My favorite part was with manta rays, where everyone was lying on their stomachs and then lifted their trunks to reveal white tummies! Very adorable. I have a whole new appreciation for the ballerinas after doing yoga, I have to say, the way they can contort themselves is amazing. Just lifting one’s trunk up that far…incredible.
The most interesting part was that everyone was very young. The lead was 16 or 17, and I think everyone else was that age or younger. The National Theater lets all sorts of groups in! I think that is very nice, though at first unexpected, because how wonderful is it to be able to dance in such a prestigious place without being the elite of the elite. I think sharing the spotlight is a good thing :)
~
So…the week after that didn’t have many interesting events until the weekend. Then, oh boy, THEN I had some experiences. And the week after that…I love typing this and knowing that all of that nonsense is over. :D success!
On that Tuesday I got a bit of a surprise walking to the bus stop, and I was just thankful it was directed at another girl and not me or I would have caused a scene screaming like the gringa I am for sure. There was a man dressed in a green body suit, with ‘German’ written on his chest (I think I just didn’t see all of the word, and that it really said ‘Germenes’, or germs) hiding in a garbage bag on the ground behind a partial wall. He jumped up and out of the bag, as if from thin air, and then just stood there smiling. I guess he was proving some sort of point about public health and germs being everywhere? I think he was also wearing a green mask, but that might just be my imagination making him more awesome than he was. Don’t get me wrong, he was awesome, but he had the potential to scare me half to death with his activism. I had very mixed feelings on him at the time.
On Thursday, there was a decently long temblor (tremor, not earthquake). I was cutting up a pineapple at the time, and continued along with what I was doing after briefly noting the quake, but then got a bit more nervous when a friend of one of the guys in my house asked if we should get under a doorway or outside or something. I told her that these happened all the time because Costa Rica was made of three tectonic plates that were fairly active (score one for my Natural History class!) and that we shouldn’t worry, but right as the words were coming out of my mouth it got stronger, and didn’t stop after the normal 30 seconds. Way to make me look like a fool, earth’s natural processes. But then it did stop, and everything was fine.
Later that night I went to el Teatro Nacional for the first time to see a saxophone concert and then a ballet. The concert was amazing, and I was just a liiiiittle too tired to be awake for the entire hour (^^; whoops). It was part of a program they have called ‘Música al Atardecer’ wherein they have cheap ($2) concerts at 5:10 every Thursday. I love that concept, and I’m definitely going back. The whole thing was Latin rhythms, and the Salsa one definitely kept me awake while the soothing Bolero let me drift back into semi-consciousness.
Afterwards, I decided I needed a coffee before seeing “La Sirenita” (THE LITTLE MERMAID! I was so excited when I learned Sirena meant Mermaid and put two and two together), but couldn’t find the coffee shop I wanted. I braced myself for horrendous prices and entered the theater once more, but was pleasantly surprised that my coffee only cost a bit more than coffee at McDonalds, and was way better. I felt all refined with my fancy raspberry chocolate coffee and journaling my thoughts on the previous concert, waiting for the ballet…Then I met some other Americans, who were just sitting down to eat before the ballet (we were all very excited). They asked me how the prices were, and I was happy to bring them the good news. Certainly that café has higher prices than the nearby fast food places, but spending less than $10 on any item I wanted off the menu, in the most prestigious theater? I definitely think that’s surprisingly reasonable.
After some worry that the girls I was supposed meet up with wouldn’t come, they showed up and we got our seats. The ballet was good, and a lot shorter than I expected, but apparently I’m not a ballet person. I kept waiting for them all to sing, and that never quite happened…So from now on I’ll stick to musicals, unless it’s The Nutcracker, which has amazing music.
There was a screen that projected lights and bubbles on the stage, and at one point the prince (there were only female dancers…and then there was the projected prince? The lead still ‘danced’ with him, I’ve never seen or thought of that before). My favorite part was with manta rays, where everyone was lying on their stomachs and then lifted their trunks to reveal white tummies! Very adorable. I have a whole new appreciation for the ballerinas after doing yoga, I have to say, the way they can contort themselves is amazing. Just lifting one’s trunk up that far…incredible.
The most interesting part was that everyone was very young. The lead was 16 or 17, and I think everyone else was that age or younger. The National Theater lets all sorts of groups in! I think that is very nice, though at first unexpected, because how wonderful is it to be able to dance in such a prestigious place without being the elite of the elite. I think sharing the spotlight is a good thing :)
Ay, Dios mio
Hello everyone! I have been gone a while, but it's better that way. For the last month I have been more than desperate to go home, as I have discovered true tica culture and now know that I hate it.
I feel badly publicly admitting that, but it's the truth, and if I'm going to write about my experience here I shouldn't paint everything pink and pretend that I'm not disillusioned by Costa Rica. Now, that's not to say that I haven't had some amazing experiences here, or that I regret coming here even for a second, but it IS to say that I don't think I'll be returning any time soon unless I will be surrounded in the fuzzy comfort of tourism and Americanized values. I had a heart-to-heart with a guy in my class, and he told me that the experiences I've been having with the people here aren't at all normal, yet I keep having them, so I wonder...All I know is that I love Karen to death three times over, but that her warmth, welcoming and positivity are most definitely not ingrained into this culture as spending time with her had led me to believe.
What I have learned about ticos in general is that the older generations thrive on complaining and all generations are irresponsible in the sense that they not only act irresponsibly but they also throw off responsibility and blame on to other people or things. Also, they are wasteful, possibly worse than Americans... O_o; AND YES! Stereotyping is awful and generalizing is dangerous! But when presented with the image of 'eco-friendly' Costa Rica, happiest place on earth (http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/07/05/costa.rica.happy.nation/index.html) I can't help but create a counter-image that is more accurate. Also, many foreigners come here (especially Americans) to live, and I have found them to be pretentious and rude, refusing to learn Spanish many times and acting superior to others, so my judgments aren't directed only at native Costa Ricans.
It makes me wonder 1.) is this REALLY how things are? and 2.) if it isn't (and I certainly hope that it's just my 'mala suerte' that has brought me into contact with these frustrating personalities), where the heck do I find the true heart and soul of Costa Rica, the pura vida that was so attractive to me when I first came here?
I'm crossing my fingers that I'll find it on the vacation I'm taking with my mom (she's coming the 7th, thank goodness!!!!). My guess is that things will be different in another 10-20 years, because listening to a philosophical discussion my bio class had on one of our giras really gave me hope for the future. Those people certainly know what they're talking about when it comes to people and the environment, but I mustn't forget that they're bio people, and I only hope the people not interested in the natural world are also experiencing a change of mindset from the previous generations.
Every time I get frustrated with the people here, I also get frustrated with myself. I really should be more compassionate with the older generation, as I know the machismo (which I've seen to manifest itself as both chauvinism and chivalry while I've been here, generations later) created a culture in which men would abuse women, whether it be their child, their wife, who knows how discriminate they were, they may have extended it full-force to complete strangers. I tell myself I SHOULD be able to endure the same stories, the same complaints, the same gossip over and over...but I just can't. I was definitely much better in the beginning, but I have just been used and abused by the people here and now just feel a strong need for self-preservation. Just because I'm a good listener and speak Spanish doesn't mean I'm a dumping ground for neuroses and negativity, and though I will support a friend through bad times and am always willing to talk things through if it will help, I am not willing to just lie down and take the complaints thrown at me when the situation is inevitable (yes, in Costa Rica it rains a lot, but for some reason rain always elicits long monologues about how terrible it is), the person makes no efforts to fix or change the offending situation, and/or there is no reciprocity in the relationship.
So, if that makes me a bad person, so be it. What I HAVE learned is that I need to work on boundaries. I can't defend myself in Spanish, and I can't turn the conversation around or change the subject (though, trust me, oh how I have tried), but I'm hoping I can take this experience and use it in the future to protect myself when I am armed with my native language. Because I should NOT be harassed into agreeing that all dogs should be poisoned so they'll stop barking after the dog snuck into my room last night (the harasser having locked her out of her room...again) and woke me up at a little past 5 barking and didn't stop until after 7 because she was throwing a hissy fit outside the harasser's room (I'm guessing she turned off her earplugs and left me to be the lucky recipient of the screaming). Seriously, people.
There is my MIA explanation. I have been doing yoga and breathing exercises, and I have been carrying my iPod everywhere to keep me calm, but I honestly can't help but get annoyed sometimes. I generally talk to myself after an especially frustrating experience, and ask if this or that person is 'for real', if they're not some character in a book or movie just being as quirky as possible to attract viewers...So bear with the rest of the blog, not everything is sunshine and daisies but I'll do my best to skim over the negative experiences as much as possible and not dwell/rant while still giving a glimspe of the crazy. Once I get home I'm going to find a treadmill and work through all these dark feelings in a positive way :)
I feel badly publicly admitting that, but it's the truth, and if I'm going to write about my experience here I shouldn't paint everything pink and pretend that I'm not disillusioned by Costa Rica. Now, that's not to say that I haven't had some amazing experiences here, or that I regret coming here even for a second, but it IS to say that I don't think I'll be returning any time soon unless I will be surrounded in the fuzzy comfort of tourism and Americanized values. I had a heart-to-heart with a guy in my class, and he told me that the experiences I've been having with the people here aren't at all normal, yet I keep having them, so I wonder...All I know is that I love Karen to death three times over, but that her warmth, welcoming and positivity are most definitely not ingrained into this culture as spending time with her had led me to believe.
What I have learned about ticos in general is that the older generations thrive on complaining and all generations are irresponsible in the sense that they not only act irresponsibly but they also throw off responsibility and blame on to other people or things. Also, they are wasteful, possibly worse than Americans... O_o; AND YES! Stereotyping is awful and generalizing is dangerous! But when presented with the image of 'eco-friendly' Costa Rica, happiest place on earth (http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/07/05/costa.rica.happy.nation/index.html) I can't help but create a counter-image that is more accurate. Also, many foreigners come here (especially Americans) to live, and I have found them to be pretentious and rude, refusing to learn Spanish many times and acting superior to others, so my judgments aren't directed only at native Costa Ricans.
It makes me wonder 1.) is this REALLY how things are? and 2.) if it isn't (and I certainly hope that it's just my 'mala suerte' that has brought me into contact with these frustrating personalities), where the heck do I find the true heart and soul of Costa Rica, the pura vida that was so attractive to me when I first came here?
I'm crossing my fingers that I'll find it on the vacation I'm taking with my mom (she's coming the 7th, thank goodness!!!!). My guess is that things will be different in another 10-20 years, because listening to a philosophical discussion my bio class had on one of our giras really gave me hope for the future. Those people certainly know what they're talking about when it comes to people and the environment, but I mustn't forget that they're bio people, and I only hope the people not interested in the natural world are also experiencing a change of mindset from the previous generations.
Every time I get frustrated with the people here, I also get frustrated with myself. I really should be more compassionate with the older generation, as I know the machismo (which I've seen to manifest itself as both chauvinism and chivalry while I've been here, generations later) created a culture in which men would abuse women, whether it be their child, their wife, who knows how discriminate they were, they may have extended it full-force to complete strangers. I tell myself I SHOULD be able to endure the same stories, the same complaints, the same gossip over and over...but I just can't. I was definitely much better in the beginning, but I have just been used and abused by the people here and now just feel a strong need for self-preservation. Just because I'm a good listener and speak Spanish doesn't mean I'm a dumping ground for neuroses and negativity, and though I will support a friend through bad times and am always willing to talk things through if it will help, I am not willing to just lie down and take the complaints thrown at me when the situation is inevitable (yes, in Costa Rica it rains a lot, but for some reason rain always elicits long monologues about how terrible it is), the person makes no efforts to fix or change the offending situation, and/or there is no reciprocity in the relationship.
So, if that makes me a bad person, so be it. What I HAVE learned is that I need to work on boundaries. I can't defend myself in Spanish, and I can't turn the conversation around or change the subject (though, trust me, oh how I have tried), but I'm hoping I can take this experience and use it in the future to protect myself when I am armed with my native language. Because I should NOT be harassed into agreeing that all dogs should be poisoned so they'll stop barking after the dog snuck into my room last night (the harasser having locked her out of her room...again) and woke me up at a little past 5 barking and didn't stop until after 7 because she was throwing a hissy fit outside the harasser's room (I'm guessing she turned off her earplugs and left me to be the lucky recipient of the screaming). Seriously, people.
There is my MIA explanation. I have been doing yoga and breathing exercises, and I have been carrying my iPod everywhere to keep me calm, but I honestly can't help but get annoyed sometimes. I generally talk to myself after an especially frustrating experience, and ask if this or that person is 'for real', if they're not some character in a book or movie just being as quirky as possible to attract viewers...So bear with the rest of the blog, not everything is sunshine and daisies but I'll do my best to skim over the negative experiences as much as possible and not dwell/rant while still giving a glimspe of the crazy. Once I get home I'm going to find a treadmill and work through all these dark feelings in a positive way :)
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Cumpleaños y cristianos
Hilariously (?) enough, right after promising myself to post more the Internet pooped out. Yes, I could have written it in Word (and prayed to the little tech fairies inside my computer to not have it crash TOO much) but I think I just got hung up on not having Internet. Also, the owner of the house was Skyping her daughters all night, so I don’t know what was wrong with my computer…
Anyways, right now I am squeezing in every last minute plan that I possibly can because I realize I am out of San Pedro in a month! I leave Costa Rica the 20th, but I move out and finish with school in a month. I’m not sure how I feel about it, and I guess that answer always depends on my mood. Right now, I am sick, even though I did all I could to prevent it, and I would absolutely love to be at home sleeping and away from people who just randomly cancel plans or don’t show up. That will be in a future post…whenever I catch up x_x;
~
Saturday, May 15th, was a mess. I was supposed to meet Karen and go to her house for a celebration of her two sisters’ birthdays (which turned out also to be for hers, which was two weeks later! Sneaky through modesty I suppose), but she said that she wasn’t feeling so well and was wondering if I could take the bus to her house by myself. I figured I could, as I had done it with her in the past, but I soon found out that I screw things up, badly, when I get nervous. I already knew that, but I really thought I had a handle on things this time…
The problems started with the lack of buses. Maybe four or five passed the opposite way before we FINALLY got one going to San Jose. There were a ton of people waiting by that time, and I wasn’t the only person a little confused as to why there would be no buses on a Saturday afternoon. Once the bus got there, it wasn’t a typical ‘San Jose’ bus, but he told us he was going downtown so we hopped on. I don’t remember exactly why it took so long, but the trip took forever. It should have been maybe 40 minutes at the most, but I think it took at least an hour. I have blocked out these memories slightly x_x; It stopped at every possible stop and waited to cram more people on, and only reluctantly moved on to the next one after several minutes. Then there was traffic. And maybe the driver was just bad. I have no idea.
Anyways, then I went to get on the bus to Coronado. After waiting, it finally came, and then promptly filled up with people and left. Thankfully the next one didn’t take so long to come. That journey was just as slow, and packed with traffic (I later found out a highway route was shut down, which is why everyone was filtering through the same small streets), and after hours of being en route to Karen’s house I figured I must have gotten there. I KNEW where to get off, and I KNEW what it looked like, but I got off at a shopping complex with identical stores instead out of pure panic I was missing my stop. I saw the signs and jumped up, had to ask the bus driver not to drive away just yet (everyone was so packed on that I couldn’t get through), jumped out the re-opened doors and realized my grave mistake.
So…I called Karen. Except that took forever because there was only one pay phone, many people, and it decided to just not work every now and again. I finally got in touch with her and asked if I should get back on the same bus when the next one came through, but she told me to wait for her sister to come pick me up. I should have just gotten on the bus, but I didn’t think about how her sister was just learning to drive, how most of the cars are stick-shift and how the streets in Costa Rica are awful. Maybe an hour later, getting mildly panicked that I had been forgotten and feeling frustrated watching the buses I could have taken pass, she showed up. I had gotten off close to their house, but her sister had taken the long route to get me because the shorter one was hard to drive. And the streets were shut down. Her son sat in the back seat with me, making comments of his sheer terror of being driven by his mom, and eventually her boyfriend took over the driving and we made it home.
After more than four hours of being in transit, I was exhausted and dazed. Karen was a little sick, her friend had been out all night the night before at her friend’s birthday celebration, and the rest of the people our age just sorta wandered in and out of the party. Therefore, we sat on our butts and watched the Pink concert on MTV, which was awesome. It’s just that…after it was over, we still didn’t move, we just watched music video after music video and chatted when we got up the strength. It even got to ’17 and Pregnant’ and we only pried ourselves away after it had been going on for more than half an hour, and I think that’s because Karen’s boyfriend finally showed up (I wanted to meet him before leaving, but it took way longer than I had hoped).
The party was pretty neat. It was really relaxed, and the people there were mostly family, but also some friends and neighbors. Of course it was focused around some sort of fried pork dish, but I had amazing banana bread and a peanut-brittle-like candy. There was a piñata, and all the kids (that included us) were given noise makers and mardi-gras(esque) masks. I didn’t feel the need to run down all the little kids to get the candy from the piñata, but Karen’s sister brought some over to me and Karen’s other friend so we could join in the fun ;) (she and I were not as enthused as everyone else, but it was really fun to watch the madness that was Karen’s cousins)
We got fantastic cake, with a dulce de leche filling, and a slice for the road. Then, fiiiinally, I went home.
The next day, there was a plan to visit La Marta, a nature reserve in Turrialba, with my guy friends from last week. I was all packed and ready when I got a call that plans had changed. The friend who was going to drive couldn’t come, so we were going to the beach. I should have asked more questions, but it sounded fun so I didn’t.
Turns out, I was crashing a Christian beach retreat. It was their before school vacation. The person who drove us (new friend Daniel and me) was the spiritual advisor (or something?) of many of the people whom we met, who were all staying in a rented house together.
Um, yes. That was uncomfortable on many many levels. I figured out how religious the driver was when he told me he was going to put on a CD and he thought I’d know the artist because she sings in English. Then he said it was Christian rock. ‘Oh, like Switchfoot?’ But no. It was about our Lord Jesus, who sits on his throne (with glory and honor and praise…) <-- and I still get it stuck in my head now and then (impressive, as I only heard it once). He was shocked I hadn’t heard it before.
We went looking for the friends to meet up, and by the time they had coordinated found each other and I had gotten on sunscreen, we left the beach to go eat. The beach we visited is the tico Jaco and is called Estrirrillos. I’m glad I got a chance to run out on the tide pools and see the mermaid statue, even if I didn’t get to go in the water, before leaving. I figured we would go to a Soda to eat, but we went to their rented house…And then we just sat around and did nothing for a very long time. I offered to help prepare the food, and went with them to buy it, but the girls weren’t so into that idea and I went back outside to chill with the guys. I dipped my legs in their concrete box pool thingy, and got roped into a discussion about religion. Finally, standing in the rain and still talking about religion, we got called in to eat before the food ran out.
