Writing in Costa Rica

The Howler Monkey Brain Dump from very, very high. Karen Rowan, 12.05.10….from the plane ride back to Denver.

2010-12-07T17:06:00.000-08:00

The Howler Monkey Brain Dump from very, very high.

Karen Rowan, 12.05.10….from the plane ride back to Denver.

(Feel free to comment and add information or correct inaccuracies -- corrections already made to the "Lisa" section)

General information about Howler Monkeys

A troop is made of an alpha male, several females and their offspring.

Female Congo Aullador, Howler Monkey

Former Alpha Male Congo

When a male child gets big and wants to be the alpha he challenges the alpha. If the alpha remains the alpha, the challenger will go off to make his own troop. If the younger male wins, the older male is retired and goes off on his own to die. A congo cannot survive alone. This is the natural process, as much as we might want to create a retirement home for old alpha males. Infants ride on their mother’s backs until they are old enough to try climbing alone.

Congos do not appear to have a mating season any more than humans do. There are always babies. There are always adolescents. The congo tail is like a hand or foot and has similar grabbing muscles and texture.

If a congo is separated from the troop, it will generally wait for her, howling from the trees. A congo that is hurt and separated from the troop by someone who is trying to help should be prepared for angry attacks. When that same congo is reintroduced to the troop after medical treatment, females are more likely to be reaccepted. Congos eat all manner of leaves and fruits and know what to eat to calm an upset stomach. 20% fruits and 80% leaves. Their choices are very specific. Congos who are fed foods that their digestive systems are not used to need vitamins and medical care to reestablish their natural digestive processes. The alpha male either leads or follows the troop. He leads the way and then hangs back to make sure everyone stays together. Congos howl to advertise to other congos that this is their eating and drinking territory. They cover only a short distance each day, usually only about 400 meters. They are diurnal and one of the most sedentary (in terms of daily forward geographical progress) animals. Although I have been told anecdotally that congos throw poop at people when they are angry, I’ve never seen in happen. I have, however, seen congos pee from high branches. On purpose and with pre-meditation as a warning to humans who are interfering in their space. The females I have seen have a slight orange overcoat and the males tend to be a little darker. The bright white balls of the male congo can be seen from great distances.

Abnormal Congo behaviors

It is abnormal and entirely out of character for a congo to walk on the ground. They can… but doing so is unnatural and puts them in danger from cars, humans and other animals. Any contact with humans is also abnormal and ultimately dangerous to the congo troop.

Dangers to Congos

By far the most dangerous threat to Congos right now is the proliferation of electrical wires. Congos travel by grabbing a branch with a hand and using the tail for balance or to hang. Using this same strategy on an electrical cord and metal attachment or transformer, congos are easily and quickly electrocuted. Sometimes congos lose their tails, and then are at a great disadvantage while traveling with the troop or are temporarily stunned. Often, they are killed.

Monkey Bridges

Originally designed by Vanessa at the Monkey Park on the way to Tamarindo and successfully used at the park, Monkey Bridges were created by the Playa Hermosa Association, among other groups, and placed throughout northwestern Costa Rica. They can be seen from Playa Panama down to Tamarindo. They are green because the Monkey Park discovered that monkeys were more likely to use green ones. They are never black because hopefully congos will learn that black cords are dangerous and green ones are safe. ICE hung the bridges provided by the Playa Hermosa Association first and later decided to make and hang them themselves. The Playa Hermosa Association has stopped accepting donations for Monkey Bridges since ICE has started making them. Donations for congos now go to emergency vet care for rescued Congos.

Bridges can take up to a year to be found and used. Some Congos have now been seen in Monte Paraiso in Playa Hermosa using the bridges. I found pictures on the Playa Hermosa Association website.

The Monkey Park on the way to Tamarindo

Vanessa works at the barely supported Monkey Park, an animal rescue center. They have big cats that the big cat rescue park was unable to take, injured birds, spider monkeys, white faced monkeys and congos. They have a medical facility to care for seriously injured animals, but minor injuries are best treated at a local vet clinic so that the animal can be returned to the wild as quickly as possible. When I asked what kind of donations they need she said bird seed.

The Monkey Park primarily focuses on rehabilitation. I am not allowed to enter a three part, large enclosed area. The first area houses what will hopefully become an alpha male. The second houses a female adult. The third houses two babies. None of them are related to each other or from the same troop. Alpha males will kill congos from other troops. The goal of this rehabilitation is to convince these congos that they are in the same troop. The female and the babies can see each other an communication through the mesh barrier that separates them. The babies are allowed to enter the female’s area for brief periods, while under observation. The alpha male and the female can also see each other through their own mesh barrier. When the staff is confident that he will not kill her, they will be put in the same cage. The alpha will not be put into the same enclosure with the babies until he has already bonded with the female. This is the riskiest combination. If it works, the family will be released as a troop back into the wild. Congos cannot survive alone. Each enclosure has monkey bridges hanging in it and the congos use them.

Another cage holds two spider monkeys that were kept in a small cage together as pets for so long that they went crazy. They can still keep each other company and are now in a much larger cage than the box-sized one that had been held in previously, but they attack anyone else.

A small cage set far apart from everyone else holds two babies who were rescued separately. They now cling to each other as though each is the other’s mama. One is missing an eye and looks warily and fearfully from the other while clutching the baby who is smaller than she is. They are both terrified. The Monkey Park does not think that the one-eyed Congo will be able to survive in the wild, so they will not rehabilitate her. Even so, they have found family in each other.

Vanessa used to rescue monkeys on her own, but she found that the people who were keeping them as pets or befriending and domesticating wild monkeys were resentful when she took them and would retaliate. They just didn’t understand, she said. So now she calls the municipality to investigate and bring the monkeys to her. They will not be taken anywhere else. She is the only accredited Monkey rehab park in Costa Rica. It receives almost no funding even though it is the official rehab location, and relies heavily on donations to feed the rescued animals.

Vanessa runs through the list of rules for living near Congos. Do not name them. Do not touch them. Do not feed them. Cover their eyes to reduce premature death caused by extreme stress if you do have to move them or treat them medically. Turn them into pets and remove them from their troops and they will go crazy in the same way that we would go crazy without social contact. They will become violent. They will become abnormal.

Congo Stories

The baby girl lays on her side, tiny hands clutching small stones. I touch her, willing her to just be shocked, not already dead, but she does not move, does not respond, does not breathe.

Her family howls from a nearby tree, willing her to get up, too.

They will not leave until they give up hope completely. They will not give up hope yet. The alpha congo moves agitatedly in the tree whenever someone approaches, hanging menacingly, protectively. I take pictures from the ground where she lays under the transformer, electrical wires and metal connectors on the pole several meters above her.

The trees here have been cut back. Branches are gone to encourage the congos to go another way, but it does not work. I step back and I see, in the tree immediately above this little girl, one lone congo, not howling with the rest of the troop a few trees away. They are surely howling for the baby. They are also howling for the mama to come along. They will not leave them. The mama will not move.

She has been watching me taking pictures all along from her hidden perch high above. She makes little noise. While the daddy howls, she makes small noises that sound more like crying. When I stand beneath her, she pees. I back up. I get the message. When the young man who works nearby comes to bury her, I call him off. Give her more time, I say. He knows she can’t be left for very long or she will begin to attract animals and insects. In the heat, she will begin to smell. She fell in the early hours of the morning and it is still before 9. Give her more time. I point up. He steps back and scans the trees for more, knowing he will not move her if he fears angering the congos. But this mama is not angry. She is just not quite yet resigned. She watches and waits. We stand quietly talking and he tells me there were 7 who shocked themselves all at the same time recently. I take a picture of the number on the pole so that maybe a bridge can be placed here.

Lisa, the Congo with a name (including corrections and additional information that was sent to me in response to the first version)

Yesterday someone had said to me that the congo Lisa has a better life than most of the dogs around here. (Not a Tico.) Congos are not dogs. They are not pets. As I watch this grieving mama, I see how much more like us they are than a pet. I ache for her and for the protective alpha daddy hanging from the tree to warn me to back away.

Life imitating art, which imitated life. There is so much more to say and show than what came out in the book Isabela quiere un congo. As I capture video of these howling, mourning brothers and sisters, I think of Lisa.

“Lisa” is a Congo whose mother died on a “cable de alta tension”. Lisa still has a scar from that fall. When she arrived in Hermosa Heights, at first she was fed grapes, but after much reading and research by those who were caring for her, she came to be fed only small portions of papaya so that she would still have to go into the mountains to seek the rest of her diet.

Lisa, sitting on the ground

When I see her for the first time, I am startled, but am encouraged by someone who works there to reach out my hand. In a flash she has grabbed my hand, climbed my arm like it’s a branch and is sitting on my shoulder picking imaginary bugs from my hair. Is this creature still a candidate for rehabilitation? I’m thinking the head sitting isn’t going to go over with the other congos in the troop.

Lisa, climbing and playing in a low bush

She walks on the ground, hangs from trees taunting people as they enter the restaurant, reaches for people to play with her, grabs their hands and playfully bites them. She approaches people and tries to touch them and attracting the affection attention of groundskeepers and employees nearby.

She seems bored and listless most of the time, but entertains herself playing with birds and passing groundskeepers. Maybe this is what normal congos look like, too.

Rehabilitation is still possible if this does not work, but Vanessa sighs when she learns she was fed grapes. Congos don’t eat grapes. Do you see grapes here?, she asks. She scrunches her face when I guess at her age. It has been several months since she appeared in Hermosa. At that point, having little information about Lisa’s story, I assumed the grape feeding was a daily occurrence.

Fortunately for Lisa, the humans around her are doing their homework. The municipality was called and has been involved for the last month. What I saw was a named, touched, fed Congo that resulted in a creature that was so dissimilar from a Congo that she exhibited almost no natural Congo behaviors.

But what the experts saw was different. After seeing her playing in trees and eating flowers and knowing that she still disappears into the hills at night, they came to the conclusion that may still be able to reunite with a troop. She is going into “heat” and may eventually go with a male. They think there is a possibility that as she matures she can still get back into the troop. There are now signs up saying not to touch or feed her, which must be excruciatingly painful… for her human friends who greet her on their way in and out of their offices. She is impossible not to be attracted to.

I am told of two other stories in which a congo who used to hang around eventually took off and went back into the wild all on his own.

We await a happy ending.

From my observer position, knowing that I didn’t know enough about either Congos or Lisa to do anything, I didn’t do anything. I did nothing but take pictures for the same reason I don’t buy lottery tickets in Costa Rica. People walk around selling them and after simply declining many times, I finally started answering my real answer. “No, thank you. I do not want to be the American who won the Costa Rican lottery.” And I do not want to be the American who thought she knew enough about Lisa to know how to help her. I do not.

She may very well be better off and better taken care of than any dog. If we think of her, though, as an orphaned baby or if we think of her with the emotional capacity of the mama in the tree mourning her electrocuted baby, depriving that baby of a family is ultimately not compassionate. She has access to veterinary care and she is doted on by the people around her, but she is lonely. If she doesn’t leave, she will never mate. She will never have her own baby. She will not know what leaves to eat when her stomach is upset. She will not learn to avoid danger by staying off of the ground. She will not have a healthy fear of humans. The only thing to do at this moment is to hold our collective breaths and watch for a young, good-looking male congo who goes crazy out of his mind for Lisa, loves that she’s a little different and wants her to sit on his head and no one else’s.

What happened to this baby that made the troop not stay and howl for her when she wandered away? When her mother was electrocuted was she injured? Did the troop stay with her or abandon her? Did she abandon the troop since her mother wasn’t in it anymore? Was she abandoned because she exhibited abnormal head climbing behavior from infancy?

We feel responsible for and compassionate toward so many animals, but the congos have a special place in our hearts, I think, because we feel culpable. It is our use of electricity that has invaded their natural habitat with dangerous high tension wires. We are more affected by stories of orphaned congos because we need that electricity to live here…. And so we rescue and we save and we rehabilitate and we donate and we build bridges because it is no longer an option to bury these cables in the ground and it is most definitely not an option to live here without electricity.

