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!