(Sidenote: I am truly honestly sick of the stupid discussions on religion here in general, because I have both the language and closed-minded disadvantages (if the whole state is uber religious, I just don’t stand a chance with logic or experience with multiple religions, and I am a bad person if I don’t claim titles of certain religions as they do). I also hate being lectured, and that is the women’s favorite thing to do here. Inane lectures are their specialty, and I think it’s because they just want to complain and sound smart doing it.)
Anyways, that was a mildly awkward experience, especially because the person with whom I was talking (the person who drove us) found Jesus at a later age and had previous been an alcoholic. He also has a child out of wedlock. I could have made SO MANY awful comments or remarks and had no idea, I hate how out of the loop I am here. What I liked a lot about the conversation was that he wasn’t Catholic, just some form of Christian, so he knows how it is to be a minority and didn’t beat me over the head with Catholicism. He immediately got past the idea that I wasn’t a Christian and wanted to know if I led a Christian lifestyle. Well, I could have been boring and just said yes (I don’t drink, do drugs, harm others or live a promiscuous life and I’m focused on community service, preserving the environment and having good relationships, which leads me to believe that I live a moral life at the very least) but instead I asked him what he meant by that. I have a lot (and I mean a LOT) of disagreements with the Bible, so I wonder how many of those things are incorporated into a ‘Christian lifestyle’.
His opinions were really interesting. He believes that God wants all of His children to not sin, live a Christian lifestyle and basically stay in the good graces of God. When people make other choices, God is sad and hopes that they will one day see their mistakes and come back to Him. (And yes, homosexuality is a choice to sin… *grits teeth* It’s not even worth trying to explain, I should just carry around scientific papers on brain studies/the biological basis of sexuality and whack people with them). His explanation for some of the contradictions in the Bible was that it had stories for its place and time, and was trying to teach a moral lesson with certain restrictions at one time that do not necessarily apply now (for instance, having long hair was a symbol of being lazy, so even though it was banished back then it’s okay now). I think that is awesome that he can understand that maybe, just MAYBE, the Bible doesn’t need to be interpreted literally every step of the way. Loads of women would be stoned to death for their natural monthly cycle, and that’s pretty ridiculous. And that MAYBE not everything is symbolism for sin and redemption, maybe it’s just a story with a moral to encourage others to do the ‘right thing’. (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_samaritan for an example of what I mean…I take sides with the ethical reading over the allegorical one, and I certainly hope that’s what most people take away from this story.)
But…who decides what should be followed literally and what should be interpreted only for morals and messages of kindness? I didn’t even ask, there is no answer for that. There are people who put themselves in charge, but that doesn’t mean they SHOULD be doing it. I feel that there is a definite black/white answer on some issues (though the interpreters don’t always have the same black/white conclusions that I have), but on other issues it’s a bit more situation-to-situation. I don’t think that any one person can truly say what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ when it comes to that, so I guess that’s a bone I have to pick with a lot of religious practices.
Near the end of our chat he brought to light what bothers me most about religion, and I was shocked I had never before realized it: Anthropocentricism. Plain and simple. The Bible teaches us that humans are above all other creatures on this earth, as sons of God, and does not mention ‘love thy planet’ along with ‘love thy neighbor’. This is where they lose me, and no argument can change my mind.
I study ecology, which is a holistic science that examines the relationships among organisms as well as their relationship to their physical environment. There is no way that I can separate human-human interactions and human-environment interactions in my mind, as well all share the same resources and live on the same planet. I don’t just look at how adorable it is that bees have great teamwork, I also see how they interact with flowers to get nectar and pollen, how those flowers are influenced by herbivores, and those herbivores are affected by predators… So, for humans, I can’t just see how great it is that we’re nice to one another, because I am always left thinking about how our actions influence so much more around us than our own species.
For me, love thy neighbor is more than just being a nice, giving person, it’s protecting our shared resources and preventing horrible health tragedies. Choosing to recycle and buy recycled products means perhaps loving our ‘neighbors’ in South America, because indigenous peoples are being kicked out of their homes in order to cut down trees and produce paper. Choosing to buy a vegetarian meal instead of a McDonald’s hamburger could have a similar effect, as rainforests are cut down to farm cattle for cheap beef. Buying organic is loving our farmers and our children, as the people who work with agrochemicals suffer a myriad of health problems due to absorption through skin or lungs and children are the most susceptible to the harmful effects of chemicals in our air and water due to their still-developing brains and bodies. Not wasting resources, such as water, oil and food, is loving our grandchildren, as they can only inherit what we leave behind.
The list goes on and on and on, but to get to the point, I can never believe in something that doesn’t recognize and respect that all life is connected. If anyone truly wanted to love other humans, they would also love and care for the earth, which provides us with the essentials to survive. I love and care for the earth because I feel it is the right thing to do, and I would feel wrong living my life in any other manner, but even for those who don’t love and respect nature for its intrinsic value should do the same if they truly believe in loving other humans and preventing unnecessary harm.
So, there you have it, another little piece of myself I uncovered here due to exploring my differences with those around me.
After the chat, we were called inside (everyone was almost done eating by then) and finally got out of the rain. It was a pretty intense, but not at all malicious, conversation. We had some good food and then the poor doggie begging outside got some as well :) I started playing cards with my friend, and stayed behind even when a big group of people went out to the beach (it was dark…) and then the game was cut short just as I was destroying him (hehee) by a power outage. That spurred a long conversation on love and relationships between us remaining stragglers, which was also very thought-provoking. The conversation was a bit more enjoyable than it could have been, as I am perfectly content with my love life ( <3 ), though I love hearing other people’s thoughts on abstract nouns any time, any day.
When the other people came back, the lights eventually came back on. Perfect timing, because it was exactly when we were supposed to leave! Wrong. We hung around for a few hours more to…to sing songs. Being hymns in Spanish, I was more than lost, so I just sat on the sidelines and watched. It was really neat, the first hour or so, and then it wasn’t so warm-and-fuzzy anymore. It was time to leave. I talked to my friend later, and he also didn’t think it’d go for the ENTIRE day, but it certainly managed to. By this time other members of the group were trying to drag people outside, and into the car, so I offered to take some pictures (hopefully speeding the exit up a bit) and then jumped in the car the first chance I got. Then we just sat there…because apparently we were going out as a group, and we had to get in line? Whatever, I fell asleep and we made it home eventually.
Unfortunately, my iPod case that wasn’t in my bag when I originally got in the car wasn’t at home, either. I searched for it outside, but it was long gone. I wouldn’t have cared, but I made it myself and it was fuzzy Dalmatian print from a jacket I had when I was little. I’m still a bit bummed, but I’m hoping someone found it and has made good use of it (as all the trash was still on the street when I went looking, so it wasn’t just a general clean-up that moved it).
~
HURRAH! End entry on emotion-packed weekend!
Anyways, right now I am squeezing in every last minute plan that I possibly can because I realize I am out of San Pedro in a month! I leave Costa Rica the 20th, but I move out and finish with school in a month. I’m not sure how I feel about it, and I guess that answer always depends on my mood. Right now, I am sick, even though I did all I could to prevent it, and I would absolutely love to be at home sleeping and away from people who just randomly cancel plans or don’t show up. That will be in a future post…whenever I catch up x_x;
~
Saturday, May 15th, was a mess. I was supposed to meet Karen and go to her house for a celebration of her two sisters’ birthdays (which turned out also to be for hers, which was two weeks later! Sneaky through modesty I suppose), but she said that she wasn’t feeling so well and was wondering if I could take the bus to her house by myself. I figured I could, as I had done it with her in the past, but I soon found out that I screw things up, badly, when I get nervous. I already knew that, but I really thought I had a handle on things this time…
The problems started with the lack of buses. Maybe four or five passed the opposite way before we FINALLY got one going to San Jose. There were a ton of people waiting by that time, and I wasn’t the only person a little confused as to why there would be no buses on a Saturday afternoon. Once the bus got there, it wasn’t a typical ‘San Jose’ bus, but he told us he was going downtown so we hopped on. I don’t remember exactly why it took so long, but the trip took forever. It should have been maybe 40 minutes at the most, but I think it took at least an hour. I have blocked out these memories slightly x_x; It stopped at every possible stop and waited to cram more people on, and only reluctantly moved on to the next one after several minutes. Then there was traffic. And maybe the driver was just bad. I have no idea.
Anyways, then I went to get on the bus to Coronado. After waiting, it finally came, and then promptly filled up with people and left. Thankfully the next one didn’t take so long to come. That journey was just as slow, and packed with traffic (I later found out a highway route was shut down, which is why everyone was filtering through the same small streets), and after hours of being en route to Karen’s house I figured I must have gotten there. I KNEW where to get off, and I KNEW what it looked like, but I got off at a shopping complex with identical stores instead out of pure panic I was missing my stop. I saw the signs and jumped up, had to ask the bus driver not to drive away just yet (everyone was so packed on that I couldn’t get through), jumped out the re-opened doors and realized my grave mistake.
So…I called Karen. Except that took forever because there was only one pay phone, many people, and it decided to just not work every now and again. I finally got in touch with her and asked if I should get back on the same bus when the next one came through, but she told me to wait for her sister to come pick me up. I should have just gotten on the bus, but I didn’t think about how her sister was just learning to drive, how most of the cars are stick-shift and how the streets in Costa Rica are awful. Maybe an hour later, getting mildly panicked that I had been forgotten and feeling frustrated watching the buses I could have taken pass, she showed up. I had gotten off close to their house, but her sister had taken the long route to get me because the shorter one was hard to drive. And the streets were shut down. Her son sat in the back seat with me, making comments of his sheer terror of being driven by his mom, and eventually her boyfriend took over the driving and we made it home.
After more than four hours of being in transit, I was exhausted and dazed. Karen was a little sick, her friend had been out all night the night before at her friend’s birthday celebration, and the rest of the people our age just sorta wandered in and out of the party. Therefore, we sat on our butts and watched the Pink concert on MTV, which was awesome. It’s just that…after it was over, we still didn’t move, we just watched music video after music video and chatted when we got up the strength. It even got to ’17 and Pregnant’ and we only pried ourselves away after it had been going on for more than half an hour, and I think that’s because Karen’s boyfriend finally showed up (I wanted to meet him before leaving, but it took way longer than I had hoped).
The party was pretty neat. It was really relaxed, and the people there were mostly family, but also some friends and neighbors. Of course it was focused around some sort of fried pork dish, but I had amazing banana bread and a peanut-brittle-like candy. There was a piñata, and all the kids (that included us) were given noise makers and mardi-gras(esque) masks. I didn’t feel the need to run down all the little kids to get the candy from the piñata, but Karen’s sister brought some over to me and Karen’s other friend so we could join in the fun ;) (she and I were not as enthused as everyone else, but it was really fun to watch the madness that was Karen’s cousins)
We got fantastic cake, with a dulce de leche filling, and a slice for the road. Then, fiiiinally, I went home.
The next day, there was a plan to visit La Marta, a nature reserve in Turrialba, with my guy friends from last week. I was all packed and ready when I got a call that plans had changed. The friend who was going to drive couldn’t come, so we were going to the beach. I should have asked more questions, but it sounded fun so I didn’t.
Turns out, I was crashing a Christian beach retreat. It was their before school vacation. The person who drove us (new friend Daniel and me) was the spiritual advisor (or something?) of many of the people whom we met, who were all staying in a rented house together.
Um, yes. That was uncomfortable on many many levels. I figured out how religious the driver was when he told me he was going to put on a CD and he thought I’d know the artist because she sings in English. Then he said it was Christian rock. ‘Oh, like Switchfoot?’ But no. It was about our Lord Jesus, who sits on his throne (with glory and honor and praise…) <-- and I still get it stuck in my head now and then (impressive, as I only heard it once). He was shocked I hadn’t heard it before.
We went looking for the friends to meet up, and by the time they had coordinated found each other and I had gotten on sunscreen, we left the beach to go eat. The beach we visited is the tico Jaco and is called Estrirrillos. I’m glad I got a chance to run out on the tide pools and see the mermaid statue, even if I didn’t get to go in the water, before leaving. I figured we would go to a Soda to eat, but we went to their rented house…And then we just sat around and did nothing for a very long time. I offered to help prepare the food, and went with them to buy it, but the girls weren’t so into that idea and I went back outside to chill with the guys. I dipped my legs in their concrete box pool thingy, and got roped into a discussion about religion. Finally, standing in the rain and still talking about religion, we got called in to eat before the food ran out.
(Sidenote: I am truly honestly sick of the stupid discussions on religion here in general, because I have both the language and closed-minded disadvantages (if the whole state is uber religious, I just don’t stand a chance with logic or experience with multiple religions, and I am a bad person if I don’t claim titles of certain religions as they do). I also hate being lectured, and that is the women’s favorite thing to do here. Inane lectures are their specialty, and I think it’s because they just want to complain and sound smart doing it.)
Anyways, that was a mildly awkward experience, especially because the person with whom I was talking (the person who drove us) found Jesus at a later age and had previous been an alcoholic. He also has a child out of wedlock. I could have made SO MANY awful comments or remarks and had no idea, I hate how out of the loop I am here. What I liked a lot about the conversation was that he wasn’t Catholic, just some form of Christian, so he knows how it is to be a minority and didn’t beat me over the head with Catholicism. He immediately got past the idea that I wasn’t a Christian and wanted to know if I led a Christian lifestyle. Well, I could have been boring and just said yes (I don’t drink, do drugs, harm others or live a promiscuous life and I’m focused on community service, preserving the environment and having good relationships, which leads me to believe that I live a moral life at the very least) but instead I asked him what he meant by that. I have a lot (and I mean a LOT) of disagreements with the Bible, so I wonder how many of those things are incorporated into a ‘Christian lifestyle’.
His opinions were really interesting. He believes that God wants all of His children to not sin, live a Christian lifestyle and basically stay in the good graces of God. When people make other choices, God is sad and hopes that they will one day see their mistakes and come back to Him. (And yes, homosexuality is a choice to sin… *grits teeth* It’s not even worth trying to explain, I should just carry around scientific papers on brain studies/the biological basis of sexuality and whack people with them). His explanation for some of the contradictions in the Bible was that it had stories for its place and time, and was trying to teach a moral lesson with certain restrictions at one time that do not necessarily apply now (for instance, having long hair was a symbol of being lazy, so even though it was banished back then it’s okay now). I think that is awesome that he can understand that maybe, just MAYBE, the Bible doesn’t need to be interpreted literally every step of the way. Loads of women would be stoned to death for their natural monthly cycle, and that’s pretty ridiculous. And that MAYBE not everything is symbolism for sin and redemption, maybe it’s just a story with a moral to encourage others to do the ‘right thing’. (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_samaritan for an example of what I mean…I take sides with the ethical reading over the allegorical one, and I certainly hope that’s what most people take away from this story.)
But…who decides what should be followed literally and what should be interpreted only for morals and messages of kindness? I didn’t even ask, there is no answer for that. There are people who put themselves in charge, but that doesn’t mean they SHOULD be doing it. I feel that there is a definite black/white answer on some issues (though the interpreters don’t always have the same black/white conclusions that I have), but on other issues it’s a bit more situation-to-situation. I don’t think that any one person can truly say what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ when it comes to that, so I guess that’s a bone I have to pick with a lot of religious practices.
Near the end of our chat he brought to light what bothers me most about religion, and I was shocked I had never before realized it: Anthropocentricism. Plain and simple. The Bible teaches us that humans are above all other creatures on this earth, as sons of God, and does not mention ‘love thy planet’ along with ‘love thy neighbor’. This is where they lose me, and no argument can change my mind.
I study ecology, which is a holistic science that examines the relationships among organisms as well as their relationship to their physical environment. There is no way that I can separate human-human interactions and human-environment interactions in my mind, as well all share the same resources and live on the same planet. I don’t just look at how adorable it is that bees have great teamwork, I also see how they interact with flowers to get nectar and pollen, how those flowers are influenced by herbivores, and those herbivores are affected by predators… So, for humans, I can’t just see how great it is that we’re nice to one another, because I am always left thinking about how our actions influence so much more around us than our own species.
For me, love thy neighbor is more than just being a nice, giving person, it’s protecting our shared resources and preventing horrible health tragedies. Choosing to recycle and buy recycled products means perhaps loving our ‘neighbors’ in South America, because indigenous peoples are being kicked out of their homes in order to cut down trees and produce paper. Choosing to buy a vegetarian meal instead of a McDonald’s hamburger could have a similar effect, as rainforests are cut down to farm cattle for cheap beef. Buying organic is loving our farmers and our children, as the people who work with agrochemicals suffer a myriad of health problems due to absorption through skin or lungs and children are the most susceptible to the harmful effects of chemicals in our air and water due to their still-developing brains and bodies. Not wasting resources, such as water, oil and food, is loving our grandchildren, as they can only inherit what we leave behind.
The list goes on and on and on, but to get to the point, I can never believe in something that doesn’t recognize and respect that all life is connected. If anyone truly wanted to love other humans, they would also love and care for the earth, which provides us with the essentials to survive. I love and care for the earth because I feel it is the right thing to do, and I would feel wrong living my life in any other manner, but even for those who don’t love and respect nature for its intrinsic value should do the same if they truly believe in loving other humans and preventing unnecessary harm.
So, there you have it, another little piece of myself I uncovered here due to exploring my differences with those around me.
After the chat, we were called inside (everyone was almost done eating by then) and finally got out of the rain. It was a pretty intense, but not at all malicious, conversation. We had some good food and then the poor doggie begging outside got some as well :) I started playing cards with my friend, and stayed behind even when a big group of people went out to the beach (it was dark…) and then the game was cut short just as I was destroying him (hehee) by a power outage. That spurred a long conversation on love and relationships between us remaining stragglers, which was also very thought-provoking. The conversation was a bit more enjoyable than it could have been, as I am perfectly content with my love life ( <3 ), though I love hearing other people’s thoughts on abstract nouns any time, any day.
When the other people came back, the lights eventually came back on. Perfect timing, because it was exactly when we were supposed to leave! Wrong. We hung around for a few hours more to…to sing songs. Being hymns in Spanish, I was more than lost, so I just sat on the sidelines and watched. It was really neat, the first hour or so, and then it wasn’t so warm-and-fuzzy anymore. It was time to leave. I talked to my friend later, and he also didn’t think it’d go for the ENTIRE day, but it certainly managed to. By this time other members of the group were trying to drag people outside, and into the car, so I offered to take some pictures (hopefully speeding the exit up a bit) and then jumped in the car the first chance I got. Then we just sat there…because apparently we were going out as a group, and we had to get in line? Whatever, I fell asleep and we made it home eventually.