But we do. Every once in a while there is a pop that sounds like a canon being fired and sparks fly from a transformer. At that moment, we do not feel resentful that the lights and the modem and the air conditioning and the stove are dark. In that stillness that means that a congo touched a wire and blue a fuse, we are quiet. We look outside and walk to the transformer hoping to find nothing. Nothing means no one was hurt and the congos moved away.

I have seen Alpha Congos reaching out to touch a wire before leading the troop over it. It takes higher level thinking skills to essentially exhibit the same behaviors he would if there were a posted sign that said, “Dear Congo Troop, Please do not touch this wire. Doing so may cause severe shock resulting in serious injury or even death.”

If they can mourn, if they can communicate their wishes clearly by peeing on our heads from high above, if they can be aware of the danger of electric cables, then we are more responsible, more culpable, more inclined to pay back that debt by trying to build alternate highways from green rope.

The story here isn’t that Lisa is here, the story is that she is here because her mom touched a high tension cable and died. The lottery ticket that needs to be bought here is the one that will keep Lisa and her future babies safe from a similar fate.

Playa Huevo

The troop is gone. This formerly alpha male sits in complete stillness in the low branches of a tree. He regards us dispassionately as we take pictures. A congo cannot survive alone. There is no reasonable explanation for a male congo to be alone other than that he is the ostracized former alpha. Congos are never alone. They cannot survive alone. He does not play. He does not eat. He does not move. His head turns from right to left, but he seems disinterested in what he sees. My friends express concern. I express wonder that being here allows me the privilege of watching this part of the congo life cycle. I am as in awe as I would be if I were watching a congo birth… an experience I hope to avoid. There is no mourning for a natural death. It is the unnatural, early deaths of young congos that stops the entire troop in its tracks. The family refuses to accept that the baby is dead until there is no choice but to be resigned because sometimes shocked monkeys get back up and stumble back to the troop.

From 12.14.09

THE SHOCKING STORY OF THE CONGO AULLADOR (HOWLER MONKEY)

We are leaving for San Jose in 14 hours. We should be finishing packing and going to bed early. Instead Kassidy is hurrying with such drive her feet remind me of when she was little and we would spontaneously drop everything to seek whatever adventure her imagination was captured by that moment. We are walking to the guard station in the dark with a camera and a head lamp and a cell phone, to try to figure out what you do with an electrocuted monkey. The congo aullador fell from a branch and grabbed the live wire on his way down. Our friend Heather pulled up with her three small children and we all quietly marveled at him. He was moaning and trying to get up. He looked exactly as one might imagine a drunk monkey. Confused and disoriented and compelled to get in his car even though someone had taken his keys already. One of the three kittens that lives down there, too, was apparently curious and sat a meter away from him, staring calmly. The congo would get up and stagger and occasionally notice her, but no matter how close he came, the kitten wouldn’t move. He tried to climb the rake propped against the guard house, thinking it was a tree. The guard caught it on its way down. Hmm… that’s not a tree. Are you a tree? We called a neighbor who said she would call the monkey rescue place, but he was already responding to the deep howl that was calling him home. Since we had been there, we had been hearing the howler monkey in the tree. It’s the alpha who hollers so that everyone can stay together. Once they lost this one, they stopped and waiting and howled. He took several breaks on his way to the tree. He would stagger and then stumble and rest on his chin for a few seconds and then try again. He never appeared to be even peripherally aware of us watching. He climbed the tree and rested on the lowest branch. Hurt as he was, he would make his way back to that howl and the howler family would sit and wait and howl until he did.

Stupid kids with a bee bee gun.

When the young congo falls from the tree near Lily’s Soda, instead of handling it, the neighborhood kids run for Bridget, the veterinarian who spends her days at Aqua Sport. She supervises the rescue. He is hurt and needs medical care. In short order the congo’s eyes are covered with a towel to reduce stress. Handlers only touch him with towels. As he is moved the alpha male jumps down from a tree, swings to the ground and waves his arms menacingly. He does not understand that they are trying to help. They continue howling for the baby as he is driven away in the back of a truck to the vet’s office. There he is treated with antibiotics and the wound is treated topically while he is gently held with only towels so that he will not hurt the vet. If the family moves on, it is harder to find the right troop and return the baby, so speed is essential. It is possible that if he is not returned quickly enough that he will be rejected by the troop. A solo monkey cannot survive. He is returned within a few hours to the same tree where the family is still howling and has not moved. They come down the tree to bring him up. He is wounded, but will recover, thanks to a couple of kids who knew to go get help from someone who knew the monkey rules but no thanks to the couple of kids who thought shooting a baby monkey with a bee bee gun would be a bright idea. After some serious threats to report them if they are ever caught doing anything so stupid again, they are reportedly contrite.

Some combination of the bee bee gun congo and the shocked congo inspired Isabela quiere un congo, the story of a girl who comes to Costa Rica and decides she wants a pet monkey who will sleep in her bed. Her misguided attempt to attract one results in the monkey being shocked. She learns that monkeys are not pets and helps to build monkey bridges. The setting is the fictional town of Playa Perfecta and the unnamed restaurant bears an uncanny resemblance to Aqua Sport. Isabela’s behavior is understandable from an over-zealous 9 ½ year old. The rest of us should endeavor to tell the difference between a dog and a howler monkey and act accordingly. Myself included. I am grateful that I was encouraged to let Lisa approach me and that the result was that she climbed up me because following her story became an educational and fascinating journey into how to gently return a Congo to the wild, as these people are trying to do.

With gratitude to the Playa Hermosa Association, from whom I heard a lovely story, too, about a shocked baby that was rescued and kept safe until it woke up and then was returned a short distance from its family so that they would not see that the baby had been with humans. She said she soooo wanted to cuddle the baby, but didn’t touch it and just sat beside it. It was a beautiful demonstration of the combination between compassion and education. Congos walking on green hanging bridges are a just reward for a spectacular effort.

If we could just hang signs next to the electrical wires and teach them to read….

CR 02.19.10 First blog since December

2010-02-19T14:10:00.000-08:00

CR 02.19.10

SYNOPISIS: Inspired by Ticht Naht Hahn; seeing lava at the Arenal Volcano; the waterfall; being perfect; the moment I have held my breath for 5 months; teaching at Playa Panama elementary school.

“I am a writer. I write stories, essays, books and poems. There are times when I don’t write. But that doesn’t mean that writing isn’t continuing inside me. When I water the vegetables, I just practice watering the vegetables. I enjoy watering my vegetable garden. I don’t think about the poem or the short story, but I know that somewhere inside me the short story is being made. If I don’t grow lettuce, I can’t write poems.

So when you allow the grow lettuce, you have to grow it with one hundred percent of yourself and enjoy deeply the work of growing lettuce. Then, when you write a poem, the poem will be good. The moment you begin to write the words down is not exactly the moment you create the poem. While you practice mindful walking, breathing and planting lettuce, without thinking at all about the poem, the poem is being written. The poem, or any work of art, is conceived in the depth of your consciousness while you’re not thinking about it. The moment you write it down or express it is only the moment of completion, like when a mother gives birth to her baby. Much has happened before this to make this baby or the artwork possible. This is why there must be moments when you allow the child in you to grow.” TNH, The Art of Power

(Starting this way for the benefit of those who have asked why it’s been so long without a blog. I’ve travelled to Colorado and Washington 3 times since November and I have not figured out yet how to work that much and write at the same time. I also apparently leave my muse behind in Costa Rica when I travel.

In any case…)

LAVA, LAVA!

I am sitting near a bridge as the sun goes down, watching orange lava spew from under the clouds on Arenal. There are 50 other tourists gathered around and they and their tour guides shout, “Lava, lava!” and we all clumsily gather our cameras and do not get a picture before the lava stops descending or the clouds descend too much and our audience is no longer required by the great and powerful volcano. We read that we can hear the rumbling if we hike on her, but this is what we wanted…. The coveted opportunity to see Arenal on a non-cloudy night. We wait long enough to provide a feast for the mosquitoes before we decide she may not blow again, and head to a hotel.

We check into a quaint cabin with one King bed and a… a crib. Swans with a heart made of flowers are twisted on our bed from bathroom towels and we cock our heads at the curious scene – an apparent honeymoon suite… with a crib.

PRINCE CHARMING

We are in the Jacuzzi chatting with three French Canadian women shortly after our arrival. An odd animal sound – what must be a frog, we suppose, only because we can’t imagine another animal making a similar sound – interrupts our conversation frequently as we chat. We are telling the women a story in French to illustrate that Kassidy is tri-lingual, but they don’t really “get” us. “Le chat voulait mange au crossaint au chocolat.” She corrects our pronunciation, changes voulait to present tense and laughs about the random placement of an irrelevant and unexplained cat in our conversation. She clearly is not a language teacher, but her French is pretty good for a native French speaker, so we let her stay in the Jacuzzi.

The frog continues to make…. Truly un-spellable sounds and I imitate him. We joke about the potential English spelling of this particular sound. The frog sounds his… Rghaagg Ruuph again and I try again to re-create his pronunciation. He copies me. I copy him. He copies me. We are suddenly and unbelievably in an actual conversation that send us into peals of laughter. The more we imitate the frog, whose location is still unknown, the more he replies at appropriate and responsive intervals. We change our tone and intonation and he changes his. His responses answer our questions. We respond to his questions. We have absolutely no idea what we’re saying. Kassidy is now a polyglot rather than just tri-lingual. The French women lose patience with us as we become more and more enamored of our frog.

“I think this is incomprehensible input”, I say, to which my lovely and well-educated daughter appropriately laughs.

“Maybe he’s a Prince!”

“Hola, Principe,” she says. “Bonjour, Principe” she says. “Hello , Prince.” When she receives no response, she decides the frog doesn’t speak Spanish, French or English. She says again, “Rghaagg Ruuph.”

The frog replies, Rghaagg Ruuph.

We can’t breathe.

Maybe it isn’t a frog. We can’t see it. It could be anything. It’s probably a frog, though, right?

She sidles up to the edge of the Jacuzzi to converse with the frog on the other side of the fence. Anyone who has studied animals as much as I have (biology…9th grade) knows that this is a mating ritual. This frog is seeking a mate. Kassidy is interested in kissing a frog to make him turn into a Prince, so they are a compatible couple.

“That”, I say, “Is going in the book.”

This becomes our new line. From then on, anything remotely interesting or even decidedly uninteresting is “going in the book.”

LAS CATARATAS

We have to return to the waterfall the next morning because while exploring the evening before, I have left my Loyola sweatshirt. We arrive to look for it and they won’t let us in unless we pay and they guarantee us that there were no jackets found. A few minutes later, when we have steadfastly refused to leave, they are reviewing videos of the previous evening’s tapes to determine if a jacket was left and who might have retrieved it if it was.

It is at this moment that I remember what we were doing last night. We were entirely unaware that there were security cameras at the waterfall.

I mention to Kassidy that there are videotapes of last night and she says, “Oh, God.” We both silently mentally review the repeated and excessive camera poses as we both attempted to get passable pictures of each other in front of the waterfall. It’s a thing we do. Tilt your chin up. Snap. No, now turn sideways. Snap. That one isn’t good either. Change your smile. Snap. Too much teeth. Snap. Put your hair down. Snap. Take your sunglasses off. Snap. A little to the left. Snap. Now your chin’s too high. Snap. How about that one?

But we were alone. No one was watching us or we would never have publicized our vanity. They were smiling when they found my jacket. Maybe they were just really proud that they found it.

It suddenly stopped raining, so we went down to the waterfall --- a tremendous hike. Beautiful, steep, and full of stairs that are an unreasonable distance away from each other. The waterfall is surrounded by rocks. We climbed over them. As the falling water hits the lake it mists thickly so that dry clothes and towels are moist almost immediately. We carefully climbed over the slippery rocks and gingerly dipped our feet in the water. The rocks were mossy and the water was bitterly, shiveringly cold. We left our shoes and climbed in and shrieked at the temperature. An Englishman in the parking lot had insisted we try to go “right round” the waterfall on the right. Just “right round” he said. We tried. We swam really, really hard. We kicked. We pushed. We swam backward into the mossy rocks. I might’ve… might’ve…. Been able to make it. But the waves (seriously… waves) were constant and battering and created the illusion of being caught in a storm in the ocean or a 6 Flags wave pool. This would be a preposterously dumb way to die. A few minutes later a fellow swimmer, this one also a Canadian, mentioned that occasionally people have died here. No idea if it’s true, but it was the end of Kassidy in the waterfall. “MOM… we could DIE.” “We’re not going to die, Kassidy. We don’t take any risks.” She agreed with a too quick nod that did not make me feel manly or strong, but rather passive and safe.