Unfortunately, my iPod case that wasn’t in my bag when I originally got in the car wasn’t at home, either. I searched for it outside, but it was long gone. I wouldn’t have cared, but I made it myself and it was fuzzy Dalmatian print from a jacket I had when I was little. I’m still a bit bummed, but I’m hoping someone found it and has made good use of it (as all the trash was still on the street when I went looking, so it wasn’t just a general clean-up that moved it).
~
HURRAH! End entry on emotion-packed weekend!
Friday, June 4, 2010
El inicio de todo fracasado
Starting with the weekend of the 8th, my weekends have been complete fracasos. I don’t even know how to convey the failure after failure that was involved in Spanish, and the best I can do in English is ‘utter failure’. It feels like I am always stuck somewhere I don’t want to be, or just two minutes too late, or the only know who doesn’t know all the important details. Just as the giras were frustrating, the following weekends continued the pattern.
On Saturday I was planning to go to the feria del agricultor (farmer’s market) nearby, but some people in the house told me that they always went to the one in San Jose and that it was better-priced. I figured I’d just do that another weekend and visit the feria nearby, but then a friend finally got back to me about meeting up and told me he’d join me in San Jose at the market. I missed yoga (as I’ve been doing more and more lately…I haven’t been sleeping hardly at all) to go with him, but, surprise surprise, it was impossible to get into contact with him. The phone in the house has cell phone numbers blocked for outgoing calls, which I was told right when I needed to use it, so someone let me borrow their cell phone.
Ticos just do not have a concept of not having a cell phone, which maybe makes sense because they also never check their e-mails. I tell my friends that I don’t have a phone, or that I’m living either in a house where the phone isn’t mine or no one answers, and they still ask for my number multiple times. I give it to them, but tell them not to use it and just to e-mail me or contact me on Facebook, yet do they listen? And I KNOW these people have Internet and computers, because we’ll be making plans over the Internet up until a few days before (the most important days) when they disappear. Then, suddenly, I’m getting phone calls. Thankfully someone has answered the phone so far and I’ve been home, or I’ve had a feeling it’s them and picked up. I don’t know why it’s so HARD to just settle things by e-mail, and only call if plans change, but they are apparently very attached to their phones to finalize plans. It’s not even that we discuss the plan, they already have their minds made up and just want me to jump through hoops to learn what they’re thinking. Don’t send me gosh darn messages telling me to call you instead of just telling me your plan in the message!!!
Anyways, the friend I was trying to reach has a broken cell phone, so the sound goes out sometimes and I miss even more than usual of what he’s saying. He also doesn’t have reception in his house, which I found out after calling and leaving a message, and receiving a text back on someone else’s phone. Um…that will not achieve anything. So there was back and forth tag calling until I got ahold of him, and then he changed the original plans just in time for me to miss the local feria. I headed off to the one in San Jose, but it turns out I was directed towards Mercado Central, which mostly consists of meat and Sodas (cheap, traditional restaurants). I bought some honey that is infused with herbs to help lung-ailments (yes, it tastes like medicine, though I was told otherwise and was planning to put it in my oatmeal…).
Since I was planning on bringing all my food home, I was stuck waiting in San Jose for quite a while. I got the best falafel in my life (due to the factors of missing them so much and being extremely hungry, as my failure-filled morning didn’t allow me time to eat much) and went to wait for my friend. I called him after waiting a while at the time we decided to meet as he had told me to do, but he didn’t answer. I called again after waiting half an hour…I chatted with a man from Canada, and waited some more. He was nearly an hour late, and had been calling back the pay phones I was using to tell me. Except…I don’t understand why he didn’t pick up in the first place if he was waiting for my call. X_X;
See what I mean? This is only the start to life being impossible. The following weekend was far worse.
We hung around, got food at the vegetarian restaurant nearby (it’s a chain restaurant, which amuses me) and he gave me the San Jose tour that I’ve had so many times but still can’t remember. There are parks, and buildings/monuments, and many many roads that all lead to the same place if you know where you’re going. But I’m directionally challenged, and enjoyed learning at the time but promptly forgot everything.
It started to get dark, which to me was a signal to go home, but he told me one of his friends was coming and we could all go somewhere with drinks and music. With him I knew that drinks meant non-alcoholic drinks, so it sounded fun. Then his friend pulled up, and before I could think of potential dangers of some new person driving me places, we hopped in his car and took off.
The place that was intended certainly had music, but it was just too loud for my new acquaintance (and me, too, but I was glad I didn’t have to say anything). All too quickly I was pulled away from my new best friend, the parking garage kitty, and we set off for San Pedro (the town/city/these sorta things make no sense in Costa Rica, maybe it’s a district?...the region in which the University is located, which is also close to my house) to go to Café Mal País. By this time another friend had joined us, a guy on a motorcycle with a leather jacket…with a cross and Bible slogans on the back. Very amusing, but now that I know him better very fitting as well.
Turned out that there was some comedy performance that night, so we would have to pay to enter and the tiny place was jam packed with people. At this point I just wanted to go home, but they had one more idea. We went to a locally famous pizza place, which I was told was famous for the pizza but it seemed more likely that it was famous for the dozen or so TVs playing a movie and the movie posters plastered all over the restaurant. After watching Iron Man and arguing about the actress with red hair there and the actress in Spiderman (I was so right, two different people, though remembering names is tricky) while enjoying our pizza, we went to the ‘Parque Japonés’, which actually has a Japanese name that I don’t remember. I was glad in the end that I stayed, because we had some really good, really amusing conversations, and I got along really well with the two new people.
Once again (this is such a recurring and annoying theme in my life) I was asked about religion, because it turns out that these guys are church friends! What a surprise (not). They aren’t Catholic, just Christian, so at least the question was slightly more original. It also explained why there was a guy in his mid-30s chilling with us, kids in our early 20’s. The best part of the question was that it got shut down by a person who wasn’t me! Somehow we got onto sexuality instead, which was disappointing because everyone with whom I’ve spoken on that subject has never heard of a genetic component of sexuality. *sigh* I guess this is what happens in a Catholic country…except that it happens in our ‘secular’ country as well.
So, when it was too late to just be wandering the park, we drove me home in a car+motorcycle train (yay, I love not taking the bus). I’m sure I looked bizarre, especially since my housemates were having a wine drinking get together on the equivalent of the front porch and watching everything, but I bid my new friends farewell and went to bed. It’s pretty cool I got ‘in’ with the ticos for a night :)
The next day, Sunday the 9th, I had an amazing experience that was anything but typical tico. My yoga studio was offering a raw foods workshop focused on desserts, and after debating the cost and the probability that I’d understand, I signed up. I think that may have been an urge due to the promise of chocolate mousse (yes, CHOCOLATE, meaning made out of cacao, not just ‘sabor a chocolate’), but I still feel warm and fuzzy just remembering that day so I don’t regret it one bit. We started with green smoothies (I drank cilantro and liked it o_0), then went on to raw lunches (including meat substitute made from pistachio and yogurt made from cashew), then desserts (YES, there was mousse and ‘cheesecake’ and natural nutella…) and finally condiments. After all that, the instructor busted out this juicer that finely ground everything and made ‘ice cream’ out of pure cacao, almonds, bananas…so yummy.
During the workshop I met a woman from Italy with her own organic, vegan-friendly restaurant and her friend from Sri Lanka who had lived a large part of her life in southern California before moving to Costa Rica. It was so great to talk to them about food and life, and I didn’t mind the break from Spanish (the woman from Sri Lanka doesn’t speak Spanish). Hopefully I’m going to visit them soon, plans are almost solidified!
As a fairly related segway, it amused me to look at the composition of the class. There was a girl from Chile, three women from France, my friends from Italy and Sri Lanka, me (the gringa), four or five yoga instructors and then maybe ten other ticos. Like I said, this was a very special non-tico experience. I guess it’s hard to eat vegan or raw foods when nuts are extremely expensive, and all the condiments (and many other products) without a ton of preservatives and MSG are imports from the US. But new organic open-air markets (ferias del agricultor) are opening up at the very least, and I hope to go soon.
After class I hopped on the bus to San Jose to meet Karen for coffee. Good thing coffee is just what I put chocolate, sugar and milk in, not necessarily the main event, or I would have been sorely disappointed. Apparently the city effectively shuts down on Sunday, so we were forced into getting McDonald’s coffee. In this country, where coffee jump-started the economy and is still arguably the most important export, if not the second most, I drank McDonald’s coffee. What can I say, things are weird here.
So Karen, mi novia, had gotten a boyfriend, and I have now been officially replaced as the significant other in her life. It’s sad, but I guess it’s alright because having a boyfriend and a novia would be a bit too much work, and I am eventually leaving...We talked about that, and it made me so happy to know that things are working out really well for her (even without me *sniffle*). I don’t get to see her too much anymore, due to weekend fieldtrips and her work schedule, so it was nice to have a chance to talk again.
That week was all a blur and a waste, except for a few key moments. The majority of the week before I had been getting stomachaches after breakfast, which I attributed to the yogurt I was eating most days (which was correct, as I have now confirmed through experimentation), but starting Saturday night I was getting painful cramps. I attributed that to eating badly and being stressed, and ignored it, but after eating wonderfully at the raw foods workshop and being in pain the whole time I started to wonder. Yes, coffee afterwards was a bad idea, but it was pretty much just a coffee-flavored milkshake and I wanted to be social…
Turns out it really didn’t matter. No matter what I did with my food habits, I was getting intense stomach cramps that just wouldn’t stop. They started every time after I ate, every time I didn’t eat, when I lied down, when I stood up, when I sat…I spent a lot of time that week just curled up in a ball of pain hoping to just fall asleep. First Costa Rican virus, score!
Meanwhile, I was babysitting my group members (one in particular…ugh more on that later) for our group project and working on my partner project and staying up way too late. I went to a meeting to discuss how I could help with environmental education research (after a month or more of failed contact) and the professor cancelled ten minutes before and couldn’t get in contact with me to tell me. Yep…that got put off a little bit longer.
Some COOL things that happened! I heard meowing one night, and got a little weirded out, but I ran out to the common room and whadyaknow, a kitty! She was mean (she did the purr purr rub your legs BITE BITE ANGRYFACE that cats are so fond of), like most every cat, but an animal! How wonderful! Then the tiny dog came out (have I mentioned there is a white Chihuahua mix living in the new place?) and then the tarantula. Well, it was a huge spider with hair, so I think it was a tarantula. My housemate flipped when he saw it, but got me a Tupperware so I could take it outside while I was keeping the dog and cat away. (It was awesome :D)
How useful, Microsoft Word, you just capitalized ‘Chihuahua’ and ‘Tupperware’ automatically for me…that is definitely not something I would have done.
Then, I think it was that week, I met a friend in yoga. I’m pretty sure we can count as friends, because he gave me a ride home (I figured he was safer than walking for 10 minutes then waiting and busing 10 more at night ;) ). I’ve gotten two rides and some good conversation, what a lucky meeting.
~
Woohoo, I finally transferred that from Word to my blog, progress! Hopefully I'll be able to work a bit more on my next post tonight, but I have a gira tomorrow so I make no promises.
P.S. Mommy, Gram Reena and Nana- thank you for being wonderful women in my life. I have always loved you very, very much, but I had never before had comparison to know what amazingly insightful, warm and open-minded individuals you are. Being around other people's mothers and grandmothers is making me miss you even more. I send all my love!
On Saturday I was planning to go to the feria del agricultor (farmer’s market) nearby, but some people in the house told me that they always went to the one in San Jose and that it was better-priced. I figured I’d just do that another weekend and visit the feria nearby, but then a friend finally got back to me about meeting up and told me he’d join me in San Jose at the market. I missed yoga (as I’ve been doing more and more lately…I haven’t been sleeping hardly at all) to go with him, but, surprise surprise, it was impossible to get into contact with him. The phone in the house has cell phone numbers blocked for outgoing calls, which I was told right when I needed to use it, so someone let me borrow their cell phone.
Ticos just do not have a concept of not having a cell phone, which maybe makes sense because they also never check their e-mails. I tell my friends that I don’t have a phone, or that I’m living either in a house where the phone isn’t mine or no one answers, and they still ask for my number multiple times. I give it to them, but tell them not to use it and just to e-mail me or contact me on Facebook, yet do they listen? And I KNOW these people have Internet and computers, because we’ll be making plans over the Internet up until a few days before (the most important days) when they disappear. Then, suddenly, I’m getting phone calls. Thankfully someone has answered the phone so far and I’ve been home, or I’ve had a feeling it’s them and picked up. I don’t know why it’s so HARD to just settle things by e-mail, and only call if plans change, but they are apparently very attached to their phones to finalize plans. It’s not even that we discuss the plan, they already have their minds made up and just want me to jump through hoops to learn what they’re thinking. Don’t send me gosh darn messages telling me to call you instead of just telling me your plan in the message!!!
Anyways, the friend I was trying to reach has a broken cell phone, so the sound goes out sometimes and I miss even more than usual of what he’s saying. He also doesn’t have reception in his house, which I found out after calling and leaving a message, and receiving a text back on someone else’s phone. Um…that will not achieve anything. So there was back and forth tag calling until I got ahold of him, and then he changed the original plans just in time for me to miss the local feria. I headed off to the one in San Jose, but it turns out I was directed towards Mercado Central, which mostly consists of meat and Sodas (cheap, traditional restaurants). I bought some honey that is infused with herbs to help lung-ailments (yes, it tastes like medicine, though I was told otherwise and was planning to put it in my oatmeal…).
Since I was planning on bringing all my food home, I was stuck waiting in San Jose for quite a while. I got the best falafel in my life (due to the factors of missing them so much and being extremely hungry, as my failure-filled morning didn’t allow me time to eat much) and went to wait for my friend. I called him after waiting a while at the time we decided to meet as he had told me to do, but he didn’t answer. I called again after waiting half an hour…I chatted with a man from Canada, and waited some more. He was nearly an hour late, and had been calling back the pay phones I was using to tell me. Except…I don’t understand why he didn’t pick up in the first place if he was waiting for my call. X_X;
See what I mean? This is only the start to life being impossible. The following weekend was far worse.
We hung around, got food at the vegetarian restaurant nearby (it’s a chain restaurant, which amuses me) and he gave me the San Jose tour that I’ve had so many times but still can’t remember. There are parks, and buildings/monuments, and many many roads that all lead to the same place if you know where you’re going. But I’m directionally challenged, and enjoyed learning at the time but promptly forgot everything.
It started to get dark, which to me was a signal to go home, but he told me one of his friends was coming and we could all go somewhere with drinks and music. With him I knew that drinks meant non-alcoholic drinks, so it sounded fun. Then his friend pulled up, and before I could think of potential dangers of some new person driving me places, we hopped in his car and took off.
The place that was intended certainly had music, but it was just too loud for my new acquaintance (and me, too, but I was glad I didn’t have to say anything). All too quickly I was pulled away from my new best friend, the parking garage kitty, and we set off for San Pedro (the town/city/these sorta things make no sense in Costa Rica, maybe it’s a district?...the region in which the University is located, which is also close to my house) to go to Café Mal País. By this time another friend had joined us, a guy on a motorcycle with a leather jacket…with a cross and Bible slogans on the back. Very amusing, but now that I know him better very fitting as well.
Turned out that there was some comedy performance that night, so we would have to pay to enter and the tiny place was jam packed with people. At this point I just wanted to go home, but they had one more idea. We went to a locally famous pizza place, which I was told was famous for the pizza but it seemed more likely that it was famous for the dozen or so TVs playing a movie and the movie posters plastered all over the restaurant. After watching Iron Man and arguing about the actress with red hair there and the actress in Spiderman (I was so right, two different people, though remembering names is tricky) while enjoying our pizza, we went to the ‘Parque Japonés’, which actually has a Japanese name that I don’t remember. I was glad in the end that I stayed, because we had some really good, really amusing conversations, and I got along really well with the two new people.
Once again (this is such a recurring and annoying theme in my life) I was asked about religion, because it turns out that these guys are church friends! What a surprise (not). They aren’t Catholic, just Christian, so at least the question was slightly more original. It also explained why there was a guy in his mid-30s chilling with us, kids in our early 20’s. The best part of the question was that it got shut down by a person who wasn’t me! Somehow we got onto sexuality instead, which was disappointing because everyone with whom I’ve spoken on that subject has never heard of a genetic component of sexuality. *sigh* I guess this is what happens in a Catholic country…except that it happens in our ‘secular’ country as well.
So, when it was too late to just be wandering the park, we drove me home in a car+motorcycle train (yay, I love not taking the bus). I’m sure I looked bizarre, especially since my housemates were having a wine drinking get together on the equivalent of the front porch and watching everything, but I bid my new friends farewell and went to bed. It’s pretty cool I got ‘in’ with the ticos for a night :)
The next day, Sunday the 9th, I had an amazing experience that was anything but typical tico. My yoga studio was offering a raw foods workshop focused on desserts, and after debating the cost and the probability that I’d understand, I signed up. I think that may have been an urge due to the promise of chocolate mousse (yes, CHOCOLATE, meaning made out of cacao, not just ‘sabor a chocolate’), but I still feel warm and fuzzy just remembering that day so I don’t regret it one bit. We started with green smoothies (I drank cilantro and liked it o_0), then went on to raw lunches (including meat substitute made from pistachio and yogurt made from cashew), then desserts (YES, there was mousse and ‘cheesecake’ and natural nutella…) and finally condiments. After all that, the instructor busted out this juicer that finely ground everything and made ‘ice cream’ out of pure cacao, almonds, bananas…so yummy.
During the workshop I met a woman from Italy with her own organic, vegan-friendly restaurant and her friend from Sri Lanka who had lived a large part of her life in southern California before moving to Costa Rica. It was so great to talk to them about food and life, and I didn’t mind the break from Spanish (the woman from Sri Lanka doesn’t speak Spanish). Hopefully I’m going to visit them soon, plans are almost solidified!
As a fairly related segway, it amused me to look at the composition of the class. There was a girl from Chile, three women from France, my friends from Italy and Sri Lanka, me (the gringa), four or five yoga instructors and then maybe ten other ticos. Like I said, this was a very special non-tico experience. I guess it’s hard to eat vegan or raw foods when nuts are extremely expensive, and all the condiments (and many other products) without a ton of preservatives and MSG are imports from the US. But new organic open-air markets (ferias del agricultor) are opening up at the very least, and I hope to go soon.
After class I hopped on the bus to San Jose to meet Karen for coffee. Good thing coffee is just what I put chocolate, sugar and milk in, not necessarily the main event, or I would have been sorely disappointed. Apparently the city effectively shuts down on Sunday, so we were forced into getting McDonald’s coffee. In this country, where coffee jump-started the economy and is still arguably the most important export, if not the second most, I drank McDonald’s coffee. What can I say, things are weird here.
So Karen, mi novia, had gotten a boyfriend, and I have now been officially replaced as the significant other in her life. It’s sad, but I guess it’s alright because having a boyfriend and a novia would be a bit too much work, and I am eventually leaving...We talked about that, and it made me so happy to know that things are working out really well for her (even without me *sniffle*). I don’t get to see her too much anymore, due to weekend fieldtrips and her work schedule, so it was nice to have a chance to talk again.
That week was all a blur and a waste, except for a few key moments. The majority of the week before I had been getting stomachaches after breakfast, which I attributed to the yogurt I was eating most days (which was correct, as I have now confirmed through experimentation), but starting Saturday night I was getting painful cramps. I attributed that to eating badly and being stressed, and ignored it, but after eating wonderfully at the raw foods workshop and being in pain the whole time I started to wonder. Yes, coffee afterwards was a bad idea, but it was pretty much just a coffee-flavored milkshake and I wanted to be social…
Turns out it really didn’t matter. No matter what I did with my food habits, I was getting intense stomach cramps that just wouldn’t stop. They started every time after I ate, every time I didn’t eat, when I lied down, when I stood up, when I sat…I spent a lot of time that week just curled up in a ball of pain hoping to just fall asleep. First Costa Rican virus, score!
Meanwhile, I was babysitting my group members (one in particular…ugh more on that later) for our group project and working on my partner project and staying up way too late. I went to a meeting to discuss how I could help with environmental education research (after a month or more of failed contact) and the professor cancelled ten minutes before and couldn’t get in contact with me to tell me. Yep…that got put off a little bit longer.
Some COOL things that happened! I heard meowing one night, and got a little weirded out, but I ran out to the common room and whadyaknow, a kitty! She was mean (she did the purr purr rub your legs BITE BITE ANGRYFACE that cats are so fond of), like most every cat, but an animal! How wonderful! Then the tiny dog came out (have I mentioned there is a white Chihuahua mix living in the new place?) and then the tarantula. Well, it was a huge spider with hair, so I think it was a tarantula. My housemate flipped when he saw it, but got me a Tupperware so I could take it outside while I was keeping the dog and cat away. (It was awesome :D)
How useful, Microsoft Word, you just capitalized ‘Chihuahua’ and ‘Tupperware’ automatically for me…that is definitely not something I would have done.
Then, I think it was that week, I met a friend in yoga. I’m pretty sure we can count as friends, because he gave me a ride home (I figured he was safer than walking for 10 minutes then waiting and busing 10 more at night ;) ). I’ve gotten two rides and some good conversation, what a lucky meeting.
~
Woohoo, I finally transferred that from Word to my blog, progress! Hopefully I'll be able to work a bit more on my next post tonight, but I have a gira tomorrow so I make no promises.
P.S. Mommy, Gram Reena and Nana- thank you for being wonderful women in my life. I have always loved you very, very much, but I had never before had comparison to know what amazingly insightful, warm and open-minded individuals you are. Being around other people's mothers and grandmothers is making me miss you even more. I send all my love!
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Lookie here! Huge culture shock, but I'm still alive...
...just still zapping random things and shaking every now and again.
Every night, as I'm avoiding my work with every possible unproductive thing I can think of, I fantasize about being back home. The funny thing is, I don't know which home or from when, but the idea of being in my own space with my own culture is taking over my being. I just want projects to make sense, little sayings to be funny or meaningful, people to show up on-timeish or tell me when they're not planning to come, and adults in my proximity to let me live my life unless they actually have useful knowledge to share (yes, I am about at the end of my rope of being micro-managed, especially if it's going to generate more waste for no reason at all besides pickiness). Not losing the water for an entire day without warning or having appliances break every month or so would be nice.
I have an entry I almost finished a week ago, but the theme of that week was wasting my time in every possible way. It's looking to be a theme of this week as well, so hopefully things will turn around soon :)
More to come! Honest!
Every night, as I'm avoiding my work with every possible unproductive thing I can think of, I fantasize about being back home. The funny thing is, I don't know which home or from when, but the idea of being in my own space with my own culture is taking over my being. I just want projects to make sense, little sayings to be funny or meaningful, people to show up on-timeish or tell me when they're not planning to come, and adults in my proximity to let me live my life unless they actually have useful knowledge to share (yes, I am about at the end of my rope of being micro-managed, especially if it's going to generate more waste for no reason at all besides pickiness). Not losing the water for an entire day without warning or having appliances break every month or so would be nice.
I have an entry I almost finished a week ago, but the theme of that week was wasting my time in every possible way. It's looking to be a theme of this week as well, so hopefully things will turn around soon :)
More to come! Honest!
Saturday, May 15, 2010
La casa nueva
Home…home is certainly different than advertised. The man with whom I was e-mailing is with his kids in the US, and his wife is here with the boarders and her mom. It’s a lot more…rough?..than was let on. For one thing, people here aren’t ‘professionals and students’, they’re mostly people who want to travel and end up getting jobs because they don’t have money anymore. (This may or may not be due to the excessive partying, I really can only guess). There are two other students, and I like them, but we’re busy actually working…
I don’t know, I was told that I would live with a communicative family, and with other people who were there to learn and work and didn’t do drugs, smoke or excessively drink. The second night I’m here, the mom is smoking in the house and one of the guys lights up a joint. Allllrighty, then, never believe what people tell you, that is the lesson. I’m also not really allowed to use the good kitchen, like I was told, and instead am confined to a tiny kitchen that five people share…plus the people from the other kitchen who randomly use our kitchen. Laundry is do-it-yourself, towels not included, and the place is downright dirty at times. I’ve made friends with all the cockroaches, at least, though the one that was walking towards the sound of my voice whenever I spoke (pointed out by my conversation partner) was pretty creepy.
I’m used to all this stuff now, and am more or less settled in, but at first I was really worried I had made a mistake. And then I thought about all the annoying tica mom micro-managing I wasn’t having to grin and bear, and figured things weren’t so bad. I’m still annoyed by the LOUD conversations people have down the hall, across the room, etc. really early in the morning (someone is always up watching TV super late, doesn’t that give you a little hint that at least one other person is trying to sleep?!). Seriously, I have to be out the door by 6:30 some days, so I know that I should take extra care not to announce to the world that I’m awake, but then the NEXT day I want a little extra sleep, and others don’t do me the same favor. Still, most things are good, and I can have friendly conversations with everyone, which is more socializing than was happening previously.
The week after the gira was my first test, and I was scared out of my mind for it. I don’t know how I did, because I couldn’t figure out how it would be graded, but I knew most of what I was being asked so hopefully that’s enough...When I went to talk to the professor about a few things I didn’t understand, he basically told me I must take the test in English. I had the option to take it in Spanish, but it wasn’t a Spanish class so I may as well take it in English (if my Spanish was a tiny bit unclear, he just wasn’t going to bother to read it). Well, that was a blow to my ego, but whatever, I took the silly thing in English.
After that, I just let myself completely crash. I hung around and did nothing besides experiment with cooking, sleep, yoga and mess around on the Internet. I figured I deserved the down time, as everything was new and stressful, and made plans for the weekend while trying to put myself back together. At the very least, I found out that I could feed myself, and that it was with healthy, creative foods.
I don’t know, I was told that I would live with a communicative family, and with other people who were there to learn and work and didn’t do drugs, smoke or excessively drink. The second night I’m here, the mom is smoking in the house and one of the guys lights up a joint. Allllrighty, then, never believe what people tell you, that is the lesson. I’m also not really allowed to use the good kitchen, like I was told, and instead am confined to a tiny kitchen that five people share…plus the people from the other kitchen who randomly use our kitchen. Laundry is do-it-yourself, towels not included, and the place is downright dirty at times. I’ve made friends with all the cockroaches, at least, though the one that was walking towards the sound of my voice whenever I spoke (pointed out by my conversation partner) was pretty creepy.
I’m used to all this stuff now, and am more or less settled in, but at first I was really worried I had made a mistake. And then I thought about all the annoying tica mom micro-managing I wasn’t having to grin and bear, and figured things weren’t so bad. I’m still annoyed by the LOUD conversations people have down the hall, across the room, etc. really early in the morning (someone is always up watching TV super late, doesn’t that give you a little hint that at least one other person is trying to sleep?!). Seriously, I have to be out the door by 6:30 some days, so I know that I should take extra care not to announce to the world that I’m awake, but then the NEXT day I want a little extra sleep, and others don’t do me the same favor. Still, most things are good, and I can have friendly conversations with everyone, which is more socializing than was happening previously.
The week after the gira was my first test, and I was scared out of my mind for it. I don’t know how I did, because I couldn’t figure out how it would be graded, but I knew most of what I was being asked so hopefully that’s enough...When I went to talk to the professor about a few things I didn’t understand, he basically told me I must take the test in English. I had the option to take it in Spanish, but it wasn’t a Spanish class so I may as well take it in English (if my Spanish was a tiny bit unclear, he just wasn’t going to bother to read it). Well, that was a blow to my ego, but whatever, I took the silly thing in English.
After that, I just let myself completely crash. I hung around and did nothing besides experiment with cooking, sleep, yoga and mess around on the Internet. I figured I deserved the down time, as everything was new and stressful, and made plans for the weekend while trying to put myself back together. At the very least, I found out that I could feed myself, and that it was with healthy, creative foods.
La mudanza y la segunda gira
The week after that had a theme: moving. I had e-mailed a place on craigslist about their living situation the Friday before the gira, and I had a promising e-mail waiting for me when I got home from the trip. I still wasn’t sure how I felt about it, but then I went to yoga. I’m telling you, the Mayan calendar was really speaking to me those first three weeks, as the session’s theme was listening to your inner voice and following your own path. It hasn’t been 100% finding-my-innermost-struggle-for-the-week accurate since, but still, wow.
The rest of the week was visiting the house to check it out (the woman and her husband who own the house used to be vegans, and I took that as a sign I would be with good people), figuring out how to tell my tica mom (if were as though she already knew! She didn’t skip a beat in telling me that everyone must make their own decisions and completely accepting it), worrying about my upcoming test and finally getting in touch with the person in charge of the environmental education project. Oh right, and packing.
My tica mom started to ask questions about the program, and the house, and tell me about how less and less students were coming to the other program for which she houses students…Just generally continuing her theme of being personal in an uncomfortable way. I was feeling super super guilty, but then on Friday the router for the Internet vanished (it was being ‘serviced’, though I don’t know why that couldn’t wait until I was gone…one theory is so that I didn’t take it with me). There was no warning, and I had to mention it for her to tell me. I mentioned it because I couldn’t get in touch with the people at my new house by phone and had no other method of communication. It turns out later that the woman wasn’t answering her phone because the number was a private number, and some guy with a private number has been bugging her…That was certainly a no-win extremely frustrating day. Especially because my tica mom was going out and wanted to help me leave (which I wanted, since I had all my bags), and there was nothing for me to do in the house without Internet, whereas I would have been studying for my upcoming test if I had had access.
Phew, confusing and stressful, glad that’s over.
I was really excited to meet with the director of the environmental program, but he keeps having scheduling things pop up, and we have still yet to have enough time to talk about how I would help. Maybe next week…
Part of why moving was so stressful was because I had a gira the day after I moved. I didn’t even buy food, just some yogurt and granola for dinner and breakfast, because there wasn’t space for me yet in the kitchen and I wouldn’t be home to eat the food…It was just bad timing overall, but yet good timing because it was when my contract ended with my tica mom and I was at my breaking point.
We went to Cerro de la Muerte, a place in Costa Rica that is at a high enough elevation to be COLD. I was completely and entirely unprepared throughout the whole trip, and came home slightly miserable and very frustrated. At the very least, I have some nice pictures, I spoke with most of the people in my class for the first time and I made a friend. I mean, I think I did, but it’s hard to tell with shy guys.
Our first stop was a park, and after asking twice I misunderstood that we would only be there for ten minutes. Apparently, it was ten minutes to GET where we would spend…was it two hours? I really don’t know, I was trying not to melt down. So, armed with only my hiking boots, my camera and my notebook, I wandered into a swap. Okay, so it was a paramo, but I still don’t know exactly what that means and it was flooded and swamp-like enough for the sad non-biologist part of me. Everyone else had rain boots, and at first it didn’t matter I only had hiking boots, but then we got lost, and then we had to wander through extremely flooded and muddy areas, and then it started to rain… I usually don’t care about getting wet and muddy, except that I hadn’t brought a lot of clothing as the professor told me not to. I specifically asked him in class for that very reason…*sigh*.
After that hike I was feeling extremely misled and scared about that night, when I knew I’d freeze to death in wet clothing either from not changing before the next activity or by changing and then only having wet sweatshirts. I didn’t really bring cold-weather clothing to Costa Rica (seriously, who’d have guessed?!) and it was lucky I decided to buy a fleece sweatshirt after visiting Karen’s (my tica friend’s) house in the mountains. Once we started the research, however, I got the chance to feel scared AND stupid, because everyone around me was able to memorize scientific names in an instant and jumped into the projects with absolute ease.
Me: What the heck’s a panterpe?
Them: It’s a scientific name for the most common hummingbird found here, it is characterized by the red patch on their throat. They are commonly called ‘fire-throated hummingbird’.
Me: You…Ohhh, you’ve taken previous classes on them, then.
Them: What on earth are you talking about, that’s what the professor just said.
So, yes, apparently EVERY person in my class is a genius at automatically absorbing all information given to them verbally and remembering every detail. I’m the dumb gringa who is getting her clothing dried for her during the project (my professor asked one of the people at the lodge/restaurant for that favor, thank goodness) and asking too many questions. I got ‘invited’ to set up the hummingbird nets with the professor, which meant I didn’t have to do any thinking for a while, and was rewarded at the end by getting to hold a hummingbird as a pollen sample was taken. They are quite adorable little critters.
The professor’s wife and kids were there as well, and the kids were so excited to help out with the birds. Them being more experienced than I was only added on to the failure I felt (they were both around 10 years old), but I took solace in them being cut, budding biologists. We worked with four species of hummingbirds, and had half the people collecting them from the nets and taking pollen samples and the other half counting how many times they fed at the numerous hummingbird feeders hanging outside the restaurant. It was really neat to watch, as the whole wall was windows where the feeders were hanging. I eventually went to do real research, and took turns counting hummingbirds (and therefore finally learned their names by having to dictate them over and over), and then we had dinner.
The girls with whom I was sitting just…sat there. And sat there. I couldn’t figure out why they weren’t getting dinner, but they were waiting for dinner time…because it’s not right to eat more than three meals a day apart from their customary times. Once it was exactly 6:30, they finally let themselves eat. No WONDER my tica mom was so freaked out by my fluctuating eating schedule...
That night we could have done whatever we wanted, but we (the girls) ended up all getting in our PJs and reading aloud the study guide for the test. It was cute, we all slept in a cabina together, and most people were in the same room, mattresses all over the floor. I think the boys went to bed early, too, but they were staying right on top of the restaurant while we had to walk a ways to get to our cabina, so they probably stayed a little longer. Despite dry PJs and two thick blankets, I was too frozen to sleep. I’m sure the cold would have been nothing normally, but with only Costa Rica clothing it was pretty bad. The next day we continued from where we left off, and then there was the second hike of doom.
This time it wasn’t wet and miserable physically, it was just agonizing mentally. We were supposed to be doing ‘organism collections’ throughout the gira, and I was taking pictures of all sorts of species to later identify. Problem was, people already knew a bunch of the species, and were claiming them throughout the day before. I was unaware of this, and to make matters worse, I got transferred into a group (after being told I was with people I already knew) of two boys who hadn’t been claiming things. And I was the only one with a camera. So we had no species, whereas most people were already done, and the course assistant was being kind of a jerk about that while continually ignoring my questions about how to get species or if pictures I had already taken could work (like a bird I knew no one else had, as my camera had to do some major zooming to just barely see it in the trees). Sheesh, I don’t understand course work or its process here at ALL. By the end the other course assistant was helping us out (he was the nice one, although he was so quiet I figured he was a student the whole first day) as was the professor, so things weren’t the impending doom I had originally felt. Grr, that was frustrating and completely out of my control by force, which seems to be the overall theme of the trip.
Thankfully, I made friends with one of the boys in the group, and we went this past week and worked really hard on getting information for our collection, and going through the pictures to get ENOUGH species to write about. I realized he was out of the loop of the class in a sense when I found out he didn’t have the class-collaborated study guide, so when it came time to write out reports in partners, I made sure to ask him. That also took off some of the stress, because it’s old hat to write scientific reports for them whereas I was completely thrown off balance reading the directions…maybe by the end of the class I’ll know enough to have been able to semi-competently have taken the class. Heh.
Then we got to go home!
Except…then the bus pulled over to the side of the road for a mini trip, oh joy! Someone in the class said ‘nos engañaron’, they tricked us, as we trudged out of the bus into the cold and hint of rain. Partway through the professor’s lecture, it began to pour, and he let us all rush back into the bus early and head home. For me, home wasn’t home yet, but it was SO nice to get a good night’s sleep.
The rest of the week was visiting the house to check it out (the woman and her husband who own the house used to be vegans, and I took that as a sign I would be with good people), figuring out how to tell my tica mom (if were as though she already knew! She didn’t skip a beat in telling me that everyone must make their own decisions and completely accepting it), worrying about my upcoming test and finally getting in touch with the person in charge of the environmental education project. Oh right, and packing.
My tica mom started to ask questions about the program, and the house, and tell me about how less and less students were coming to the other program for which she houses students…Just generally continuing her theme of being personal in an uncomfortable way. I was feeling super super guilty, but then on Friday the router for the Internet vanished (it was being ‘serviced’, though I don’t know why that couldn’t wait until I was gone…one theory is so that I didn’t take it with me). There was no warning, and I had to mention it for her to tell me. I mentioned it because I couldn’t get in touch with the people at my new house by phone and had no other method of communication. It turns out later that the woman wasn’t answering her phone because the number was a private number, and some guy with a private number has been bugging her…That was certainly a no-win extremely frustrating day. Especially because my tica mom was going out and wanted to help me leave (which I wanted, since I had all my bags), and there was nothing for me to do in the house without Internet, whereas I would have been studying for my upcoming test if I had had access.
Phew, confusing and stressful, glad that’s over.