I am in Central America under a waterfall that is so high I cannot see the top, standing on a dangerously mossy rock in 40 degree water aware that even when I do dangerous things, they aren’t dangerous. I am too afraid to complete the things I start, to weak to swim behind the waterfall, too afraid of dying and leaving Kassidy to figure out how to get home alone.

And I think… maybe that down payment I put down on SCUBA diving lessons 2 months ago that I haven’t yet completed is something I should think about again.

“To feel happy right where you are in the present moment is your practice. With this kind of understanding you accept yourself completely; you don’t feel the need to become someone because you already are someone.”

“I take my time. I want to be myself. I don’t deny myself in the here and now.. This is our practice – we call it aimlessness. We don’t put a goal in front of ourselves and run after it constantly. If we do, we’ll be running all of our life and never be happy. Happiness is possible only when you stop running and cherish the present moment and who you are. Who you are is already a wonder; you don’t need to be someone else. You are a wonder of life.” – TNH, The Art of Power

PERFECTION

What if there were a place in the world where you were the definition of perfect? What if there were a place where the shape of your body, the appearance of your face, the content of your character, the characteristics of your personality --- every single little thing --- what if that was the definition of ideal in some given place? Imagine a place where everyone wants to be just like you and wishes they could be more like you. Imagine a place in which there was no reason to feel self-conscious or insecure to experience self-loathing because there was no argument that in this place, the textbook definition of perfect – was you.

After reading and meditating on this TNH excerpt I thought how lovely this would be and how much differently I would treat myself. Then I wondered what would be different for Kassidy if she had a place in the world like that. Home. That’s what home should be. I wonder if that’s how Kassidy feels at home? I realized that it wasn’t, and resolved in that moment to change that.

That afternoon we were swimming in the ocean and I shared this thought with her. What began as a resolution has become part of our day every day. Yesterday she said to me, “Good thing you’re perfect or that would’ve really been a problem.”

YEAH, WHICH I’M ACTUALLY STARTING TO REGRET

My perfect daughter is talking to our friend Liam. “You’re only staying for half the year, right?” he says. Liam has a curious ability I’ve seen only in football watching men who attempt to have simultaneous conversations with their wives or dates. They watch the game over her shoulder. Liam is looking beyond Kassidy while he talks to her. He’s only 10. She says,

“Yeah, which I’m actually starting to regret.”

And then the conversation abruptly ends because he has flattened his belly against his boogey board and is catching the wave he had been watching behind her.

“Yeah, which I’m actually starting to regret” swims repetitively in my bobbing head while we play in the waves. The sun sets brilliantly and I swallow it whole with a several cups full of salt water and a chest full of happy.

There is a level of happiness that is attainable alone and there is a separate and fuller level of happiness attainable when your happiness is not making someone else miserable.

TEACHING AT PLAYA PANAMA ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

Walk to the door. Walk to the window. Walk to Yancy. Walk to Alex. Walk to Jose. Walk slowly. Walk to the teacher. Walk slowly.

The 6th graders are cool. They clearly think I’m an idiot. I’ll have to give them some time to warm up to me. The 4th graders, though, hug me when I arrive, hug me during class and hug me when I leave. Several of the girls kiss my cheek when I arrive and when I leave.

I arrive to teach the first day and the classroom has not been used in 2 months. Several kids grab mops and broom and remove a thick layer of dust from the top of the desks and the floor. I consider briefly just teaching on top of the dirt, but it isn’t possible. It’s suffocating, old dirt. There are spider webs. I grab a mop. I should have asked if they had electricity in this room before I brought the LCD projector down with me. I have bought two white board markers. Before we start I have the kids move all the desks up against the wall on once side of the room so that we have chairs and open space on one side of the small classroom. There are holes in the ceiling. The windows are made of chicken wire. It is really, really hot. I can hear all the rest of the kids. They are at recess and they are peeking in our windows. My voice hurts from talking over the noises. The door opens and closes perhaps 30 times. Kids come in. Kids go out. Without saying anything. As though they have suddenly remembered they have to be somewhere. Other kids open the door, look inside, and then walk out. I don’t know if they are supposed to be in class or not.

Day 1: walks to, fast, slowly, the door.

Day 2: the window, looks at, don’t look, don’t walk

Day 3: I arrive at the school and one of the teachers is at a meeting. She has cancelled classes for the day for the half of the school that she teaches, so only half of the students are in attendance. She also took the keys to my classroom. I have no board with the previous days words on it, no labeled classroom parts, no props, no markers. I decide to suck it up. I teach in the empty Kindergarten classroom and change my lesson plan.

The wall. Yells. What is your name?

The next day, I teach the same lesson to the kids who weren’t there the day before.

I arrive on Day 4, which is now Day 3 the second time. Where is everybody? They went home already. Why did they go home? They left on the bus. Why would the bus have left at 10:30 before the rest of their classes? I don’t know. Okay, where are the 5th graders? At lunch. Why are they at lunch during English class? I get no answer to this. They just run off after them and try to get them to come to class.

I have only 4 students. Let’s get started, I say. They keep bouncing out of their chairs like they’re made of rubber. It’s like herding cats. I finally decide to just start. We don’t have very long. Let’s just start, I say. They sit.

Another kid from the 6th grade walks in. He isn’t in a uniform. He has gone home, changed clothes, and come back to school. The rest of the 6th grade went home early for no apparent reason. Dennis decides to stay.

The wall. Yells. What is your name?

Then I start to teach a story using all the words we’ve done so far. I don’t want to be the mouse. Can I be the cat? Sure. I want to be the cat, too. There are two cats. Okay – fine. Two cats. I’m going to be the Uncle. They Uncle? There’s no Unc… nevermind. Okay. You can be the Uncle.

After we tell the story a couple of times I ask them if anyone wants to re-tell it. One girl starts to re-tell it. The baby mouse looks at the cats. The baby mouse yells….

And then 4 of the 5 students are standing and looking out the window. The English teacher is here.

Okay. Whatever. Sit down.

The girl apparently has no memory of the fact that she was in the middle of telling a story. Someone else volunteers to tell it. I accept. The girl walks out. I don’t know where she’s going.

This is not a classroom management issue. They are sweet and kind and well-behaved. This is precisely what they do in all their other classes. It’s weird. But then… having the bus come in the middle of the day and take students home… scheduling lunch during English class… those things aren’t what I would consider normal, either, and all I can say

The real English teacher comes in to talk to me after class. We speak in Spanish. She will be coming on Mondays and Thursdays. We decide that I will come Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I ask her what her plan is, so that maybe I can support her in it. I show her the book I intend to teach – Isabela.

Los niños no pueden leer.

This is a 6 year English program. She tells me she will bring me the Costa Rican curriculum for English because these kids will never be able to read in English.

I have secret weapons at my disposal, but I do not share that. I will whip them out later in the form of literate students. ;-)

Kassidy is home and we are going to the beach. We have been every day this week. We have friends visiting and tomorrow will go out on the boat with Marcos. Catching up on writing… now I have to catch up on pictures.

CR121409, 6pm

2009-12-16T06:58:00.000-08:00

SYNOPSIS: Rescuing kitties and puppies and monkeys and mermaids and children and in the process each of us finds ourselves.

Thou rememb'rest
Since once I sat upon a promontory
And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back,
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath
That the rude sea grew civil at her song,
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
To hear the sea-maid's music.
- William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream (Oberon at II, i)

THE METEOR SHOWER

I am sitting on the roof of the house in Costa Rica, carefully and gently negotiating the roof tiles. Kassidy is in the crook of my arm and I hear her gasp quietly as she sees the first meteor fall from the sky.
I want to shake the package of her future to see what’s inside and to see how much of her is made of memories made at 2am while the earth spins past shattered fragments of heaven.

FINDING GOLD AT PLAYA PANAMA ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

This week a 3rd grader I had never met walked up to my waist without tilting her head to see who I was and wrapped her arms around me and stayed while I rubbed her back. This week I tried to be a quiet bystander on the outskirts of the elementary school here, but the desire to be who I am bubbled out of me like passion. I took the kids not directly involved with the arts and crafts Christmas project who were milling about aimlessly waiting for the bus and made them stand up and sit down about 75 consecutive times. Kassidy, familiar with this process, was writing the words I was teaching on the white board behind me. I am so remarkably, staggeringly out of my element teaching elementary age kids instead of high schoolers or adults, but it was still so much fun. The teachers were amenable to my returning and teaching English when the school year starts next February.

My Spanish teacher friends, I got gold. I asked the kids to talk about their school, their favorite classes, their friends, their families. They sat two at a time on a chair and spoke slowly and smiled. Then I asked them to show me their classroom. They were instinctively comprehensible. They walked around pointing and saying, “This is the chalkboard where the teacher writes. This is the other chalkboard where the teacher writes.” It was very cute and very perfect. My Christmas project is to figure out how to load them up so that they can be used.

PUPPIES AND KITTIES AND FLEAS, OH MY!

Kassidy volunteered at the CARE spay and neuter clinic on Saturday, while I made a terrible faux paux. She picked up a flea-ridden stray puppy and nuzzled it to her chest and pet it. I told her not to because the fleas were crawling all over it. The woman who runs the clinic regarded me with nothing short of disdain while telling me, basically, to get over it. They were all covered with fleas and she had been here all day already. No cure for it but a hot shower. There’s something in my daughter that I did not put there, and there is a tolerance in her that I lack. It’s really amazing to watch how generous and gentle she is with tick-ridden, fluid seeping animals. She captured two of the three kittens from the grounds that are cared for by the day guard and brought them in to be spayed and neutered. When we brought them home so drugged they appeared to be dead, she nursed them in a kennel overnight and returned them to the guard in the morning. Her eyes were puffy and red and swollen in spite of the Benadryl.

FINDING A MERMAID

So Saturday, as I was driving back

(Okay… seriously… it’s a REALLY good story but, and I’m not kidding… a congo aullador (howler monkey) just fell from an electric cable by the guard’s station. We have already returned the rental car so we’re going to walk down in the dark and see if there’s anything we can do. You just can’t make these things up.)

So Saturday, as I was driving back from Playa del Coco for the third time, feeling like a soccer mom whose kid’s sport is collecting stray cats, the traffic began to slow because there was a barely dressed woman crying on the side of the road. The truck in front of me stopped and the drivers got out. I pulled over and got out. She was not hurt, but she was sobbing and she was in a bikini. Deciphering Spanish through choking sobs is not a skill I’ve practiced and it was actually the drivers who interpreted what she said for me. What did not require much cross-cultural understanding is that you don’t put a naked woman in a truck with men. So, a minute later she was in my car. She and her boyfriend had had a fight and she was scared so she told him to let her out of the car. I told her I felt like I had found a mermaid on the side of the road. She spent the ride back to her hotel screaming into the phone at her boyfriend about being fed up with his drugs and hitting her in the face and saying mean things, but she later told me he never hit her, he just said mean things about how no one has ever loved her and he’s the only one who doesn’t abandon her. Their next conversation was her assuring him that the people at the hotel would not know what had happened and think badly of him. By the time I dropped her off at the Hilton by the airport in Liberia, I was sure she would have dinner with him and that she probably wouldn’t kick him out of her hotel room tonight. Mermaids have to want to swim away before they can really be free.