I was really excited to meet with the director of the environmental program, but he keeps having scheduling things pop up, and we have still yet to have enough time to talk about how I would help. Maybe next week…
Part of why moving was so stressful was because I had a gira the day after I moved. I didn’t even buy food, just some yogurt and granola for dinner and breakfast, because there wasn’t space for me yet in the kitchen and I wouldn’t be home to eat the food…It was just bad timing overall, but yet good timing because it was when my contract ended with my tica mom and I was at my breaking point.
We went to Cerro de la Muerte, a place in Costa Rica that is at a high enough elevation to be COLD. I was completely and entirely unprepared throughout the whole trip, and came home slightly miserable and very frustrated. At the very least, I have some nice pictures, I spoke with most of the people in my class for the first time and I made a friend. I mean, I think I did, but it’s hard to tell with shy guys.
Our first stop was a park, and after asking twice I misunderstood that we would only be there for ten minutes. Apparently, it was ten minutes to GET where we would spend…was it two hours? I really don’t know, I was trying not to melt down. So, armed with only my hiking boots, my camera and my notebook, I wandered into a swap. Okay, so it was a paramo, but I still don’t know exactly what that means and it was flooded and swamp-like enough for the sad non-biologist part of me. Everyone else had rain boots, and at first it didn’t matter I only had hiking boots, but then we got lost, and then we had to wander through extremely flooded and muddy areas, and then it started to rain… I usually don’t care about getting wet and muddy, except that I hadn’t brought a lot of clothing as the professor told me not to. I specifically asked him in class for that very reason…*sigh*.
After that hike I was feeling extremely misled and scared about that night, when I knew I’d freeze to death in wet clothing either from not changing before the next activity or by changing and then only having wet sweatshirts. I didn’t really bring cold-weather clothing to Costa Rica (seriously, who’d have guessed?!) and it was lucky I decided to buy a fleece sweatshirt after visiting Karen’s (my tica friend’s) house in the mountains. Once we started the research, however, I got the chance to feel scared AND stupid, because everyone around me was able to memorize scientific names in an instant and jumped into the projects with absolute ease.
Me: What the heck’s a panterpe?
Them: It’s a scientific name for the most common hummingbird found here, it is characterized by the red patch on their throat. They are commonly called ‘fire-throated hummingbird’.
Me: You…Ohhh, you’ve taken previous classes on them, then.
Them: What on earth are you talking about, that’s what the professor just said.
So, yes, apparently EVERY person in my class is a genius at automatically absorbing all information given to them verbally and remembering every detail. I’m the dumb gringa who is getting her clothing dried for her during the project (my professor asked one of the people at the lodge/restaurant for that favor, thank goodness) and asking too many questions. I got ‘invited’ to set up the hummingbird nets with the professor, which meant I didn’t have to do any thinking for a while, and was rewarded at the end by getting to hold a hummingbird as a pollen sample was taken. They are quite adorable little critters.
The professor’s wife and kids were there as well, and the kids were so excited to help out with the birds. Them being more experienced than I was only added on to the failure I felt (they were both around 10 years old), but I took solace in them being cut, budding biologists. We worked with four species of hummingbirds, and had half the people collecting them from the nets and taking pollen samples and the other half counting how many times they fed at the numerous hummingbird feeders hanging outside the restaurant. It was really neat to watch, as the whole wall was windows where the feeders were hanging. I eventually went to do real research, and took turns counting hummingbirds (and therefore finally learned their names by having to dictate them over and over), and then we had dinner.
The girls with whom I was sitting just…sat there. And sat there. I couldn’t figure out why they weren’t getting dinner, but they were waiting for dinner time…because it’s not right to eat more than three meals a day apart from their customary times. Once it was exactly 6:30, they finally let themselves eat. No WONDER my tica mom was so freaked out by my fluctuating eating schedule...
That night we could have done whatever we wanted, but we (the girls) ended up all getting in our PJs and reading aloud the study guide for the test. It was cute, we all slept in a cabina together, and most people were in the same room, mattresses all over the floor. I think the boys went to bed early, too, but they were staying right on top of the restaurant while we had to walk a ways to get to our cabina, so they probably stayed a little longer. Despite dry PJs and two thick blankets, I was too frozen to sleep. I’m sure the cold would have been nothing normally, but with only Costa Rica clothing it was pretty bad. The next day we continued from where we left off, and then there was the second hike of doom.
This time it wasn’t wet and miserable physically, it was just agonizing mentally. We were supposed to be doing ‘organism collections’ throughout the gira, and I was taking pictures of all sorts of species to later identify. Problem was, people already knew a bunch of the species, and were claiming them throughout the day before. I was unaware of this, and to make matters worse, I got transferred into a group (after being told I was with people I already knew) of two boys who hadn’t been claiming things. And I was the only one with a camera. So we had no species, whereas most people were already done, and the course assistant was being kind of a jerk about that while continually ignoring my questions about how to get species or if pictures I had already taken could work (like a bird I knew no one else had, as my camera had to do some major zooming to just barely see it in the trees). Sheesh, I don’t understand course work or its process here at ALL. By the end the other course assistant was helping us out (he was the nice one, although he was so quiet I figured he was a student the whole first day) as was the professor, so things weren’t the impending doom I had originally felt. Grr, that was frustrating and completely out of my control by force, which seems to be the overall theme of the trip.
Thankfully, I made friends with one of the boys in the group, and we went this past week and worked really hard on getting information for our collection, and going through the pictures to get ENOUGH species to write about. I realized he was out of the loop of the class in a sense when I found out he didn’t have the class-collaborated study guide, so when it came time to write out reports in partners, I made sure to ask him. That also took off some of the stress, because it’s old hat to write scientific reports for them whereas I was completely thrown off balance reading the directions…maybe by the end of the class I’ll know enough to have been able to semi-competently have taken the class. Heh.
Then we got to go home!
Except…then the bus pulled over to the side of the road for a mini trip, oh joy! Someone in the class said ‘nos engañaron’, they tricked us, as we trudged out of the bus into the cold and hint of rain. Partway through the professor’s lecture, it began to pour, and he let us all rush back into the bus early and head home. For me, home wasn’t home yet, but it was SO nice to get a good night’s sleep.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Mi gira primera!
(From Tuesday)
I can’t even wrap my head around how much has happened since I was keeping on top of my blog and now, and I still haven’t ended my ‘difficult period’, as I’m naming it. Things finally settled down maybe as of this weekend, and then my low-level stomach annoyance turned into crippling cramps that have persisted for three days straight. So it’s been a battle of trading bad for different kinds of bad, but I’m finally at a place where the end of the bad is in sight and I just hope to last until then. As always, sorry to my mom who has to listen to me hash out every little annoying thing that’s been bothering me once I hit rock bottom when we both know it’s just another bump in the road of something that is overall good.
I think I left off at my gira for my Organic Agriculture class. Bright and early I hopped on the bus (after 15 minutes of walking, since I wasn’t sure what the school bus would be doing on a Saturday (teachers give regular old tests on Saturdays here!), and not telling my tica mom that I wasn’t taking a taxi) and noticed that the fare was unusually high. Just due to dumb luck I had enough money in my pocket (I generally keep exact change in my pocket so I don’t have to hassle with my purse or counting money), and once I got on the bus I realized that the bus had a television. I’m guessing that was the cause for the high fare, but more and more lately there are televisions on the buses that I ride…
Anyways, once I got to the meeting place, I found out that I was truly the only student going. No one ever told me it was an optional fieldtrip, but apparently it was. Students were either on fieldtrips or decided not to go because students weren’t going, so it was just me and the automayores. One of the highlights of the trip happened early: Dancing Queen was playing on the radio on the bus, entirely in Spanish. Yes! How completely ridiculous!
My friend from last week, who is now referred to as ‘el abuelito suyo’ when someone is talking to me, helped me get my backpack on the bus so we could sit together. He also brought snacks for both of us. Throughout the trip I was always a little nervous in the back of my mind because I couldn’t always understand things he said (and because I’m paranoid and unused to this warmer, more openly friendly culture), but I’m guessing that he just likes children but is normally too shy to bond with them (whereas I’m shy myself, so we get each other) or I remind him of a granddaughter. It’s just hard to not fully understand a compliment, and I interpret it to the best of my ability and hope that there was nothing there that would normally tip me off to GET AWAY.
But all my weird mind issues aside, the automayores are cool people in general. They liked to talk to me about my experiences, and share whatever other gringo or exchange student experiences they’ve had, and I found out that most of them are still actively learning and taking multiple classes. That is so awesome! Some were still kinda finicky and rigid in their thinking at times, but I have fun with them and they always manage to teach me something and make me smile. Just another example of how great it is to never stop learning :)
I honestly couldn’t figure out the point to the gira, even though I asked many people and even the professor, but there were a few highlights in between being on the bus and having a two minute visit to a farm just to see one thing. I thought it would be labor-intensive, as it was a trip planned for the regular students as well, but boy was I wrong. We went to a farm where they composted ashes from burned banana plant leftovers, manure, and something I couldn’t understand in Spanish and ‘turned’ the compost to aerate it by shoveling it to one side a few feet. Everyone took turns, and after about 40 minutes the experienced workers took over and we marveled at their speed. We were close to finishing the job, but I guess we only had a certain time allotment.
Then, we got lunch! I was told the types of ‘refrescos naturales’ there were, and heard ‘linaza’ for the first time. People tried to explain it to me by telling me it was a seed that people ate to slim down, but I still couldn’t figure it out. Then I ordered it to try to make out what it was, and it was like drinking watered down yet still thick maple syrup. Yum! Later I looked up what linaza is, and discovered that it is flax seed! I NEVER would have tried the drink if I had known, having had awful experiences with flax seed oil, but I’m glad I was ignorant and could enjoy the sugary flax water without prejudice.
Later that day we visited a farm with cows, but I didn’t pick up on the details too much because I was busy being distracted by the little calf in the pasture. Someone told me he was ‘recién nacido’, recently born, and I thought, ‘awww, several-month-old cows are so cute!’ But later people went in to visit him, and he was SO recently born that there was the placenta, lying on the ground with mama cow still not having eaten it. Definitely awesome. Especially when mom cow DID try to eat it, and got the dogs interested, then had to scare them away with scary moo-ing. And now you’re all grossed out (but I still plan on posting a picture!).
After that we went to a…farming expo? People were showing their cows and talking about raising them and there were saddles and cowboy hats…And then random people selling the usual jewelry and kids toys and food. And then, a portable theme park. No one was sure why we were there, besides the talk that the professor was supposed to give, and we just wandered around and then tried to figure out how we could spend more than three hours where we were. I marveled at Volcán Arenal, which I could see just past the swirly whatnot from the theme park area, and spoke to a man who lived near the volcano with all the fun wildlife. Unfortunately, what he told me is he’d give the animals food, and as soon as he wasn’t home at night people would come kill them and eat them. This is a recurring theme in Costa Rica (people poaching and eating wild mammals), and the man was obviously saddened by it but had no way to stop it.
My abuelito insisted on getting me an ice cream, and we joined back up with some people from the group to eat and then go to the professor’s talk. I found a baked-in surprise in the cake that was with my ice cream: yummy, a bug! Everyone discussed what to do, and decided that if it wasn’t a cockroach (it probably was, but I didn’t want to throw the whole thing out) I could just eat around that area. Good times were had by all…
The professor didn’t end up giving his speech, as everything was running late (surprise??), and I nodded off listening to a lecture on sperm selection when breeding cattle. Someone eventually woke me up and told me that we were leaving, and a group of us went to wait by the bus. Juuuust as it started to pour, and we started to strategize on what to do, the bus driver came to our rescue! The rest of the people were rounded up and we got to go to the hotel early.
I was lucky to get invited to room with two women so that I didn’t have to stay by myself (and good thing, too, the gira turned out to be way more expensive than I had planned and I wouldn’t have had enough money with me). We took turns showering and getting ready for dinner, and while I was waiting with one woman she asked me to help her turn on the TV. I got it on…right to a telenovela sex scene. Too bad the remote was hard to navigate. She handed it over to me after that and I flipped around for her until a fishing show fascinated her enough for her to tell me to stop. If I had paid attention, I would now have the valuable knowledge of how to tie a fishing hook.
After taking forrreeeever to get ready, a group of us finally headed over for dinner. They were really excited about the professor going out dancing and drinking with them later, but we all ended up just going to sleep. (That was my plan all along, bwahaha!) And such nice, quiet, peaceful sleep it was without the cars keeping me awake. Apparently some people stayed awake long enough to go out, but it wasn’t anything special from what us sleepers were later told. They’re an amusing group.
At breakfast the next morning I heard crying…When it didn’t stop, I got up, ready to try my Spanish in yelling at someone for kicking dogs when I see a litter of puppies toddling around the steps of the restaurant. The story was that a dog would always hang out near the restaurant, and an American couple would come feed her while they had their breakfast. One day, obviously pregnant, she disappeared to have her puppies and hadn’t come back until that day. My GOODNESS were the puppies adorable! They just barely had their eyes open, and were wandering all over and getting stuck places and whimpering like mad. The ladies with whom I had breakfast went to buy the mommy dog milk, and the class assistant bought her food. I asked the waiter at the restaurant, who had told us the story, if I could go pet them, and he just told me that they’re dirty but I could do what I want. Oh, ticos. I went and comforted the mommy dog, and then helped her gather up her pups. One of the ladies was extremely nervous the mom dog would bite me, but after years of experience with animals I knew I’d be fine. Oh, ticas. I didn’t love all over the puppies like I wanted to (I am extremely animal-deprived here) because I knew just being near them made her nervous, but she encouraged me to bring the puppies over to the mom once I had gotten her to lie down and let them nurse. Yay happy, not-lost puppies and a quiet restaurant! I think the whole trip was worth those few minutes with the dogs ^_^
By then I was more than ready to go home, but going to the hot springs was our ‘special treat’ on our way home. Everyone went back on forth whether or not they wanted to go, and it seemed that my wish would come true and we’d head home, but the professor demanded that we at least entered the place to see if we liked it with the option of leaving if we didn’t then abandoned us there. The false hope made me bitter, but I forced myself to get over it and have a good time in the water. It turned out to be very nice, and I pushed out the feelings of impending doom for the coming week and all I had to do.
Part of why I was anxious to get home is I was considering moving. By considering, I mean I had pretty much made up my mind but was too scared to admit it to myself yet. I talked to the program director, Jeanina, about the problems I was having with my tica mom just so she’d know, and she immediately suggested I move. As if…as if it were the most common thing ever. Which it honestly has been this cycle of the program, although before they were bragging about how almost everyone stayed with their tica family because it was such a good experience. The other part was being with slightly tiring people and not ever knowing what was going on next. I like knowing if I should bring my lunch or not, or if we’re going somewhere for three hours or five minutes. The tico way of living still isn’t the most comfortable for me.
On the way home we started up a huge hill, and then, just stopped. And went back down a bit, then couldn’t go up again. I’m not sure what the bus driver was thinking, as the incline didn’t decrease anywhere and there was nowhere to turn off, but it certainly felt like we’d never get home. We went alllll the way back down, and then on a magic side route. Thank goodness, home at last.
I can’t even wrap my head around how much has happened since I was keeping on top of my blog and now, and I still haven’t ended my ‘difficult period’, as I’m naming it. Things finally settled down maybe as of this weekend, and then my low-level stomach annoyance turned into crippling cramps that have persisted for three days straight. So it’s been a battle of trading bad for different kinds of bad, but I’m finally at a place where the end of the bad is in sight and I just hope to last until then. As always, sorry to my mom who has to listen to me hash out every little annoying thing that’s been bothering me once I hit rock bottom when we both know it’s just another bump in the road of something that is overall good.
I think I left off at my gira for my Organic Agriculture class. Bright and early I hopped on the bus (after 15 minutes of walking, since I wasn’t sure what the school bus would be doing on a Saturday (teachers give regular old tests on Saturdays here!), and not telling my tica mom that I wasn’t taking a taxi) and noticed that the fare was unusually high. Just due to dumb luck I had enough money in my pocket (I generally keep exact change in my pocket so I don’t have to hassle with my purse or counting money), and once I got on the bus I realized that the bus had a television. I’m guessing that was the cause for the high fare, but more and more lately there are televisions on the buses that I ride…
Anyways, once I got to the meeting place, I found out that I was truly the only student going. No one ever told me it was an optional fieldtrip, but apparently it was. Students were either on fieldtrips or decided not to go because students weren’t going, so it was just me and the automayores. One of the highlights of the trip happened early: Dancing Queen was playing on the radio on the bus, entirely in Spanish. Yes! How completely ridiculous!
My friend from last week, who is now referred to as ‘el abuelito suyo’ when someone is talking to me, helped me get my backpack on the bus so we could sit together. He also brought snacks for both of us. Throughout the trip I was always a little nervous in the back of my mind because I couldn’t always understand things he said (and because I’m paranoid and unused to this warmer, more openly friendly culture), but I’m guessing that he just likes children but is normally too shy to bond with them (whereas I’m shy myself, so we get each other) or I remind him of a granddaughter. It’s just hard to not fully understand a compliment, and I interpret it to the best of my ability and hope that there was nothing there that would normally tip me off to GET AWAY.
But all my weird mind issues aside, the automayores are cool people in general. They liked to talk to me about my experiences, and share whatever other gringo or exchange student experiences they’ve had, and I found out that most of them are still actively learning and taking multiple classes. That is so awesome! Some were still kinda finicky and rigid in their thinking at times, but I have fun with them and they always manage to teach me something and make me smile. Just another example of how great it is to never stop learning :)
I honestly couldn’t figure out the point to the gira, even though I asked many people and even the professor, but there were a few highlights in between being on the bus and having a two minute visit to a farm just to see one thing. I thought it would be labor-intensive, as it was a trip planned for the regular students as well, but boy was I wrong. We went to a farm where they composted ashes from burned banana plant leftovers, manure, and something I couldn’t understand in Spanish and ‘turned’ the compost to aerate it by shoveling it to one side a few feet. Everyone took turns, and after about 40 minutes the experienced workers took over and we marveled at their speed. We were close to finishing the job, but I guess we only had a certain time allotment.
Then, we got lunch! I was told the types of ‘refrescos naturales’ there were, and heard ‘linaza’ for the first time. People tried to explain it to me by telling me it was a seed that people ate to slim down, but I still couldn’t figure it out. Then I ordered it to try to make out what it was, and it was like drinking watered down yet still thick maple syrup. Yum! Later I looked up what linaza is, and discovered that it is flax seed! I NEVER would have tried the drink if I had known, having had awful experiences with flax seed oil, but I’m glad I was ignorant and could enjoy the sugary flax water without prejudice.