THE SHOCKING STORY OF THE CONGO AULLADOR (HOWLER MONKEY)

We are leaving for San Jose in 14 hours. We should be finishing packing and going to bed early. Instead Kassidy is hurrying with such drive her feet remind me of when she was little and we would spontaneously drop everything to seek whatever adventure her imagination was captured by that moment. We are walking to the guard station in the dark with a camera and a head lamp and a cell phone, to try to figure out what you do with an electrocuted monkey. The congo aullador fell from a branch and grabbed the live wire on his way down. Our friend Heather pulled up with her three small children and we all quietly marveled at him. He was moaning and trying to get up. He looked exactly as one might imagine a drunk monkey. Confused and disoriented and compelled to get in his car even though someone had taken his keys already. One of the three kittens that lives down there, too, was apparently curious and sat a meter away from him, staring calmly. The congo would get up and stagger and occasionally notice her, but no matter how close he came, the kitten wouldn’t move. He tried to climb the rake propped against the guard house, thinking it was a tree. The guard caught it on its way down. Hmm… that’s not a tree. Are you a tree? We called a neighbor who said she would call the monkey rescue place, but he was already responding to the deep howl that was calling him home. Since we had been there, we had been hearing the howler monkey in the tree. It’s the alpha who hollers so that everyone can stay together. Once they lost this one, they stopped and waiting and howled. He took several breaks on his way to the tree. He would stagger and then stumble and rest on his chin for a few seconds and then try again. He never appeared to be even peripherally aware of us watching. He climbed the tree and rested on the lowest branch. Hurt as he was, he would make his way back to that howl and the howler family would sit and wait and howl until he did.

It’s funny that this week tidied itself up so nicely in a little theme. In the process of rescuing, each of us had been led to our passion. Me in an environment with fleas and ticks and mange – nyuh uh. But Kassidy seems entirely comfortable there and also driven to capture and care for them. Her compassion leaks from her face and reaches from her hands. I didn’t even know how much teaching was a part of me until I was in front of kids who were telling me that they knew their numbers up to 60 and they knew how to say all of the animals in English. She’s an artist and a writer and singer and an actress. But she was also the kid who dissected a dead garter snake in our backyard a couple of years ago. So… maybe she’ll be an artist / veterinarian.

We are on our way back to Colorado for Christmas. Thank you for keeping up the howling all this time.

CR 12.06.09

2009-12-06T20:42:00.000-08:00

Only the present moment is real.

Every morning I wake up and look out the window first. If the ocean is still there, then I am still in this paradise and it is not a dream.

On the morning that I woke up and sat bolt upright in bed and looked out the small bedroom window in my mom’s guest room in Colorado, there was no ocean. There was no paradise. Sigh. Time to make lemonade.

It was still early, so I drove over to my sister’s house and knocked on the door at about 7:30am. My brother-in-law opened the door and my niece, Devyn, was at the end of the hallway staring. Her mouth hung open and then she ran toward me and gave me a squeezy hug.

Lemonade.

A few days later we all took Veteran’s Day off and went to the park. Devyn, Dylan, Kassidy and her cousin from the other side, Sarah. All we did was play. No cell phone. No computer. No other adults. We played on the swings and the slides and the monkey bars. 13 year-old Sarah was swinging next to me and said, “I feel like a little kid.”

Kassidy said, “I have an epiphany.” (Seriously.) She ran to the top of a hill in Bear Creek Park and rolled down it. Devyn followed her. Dylan watched. At 2… this was a new experience, and his little brain was absorbing. “Do you want to roll down the hill?” “Yes.” So Kassidy helped him. He rolled. Sideways. No up. No down. Just sideways, straight across the relatively flat hill, when viewed from that perspective. Kassidy began a hands on tutorial and Dylan was a willing student. Sarah decided to roll. And then I put down the camera and rolled. Soon after, the new game became covering each other with armloads of leaves. The weather was mild and autumny. We played volleyball and took pictures of each other. When we noticed Dylan tearing apart the contents of the diaper bag looking for animal crackers, we realized it must be time for lunch.

We spent the whole day making a memory for when we grow up. One day we will say, “Remember when we were little and rolled down the hill at the park and everyone’s pants fell down? Remember that day? That was a perfect day.”

We left to get lunch and then stopped at another park to eat it. That afternoon we went to a third park because we were having so much fun we could imagine nothing more perfect. If sliding and swinging and rolling down hills and chasing ducks (yeah… duck chasing…. It’s a Colorado past time invented by Kassidy when she was about Dylan’s age.) is your version of paradise then, after a short lunch break, all you want is more of the same.

After two weeks in Colorado teaching Fluency Fast Spanish classes and visiting my family and friends and a week in California at ACTFL with some of my favorite teacher people, a took a red-eye from LAX to Liberia. It wasn’t, though, until I saw the billboards on the highway leading to the airport as we were landing that I believed that this had not all been a dream.

The first morning I woke up and looked out the window and saw the familiar vista from my window I said, “yes!” and leaned back against my pillow, perfectly content.

Yesterday my dad, Shannon, Kassidy and I went to Borinquen. Kassidy went on the first zip line with a guide. They were clipped together and she didn’t have to do anything at all. She looked terrified, but she wanted to do it. (I love this kid!) Shannon and my dad went. I… went with a guide, too. Clipped in. Didn’t have to do anything. The guides call it going “en taxi.”

When I landed on the second platform Kassidy was beaming and saying, “I want to go by myself now.” And she did. At each platform she counted the remaining ones, “Only 8 more left.” By the last one she had watched the guides who were monkeying around and decided to go upside down like they did.

It took me three times “en taxi” to decide to go alone, and then I did the rest of them myself. The lines covered jungle, waterfalls, breathtaking views of the volcano and mountains.

I am not… the person I thought I was.

CR06-12-09.

Whatever we have done with our lives makes us what we are when we die. And everything, absolutely everything counts. – Sogyal Rinpoche

Ticht Naht Hahn is my morning replacement for my missing Sangha, and tells me today that I must look deeply into my desire and deeply at my intentions. The way I use money is important. It can be used to relieve suffering and feed the hungry. Am I motivated by compassionate ideals? Or am I motivated by greed or revenge?

The weight of that question falls between us and everything we do like armloads of books clumsily thunking the floor.

Whereas the poverty in Mexico reveals itself nakedly on street corners in the form of the limbless elderly and shoeless children selling gum, it is hidden in Costa Rica. It is possible to be here, to swim in the ocean, to walk on the beach, to shop like a tourist and never be awakened from the dream that this is paradise. The main roads are lined with houses and Pulperías (very small neighborhood convenience stores) and the occasional shack. These main roads have unpaved off-shoots. As most of the people who live down those side roads don’t have cars, sometimes they are just trails. The trails lead into the belly of Costa Rica. Here there are many shacks. Here there is very little rice.

And here is where Kassidy and I will naturally divide between what guides our individual souls. On Saturday we have been invited to join the Secret Santa committee we’ve been working with to deliver food to one of these communities. We accepted. And then last night we learned that, because of the holidays, the vet clinic has been changed to this Saturday. Last week Kassidy de-ticked a dog at a restaurant while we were waiting for our food. This is something she is good at. She feels compassion for them. She is bold enough that she will tackle random dogs to remove the suffering caused by the ticks. This is a girl whose lap was created to exactly accommodate a lap dog. They crawl into her arms and make themselves comfortable and she pets and snuggles and scratches them. Once they get there, there isn’t anything that will motivate them to leave.

There is a ghost on her lap now, and she wears those memories on the outside as they march wispily in front of her eyes. Our butt of a dog Kuzco, who we learned in the 6 months before we moved that we were immensely fonder of than we had realized, was hit by a car while participating in the traditional butt-like activities that had earned him the nickname to begin with.

She was torn, but ultimately, she is not the person she thought she was, either. These little dogs climb into the vacated space and absorb her sadness and hear the spaces between her recollections of Kuzco fetching badminton birdies in the back yard and her lap stretches and grows to make room for both a tick-covered dog and the ghost of a dancing butt-like dog.

My dad and Shannon were here last week and went to the rain forest and the National Park. The guide told stories that I am now repeating in my informal guided driving tours of the roads between the airport and home. Sugar cane planting here is staggered. Crops right next to each other will be in various stages of growth. It is ready to be harvested when it has gone to seed and the wind has replanted for the following year. Since each crop is ready at a different time, all of the farmers can help each other harvest one at a time. I said this with much authority, too. Because “look who knows so much.”

The underlying resentment and anger that has been palpable around us since we arrived ambled clunkily away while they were here. It is hard to hold one’s ground in the face of more than one person telling you you are dead wrong. Kassidy experienced daily jumps in the pool and my dad taught her to body surf. She listens to the waves from the balcony now and says, “Do you think they’re big today?”

Kassidy and I have enjoyed the only 3 days we will spend at home alone together between now and February. Really. We started going to the gym together every night. It’s been so much fun to have a work-out partner. We miss Dad and Shannon, though. They email to ask what the sunsets look like. They have not yet noticed that each of them left one pair of unmentionables in the dryer. We think we’ll put them in the guest room in case anyone needs “extras.”

Friday night I arrived at the airport to greet a very late plane. I stood with the shouting taxi drivers and felt the glee and giddiness that the taxi drivers could not have been feeling. Diana Noonan, her son Tony and Tony’s girlfriend Meghan were winding their way through customs. Kassidy and Tony dove for coins thrown in the pool and the winner was the one with the greatest value of piled change, not the greatest number of coins. Diana went to the fundraiser with me and met people from East high school in Denver. Tony and Meghan had dinner in Playa del Coco and I forgot to tell them that the tip was included in the charge, so they triple tipped. (We also did this our first night here.) They were serenaded by a small band and when Tony tipped them, he handed them all the change that remained in his pocket – 300 colones. The musician looked at the change in his hand and said, “Muy poquito.” As they re-told the story that evening and we told them that 300 colones was about 50 cents. Whoops.

Since the very beginning I have said that being here would be more fun if we had someone to share it with. Now we do. I was right.

Information on how to donate to the Secret Santa group was posted just before this note / blog. I’ll have more pictures after Saturday, too. I’m looking for classes / schools that would like to use this as a class project. The schools don’t have internet access, so we can’t do anything live, but I can do audio and video recording, post it and then have classes audio and video record themselves and then go back and play it back for them. Internet access in schools is still a few years away. Let me know if it sounds possible.

My apologies, also, for the anemic availability of blogs. I was in Colorado for two weeks, at ACTFL in San Diego for a week and then back here with my parents. While I was in California, I told my Aunt Judy that it was hard to get enough writing done. “Don’t forget that’s why you’re there,” she said.

I finished Carl and sent it to the publisher and when my dad was here, we talked through the story of José. I was stuck on a plot point that was paralyzing me. This story happened in 2005, and I’ve always been stuck about how to write it. I’m still editing, but the book is done. Actually, two books are done. One is about Isabela, the girl from the first book. The other one is from the perspective of her mother and contains a little bit of unexpected romance. We will use it for our adults classes. Adults can handle a steamy novel, right? I’ll be looking for proofreaders and anyone who wants to pilot the kids book shortly.

¡Pura vida!

HOW TO DONATE TO KIDS IN COSTA RICA

2009-12-06T20:14:00.000-08:00

Today I was driving home from the gym and passed hitchhikers. I shouldn’t have stopped. I knew I shouldn’t have stopped. But I did anyway. It was a Nicaraguan woman with two children coming across the border. She said her husband had died 22 days before in an accident and the “patron” had asked them to leave afterward. She had two older children in León, so they were travelling on foot and by hitchhiking. They had left Nicaragua 8 days ago. The little boy, Nicolás, asked me if I had any food. They hadn’t eaten, they said, in two days. I had almost an entire energy bar and the kids split it. On the way, I stopped to drop off the recycling, and while mom and daughter got out to help me unload it from the trunk, the little boy stayed in the car. I should have known better. When I got back in the car and realized that I had left him alone I surreptitiously checked to be sure my belongings were still on the front seat. My gym bag contained some credit cards, the camera, my Ipod and some cash. I dropped them off with a little bus money. They stole nothing. I felt guilty I even checked. I felt guilty that I even had an Ipod. I felt bad that I didn’t have more food in the car that day.

The depth of the poverty here is unbearable. When we asked the school to make a wish list, toilet paper was at the top. There is a community nearby where the poverty is so severe their cupboards are literally bare of even rice. A fellow volunteer said that she had been there once and couldn’t go back. There were people who can stomach seeing starvation and people who can’t, and she knows she’s in the group that can’t.

Below is the priority list from one of the four schools that the Secret Santa group here supports. Ultimately, though, once I visit this rice-less community on the 12th, I don’t think it will surprise me to learn that most of the donated money this year will go there. I’m already fantasizing about filling the car with food and driving there.