Later that day we visited a farm with cows, but I didn’t pick up on the details too much because I was busy being distracted by the little calf in the pasture. Someone told me he was ‘recién nacido’, recently born, and I thought, ‘awww, several-month-old cows are so cute!’ But later people went in to visit him, and he was SO recently born that there was the placenta, lying on the ground with mama cow still not having eaten it. Definitely awesome. Especially when mom cow DID try to eat it, and got the dogs interested, then had to scare them away with scary moo-ing. And now you’re all grossed out (but I still plan on posting a picture!).
After that we went to a…farming expo? People were showing their cows and talking about raising them and there were saddles and cowboy hats…And then random people selling the usual jewelry and kids toys and food. And then, a portable theme park. No one was sure why we were there, besides the talk that the professor was supposed to give, and we just wandered around and then tried to figure out how we could spend more than three hours where we were. I marveled at Volcán Arenal, which I could see just past the swirly whatnot from the theme park area, and spoke to a man who lived near the volcano with all the fun wildlife. Unfortunately, what he told me is he’d give the animals food, and as soon as he wasn’t home at night people would come kill them and eat them. This is a recurring theme in Costa Rica (people poaching and eating wild mammals), and the man was obviously saddened by it but had no way to stop it.
My abuelito insisted on getting me an ice cream, and we joined back up with some people from the group to eat and then go to the professor’s talk. I found a baked-in surprise in the cake that was with my ice cream: yummy, a bug! Everyone discussed what to do, and decided that if it wasn’t a cockroach (it probably was, but I didn’t want to throw the whole thing out) I could just eat around that area. Good times were had by all…
The professor didn’t end up giving his speech, as everything was running late (surprise??), and I nodded off listening to a lecture on sperm selection when breeding cattle. Someone eventually woke me up and told me that we were leaving, and a group of us went to wait by the bus. Juuuust as it started to pour, and we started to strategize on what to do, the bus driver came to our rescue! The rest of the people were rounded up and we got to go to the hotel early.
I was lucky to get invited to room with two women so that I didn’t have to stay by myself (and good thing, too, the gira turned out to be way more expensive than I had planned and I wouldn’t have had enough money with me). We took turns showering and getting ready for dinner, and while I was waiting with one woman she asked me to help her turn on the TV. I got it on…right to a telenovela sex scene. Too bad the remote was hard to navigate. She handed it over to me after that and I flipped around for her until a fishing show fascinated her enough for her to tell me to stop. If I had paid attention, I would now have the valuable knowledge of how to tie a fishing hook.
After taking forrreeeever to get ready, a group of us finally headed over for dinner. They were really excited about the professor going out dancing and drinking with them later, but we all ended up just going to sleep. (That was my plan all along, bwahaha!) And such nice, quiet, peaceful sleep it was without the cars keeping me awake. Apparently some people stayed awake long enough to go out, but it wasn’t anything special from what us sleepers were later told. They’re an amusing group.
At breakfast the next morning I heard crying…When it didn’t stop, I got up, ready to try my Spanish in yelling at someone for kicking dogs when I see a litter of puppies toddling around the steps of the restaurant. The story was that a dog would always hang out near the restaurant, and an American couple would come feed her while they had their breakfast. One day, obviously pregnant, she disappeared to have her puppies and hadn’t come back until that day. My GOODNESS were the puppies adorable! They just barely had their eyes open, and were wandering all over and getting stuck places and whimpering like mad. The ladies with whom I had breakfast went to buy the mommy dog milk, and the class assistant bought her food. I asked the waiter at the restaurant, who had told us the story, if I could go pet them, and he just told me that they’re dirty but I could do what I want. Oh, ticos. I went and comforted the mommy dog, and then helped her gather up her pups. One of the ladies was extremely nervous the mom dog would bite me, but after years of experience with animals I knew I’d be fine. Oh, ticas. I didn’t love all over the puppies like I wanted to (I am extremely animal-deprived here) because I knew just being near them made her nervous, but she encouraged me to bring the puppies over to the mom once I had gotten her to lie down and let them nurse. Yay happy, not-lost puppies and a quiet restaurant! I think the whole trip was worth those few minutes with the dogs ^_^
By then I was more than ready to go home, but going to the hot springs was our ‘special treat’ on our way home. Everyone went back on forth whether or not they wanted to go, and it seemed that my wish would come true and we’d head home, but the professor demanded that we at least entered the place to see if we liked it with the option of leaving if we didn’t then abandoned us there. The false hope made me bitter, but I forced myself to get over it and have a good time in the water. It turned out to be very nice, and I pushed out the feelings of impending doom for the coming week and all I had to do.
Part of why I was anxious to get home is I was considering moving. By considering, I mean I had pretty much made up my mind but was too scared to admit it to myself yet. I talked to the program director, Jeanina, about the problems I was having with my tica mom just so she’d know, and she immediately suggested I move. As if…as if it were the most common thing ever. Which it honestly has been this cycle of the program, although before they were bragging about how almost everyone stayed with their tica family because it was such a good experience. The other part was being with slightly tiring people and not ever knowing what was going on next. I like knowing if I should bring my lunch or not, or if we’re going somewhere for three hours or five minutes. The tico way of living still isn’t the most comfortable for me.
On the way home we started up a huge hill, and then, just stopped. And went back down a bit, then couldn’t go up again. I’m not sure what the bus driver was thinking, as the incline didn’t decrease anywhere and there was nowhere to turn off, but it certainly felt like we’d never get home. We went alllll the way back down, and then on a magic side route. Thank goodness, home at last.
Un disastre
Odds are against me right now. I started to blog again on Tuesday, and then my Word document got messed up and I couldn't copy and paste or save anything I wrote. So much for that. I'm fairly determined to do this, though, and hopefully I'll finish re-typing my Tuesday thoughts and continue on a bit further.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
La vida loca
My apologies for the random new pictures (they're for a project) and not updating, life has been a little crazy. I switched houses (may or may not be surprising, depending on how much complaining you've had to endure) and had two weekend-long fieldtrips in a row. Yesterday was my first test, and I have since been bombarded with projects. So...until later, I'm fine, fairly homesick and just taking things one day at a time.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Almácigos y postres
Wednesday:
I missed another dance class…for a gira! We went to Cartago to learn about mushrooms and flowers and visited three different locations. I sat next to a man on the bus who seemed a little shyer than the rest. Most of the adults get so excited and talk so quickly that it sounds like chickens when we're all in that little bus, which can get overwhelming, but he was very soft-spoken (sometimes a bit too much, as it took me a while to start to understand him). We chatted on the bus and ended up keeping each other company at each stop. We visited someone working to phase out chemicals when growing mushrooms, two men growing mushrooms and making compost for a profit (these mushrooms were grown in crates, and the stalk and cap came out the sides! I’ll post a picture soon, it was really neat), and a flower nursery. The flower nursery works to produce flowers and seeds for exportation to the US and Europe, and the guide kept emphasizing how sad it was that ticos didn’t get to enjoy them. Except we could buy the flowers next door, and they were practically free for US standards (I’m no gardener, so I shouldn’t say, but it seemed that way from everything I remembered and even the ticos thought it was cheap…12 garlic plants for $2, a pot of flowers for less than $2, big hanging arrangements for something like $5), so I don’t think they’re THAT sad about exporting. The guide took us into the greenhouse, taught us how to how to tell male and female flowers apart, then how to fertilize flowers, and finally little bit about production (manual pollination is more efficient than natural pollination for seed production, etc.).
When I got home and turned on the tap, it spurted out differently and surprised me. I turned it off, and realized it was no longer dripping. Figuring it was something the new person living with us had seen and fixed, I asked if he had changed the faucet. He was extremely confused, and then so was I, but then I saw that a little cap had been put over the tap. Maybe my tica mom finally decided to believe me about the leaky faucet!? Whatever happened, yay, that sink was driving me crazy.
Thursday:
Today on the farm (that is so cool to type…haha) we dug flower beds (they’re called ‘camas’ in Spanish, too), turned the non-working compost heap (mmm, cockroaches, nice little sign that things aren’t going as planned), and planted seedlings. The Biodynamics calendar says this week is good for ‘leaf’ plants, or plants such as basil and lettuce where the leaf is the part that is consumed, so that’s what we planted along with thyme and chive-like onions. I got my first official nasty blisters, and I found a caterpillar hanging out on the compost bag. I asked if it was poisonous, and apparently it only causes problems when it touches somewhere on the body with hair. So, hands were safe, arms were not. Strange.
I had to mail a ballot to vote on a proposition from home, and just as I was making all the signals in the crosswalks and really hauling butt to be able to make my bus on time, I trot up to a boarded up post office. Half-hoping that there were no nearby post offices so I could just give up and go home, I asked and someone told me it relocated to just around the building and across the street. Well, after bitterly admitting to myself that I wouldn’t make the bus, I found the new office and took the long way home.
I was a little angry after missing the direct-route bus and having worked digging holes and hauling things for six hours, but I consoled myself by promising myself a dessert at the bakery I pass on the way home. I always say ‘hi’ to the security guards I pass on the street if they aren’t busy and are more or less on my path because I figure we’ll be seeing a lot of each other, I think it's the proper social thing to do here, and I’d like them to save me from crazy people if the need should ever arise. I passed a security guard and said ‘hi’, to which he responded ‘¿todo bien?’ with a big thumbs up. So I told him, ‘¡todo bien!’ and gave him one back because everything really WAS fine, and my grumpy went away. When I went to the bakery, I told the woman I wanted to try a bunch of different things before I went home, to which she replied that I would be returning home with a few extra kilos in a playful manner. Thankfully, after trying the desserts, now I know that won’t be a problem. I HAVE liked desserts from here, but just none that I’ve bought myself. It’s always someone else picking a place or letting me try what they’re eating. I guess it’s better that way, as desserts are waaaay too cheap here for me to be safe craving them.
I finally got lunch, at around 4, and decided to stay home from choir and do homework. I didn’t end up doing homework, though, because I chatted with my new…dorm-mate? He got stuck in Miami after a conference due to the volcanic eruption (of a volcano whose name I couldn’t quite catch…being that it was a pretty crazy name) in Europe, and therefore couldn’t go home to Switzerland (the ash cloud prevented more or less all the flights in Europe). It was cheaper to fly to Costa Rica, study Spanish for a week, and fly back than to just stay in Miami, so that’s what he did! He’s a new dad and a backpacker, so he told me about his family and his trips. It was really nice talking to him, and surprising to learn that he didn’t know what a piñata was. I feel like I’ve just always known, but I don’t really know why. Culture is fun. His business pertains to Internet, so we griped about how slow it is here, and then did an Internet speed check and validated my claim that a short youtube clip takes more than 10 minutes to load (it said 13 for a 3-5 minute clip, if I remember correctly). Good fun! He left today (Friday) to do touristy things before returning to Miami and then home, and I was sad to see him go. But, there is a couple interested in staying here a few days, and we find out tomorrow if they will (they wanted to pay less than tica mom wanted, so I suppose they’re deciding).
Friday:
My alarm didn’t go off again, but I realized it was because the power had gone out. I mentioned this to my tica mom, and she told me that her daughters’ shower had broken so they had cut the power to fix it. Thank goodness I didn’t have school or plans today o_o;
Today was fairly uneventful. I did, however, slam a knife into my finger and only get a papercut. That was lucky (or the knife is extremely dull, which is what I’m thinking), as I was cutting a carrot and there is no cutting board…And as I typed that, I realized that there IS one, I just hadn’t seen my tica mom use it so I assumed there wasn’t. Recently it’s been hanging out behind the handles of the sink and keeps falling into my hands when I wash things. Hurrah, no more awkward putting things on plates and trying to have the least knife-plate contact possible!
Tomorrow I am going on a fieldtrip with my Organic Agriculture class. It seems that there are no students my age going, as everyone in my work group said they couldn't make it, but we'll see. Almost all of the automayores will be there, from the hand-count that was taken, and we will in fact be working, but I don't really know on what. Yup, this is planning Costa Rica style.
I missed another dance class…for a gira! We went to Cartago to learn about mushrooms and flowers and visited three different locations. I sat next to a man on the bus who seemed a little shyer than the rest. Most of the adults get so excited and talk so quickly that it sounds like chickens when we're all in that little bus, which can get overwhelming, but he was very soft-spoken (sometimes a bit too much, as it took me a while to start to understand him). We chatted on the bus and ended up keeping each other company at each stop. We visited someone working to phase out chemicals when growing mushrooms, two men growing mushrooms and making compost for a profit (these mushrooms were grown in crates, and the stalk and cap came out the sides! I’ll post a picture soon, it was really neat), and a flower nursery. The flower nursery works to produce flowers and seeds for exportation to the US and Europe, and the guide kept emphasizing how sad it was that ticos didn’t get to enjoy them. Except we could buy the flowers next door, and they were practically free for US standards (I’m no gardener, so I shouldn’t say, but it seemed that way from everything I remembered and even the ticos thought it was cheap…12 garlic plants for $2, a pot of flowers for less than $2, big hanging arrangements for something like $5), so I don’t think they’re THAT sad about exporting. The guide took us into the greenhouse, taught us how to how to tell male and female flowers apart, then how to fertilize flowers, and finally little bit about production (manual pollination is more efficient than natural pollination for seed production, etc.).
When I got home and turned on the tap, it spurted out differently and surprised me. I turned it off, and realized it was no longer dripping. Figuring it was something the new person living with us had seen and fixed, I asked if he had changed the faucet. He was extremely confused, and then so was I, but then I saw that a little cap had been put over the tap. Maybe my tica mom finally decided to believe me about the leaky faucet!? Whatever happened, yay, that sink was driving me crazy.
Thursday:
Today on the farm (that is so cool to type…haha) we dug flower beds (they’re called ‘camas’ in Spanish, too), turned the non-working compost heap (mmm, cockroaches, nice little sign that things aren’t going as planned), and planted seedlings. The Biodynamics calendar says this week is good for ‘leaf’ plants, or plants such as basil and lettuce where the leaf is the part that is consumed, so that’s what we planted along with thyme and chive-like onions. I got my first official nasty blisters, and I found a caterpillar hanging out on the compost bag. I asked if it was poisonous, and apparently it only causes problems when it touches somewhere on the body with hair. So, hands were safe, arms were not. Strange.
I had to mail a ballot to vote on a proposition from home, and just as I was making all the signals in the crosswalks and really hauling butt to be able to make my bus on time, I trot up to a boarded up post office. Half-hoping that there were no nearby post offices so I could just give up and go home, I asked and someone told me it relocated to just around the building and across the street. Well, after bitterly admitting to myself that I wouldn’t make the bus, I found the new office and took the long way home.
I was a little angry after missing the direct-route bus and having worked digging holes and hauling things for six hours, but I consoled myself by promising myself a dessert at the bakery I pass on the way home. I always say ‘hi’ to the security guards I pass on the street if they aren’t busy and are more or less on my path because I figure we’ll be seeing a lot of each other, I think it's the proper social thing to do here, and I’d like them to save me from crazy people if the need should ever arise. I passed a security guard and said ‘hi’, to which he responded ‘¿todo bien?’ with a big thumbs up. So I told him, ‘¡todo bien!’ and gave him one back because everything really WAS fine, and my grumpy went away. When I went to the bakery, I told the woman I wanted to try a bunch of different things before I went home, to which she replied that I would be returning home with a few extra kilos in a playful manner. Thankfully, after trying the desserts, now I know that won’t be a problem. I HAVE liked desserts from here, but just none that I’ve bought myself. It’s always someone else picking a place or letting me try what they’re eating. I guess it’s better that way, as desserts are waaaay too cheap here for me to be safe craving them.
I finally got lunch, at around 4, and decided to stay home from choir and do homework. I didn’t end up doing homework, though, because I chatted with my new…dorm-mate? He got stuck in Miami after a conference due to the volcanic eruption (of a volcano whose name I couldn’t quite catch…being that it was a pretty crazy name) in Europe, and therefore couldn’t go home to Switzerland (the ash cloud prevented more or less all the flights in Europe). It was cheaper to fly to Costa Rica, study Spanish for a week, and fly back than to just stay in Miami, so that’s what he did! He’s a new dad and a backpacker, so he told me about his family and his trips. It was really nice talking to him, and surprising to learn that he didn’t know what a piñata was. I feel like I’ve just always known, but I don’t really know why. Culture is fun. His business pertains to Internet, so we griped about how slow it is here, and then did an Internet speed check and validated my claim that a short youtube clip takes more than 10 minutes to load (it said 13 for a 3-5 minute clip, if I remember correctly). Good fun! He left today (Friday) to do touristy things before returning to Miami and then home, and I was sad to see him go. But, there is a couple interested in staying here a few days, and we find out tomorrow if they will (they wanted to pay less than tica mom wanted, so I suppose they’re deciding).
Friday:
My alarm didn’t go off again, but I realized it was because the power had gone out. I mentioned this to my tica mom, and she told me that her daughters’ shower had broken so they had cut the power to fix it. Thank goodness I didn’t have school or plans today o_o;
Today was fairly uneventful. I did, however, slam a knife into my finger and only get a papercut. That was lucky (or the knife is extremely dull, which is what I’m thinking), as I was cutting a carrot and there is no cutting board…And as I typed that, I realized that there IS one, I just hadn’t seen my tica mom use it so I assumed there wasn’t. Recently it’s been hanging out behind the handles of the sink and keeps falling into my hands when I wash things. Hurrah, no more awkward putting things on plates and trying to have the least knife-plate contact possible!
Tomorrow I am going on a fieldtrip with my Organic Agriculture class. It seems that there are no students my age going, as everyone in my work group said they couldn't make it, but we'll see. Almost all of the automayores will be there, from the hand-count that was taken, and we will in fact be working, but I don't really know on what. Yup, this is planning Costa Rica style.
Carne y compañeros
Oh boy, here we go.
Monday:
Ugh, Mondays have been rough for me lately. Sunday night I found hamburger in my food, but figured it was a one-time accidental thing (possibly frying my food in the same pan after someone else made hamburgers?). Then, on Monday for lunch, I found a sausage. I had to toss out most of my dinner from the night before, as the sauce was obviously meaty, and then had to do the same when I found the sausage in the sausage sauce. I hadn’t had problems with this before, so I brought it up to my tica mom. First she told me it wasn’t meat, then she ate it and told me it wasn’t THAT much meat. She couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to eat it, because there was only some meat by mistake, and she brushed me off when I explained I didn’t eat anything with meat in it, and the sauce obviously had been cooked with meat. She figured it was okay, because she had made it for her granddaughter who stayed the night.