Here’s the information on how to donate to Secret Santa. The fundraiser is THIS Saturday. I’d love to get donations in time for that.

USD WIRE TRANSFERS INSTRUCTION

The customer must instruct his/ her bank to transfer funds as follows:

The Bank of New York

New York, New York, U.S.A.

ABA: 021000018

SWIFT: IRVTUS3N

For credit to account number:

803-338-3577

Scotiabank CR

San José, Costa Rica

SWIFT: NOSCCRSJ

For final credit to account number: #_$13000054505____________________

No Problema Property Management Secret Santa

San José, Costa Rica

In all cases No Problema must be notified of the transfer along with the dollar amount, transfer number and the date of the transfer to ensure that you are credited for the transfer. noproblemapm@yahoo.com Also please ensure your bank includes your name on the transfer.

This was the priority list from the school:

Material que se ocupa

Papel higénico (toilet paper)

Desinfectante

Palo de pisos (mop)

Escobas (broom)

Machas (mop head)

Machetes

Rastrillo (metal rake)

Palas (shovels)

Macanas (6 ft crow bar)

Arañas (rake)

Hojas blancas (blank white paper)

Utensilios de cocina (cooking utensils)

Basureros (trash cans)

Pilot (White board markers)

Material didáctico (colored paper, erasers, glue, scissors)

Libros de cuento (story books)

CDs de música infantil (music for the pre-schoolers)

Paños para secarse manos (hand towels)

A corto plazo

Abanicos (fans)

Aceras (cement / concrete apron)

Piletas (sink for mopping)

Lavamanos (sink for handwashing)

Cerrar espacio kinder (fence for the pre-school / Kinder play area)

Chapiadoras (Lawn mower / gas)

Escritorios (teacher’s desk)

Cerámicas (tile)

Armarios (closets or bookshelves with locks)

Grabadoras (CD Players)

Telefax – fax machine

Proyecciones a Futuro

Salón de Actos – covered roof

Aula de Informática – computer classroom

Aula para Profesor de I y II ciclo – classroom for one more teacher (would create the opportunity for all day school)

Aula para Biblioteca - library

Requirements to have a computer in a school:

Seguridad de las aulas (Secure classroom / bars on window)

Mobilario para los equipos (Computer desk)

Extintor (Fire extinguisher)

Un ventilador de pie por cada dos computadoras (One fan for every two Computers)

October 31, 2009 5:56am ¡Pura Vida!

2009-10-31T07:44:00.000-07:00

¡Pura Vida!

October 31, 2009 5:56am
SYNOPSIS: Pedro’s wedding last weekend; the Playa Panama elementary school tamale fundraiser; scuba diving certification progress; how Kassidy is doing; I get Pura Vida.

I hear monkeys.

One Congo Aullador, actually, who has decided to be my alarm clock. One of our first purchases when we arrived here was a wind up alarm clock. We set it on school days in case the electricity goes off in the middle of the night. This morning the digital alarm clock was blinking 12:55, but the Congo Aullador was singing to me.

I am sitting on the balcony outside my room. I do not want to come back to the states. Every morning I wake up and open my eyes and immediately look at the ocean. Even after two months I’m incredulous. So I check. To make sure it’s still there. I suppose that’s how someone in love feels, looking over in the morning to watch someone breathe and being incredulous that they’re that lucky. Tomorrow morning I will wake up and it will be dark. I will arrive at the airport as the sun comes up. So this morning, is my goodbye. I am feeling present and appreciative. I’m also feeling like my feet want to be in that water.

La Boda

Last weekend we went to Pedro’s wedding. We followed Mike and Carla up to Santa Cruz, a couple of hours away. Kassidy took some pictures from the window as we passed through a cattle drive. I just never stop thinking that’s funny.

We arrived at a bar in a little town… Nimbu?… Nubu?…Namby? We turned right at the painting of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs painted on a pre-school. You know where I’m talking about, right? We paid their buddy the bar owner 5000 colones to watch the cars overnight and then Scott Hansen, the builder of the house we’re living in, drove down the mountain to pick us up because our little rental car couldn’t make it up. It was a 40 minute drive up Pikes Peak… if Pikes Peak weren’t paved, and if they hadn’t yet cut that winding road wrapping around it. The rains had created ditches and gullies, rather than potholes.

We arrived for the 11:00 wedding with the lawyer / reverend who would marry the couple at 11:10, and so began our experiential education into the Tico time schedule. The wedding started around 1:30. It was a small group of family and a handful of neighbors. For most of the day we were the only people there who weren’t related by blood or marriage. In addition to the standard unsurprising ceremony, which was traditional and archaic in its language, there was a tradition in which the reverend asks for coins from the gathered family and friends. She put 13 coins in her hand and blessed them and then gave them to Pedro. Pedro then gave them to Teresa. It was a promise that Pedro would be a good provider and that Teresa would be a good steward of their household money. She was placed in charge of all things domestic. The wedding ended with a kiss and then a champagne toast. The reverend asked everyone to raise a glass to the couple and individually make a wish for them ---love, patience, humor, that they would always have food, for many children. Witnesses were randomly selected. They both signed their names. Afterward, there was no procession, as there had been no procession in. Immediately prior to the wedding the bride had been sitting on the groom’s lap drinking a beer. After some cajoling, Mike managed to get everyone into one family picture. The family dispersed to get food ready. (They had literally slaughtered a pig for the occasion.) Everyone else moved to a bench on the outskirts of the veranda and hung out. This activity persisted for the rest of the day. People moved from the bench to under the covered veranda when it started to rain. The food was set out on the table outside and people filled their plates and sat down. The bride went to take a nap. Someone drove the reverend / lawyer down the mountain and, while they were gone, thought it might be a good idea to stop by the grocery store and pick up a white cake. They cake was set on the counter. Someone cut it and passed pieces around. Dancing and hanging out at the wedding site continued until well after we went to bed and then it moved into the living room where it continued until the wee hours. When we were ready for bed, there were several available floor spaces for our air mattress. We were shown to the floor beside the bed of the bride and groom. I stared at him absolutely incredulous. No… thanks. We took one of the kid’s bedrooms.

I had a great conversation that night with one of the drunk cousins. He was commenting that Kassidy was a little too young to propose marriage to. He was 22. He had consumed almost an entire bottle of rum. I think he was inspired by the woman from Atlanta marrying his cousin Pedro and thought maybe he’d see what other American women were available at the wedding. We were, as I mentioned, the only people there not related to him. Kassidy was too young and apparently I was too old. Kassidy found him to be creepy. I found him to be amusing. You know… like the town fool. There are three mixed race marriages in this family. Two of them are between older American men and young Tica women in the family that originally owned all of the property in Playa Hermosa. I heard there were a couple more, too, but they don’t live here anymore and I haven’t met them.

The next morning the cooking for that many people was constant. They had spent a day earlier in the week making tamales and now they were being boiled. I had the opportunity to take pictures of the entire process of tamale making at the school yesterday. Banana leaf and then masa (cornmeal rolled into a ball), and then peppers and onions and some kind of salsa thingy and then meat and manteca (that means lard – just a little piece of lard, because lard makes everything taste better) and then roll it up in the banana leaf and wrap twine around it and boil it. There was absolutely no schedule. People woke up, ate something, and then sat and watched TV. Jurassic Park and then Water World and then Pirates of the Caribbean. I wanted to go for a hike and, eventually, a couple of the boys said they would go with us. So Kassidy tucked the puppy under her arm and off we went. As we walked from the house to the trailhead, we picked up about 5 of the guys. The women all hung back and waved. I should have known better. Marcos brought a machete. This was not hiking. It was trailbreaking.

When we got back I made CDs of wedding pictures for Teresa before she went back to Atlanta and a second copy for one of the aunts who had a computer. Sometime that morning Teresa had been cleaning up and found her bouquet. She walked into the house, called for Ceci and threw it over her head directly at her. Ceci caught it. Woo hoo! Except Ceci is married to Marcos. This Tico ceremony would have driven a wedding planner up a wall. I thought it was cool. One of the advantages of being this laid back is that the anxiety about being late disappears. There’s no such thing as late. Things just happen whenever they happen.

Although we were still on no kind of a schedule, I didn’t want to drive back in the dark, so we finally got a ride back down the mountain about 3:30 and got back to Playa Hermosa just as it was getting dark.

Ohhh… just while I’m sitting here writing I can hear the waves crashing on the shore. Sigh.

La Escuela / Secret Santa

There is a fundraiser coming up in December put on by the 4 communities, Playa Hermosa, Playa del Coco, Playa Panama and Sardinal. The money that is raised from the event and auction goes to support the schools in these towns. I have been going down to the school in Playa Panama this week with John. I translate for the teachers while they tell him what they need. They are building a new bathroom right now, but don’t have the money to pay for the US $200 in labor, so they made tamales for 2 days and sold them for 500 colones (a little less than a dollar) apiece. I took pictures of the process. They have a travelling English teacher who comes in Mondays and Tuesdays. They have been told that they might be able to get a second teacher next year which would mean that instead of teaching 1st through 3rd grade in one room in the mornings and 4th through 6th grade in the same room in the afternoons, that they would be able to offer full day school. To do that, they need one more classroom. If they build that classroom with specific specifications (fans, bars on the windows etc.) the government will give them a couple of computers. This same type of fundraising built the first bathroom and the Kindergarten / pres-school classroom. This school serves 15 K and Pre-K kids and 54 1st through 6th graders. School is free, but students have to purchase their textbooks and buy uniforms and school supplies. The teachers also let the parents know when they have run out of toilet paper.

I’ll post pictures, but what I’d like to do when I’m home is see if we can tackle any of these projects. They have bathrooms now, but no sinks where they can wash their hands. (I know… eww.) They have textbooks, but no reading books. They have a pathetic play area for the littler kids, but it isn’t fenced in. I took pictures of the swing set. It is not something any of us would let our kids play on without an up to date tetanus shot.

There is a kitchen where the kids are fed lunch. A small amount of money is provided by the government for this school lunch program.

These conditions are livable, but I’m motivated to make them educational rather than just livable. John tells me that this is not the worst school. When I get back he will take me to others that this fundraiser supports. They have been in shacks with absolutely no food at all.

The underbelly of Costa Rica exposes that the myth that this is not an impoverished country is just that. It is beautiful. It is amazing. I am so very enchanted by this place. It’s just simply not true that everyone is literate. I think they only surveyed all of the people who could read. It’s also not true that everyone is fed.

SCUBA diving certification

I cannot breathe under water. I panicked. I couldn’t clear my mask. I couldn’t equalize. I felt like I was on an airplane my ears were so pressurized. Multiple attempts to clear my mask failed. I could not relax. I was with my friend Heather who had far less trouble than I did and can’t wait to go again. She was graceful. I was graceless. What else is new?

Did I mention that I panicked in 8 feet of water in a swimming pool?

I am practicing clearing my mask in the pool before I go back and am also buying a mask with a release valve in Colorado. I need every possible advantage.

Kassidy

I volunteered to read The Phantom Tollbooth to Kassidy’s class and while I was there stopped in to see the principal. How are things going? So, I told her the truth and also told her that we weren’t sure we were going to stay at Ciudad Blanca next year. She was aware of the problems, but didn’t know how bad they were. After some discussion, they have decided to move her to 8th grade next year. The school year begins in the middle of February.

I like her. We have had some difficult times together, but now when I pick her up at the bottom of the hill we take a minute to be excited that it’s the end of the day and we get to be together again. It’s a moment we hadn’t been appreciating. One day I was late and it was horrible for her. We both realized how much she looks forward to seeing me parked next to the bus and decided to relish that. She’s very excited to come home. When we come back she’ll be travelling with my parents by herself. We’re totally excited about that, too.

Pura Vida

I understand Pura Vida now. It was an abstract, silly concept when I got here. Now it’s a pace. It’s a feeling of going along with the waves and not fighting the tide. It’s a feeling of using the time for meditation and insight and presence. It’s what we would be… on vacation. It’s not just doing things slowly, it’s doing things more spontaneously. I lose track of whatever schedule I had intended to follow when something comes up.

It’s taking advantage of the moments in the day when the sun comes out to be outside. It’s taking advantage of passing someone on the street and stopping to chat. It’s dropping everything to watch the sun set. It’s spending an afternoon basking alternately in desire, pleasure and satisfaction. It’s beating the rain to the pool and floating happily but it’s also standing in the rain and feeling it instantly cool the surrounding air. It’s taking time to take pictures.

It’s having nowhere else to be but exactly where I am in this moment.

And it’s experiencing and appreciating the sensation of joy at being present in this very moment.

Costa Rica 10.11.09

2009-10-11T11:47:00.000-07:00

We are haunted by an ideal life, and it is because we have within us the beginning of the possibility of it. - Phillips Brooks

SYNOPSIS: You, in Costa Rica; Volunteering at the Vet Clinic, walking through the real Costa Rica, Juxtaposition --- the Happiest Place with extreme poverty on Earth; White Water Rafting, Poverty, Prisons, drought; S.C.U.B.A, snorkeling, rumors. Things are better. Kassidy is adjusting. We’re trying new things. We’re started volunteering. The creamy filling inside of the real Costa Rica seems to be both happiness and also severe poverty.

YOU, IN COSTA RICA

When you come to Costa Rica I will wake you up in the morning and we will walk 9 minutes down the hill to wait for the school bus. We will walk away as it approaches to avoid embarrassing Kassidy as she boards. We will walk 10 more minutes to the beach and we will walk on the beach and look at the footprints in the sand while we walk. Some with sneaker patterns, some with toes, some with paws. We will walk and watch the wave patterns in the sand.

We will joke about Match.com descriptions of ourselves enjoying “long walks on the beach.” We will hop away from the waves if they lap too closely. We will come to the realization that if a person can’t be happy here, it might not be within his or her grasp anywhere. We will walk from one far end of the small beach to the other and back again and then we will climb on the rocks and then we will strip down to our bathing suits, set our towels on the furthest possible ledge and we will jump in and swim to the beach that is inaccessible on foot.

We will swim in the still, clear ocean water and we will wish we knew how to order room service to the hidden cove so that we could have a cup of coffee on the beach.

We will swim out of the cove and wrap up in our towels so that we don’t get our clothes wet and we will walk back down the beach to Diving Safari’s where we’ll pick up our S.C.U.B.A. gear and go to the boat. We will sail out around Monkey Rock and head to Catalina Island where we will dive. We’ll get back in time to meet the bus and we will watch the sun set over the ocean while we drink cocktails by the pool and do 6th grade math homework.

We will put on our Costa Rican perfume and we will eat ceviche and arroz con pollo for dinner.

We will go to Tamarindo and take surfing lessons.
We will go to the Playa Panama and body surf. We will take the kayaks around the peninsula and watch the sun set. We will learn to snorkel. We will go to the National Park and see monkeys and birds and snakes and take pictures. You will make fun of me for ogling the pool boy, not because he is so young, but because we are so, so old. We will play pool. We will go hiking. We will see a volcano spurt fire and ash. We will fish from a boat in the middle of the ocean and joke about the suicidal flying fish that are jumping near the boat and seem like they want to jump in. We will watch for dolphins and whales. We will play in a waterfall and wonder at how any one place can be so utterly perfect and not be heaven. We will decide maybe it is. We will decide Heaven needs calorie-free cheese cake.

And we will be gluttonous, not content to enjoy just these moments alone, but will instead fantasize about moving here and being beach bums and never going home.

And when you ask me what I do when I walk the beach alone, I will tell you that I think about how fun it will be when you’re here and I plan imaginary days in which I get to show you the things I think you’ll like. And you’ll laugh and say, “Yeah, right.”

But it will be true.

Volunteering at the Vet Clinic, walking through the real Costa Rica, Juxtaposition --- the Happiest Place with extreme poverty on Earth

We are over the hump. We have been here for 5 weeks and will be in Denver to work in 3. Kassidy is happy about that, but she’s also happy here. I’m not allowed to go into detail. But there is a boy. And he talked to her. Living here feels mostly normal now and I am relieved of the stress of being told every morning and every evening that she wants to go home. For that, the boy is on my daily gratitude list.

Yesterday, Kassidy volunteered at the spay and neuter clinic that comes into Playa del Coco once a month. I walked to the gym from there. Gross stuff is really not my thing. They put all the dogs under on the floor of the school at the same time and while the vet goes around neutering and spaying them, the volunteers follow cleaning their ears, removing ticks, spraying flea and tick treatment on them, spraying and cleaning their wounds and comforting them as they come out from anesthetic. Kassidy said she felt like a real vet. Most of the volunteers speak English, but most of the people who bring their dogs to the clinic speak only Spanish, so Kassidy became the translator. Seriously. Adult volunteers would bring her over to use her limited Spanish to explain how long the wait would be and what they would need to do to take care of the dogs when they took them home. She called me at the gym asking to take one of the puppies home.

Someone found one on the beach this morning and brought it in. It’s something crossed with a Chihuahua, so it’s very small. She can fit it in her carry on. She can take it home. It can live with her dad!

We returned the rental car and are now on foot. The gym is approximately 20 kilometers from here. Not walk-able. Not bike-able. But, I have found a couple of work-out buddies and car pool in with them until I solve the problem. I am quickly learning that while it is possible to live without a car in Playa del Coco, it is not possible when you live in Hermosa. There is a 7-11 size market, but no grocery store. There is a gym, but it has 3 machines and 2 of them don’t work. Right now, I’m not terribly concerned because I can walk to the beach from here. 9 minutes down the driveway. 10 more minutes to the beach. Once I get there, finding milk doesn’t seem too terribly urgent. Janet is checking on some rental car companies that she says won’t rip us off. She will call “ahorita.” Mmhmm.

Friday night we had some neighbors over for dinner. Faith and John. I can feel myself being drawn in, like water rises to its own level. There is a school in Playa Panama that they help support. They want to send 25 additional children to school next year, so they need to raise $5000.00 to build an additional room onto the school house and then they need to raise money for uniforms, shoes and textbooks for each of those children.

I just can’t… I can’t clean ear wax out of a stray dog’s ear. I can’t remove ticks and soak them in alcohol. I so admire Kassidy for having so much compassion for animals that she wants to take them home and that working on them makes her “feel like a vet.” But I have an over-active gag reflex. =) But I can do schools.

Schools are free here, but uniforms, shoes and texts are required. Many of the kids here don’t go to school because that stands in the way every year. I’m going down this week. I’ll take pictures.

Being on foot has given me the opportunity to SEE more than I did before. There are monkeys in the trees on our driveway. There are more houses and businesses on each street than I noticed before. There are people walking on the street who wave and say, “¿Como amaneció?”

I translate this in my head every time because it seems so funny and I have no idea what the response SHOULD be. How did you wake up? The answer is “bien” – (well). I think it might be something along the lines of “How did you sleep?” but if you think about it, “How did you wake up?” is more important. As opposed to, say, not waking up.

I generally stammer through my answer to this question because it always catches me off guard and I get distracted by trying to remember exactly how I did wake up this morning.

Anyway… back to the point. While walking from the elementary school (escuela) in Playa del Coco (a very, very hot connection of outdoor classrooms made of brick with holes in it to keep it cooler, but not real walls) to the gym about 15 minutes away, I passed fruit stands and a panaderia (bakery) and a rooster just hanging out at the side of the road.

An old man in the panaderia said I was pretty and that I had a good body and asked everyone else in the store to agree. I’m fairly certain that he began thinking he was talking behind my back and that everyone would get a good laugh out of him talking about the gringa. When I responded in Spanish, he said, “¿Hablo bien o hable mal?” which means literally, “Do I speak well or do I speak poorly” but means, “Am I right or am I wrong?” I told him he was right and thanked him. =) One of those lovely situations without a good answer. But I was on my way to the gym, so it was cool to walk to the gym in a “good body.”

I walked past the gym to the beach, about 10 minutes further because… I don’t know if you knew this… but there’s a beach here. And I like it. Walked a little on the beach before going to the gym and tried to go to the massage place to make an appointment. $29 massages if you buy 10. I had spoken with the owner only last week. The office is closed. The phone number is disconnected. I called the second number on the door. A woman answers and says the business has been closed down by the police. Nice. Moments away from giving away $290 to a business that immigration shut down. Let this be a lesson to you, Americans. You can not run a business in Costa Rica on a passport.

The word that came to mind on this walk was “juxtaposition.” There is a sign for resort condominiums next to, literally, a one room shack made of scrap wood and corrugated metal. There are beautiful houses with swimming pools – empty swimming pools and abandoned houses. My experience in other countries has been of segregation. The poor and the rich live in separate neighborhoods. Here, there are nice houses and even resort condominiums in gated communities next door to dilapidated houses. Many of the houses have bars over the windows and the doors and even enclosing their patios.

On our way home we see a man carrying two Dorado (Mahi Mahi). He holds them in large plastic bags by the tails, holding them aloft so they don’t hit the ground. They stretch from his shoulder to the ground, easily. I can buy one for probably 5000 colones (double it to make $10 and then reduce by 15%, so about $8.50), and I would… if I knew how to clean a fish.

This level of poverty has a normality to it, too. There is an article in a local magazine that says that there was a survey done all over the world assessing where the “Happiest Place on Earth” is, and it’s Costa Rica. They are mostly on bikes. If I lived in Coco, I would definitely use one for all transportation. But in Hermosa, we are in an enormous valley and I only see the mountain bikers in spandex riding them. Anyone else on a bike walks the bike up the hills. The pace of this place is slow and happy. There is music coming from some of the houses. There are roosters crowing from multiple houses. I feel out of place, but still, no one really seems to notice me or care that I am walking through their neighborhood. There is no obvious need for help as there is in Mexico. No one is begging. No one looks miserable or hungry (except the stray dogs). No one appears to need anything. This is where I want to shop. There is a fish market around the corner, a bakery, a farmer’s market. I buy a banana for 30 colones and receive change from my 100 colones that is no longer valid in Costa Rica. The government is asking that all of the small silver coins be returned to the banks. I imagine this will happen with pennies someday, too.

Funny thing, too. We went to the beach at Ocotal a couple of weeks ago and even took pictures and posted them. Turns out… that wasn’t Ocotal. We turned right instead of left and came back to the far end of Playa del Coco. We went to Ocotal yesterday. Nice beach. We’ll go back and re-publicize for it when we have a car again.

I LIKE it here. I try to have a daily rhythm and build habits, but each day is different and unpredictable because no one does what they say they will do when they say they will do it, so we are beholden to some external rhythm instead.

White Water Rafting, Poverty, Prisons, drought

Since I last wrote, I went White Water Rafting. I’m going to let the Facebook photo album and narration tell that story.

What I learned on the way, though, is that we were between two volcanoes and that each was in a separate biosphere. We were on the edge of a rain forest. As we drove from Liberia toward San Jose, we passed taxis that were waiting for the arrival of busses from San Jose. It was a Sunday and Sunday is visiting day at the prison in Liberia. There are 600 prisoners there.

On this Sunday (last Sunday) there is an article in the paper about starvation in Guatemala. We talk about the difference between Guatemala and Costa Rica. There is poverty here, but not misery. The government feeds the poor people. I learn later that this is a myth and there are plenty of homes here with absolutely no food in them. Guanacaste is the poorest region in Costa Rica, but also usually has the most tourists. Tourism is THE industry in Costa Rica. The paper this week also said that tourism is down 40% from this time last year. The lack of rain in this rainy season is killing the crops. This will be a very bad year for Costa Rica. I cannot spend this year oblivious on my veranda over-looking the ocean, and I know that. I will find a balance between using this opportunity to overcome my fears and live a life I never thought was possible when I was a little girl and also finding out if there is any knowledge or skill I have accumulated so far in my life that can be helpful here.

S.C.U.B.A, snorkeling, rumors

I also walked across the street to Diving Safaris and got in the pool with all of the scuba diving equipment on. I have the certification materials and after 3 more hours in the pool, taking a number of tests and doing 4 ocean dives, I will be certified and will be ready to go again. If you’ve done this or snorkeling before, you know that the biggest obstacle to overcome is the feeling that you are not supposed to be able to breathe underwater and will breathe in water and die. If it weren’t for the people who said they were coming and want to go scuba diving, I don’t think I’d be doing this… but…. I’ll be ready for you.