I wouldn’t have been so annoyed, granted there was a new student moving in that day and I knew she was distracted, but that morning I discovered why I magically was sleeping through my alarm the last four or five days. The snooze button on the top was completely smashed in, meaning the alarm wasn’t going off. I was able to fix the alarm, but I have no idea what happened to it. I asked my tica mom, and she told me that the electricity must have gone out. I explained it to her better, and she said she had no idea. I wouldn't have been angry if she had accidentally done it and told me, but not telling me and therefore facilitating a non-functioning alarm is quite a pain for a student. This is mostly hypothetical, because I will never really know what happened, but things rarely implode…
Yoga that night was freaky stuff. It was the Mayan calendar day for digestion, which focuses on how what we put into our bodies affects us (including emotions). That’s two Mondays in a row now that the yoga lesson has honed in on exactly what was bothering me. Which is good, but I almost started laughing when the instructor announced the focus of the class, as it was absurd how accurately it fit my mood.
Tuesday:
Next week is Semana U! Which means there will be concerts, food, T-shirts for sale, possibly more, and some professors don’t give class or homework. This is what I learned during my popular dance class :) I am going to grab some ticos to help me figure things out, it sounds fun!
My Organic Agriculture class was cancelled (surprise, surprise), and this time the reasoning made even less sense. The professor said he’d give class if four students showed up. We had three students waiting, and were hoping for a fourth, when the class assistant told us class was cancelled and she had sent out an e-mail to tell us. Except…no one got e-mails? She told me she sent me one at a little before 8 AM, but it turns out it didn’t come until almost 11 (hm, makes me wonder when she actually sent it). The other two students with whom I was waiting didn’t get e-mails, and she said that I had only received one because I had sent her an e-mail. I sent her an e-mail over two weeks ago, and then another one…Aaaanyways, everything is chaos, even the professor didn’t know what was happening, as he still thought there was class. Her wonderful news: class is now at 7 AM. This means I have classes, separated by two hour blocks, from 7 in the morning to 7 at night every Tuesday. The only thing that kept me sane is the discovery of a computer lab, thank you Organic Agriculture buddy. Now I have somewhere to wait between classes, at least, and I can actually start having an academic component to that class.
We got our study guide for our test in my Natural History class, and the professor told us we should work in study groups to complete it. Um…too bad I don’t know anyone in that class. I talked to him, and he told me he could make the announcement that the fluent English-speaker wanted to be part of a study group, but he ended up forgetting so I got up the courage to blurt it out at the end of class. Because all of the reading is in English, the other students were more than happy to let me into their study plans, and I finally talked to them. I told one student that I was shy, and he told me that everything would change on our field trip (coming up early May), and that everyone would become friends. That was my plan, good thing it'll work! Another student invited me to a talk a human development, but as an ecology-focused person who just wanted to make the bus before it left (and I had to wait another hour), I politely declined. We ended up talking for a while afterwards, he in English and I in Spanish, and I had to run to just baaarely catch the bus as it was pulling out of the stop. I love having good bus luck, and I’m so excited for the chance to get to know my classmates!
Monday:
Ugh, Mondays have been rough for me lately. Sunday night I found hamburger in my food, but figured it was a one-time accidental thing (possibly frying my food in the same pan after someone else made hamburgers?). Then, on Monday for lunch, I found a sausage. I had to toss out most of my dinner from the night before, as the sauce was obviously meaty, and then had to do the same when I found the sausage in the sausage sauce. I hadn’t had problems with this before, so I brought it up to my tica mom. First she told me it wasn’t meat, then she ate it and told me it wasn’t THAT much meat. She couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to eat it, because there was only some meat by mistake, and she brushed me off when I explained I didn’t eat anything with meat in it, and the sauce obviously had been cooked with meat. She figured it was okay, because she had made it for her granddaughter who stayed the night.
I wouldn’t have been so annoyed, granted there was a new student moving in that day and I knew she was distracted, but that morning I discovered why I magically was sleeping through my alarm the last four or five days. The snooze button on the top was completely smashed in, meaning the alarm wasn’t going off. I was able to fix the alarm, but I have no idea what happened to it. I asked my tica mom, and she told me that the electricity must have gone out. I explained it to her better, and she said she had no idea. I wouldn't have been angry if she had accidentally done it and told me, but not telling me and therefore facilitating a non-functioning alarm is quite a pain for a student. This is mostly hypothetical, because I will never really know what happened, but things rarely implode…
Yoga that night was freaky stuff. It was the Mayan calendar day for digestion, which focuses on how what we put into our bodies affects us (including emotions). That’s two Mondays in a row now that the yoga lesson has honed in on exactly what was bothering me. Which is good, but I almost started laughing when the instructor announced the focus of the class, as it was absurd how accurately it fit my mood.
Tuesday:
Next week is Semana U! Which means there will be concerts, food, T-shirts for sale, possibly more, and some professors don’t give class or homework. This is what I learned during my popular dance class :) I am going to grab some ticos to help me figure things out, it sounds fun!
My Organic Agriculture class was cancelled (surprise, surprise), and this time the reasoning made even less sense. The professor said he’d give class if four students showed up. We had three students waiting, and were hoping for a fourth, when the class assistant told us class was cancelled and she had sent out an e-mail to tell us. Except…no one got e-mails? She told me she sent me one at a little before 8 AM, but it turns out it didn’t come until almost 11 (hm, makes me wonder when she actually sent it). The other two students with whom I was waiting didn’t get e-mails, and she said that I had only received one because I had sent her an e-mail. I sent her an e-mail over two weeks ago, and then another one…Aaaanyways, everything is chaos, even the professor didn’t know what was happening, as he still thought there was class. Her wonderful news: class is now at 7 AM. This means I have classes, separated by two hour blocks, from 7 in the morning to 7 at night every Tuesday. The only thing that kept me sane is the discovery of a computer lab, thank you Organic Agriculture buddy. Now I have somewhere to wait between classes, at least, and I can actually start having an academic component to that class.
We got our study guide for our test in my Natural History class, and the professor told us we should work in study groups to complete it. Um…too bad I don’t know anyone in that class. I talked to him, and he told me he could make the announcement that the fluent English-speaker wanted to be part of a study group, but he ended up forgetting so I got up the courage to blurt it out at the end of class. Because all of the reading is in English, the other students were more than happy to let me into their study plans, and I finally talked to them. I told one student that I was shy, and he told me that everything would change on our field trip (coming up early May), and that everyone would become friends. That was my plan, good thing it'll work! Another student invited me to a talk a human development, but as an ecology-focused person who just wanted to make the bus before it left (and I had to wait another hour), I politely declined. We ended up talking for a while afterwards, he in English and I in Spanish, and I had to run to just baaarely catch the bus as it was pulling out of the stop. I love having good bus luck, and I’m so excited for the chance to get to know my classmates!
Monday, April 19, 2010
Los demonios de no entender películas
Sunday started off super slowly, as I was up really late the night before talking to friends from college ( ^_^ ) and completely crashed in the morning. I went to lie down and drifted in and out of sleep, and my tica mom was nice enough to buy my weekly fruit supply on my behalf so I didn’t have to accompany her to the feria agricultor. I’m always super careful not to get plastic bags when I go, because they are so wasteful about packaging fruit, so now I have a two-fold increase in my plastic bag collection as my tica mom has a strange love of them. She tells me she needs them, but she just throws most of them away once we get home so I don’t really understand. I’m hoping she’ll learn by my example, and although that hasn’t happened yet, I still have hope. Someday, she, too, may feel comfortable putting carrots with potatoes, and mangoes with passion fruits in the same bag.
We had a cafecito together before I went to meet my friend to go to the mall, and she told me about how stressed she gets from having to take care of her grandchildren all the time. She loves the idea of kids moving out of their parents’ houses more or less once they went to college, and as she’s telling me this I’m thinking about how much I love the idea of family staying close. I don’t think it’s fair to dump all responsibility on mom, but I don’t think she realizes how lucky she is to be a part of her children’s and grandchildren’s lives. Or maybe she does, but just not yesterday. She says she loves them, but she just needs quiet time, and I can understand that, but I have the personal opinion that she’d drive herself insane being in a house alone and would end up going over to see them semi-constantly. I’d really have loved to see my grandparents more, as well many others from my extended family, growing up. I think that my parents did a better job with that than most people do for their children with visits, but it’s hard being far away. Her two daughters that live with her still are best friends, and all four children get together every Saturday. I know I’ll never have that sort of set-up in my life, and that it’ll only get harder to visit as I start to establish my own life, so I can’t help but be a little jealous of latino-style families. I guess there are always good things and bad things about these types of situations, and that it’s only human nature to want what we don’t have.
Fearing I would be late, as the cafecito threw off my timing, I ran to catch the bus to meet up with my friend. I love that the two friends I’ve made one-on-one plans with have been on time :) I’ve been warned that I may be waiting for hours… I was on time, we caught the bus, and literally went back exactly to where I had caught the bus near my house! So, I could have just met her at the bus stop, but we didn’t want things to get mixed up. The mall we went to is one of the biggest in Costa Rica, which is why we had to check it out, but she accurately told me that the malls in the US are probably bigger.
There was a really nice view on the top level and an open courtyard, so we bought green mangoes with chilies and lime and looked out at the mountains while eating and talking. It’s official, I’ve finally tried green mangoes the tico way! They were pretty good, though my sweet tooth might prefer ripe mangoes. (By the way, we visited a pet shop, and they sell hedgehogs as pets! This was strange for me, but I feel like maybe people on the east coast have them?). Afterwards we decided to see a movie, and the movie we chose was a movie from Costa Rica based on the book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez called “Del amor y otros demonios” (Of Love and Other Demons). My friend told me that it was directed by someone from Costa Rica, and that many of the actors were Colombian.
I love the title ever so much, but the movie didn’t really do it for me. Halfway through the movie, my friend made sure I wasn’t bored, and I told her that I wasn’t because I could understand what was happening. But then, the movie ended. And…well, I wasn’t really sure what happened. Feeling mildly like a failure for watching my second movie in Spanish without ‘getting it’ (the first was ‘Alicia en el país de las maravillas’ (Alice in Wonderland)), I turn to my friend and she says, ‘no entendí’. AHA! And when we went to the bathroom, everyone was discussing the movie and trying to make sense of it. Turns out, just like Alice in Wonderland, I understood the plot but not whatever deeper meaning was hiding in it. But for this movie, not even native speakers understood what the heck was going on. I must find a straightforward movie to watch in Spanish, without weird accents (which were in both movies) or the use of vosotros. Even people here barely understand vosotros, that’s mostly just a Spain and old-timey way of speaking.
She was a really fun person with whom to spend my Sunday, so I’m hoping we can get together again soon. We might watch the movie we aaaalmost went to see before we decided to see the one in Spanish at some point in the future, and I wouldn’t mind using that as an excuse for another outing.
We had a cafecito together before I went to meet my friend to go to the mall, and she told me about how stressed she gets from having to take care of her grandchildren all the time. She loves the idea of kids moving out of their parents’ houses more or less once they went to college, and as she’s telling me this I’m thinking about how much I love the idea of family staying close. I don’t think it’s fair to dump all responsibility on mom, but I don’t think she realizes how lucky she is to be a part of her children’s and grandchildren’s lives. Or maybe she does, but just not yesterday. She says she loves them, but she just needs quiet time, and I can understand that, but I have the personal opinion that she’d drive herself insane being in a house alone and would end up going over to see them semi-constantly. I’d really have loved to see my grandparents more, as well many others from my extended family, growing up. I think that my parents did a better job with that than most people do for their children with visits, but it’s hard being far away. Her two daughters that live with her still are best friends, and all four children get together every Saturday. I know I’ll never have that sort of set-up in my life, and that it’ll only get harder to visit as I start to establish my own life, so I can’t help but be a little jealous of latino-style families. I guess there are always good things and bad things about these types of situations, and that it’s only human nature to want what we don’t have.
Fearing I would be late, as the cafecito threw off my timing, I ran to catch the bus to meet up with my friend. I love that the two friends I’ve made one-on-one plans with have been on time :) I’ve been warned that I may be waiting for hours… I was on time, we caught the bus, and literally went back exactly to where I had caught the bus near my house! So, I could have just met her at the bus stop, but we didn’t want things to get mixed up. The mall we went to is one of the biggest in Costa Rica, which is why we had to check it out, but she accurately told me that the malls in the US are probably bigger.
There was a really nice view on the top level and an open courtyard, so we bought green mangoes with chilies and lime and looked out at the mountains while eating and talking. It’s official, I’ve finally tried green mangoes the tico way! They were pretty good, though my sweet tooth might prefer ripe mangoes. (By the way, we visited a pet shop, and they sell hedgehogs as pets! This was strange for me, but I feel like maybe people on the east coast have them?). Afterwards we decided to see a movie, and the movie we chose was a movie from Costa Rica based on the book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez called “Del amor y otros demonios” (Of Love and Other Demons). My friend told me that it was directed by someone from Costa Rica, and that many of the actors were Colombian.
I love the title ever so much, but the movie didn’t really do it for me. Halfway through the movie, my friend made sure I wasn’t bored, and I told her that I wasn’t because I could understand what was happening. But then, the movie ended. And…well, I wasn’t really sure what happened. Feeling mildly like a failure for watching my second movie in Spanish without ‘getting it’ (the first was ‘Alicia en el país de las maravillas’ (Alice in Wonderland)), I turn to my friend and she says, ‘no entendí’. AHA! And when we went to the bathroom, everyone was discussing the movie and trying to make sense of it. Turns out, just like Alice in Wonderland, I understood the plot but not whatever deeper meaning was hiding in it. But for this movie, not even native speakers understood what the heck was going on. I must find a straightforward movie to watch in Spanish, without weird accents (which were in both movies) or the use of vosotros. Even people here barely understand vosotros, that’s mostly just a Spain and old-timey way of speaking.
She was a really fun person with whom to spend my Sunday, so I’m hoping we can get together again soon. We might watch the movie we aaaalmost went to see before we decided to see the one in Spanish at some point in the future, and I wouldn’t mind using that as an excuse for another outing.
INBio Parque y la Iglesia de Zapote
So, Saturday I was robbed. The bad thing was that I was most definitely watching my back. And I KNOW that a backpack becomes a frontpack while in downtown San Jose, but I had a backpack because I was planning to go on a hike and I was not entirely prepared because we walked through the sketchy part of town on the way back, not the way there, due to the arrangement of bus stops. But the good thing was, all they took was my sunglasses holder! Somehow they had gotten into the two smallest pockets on my backpack, and I never put anything in the outermost pocket due to paranoia (which has now been justified), but my camera was in the second smallest pocket. I was prepared for tricky pick-pockets, as I put it inside an inner zip pocket inside the pocket they got into, so I could just imagine their disappointment when they could see the camera through the mesh but couldn’t get to it quite in time. I did, though, as I got a weird feeling and immediately checked to see if anyone had been getting into my bag. I just know that I was really lucky, or maybe a mix of smart and lucky, and that if I ever want to bring my backpack anywhere I need to tie the zippers and be even more vigilant. Hopefully we won’t end up in the bad part of town the next adventure we take.
My adventure earlier in the day was amazing :) Karen and I went to INBio Parque, which I thought would entail some intense hiking, but it instead turned out to be a smaller area with little educational activities. We went on a guided tour to start out, and I just have to say that the tour guides here are amazing. I feel like they’re always really fun, friendly guys, and I haven’t had a problem dragging interesting facts out of them. There was a boy/girl scout troop (they are mixed-gendered here, which would have been awesome for the states as we could have maybe had a better mix of camping and domestic activities) and a family from Florida with us on the tour. The family from Florida spoke Spanish with the exception of their mischievous 7 or 8-year-old son, who was pestering the ever-patient guides in English throughout the tour. He was completely shocked to learn that I spoke English when I spoke to him, which highly amused me. The guides taught us about such things as the ‘ave feminista’, which is a bird who drops her eggs off with a male and runs. I told the guide I thought it was a good idea, to which he responded that he thought it should be 50-50. Heehee, sure.
The concept of the park was that there was a tropical dry forest right next to a tropical rain forest, and the pathways led us through these different ecosystems. Along the way, there were little rooms with terrariums that held snakes, frogs or bugs so that we could see a representation of what lives in the forest. To me, this was pretty much a cruelty-free park because there were no captured birds or animals stuck in cages for us to gawk at, though I do sometimes feel badly for the flying bugs or the really big snakes. There were captured mammals at one point, but they were in a barn and petting zoo as part of the ‘sustainable house’ on the property and definitely had room to move around. It seems they only keep the baby animals (sheep, goats and bunnies) around for people to hold/pet, which is probably for safety reasons and because they haven’t yet learned to RUN from the grabby little kids. Okay, well, I guess the park wasn’t cruelty-free when it came to the bunnies, but I’m hoping that because young children are short they don’t have that far to fall…It seemed that the older rabbits picked on them more than the kids, as they liked to bite off parts of their ears o_0 That was a new concept for me and bunnies.
The coolest part of the sustainable house was the bio-digester, which uses decomposing food waste for energy in the form of gas. Although I want a worm box, which they also had, for food waste, I wouldn’t mind getting energy as opposed to soil from that food waste. Karen and I both decided we had learned a lot from the tour, and I got my animal fix by hanging out with the baby bunnies. They were so interested in my backpack when I put it down, and they didn’t try eating the straps like the goats, so I got lots of bunny attention (even the skittish adults) :D My tica mom says she likes animals, just as long as they stay away from her and aren’t in her house. She’s a big butterfly fan.
One of the best parts of the park was the feria gastronomía that just happened to be there that day as an event. I was in food heaven, and had some amazing chocolate mousse (though it didn’t rival dad’s family recipe that Eva made over summer ;) ). Karen and I bought all sorts of food and then split it, and the countries we ate from included Lebanon, Thailand, the Netherlands somewhere (fail on my part), Argentina, France and Greece. I have to take my hat off to France, which is a rare occurrence for me, because they were the ones with the mousse. They also had a fabulous butter cake…I don’t know what it was, but it was at least 50% butter. The US had a table as well, and we had barbecued chicken, pork rice (?) and apple pie. There was also some dessert that looked similar to a brownie, maybe, but I had no idea what it was. I guess that’s what we eat. Yay home country!
That night I went to see the choir I’m in perform at the Zapote church. Technically, I could have also performed, but I don’t have any formal black or white clothing (the uniform) and once I went I discovered they knew two songs I had never heard before. The truth is, I probably wouldn’t have gone, but I live so close to Zapote that I’m practically in it, so not going felt silly. Therefore, I was there as support, and maybe to get one of those six choir performance reviews out of the way…probably more the second reason ^_^;
They sing so beautifully! I was really impressed, everything sounded good. The one ‘off’ bit was that there was a soprano who, just by herself, sang way louder than any of the other sections, but her voice is so clear and wonderful that it wasn’t such a bad thing. That is hard to do hitting all those high notes, but she is just incredibly impressive and did it without any sign of strain.