We are going down to Diving Safaris today to rent snorkeling equipment. I may need to add an underwater camera to my list of things to bring back from the U.S.

The woman who has given us a couple of rides into Playa del Coco to go to the gym and volunteer at the clinic told us yesterday that it’s a very small community here and everyone knows everyone else’s business. The only way to really get bad rumors started about you, though, is if you start hanging out with the Ticos. I am horrified. Seriously? Why? Why? Why would you COME here and then only hang out with other ex-pats????? To work on your English?

Let the rumor mill start grinding.

HOW TO ACCESS PICTURES

2009-09-28T13:58:00.000-07:00

First Costa Rica album:
http://www2.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=2338851013/a=97496915_97496915/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/

September 25th album
http://www2.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=2393215013/a=97496915_97496915/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/

September 28 album:

http://www2.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=2415016013/a=97496915_97496915/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/

CR 09.29.09 Monday 9:30am The taste of fear loosening my heart

2009-09-28T12:42:00.000-07:00

“I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise. I choose to risk my significance; to live so that which comes to me as seed goes to the next as blossom and that which comes to me as blossom, goes on as fruit."

~ Dawna Markova

SYNOPSIS: Preface; Jet-skiing with Kassidy, exploring a cave, seeing a whale; our first dinner party; a love letter.

PREFACE:

I am in the middle of the ocean with Kassidy. We do not have life jackets. I know that it is crucial that we not panic and that she not grab on to me for support. I know that it is crucial that we not panic when something touches our legs. It’s some kind of fish. There are a lot of them. We must not think about what kind. We swim in the direction of the nearest boat, a long way off, and hope it sees us before it pulls away.

When I wake up, I cannot go back to sleep. I lay there thinking about not being able to touch the bottom…. About how big the ocean is… about how long we would be able to tread water…. About how I don’t like to put my face in the water when I swim. I think about the salty water. I lay there thinking about how I will avoid being in the middle of the ocean without a life jacket.

JET SKIING, BEACHES AND CAVES

I taste like salt. It’s in my skin. It sprays up around me and splashes my face and I taste it in my mouth. I also taste fear. It is fear caused my irrational thoughts that race through my mind uncontrolled.

I could tip over.

I could fall off.

I could hit a rock.

I could hit a shark.

It is this fear that has me humming along at a steady 16 miles per hour while my guide gestures for me to keep up.

I could get lost at sea.

But I’m in a bay, not in the open ocean, so the chances of that are minimal.

I finally get up to 44 miles per hour, and my guide says that anything over 30 is respectable. The more gas I give it, the smoother the ride is.

The sea gets choppier and the waves get higher and I am scared again. I am feeling the fear and doing it anyway… but I’m down to 22 miles per hour. I give it gas again and travel in the smoother wake of the guide until the waves calm down and we speed up to 40 again. He is smiling. Kassidy is grinning. I want to take THIS picture: Kassidy travelling behind Nolberto in a life jacket. There’s no way I’m taking even one hand off of the handle bars to grab the camera from it’s water proof compartment, though. When we stop, she dives off the side without waiting for help climbing down so that she can float in her life jacket on the beach instead of swimming.

She is giggling. We call her an octopus as she wraps her arms and legs around me and says, “Mommy, I don’t want to ride with you go too slow.”

Si vas a insultarme, Kassidy, hazlo en español, (If you’re going to insult me, do it in Spanish.) I say.

We swim on an empty beach on the thing that looks like mountains in the middle of the ocean. You can only get here by jet ski or boat or canoe or kayak. Nolberto takes us to his favorite beaches. You’ll remember Nolberto, who we met at the Sports Bar with Jose Cruz, and also as the salsa dancer who I danced with at Los Ranchitos. He is a beautiful man with a body built by activity. He swims gracefully, he runs like a life guard from BayWatch. His shirtless chest is magnificent. His arms are muscular. He makes me want to write him and to create a back story and front story and transform him into the lead character in a romance novel. But… perhaps this is a cultural misunderstanding and I need to be more open-minded… but this man exudes “player.” Kassidy likes him and trusts him and her instincts are impeccable. Mine are as poor as my sense of direction, so I rely on her to have that animal sense of the difference between quality people and the other kind. Seems like a good guy. But there’s really no way I needed THAT much help putting on a life jacket.

The water here is calm. Only small waves. We nearly surrounded by hills. There is… no joke… a golf course in the hills directly in front of us… that makes it difficult to pretend we are on a deserted island.

Kassidy is so very, very happy.

We ride again and go to a second beach with a cave. Kassidy is so hungry she wants to leave. A woman sitting on the beach over-hears our conversation and offers her rice. She heaps a plate of rice and beans on a plate for her and she is restored to her previously happy self and we explore the cave.

I want to know what’s on the other side.

Nolberto takes me to Miravista, the look-out point at the top of a long trail that we climb barefoot while Kassidy sits on a blanket and munches Costa Rican rice.

We get to the top and there is no place to stand. This look-out point is exactly that. After the point, there is a 100 foot drop off onto rocks. This is what’s on the other side of the cave. He steadies me while I breath and pull out the camera.

I could fall.

I could lose my balance and slide down the side.

I ignore the annoying motherly voice in my head that is always ruining my good time and enjoy the feeling in my chest of being totally and completely with laser focus in this moment.

I am scared. All the time. It’s a defect in my brain that causes me to worry about germs and sharks and quick sand and R.O.U.S.s. Quicksand is really very, very scary, by the way.

Fear creates presence. Over-coming it creates peace. It is not peaceful. But I am present. The contrast with my normal life is sharp.

On the way back, Kassidy and Nolberto stop and point in the direction of the back of a whale that rises from the water and we sit quietly, gently rocking, with engines off watching for it to rise again.

DINNER PARTY

At home that afternoon, after Kassidy has swum in the resort pool and I have re- translated the legal waiver I was asked to sign that made me laugh out loud (I was asked to manifest danger and accident and not to ride if I had an earring infection), we prepare for our first party.

People arrive in time to watch the sun set over the ocean (el atardecer). We leave the partially prepared food in the kitchen and sit outside with sangria and marvel at the pinks on the horizon while these experts from Playa Hermosa tells us stories of the history of land development. As I go back in to finish dinner, I am happy in a way that only people at our community dinners understand. My home is full of people again. I have finally figured out how to make the Big Salad here. I am so aware of wanting my people from to be here for dinner, too, but the feeling in my chest is the same. My home is loud. Music is playing. Kids are playing pool upstairs. More kids are in the swimming pool downstairs. The cleaning lady comes tomorrow, so I do not worry about the wet footprints by the door.

Over dinner we naturally separate into two groups because there isn’t a table big enough for all of us. Kassidy opts to sit with the Spanish speakers and I float back and forth. When an English speaker wanders into the Spanish group, the conversation gently shifts back into English.

When everyone leaves, Jose Cruz stays. He is the co-owner of Tours Papagayo (with Nolberto) who we met in the Sports Bar two weeks ago who so generously sent us on today’s adventure and secured permission from the manager for Kassidy to come and swim whenever she likes. He arranged with the guests at the party to go white water rafting next Sunday. We spend two and a half more hours talking in Spanish. He corrects what he calls minor errors. Kassidy lies down on the couch and immediately slams into a twitchy sleep that is fun for us to watch while we talk. The sound of Spanish is delicious. There is no other way to describe it. It’s like melted chocolate… only without the calories. In my mouth and in my ears it transports me to this happy, floating place. English bursts the bubble. He uses the occasional Spanglish term and I chide him. Suena fea. It sounds ugly. He is conducting an interview to find out if we are compatible. He is looking for a girlfriend he can see every night after work --- 7 days a week. I am incredulous. Every day? EVERY every day? He decides we are incompatible and should not marry.

A TRIBUTE TO THE PEOPLE I LOVE

(Read it… you’re definitely one of them)

I woke up this morning feeling loved after a conversation last night with a friend that filled me up. I looked in the mirror (it’s a special kind of mirror with built in self-criticism. Perhaps you have one?) and didn’t see what I usually see. I saw what my friend sees and I carried that with me all day. This is a character flaw of mine. If I were to express how much I love and appreciate the people in my life as often as I think about how much I love and appreciate them, it would be a constant stream and love would seep from my pores and pour from my mouth, but I don’t. And I am oblivious to the fact that I’m not using my words until someone uses theirs, and then I realize how lacking my expressions really are. My gratitude for you is boundless. I am aware of the part you played in my edification whether you birthed me, grew up with me, are my friend, are my acquaintance, are my sangha-friend, are my community dinner friend, are my CSYP friend, are my childbirth class friend, are my colleague, came to my workshop, took my class, came to my house in the middle of the night because I was crying and sad and pathetic, helped me move, care about my daughter, made peanut butter bars, made chocolate-covered strawberries, let me stay at your house, cleaned out my car, mowed my lawn, sat on my couch and drank wine with me into the wee hours, sat on my couch and drank tea with me into the wee hours, sat in my driveway and talked until we steamed up the windows, ate strawberries and whipped cream on my front porch and sprayed it into your mouth, cooked with me, ate with me, wrote to me, danced with me, asked me for help, called me to talk, ran away from your family with me to see a stupid movie so that you wouldn’t tie your children up with duct tape, taught salsa lessons in my living room, went to a concert with me, went camping with me, taught me something, learned something from me, went to high school with me or didn’t like me --- I am aware that it is the strength that comes from those memories, from those experiences, from that history that forms the steady base line of my life, and that causes the voice in my head that says, “give it more gas” to be louder than the one that says, “but I could fall off.”

CR 092509 Friday, 1:48pm First Week of School

2009-09-28T10:22:00.000-07:00

CR 092509 Friday, 1:48pm

“Enjoy yourself. These are the ‘good old days’ you’re going to miss years ahead. We can never go back again, that much is certain.” – B.J. Marshall

SYNOPSIS: My hair was not made for humidity; day to day routine; Kassidy’s first week at school; waiting for the muse,

THE POWER OF DELILAH IN MY SAMSON HAIR

Samson’s power was in his hair. Delilah’s power was seduction. My power of seduction is in my hair. Perhaps it’s an imaginary power, but my self-esteem is strongly rooted in my follicles. My hair is thick and big and because of the power of Mike, who turns my hair into a decorative feast that can only be replicated with mountains of product I am then convinced to buy, I have gotten away with carrying my 80’s hair for two more decades. Mike scrunches me upside down, hanging off the chair with contraptions and extensions. He sprays and gels and fluffs until I have been transformed into a regular person with magnificent hair. I then spend the next 2 months trying to duplicate his results without duplicating his efforts --- a task I am unwilling to take. One of the advantages of this hair cut is that I threw away my hair dryer and curling iron. A dollop of product and a comb, and I am out the door, with my sunglasses unattractively perched upon my head like a head band. Low maintenance. Great results. Like Samson, though, I have been stripped of my strength. My Delilah is the majesty of the ocean that called me here… and turned out to just be humidity.

No amount of or combination of product will tame what has become again what it probably always truly was --- 80s hair. This haircut is not appropriate for humidity. It broadens into a thick, shapeless form I have seen on some witches and once it has expanded to unreasonable proportions, begins to gather the moisture from the air until it is pasted to the back of my neck.

I am considering pig tails. I mentioned the possibility of responding to this situation the way men who are losing their hair do --- just shave it off. “No. You wouldn’t be pretty anymore.” Well, duh. That’s exactly what happened to Samson. You know… if Samson had been a woman. My wily feminine, seductive ways would be no more. I know you’re all worried about that.

My list of things to bring back from the states is growing: sunscreen, more non-DHT insect repellant, hummus powder from the health food store, energy bars, my ingredients for Grandma’s homemade soup, books.

DAY TO DAY ROUTINE

Our days go like this now: We get up at 6 and get ready for school. At 7 we walk down the monstrous hill to the school bus. We do not kiss goodbye in order to safeguard Kassidy’s reputation. It takes me 15 minutes to walk to the gym and another 5 to get the security guard to unlock the door. There is an old elliptical machine that doesn’t turn on, but works. There is a treadmill that stutters, causing the user to lurch forward in panic at odd intervals. There is a stationary bike. There are three sets of weight machines I haven’t entirely figured out how to use yet and there are two sets of free weights. I arrive in time to watch a season of Ally McBeal I somehow never saw. At 9 I walk back home, and then climb the monstrous hill back to the house. I think, “It can’t be worse than the incline. It can’t be worse than the incline.” It is a cobblestone paved mountain, and I am shuffling up it, tilting forward at an angle that is building valuable muscle in my ankles.