I sat with a person who used to be in the choir and was now there just to watch his friends, and had no problem chatting with him for a while (though I still couldn’t click with the choir, which I tried to do again before the performance…hmm). The man on the other side of me started to talk to me near the end to tell me that they sang a song about the national flower of Costa Rica, then to tell me that they sang a bolero that is traditionally sung by three people and accompanied by guitars, and lastly to tell me that the performance was wonderful and to wish me a good night. I love little interactions like those.
After the performance, I went to tell them how much I enjoyed it, but sorta just ended up standing awkwardly and watching them be best friends. Then I went to the bus stop, asked a man if I was in the right place, and instantly struck up a conversation with him. Phew, it’s not me after all, it’s just choir dynamics. I love reminders that I’m not socially hopeless after being with the choir! He and I chatted on the bus as well, and for a moment I was nervous that he was a little TOO curious about where I was and what I was doing, but he was just a nice guy coming from studies at a nearby church. He’s an Anglican, and the first non-Catholic I’ve met here.
Once I got home, I wanted to see what the bus driver had given me for change. My change should have been 15 colones, meaning a 10 cent coin and a 5 cent coin, but he only handed me one coin. I figured it wasn’t that important if he shortchanged me, but when I pulled it out of my pocket, boy was I surprised. He had given me a quarter! Thinking about it now, American currency is used here fairly regularly, but I just hadn’t seen it in so long. He shortchanged himself, as there are 510 colones in a dollar (yes, the exchange rate has changed drastically since I’ve been here, and it wasn’t in my favor). I guess my gringa-ness was overwhelming for him, although I was told once again today that I don’t have an American accent when I speak Spanish. The tour guide told me I sounded like I was from another Spanish-speaking country, not from the US, so I took that as a major compliment :)
My adventure earlier in the day was amazing :) Karen and I went to INBio Parque, which I thought would entail some intense hiking, but it instead turned out to be a smaller area with little educational activities. We went on a guided tour to start out, and I just have to say that the tour guides here are amazing. I feel like they’re always really fun, friendly guys, and I haven’t had a problem dragging interesting facts out of them. There was a boy/girl scout troop (they are mixed-gendered here, which would have been awesome for the states as we could have maybe had a better mix of camping and domestic activities) and a family from Florida with us on the tour. The family from Florida spoke Spanish with the exception of their mischievous 7 or 8-year-old son, who was pestering the ever-patient guides in English throughout the tour. He was completely shocked to learn that I spoke English when I spoke to him, which highly amused me. The guides taught us about such things as the ‘ave feminista’, which is a bird who drops her eggs off with a male and runs. I told the guide I thought it was a good idea, to which he responded that he thought it should be 50-50. Heehee, sure.
The concept of the park was that there was a tropical dry forest right next to a tropical rain forest, and the pathways led us through these different ecosystems. Along the way, there were little rooms with terrariums that held snakes, frogs or bugs so that we could see a representation of what lives in the forest. To me, this was pretty much a cruelty-free park because there were no captured birds or animals stuck in cages for us to gawk at, though I do sometimes feel badly for the flying bugs or the really big snakes. There were captured mammals at one point, but they were in a barn and petting zoo as part of the ‘sustainable house’ on the property and definitely had room to move around. It seems they only keep the baby animals (sheep, goats and bunnies) around for people to hold/pet, which is probably for safety reasons and because they haven’t yet learned to RUN from the grabby little kids. Okay, well, I guess the park wasn’t cruelty-free when it came to the bunnies, but I’m hoping that because young children are short they don’t have that far to fall…It seemed that the older rabbits picked on them more than the kids, as they liked to bite off parts of their ears o_0 That was a new concept for me and bunnies.
The coolest part of the sustainable house was the bio-digester, which uses decomposing food waste for energy in the form of gas. Although I want a worm box, which they also had, for food waste, I wouldn’t mind getting energy as opposed to soil from that food waste. Karen and I both decided we had learned a lot from the tour, and I got my animal fix by hanging out with the baby bunnies. They were so interested in my backpack when I put it down, and they didn’t try eating the straps like the goats, so I got lots of bunny attention (even the skittish adults) :D My tica mom says she likes animals, just as long as they stay away from her and aren’t in her house. She’s a big butterfly fan.
One of the best parts of the park was the feria gastronomía that just happened to be there that day as an event. I was in food heaven, and had some amazing chocolate mousse (though it didn’t rival dad’s family recipe that Eva made over summer ;) ). Karen and I bought all sorts of food and then split it, and the countries we ate from included Lebanon, Thailand, the Netherlands somewhere (fail on my part), Argentina, France and Greece. I have to take my hat off to France, which is a rare occurrence for me, because they were the ones with the mousse. They also had a fabulous butter cake…I don’t know what it was, but it was at least 50% butter. The US had a table as well, and we had barbecued chicken, pork rice (?) and apple pie. There was also some dessert that looked similar to a brownie, maybe, but I had no idea what it was. I guess that’s what we eat. Yay home country!
That night I went to see the choir I’m in perform at the Zapote church. Technically, I could have also performed, but I don’t have any formal black or white clothing (the uniform) and once I went I discovered they knew two songs I had never heard before. The truth is, I probably wouldn’t have gone, but I live so close to Zapote that I’m practically in it, so not going felt silly. Therefore, I was there as support, and maybe to get one of those six choir performance reviews out of the way…probably more the second reason ^_^;
They sing so beautifully! I was really impressed, everything sounded good. The one ‘off’ bit was that there was a soprano who, just by herself, sang way louder than any of the other sections, but her voice is so clear and wonderful that it wasn’t such a bad thing. That is hard to do hitting all those high notes, but she is just incredibly impressive and did it without any sign of strain.
I sat with a person who used to be in the choir and was now there just to watch his friends, and had no problem chatting with him for a while (though I still couldn’t click with the choir, which I tried to do again before the performance…hmm). The man on the other side of me started to talk to me near the end to tell me that they sang a song about the national flower of Costa Rica, then to tell me that they sang a bolero that is traditionally sung by three people and accompanied by guitars, and lastly to tell me that the performance was wonderful and to wish me a good night. I love little interactions like those.
After the performance, I went to tell them how much I enjoyed it, but sorta just ended up standing awkwardly and watching them be best friends. Then I went to the bus stop, asked a man if I was in the right place, and instantly struck up a conversation with him. Phew, it’s not me after all, it’s just choir dynamics. I love reminders that I’m not socially hopeless after being with the choir! He and I chatted on the bus as well, and for a moment I was nervous that he was a little TOO curious about where I was and what I was doing, but he was just a nice guy coming from studies at a nearby church. He’s an Anglican, and the first non-Catholic I’ve met here.
Once I got home, I wanted to see what the bus driver had given me for change. My change should have been 15 colones, meaning a 10 cent coin and a 5 cent coin, but he only handed me one coin. I figured it wasn’t that important if he shortchanged me, but when I pulled it out of my pocket, boy was I surprised. He had given me a quarter! Thinking about it now, American currency is used here fairly regularly, but I just hadn’t seen it in so long. He shortchanged himself, as there are 510 colones in a dollar (yes, the exchange rate has changed drastically since I’ve been here, and it wasn’t in my favor). I guess my gringa-ness was overwhelming for him, although I was told once again today that I don’t have an American accent when I speak Spanish. The tour guide told me I sounded like I was from another Spanish-speaking country, not from the US, so I took that as a major compliment :)
Friday, April 16, 2010
¿A dónde voy de aquí?
Which brings me to today, hurrah! I went to yoga, went searching (unsuccessfully) for exercise pants and finally tried the popular brand of Costa Rica chocolate.
Yoga was intense. I can say now with certainty that the profuse sweating is due to the climate, because today the air was like a sauna. Right after I got home it poured, and then soon after cleared up and became sunny. I like how confused the weather is, just as long as I make it inside before it rains when I have electronics with me.
The exercise pants were interesting. I have never been a fan of white pants, but white pants specifically meant for exercising? Yeah, no thank you. I noted today during yoga that one of the participants had chosen white pants, and had also chosen to wear a thong because of how see-through they were. Ouch >.>; Even though I only have two pair of yoga pants, and one pair now has a hole in the butt, I think I can wait a little longer.
Shopping is pretty much the same here as it is at home, but I feel like there are more bag-checkers and bag check-in stations to prevent theft. The price tags were in dollars in one of the stores I visited, but the prices were indicated in colones (the currency here) on stickers and were about a third the price (which is strange, because I think many other shops are just the opposite with US vs. Costa Rica pricing). The shoe sizes only go up to size 9, and there are baaarely any there. The mannequins all have extravagant poses, huge breasts, erect nipples and junk in their trunks. Okay, now I see more differences.
The Costa Rican brand of chocolate is Gallito, and I think it’s like their version of Hershey’s. It’s what is popular, and what people eat. They make a ton of other candies, too, and I knew I liked those, so I decided it was only fair to give their chocolate a shot. Let’s just say, thankfully I found Lindt dark chocolate today at the store. It reminded me of those tiny, tin-foil wrapped balls of chocolate I would sometimes get on Halloween. I used it to make myself a mocha after trying it plain, but even then it could not be redeemed.
My tica mom has been trying really hard with my food lately, and I really appreciate it. Part of why I decided to buy the chocolate was because they were tiny, individually wrapped bars and I wanted to leave her a little present. I left it for her on her spot at the table to show my appreciation, and she later asked what it was and I told her it was for her. She then showed her appreciation by literally showing me the dinner she had left for me on the table, and I made sure to voice my approval. I think we’re starting to ‘get’ each other a little better now.
And now, a word from my pensive side.
I’m always learning here, whether it’s about my culture, their culture or myself and how I handle situations. Lately I’ve experienced moments of absolute clarity, of where I’m going, what I’m doing, my plan of action, and without a moment’s notice been thrust into a place either inside or outside of myself that is unbearably uncomfortable. It’s just like the love/hate relationship I have with the city, nothing can go too well, or too badly, for too long. This creates an interesting mindset, and I’ve caught myself in moments where all I can think of is home, and how this ‘life’ I have here is only temporary. I tell myself just to push through, and it will all be over soon and I can go back to my accustomed comforts. In this case, I just have to stop my train of thought and remember all the different things here that are good, and remind myself to take full advantage of the opportunities I have studying abroad (because I am extremely lucky to be here, and I will never have another chance to do what I am doing now). I have also caught myself feeling like a completely new person, either without any memories of friends and family, or with memories from a few years ago. This is always tricky, and I’m not sure why it happens, but it’s by far the strangest when I have teleported to the past and am unconsciously thinking about people who are no longer the same and feeling, to a certain degree, the same feelings I felt about them from that snapshot in time. I don’t know how I notice I’m doing it, but when I do I quickly regain all the memories between then and now and put myself back into college where I belong. I wonder if this is a side-effect of feeling dissociated from the world in which I’m living for a large part of the day, or if I’m just adjusting to a new way of thinking and feeling and somehow memories are getting mixed around.
My languages are definitely getting mixed around. I think in Spanglish, and end up conjugating Spanish verbs by only adding –ing or conjugating helping verbs and then finishing the thought in English. I’m tending to think in Spanish nouns, especially when it’s about something I have been mainly doing in Spanish (eating, classwork, planning), but it’s honestly a toss-up at this point. Sometimes I start to respond in English, even though I’ve been thinking in Spanish, and other times I drop in English words without noticing, such as ‘like’, ‘see’ and ‘well’. I just use ‘okay’ as a word because people get what it means, and I don’t feel that ‘está bien’ really has the same connotation as the form of ‘okay’ for ‘I’m listening and I understand’. I can tell my Spanish is worse after chatting with friends or sending e-mails in English, but I’m okay with that. I just need to find a TV show in Spanish and I could easily counter-balance the negative effects…if only entertainment was in Spanish here, and not just subtitled ;)
A strange decision with which I am faced is how hard I should push myself. After the crummiest day, when all I want to do is collapse and never speak Spanish again, one friendly conversation perks me back up. And, just when I feel my muscles are going to give out in yoga because I have gone past my physical capability, we switch positions and I can push on. I have never been the kind of person who could set up a schedule or set boundaries for myself (just ask my parents, it drove them crazy), yet somehow I always made it through. Now I figure it’s about time, but I don’t know where to start. What I DO know, though, is that this isn’t the place to do it. Ticos don’t seem to really have schedules, as you may have picked up by now, and stress as we know it in the US doesn’t exist here. People keep telling me ‘tranquila’ after I ask a question, or apologize for awkwardly getting in the way, or say thank you, and at first it really bothered me. I felt like they kept telling me to calm down, chill out, as if I were incredibly stressed. I realize now that even though I feel very calm here, I have still been nervous enough to be classified as stressed out for this culture. I can’t imagine throwing a tico into my high school during junior year, they could die just from overexposure to stress. I kid…mostly. The school pressure here just has a softer effect, and when my friends tell me that they were doing homework all night or all weekend, they look more sheepish and resigned to that fate than panicked. I might just be meeting the strange ticos, but I get the feeling that isn’t the case from the ‘pura vida’ vibe of Costa Rica. Even thinking that people were telling me to calm down was a result of my stress, I now realize. They were just telling me ‘don’t worry, be happy’.
I like those boundaries.
Yoga was intense. I can say now with certainty that the profuse sweating is due to the climate, because today the air was like a sauna. Right after I got home it poured, and then soon after cleared up and became sunny. I like how confused the weather is, just as long as I make it inside before it rains when I have electronics with me.
The exercise pants were interesting. I have never been a fan of white pants, but white pants specifically meant for exercising? Yeah, no thank you. I noted today during yoga that one of the participants had chosen white pants, and had also chosen to wear a thong because of how see-through they were. Ouch >.>; Even though I only have two pair of yoga pants, and one pair now has a hole in the butt, I think I can wait a little longer.
Shopping is pretty much the same here as it is at home, but I feel like there are more bag-checkers and bag check-in stations to prevent theft. The price tags were in dollars in one of the stores I visited, but the prices were indicated in colones (the currency here) on stickers and were about a third the price (which is strange, because I think many other shops are just the opposite with US vs. Costa Rica pricing). The shoe sizes only go up to size 9, and there are baaarely any there. The mannequins all have extravagant poses, huge breasts, erect nipples and junk in their trunks. Okay, now I see more differences.
The Costa Rican brand of chocolate is Gallito, and I think it’s like their version of Hershey’s. It’s what is popular, and what people eat. They make a ton of other candies, too, and I knew I liked those, so I decided it was only fair to give their chocolate a shot. Let’s just say, thankfully I found Lindt dark chocolate today at the store. It reminded me of those tiny, tin-foil wrapped balls of chocolate I would sometimes get on Halloween. I used it to make myself a mocha after trying it plain, but even then it could not be redeemed.
My tica mom has been trying really hard with my food lately, and I really appreciate it. Part of why I decided to buy the chocolate was because they were tiny, individually wrapped bars and I wanted to leave her a little present. I left it for her on her spot at the table to show my appreciation, and she later asked what it was and I told her it was for her. She then showed her appreciation by literally showing me the dinner she had left for me on the table, and I made sure to voice my approval. I think we’re starting to ‘get’ each other a little better now.
And now, a word from my pensive side.
I’m always learning here, whether it’s about my culture, their culture or myself and how I handle situations. Lately I’ve experienced moments of absolute clarity, of where I’m going, what I’m doing, my plan of action, and without a moment’s notice been thrust into a place either inside or outside of myself that is unbearably uncomfortable. It’s just like the love/hate relationship I have with the city, nothing can go too well, or too badly, for too long. This creates an interesting mindset, and I’ve caught myself in moments where all I can think of is home, and how this ‘life’ I have here is only temporary. I tell myself just to push through, and it will all be over soon and I can go back to my accustomed comforts. In this case, I just have to stop my train of thought and remember all the different things here that are good, and remind myself to take full advantage of the opportunities I have studying abroad (because I am extremely lucky to be here, and I will never have another chance to do what I am doing now). I have also caught myself feeling like a completely new person, either without any memories of friends and family, or with memories from a few years ago. This is always tricky, and I’m not sure why it happens, but it’s by far the strangest when I have teleported to the past and am unconsciously thinking about people who are no longer the same and feeling, to a certain degree, the same feelings I felt about them from that snapshot in time. I don’t know how I notice I’m doing it, but when I do I quickly regain all the memories between then and now and put myself back into college where I belong. I wonder if this is a side-effect of feeling dissociated from the world in which I’m living for a large part of the day, or if I’m just adjusting to a new way of thinking and feeling and somehow memories are getting mixed around.
My languages are definitely getting mixed around. I think in Spanglish, and end up conjugating Spanish verbs by only adding –ing or conjugating helping verbs and then finishing the thought in English. I’m tending to think in Spanish nouns, especially when it’s about something I have been mainly doing in Spanish (eating, classwork, planning), but it’s honestly a toss-up at this point. Sometimes I start to respond in English, even though I’ve been thinking in Spanish, and other times I drop in English words without noticing, such as ‘like’, ‘see’ and ‘well’. I just use ‘okay’ as a word because people get what it means, and I don’t feel that ‘está bien’ really has the same connotation as the form of ‘okay’ for ‘I’m listening and I understand’. I can tell my Spanish is worse after chatting with friends or sending e-mails in English, but I’m okay with that. I just need to find a TV show in Spanish and I could easily counter-balance the negative effects…if only entertainment was in Spanish here, and not just subtitled ;)
A strange decision with which I am faced is how hard I should push myself. After the crummiest day, when all I want to do is collapse and never speak Spanish again, one friendly conversation perks me back up. And, just when I feel my muscles are going to give out in yoga because I have gone past my physical capability, we switch positions and I can push on. I have never been the kind of person who could set up a schedule or set boundaries for myself (just ask my parents, it drove them crazy), yet somehow I always made it through. Now I figure it’s about time, but I don’t know where to start. What I DO know, though, is that this isn’t the place to do it. Ticos don’t seem to really have schedules, as you may have picked up by now, and stress as we know it in the US doesn’t exist here. People keep telling me ‘tranquila’ after I ask a question, or apologize for awkwardly getting in the way, or say thank you, and at first it really bothered me. I felt like they kept telling me to calm down, chill out, as if I were incredibly stressed. I realize now that even though I feel very calm here, I have still been nervous enough to be classified as stressed out for this culture. I can’t imagine throwing a tico into my high school during junior year, they could die just from overexposure to stress. I kid…mostly. The school pressure here just has a softer effect, and when my friends tell me that they were doing homework all night or all weekend, they look more sheepish and resigned to that fate than panicked. I might just be meeting the strange ticos, but I get the feeling that isn’t the case from the ‘pura vida’ vibe of Costa Rica. Even thinking that people were telling me to calm down was a result of my stress, I now realize. They were just telling me ‘don’t worry, be happy’.
I like those boundaries.
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