It is a little known fact that making coffee is not like riding a bicycle. You can forget how. Yesterday’s coffee was thick and sludgy. I offered it to my neighbor while he pointed out routes on a map of Costa Rica. He accepted the coffee and took a bite.

Today the coffee is watery and light brown. I think I’ve over-compensated.

I have a to do list of things that need to be done every day, like checking orders, and then I tackle the formidable to-do list. When I finish, I set aside time to write. I may need to flip those things so that writing gets to come first. Right now the formidable to do list has priority.

When Kassidy gets home from school, we strip and get into the pool as quickly as we can. We have about 90 minutes between when she gets home and sun set, and we don’t want to waste it.

The first week of school has been rocky. This was exam week, so she sat in on classes, but only took the exams in English. Maria hates Spanish and only wants to speak in English. She has read two of the Twilight books in English. She sits with Kassidy and translates for the other girls and Kassidy teaches them bad words in English. All of the 6th grade girls sit together at a long table every day, so she is saved from ostracization. But Thursday two other girls pull her away from Maria and warn Kassidy that she shouldn’t be friends with Maria. They court her into their own clique. She comes home worried about what to do. She is so focused on this that she forgets that she is mad at me and this morning threatened to run away. She had 200 colones (about 40 cents). She is furious with me because she was grounded the night before. She tells me about the boys fighting and the couple kissing on the bus. This is the first day I haven’t driven her 40 minutes into Liberia at 7am and 40 minutes back at 3pm. On those days we spoke in Spanish all the way to school so that she would be warmed up.

We spent Thursday night swimming in the pool and having dinner at the home of our new friends from Littleton, Colorado. The constant activity distracts her until she goes to bed. We watch the rest of the House premiere we have downloaded on Itunes and fast forward through the scene that catches us off guard and then we read A Separate Peace .before she goes to bed. She is worried about what to do about the girls, but for the first time since we arrived, she is not melancholy on her way to bed and I resolve to keep her busy from now on. This coming week is a week of vacation before the next term begins. The neighbor who drank the sludge has given us directions to the two active volcanoes. This is our plan for this week. We will see them on the way to San Jose where we will stay with friends who are living just outside of the city. Those same friends are coming to visit here this weekend.

Kassidy wants to go on a Horseback Riding tour which sounds vaguely amusing … if you like riding a horse, which I don’t really. Then she wants to go on a Canopy Tour. I have been trying to talk myself into it, but zip lining over 500 foot drops only sounds fun if you aren’t afraid of heights. As those who were present when I was pushed out of a plane at 10,000 feet can attest…I am not so good with heights. I am willing to do just about anything, though, to sell Kassidy on this place.

On the phone with her dad the other night she was telling him how much she couldn’t wait to show him things when he got here… monkeys and arroz con pollo… There must be things she loves if she thinks he will love them, right?

STREET ANIMALS

There is a big problem here with street dogs. On Saturday mornings there is a spay and neuter clinic in Playa del Coco that volunteers are needed for. We have agreed to go in in the morning and volunteer. I do have a plan.

Down by the gate at the security guard’s post, there are two mama cats. One mama, who is barely more than a kitten herself, lost her litter. The other mama has two left in her litter. The mamas are both nursing and caring for the babies. When they finish nursing we will take them all into the clinic to have them spayed.

There appears to be only one difference here between stray dogs and dogs with owners.: collars. Many dogs wander the streets with collars. They are owned, but still scavenge for food. Without exception they are gentle and disregard all human passerbyers. Myopic. I don’t think they even see us. In Liberia we saw several nursing or pregnant mamas. Funny that it didn’t occur to me that this would be as much a problem here as it was in Guanajuato.

IDEAS FOR BOOKS

Other than that I am spending my time brainstorming.

There are two book series – one for beginning adults --- and one for beginning children.

A young woman begins her first day of teaching. She is standing in the hall greeting the students, when one closes the door behind him. She reaches for the handle, but it is locked. Her keys are sitting on her desk. She has been locked out of her classroom by her students before even teaching her first period. She knocks. They do not answer. She walks across the hall to where her colleague has already started his first hour class and gestures for him to come outside. She wants to borrow his key. Don’t you have a key? Yes, but I’ve left them on my desk. Aren’t there kids in your classroom who could open the door? Yes. He looks over her shoulder assessing the situation and looks at her disapprovingly and condescendingly. He unlocks the door and stands looking at her students until they all take their seats under his gaze. She is humiliated and embarrassed. After school she walks to the faculty meeting and hears two older teachers talking about some rookie teacher who got locked out of her classroom.

A story from the point of view of one of the young boys who goes to the escuela here in Playa Hermosa. There are only 14 students. They are the sons and nephews of fishermen and fish from the boat most afternoons. Their grandparents used to own all this land, but sold it off piece by piece.

Romance in Spanish would be fun to write. =) But then… they say only to write what you know. ;-)

While I wait to gather enough ideas for the muse to strike, I am working on the last book, which is in its editing phase. Oddly enough, it’s about a boy who goes to Mexico and rescues stray dogs.

THE JOKER

Somehow in the last few days this has stopped feeling like an extraordinarily bad idea and we are falling into a routine.

Walking back from the gym today I spun the Ipod to “The Joker” and sang it on the way up the hill. At our going away party, Eric and Matt played it and Chad sang along and Stephanie was singing, “Do da do da do da do da dun dun da da dun dun da da dun dun” … and I recorded it. I have both of their blessing to release the video to the general public.

Today… I was that happy.

September 20th... no blog... just....

2009-09-20T21:32:00.000-07:00

an advertisement for massage by the side of the road. With extra clarification in the fine print.

CR091909 Saturday 8:09am

2009-09-19T08:41:00.000-07:00

Friends feed each other’s spirits and dreams and hopes; they feed each other with the things a soul needs to live. – Glen Harrington-Hall

SYNOPSIS: Musings on middle school friendships, getting ready for school, meeting ex-pats from Colorado, mosquitoes, the boys at school notice Kassidy, Kassidy's love language. Spanish lessons.

BFFs

When I was 12 I had the best friends in the world. The friendships were volatile, but tightly bonded. We were what I imagine Kassidy and her friends are now. We had falling outs that were as dramatic as any adult break-up and we shared our hearts and our heartbreaks and teased each other and grew up together. We mourned when River Phoenix died because Stand By Me had been our theme. I can almost not think of a girl in junior high who I wasn’t close to at one time. When you go to school with the same people for so long in a small school at a time when your life is chaos and your emotions are so close to the surface and your friendships are made up of a series of inside jokes and rituals and memories, at some point you end up being partnered in a science lab with absolutely everyone. If I had left for a year, would that friendship have stayed as strong, or would they have closed the circle so that it was impossible to get back in? These are the kinds of questions that keep Kassidy awake at night and cause her to wake me up in the middle of the night and ask how many more weeks until we go home. It’s not that I don’t understand… it’s that I do.

SCHOOL SUPPLIES

We arrived 2 weeks ago today. After buying school uniforms, books and paying tuition, Kassidy is now enrolled in school. Uniforms are worn in all public and private schools in Costa Rica. All we still need today are black shoes. We will shoe shopping and go to a movie and then I really need to stop spending money. =)

EX-PATS FROM COLORADO ON THE BEACH
When we arrive at the beach to meet Patty and company we are significantly late, but Denise’s daughter Maggie is 11 and moved here in January with her family from Littleton. They swim together until all of the over-protective mothers decide to pull the kids out because of lightening. It’s the Friday afternoon ex-pat club. Chantelle’s dad tells us with all sincerity that if we want Kassidy to learn Spanish faster we should really try Berlitz. (!!!!!!!!) Yuppers.

Maggie and Kassidy talked for a while while they were swimming. Her mom, Denise, and I stood on the beach talking. Flying fish are leaping behind the girls while they play. Maggie is being homeschooled by a private teacher in Playa Panama. This may be a good choice for part of December and January to help her catch up on work from Colorado. The teacher teaches in English. Not a good choice for our overall goal, but facilitating a friendship with Maggie, who must have been equally reluctant to move, and leave her friends but has adjusted, is a stepping stone on the way. Their dad owns Palo Windows and Doors and commuted between Littleton and Playa Hermosa until the business got too busy this year and they all moved together.

WE FEED THE ANIMALS

It was almost like magic how the bugs came out precisely as the sun came down. I think the sun setting is like a warning sign to run. We were dancing and swatting, but in the dark, we were helpless prey. They sting when they bite and then start itching. We get home and assess the damage. Kassidy has three large welting bites. I have 19 on my legs and 1 on my arm. Barb, the owner of our house, calls bug spray “Costa Rican perfume.” The bugs, though, are directly proportionate to the rain. We’ve only been bitten on rainy days.

LOVE LANGUAGES

Kassidy’s love language is quality time; most definitely not physical touch. As she has gotten older, though, words of affirmation seem to feed her more. Since we’ve been here she has been very appreciative of gifts, particularly of food. She’s even noticed acts of service. I am the only person loving her, and she is lapping up all that she is given and withering when I can’t give enough. Last night we had a slumber party and stayed up eating popcorn and watching T.V. and cuddling on the couch. Yesterday when the principal went into the classroom to tell the students that there would be a new student on Monday two of the boys said, “Is that the girl wearing the crystal? We talked to her yesterday.” This puts a grin on Kassidy’s face. The boys noticed her. Cool. Last night she put the crystal back on. The boys had not talked to her. She was never not with me. We have no idea what they are talking about. Maybe they thought about it and re-wrote history. =) We spend all day every day together. We sing in the car when we’re driving. Last night we ate dinner in front of the T.V. because when you have spent every single moment of the last 2 weeks together there’s really no quality conversation left to have. I thought about how contrary that was to our normal routine and let it go. How much time could anyone really want to spend with me? She probably needed a break. =)

SPANISH LESSONS

All I have learned about Costa Rican culture and language today is that we have found ONLY 2% milk. There are no other options. We bought a gallon. We will never do that again, for the same reason we would never buy a gallon of ice cream. When the electricity goes off for a day, everything goes bad. I have almost a full gallon of sour milk in my fridge. I can’t remember what, but I think you can cook something with that.

Ooo… and if you need one of those cords that connects your wireless adaptor and your computer, when you go to the computer store it will be 15 minutes. They MAKE it. When we went to go buy school uniform pants, the store we walked into had seamstresses and a tailor. This is PRE-Wal-mart land. When you buy things you go to multiple places to make purchases one at a time.

What I learned from the ex-pats is that we need a “Denver list.” Oil of Olay, snorkeling masks (you can snorkel for free in one of the inlets, but everything in the touristy areas costs more), sunscreen, scissors (we haven’t found scissors here and they were $20 in the Maxi-Bodega), Chai.

The cost of living here seems to be about the same as the cost of living in Colorado Springs. I am cheap… so we’re living here the same way we live in Colorado Springs…attempting to live on as little as possible so that the excess can be saved for worthy expenses… like SCUBA diving and zip lining. We have switched all of our purchases to Costa Rican products as opposed to American already and we have converted all of our dollars into colones. If I could just get myself to stop buying books.

CR 091809.doc Friday, 7:50am

2009-09-18T08:55:00.001-07:00

“How would it be if everything that you thought you knew
Was turned upside down opposite from your point of view
How would you feel if the ground was really the sky and all of this time you’ve been walkin’ when you coulda been ...flying.” Ellis

SYNOPSIS: Listening to Ellis on the way to Liberia. We finally got an appointment with the principal, and Kassidy will start school on Monday. We have met an ex-pat family from the school who we have been invited to celebrate a kid birthday with tonight. No electricity all day Thursday. The Library… I don’t think that word means what you think it means. Rain is different here. THAT is not a Wal-mart. Costa Rican coffee is seducing me. Fast food lunch: Would you like a beer with that Cinnabun? Kassidy buys ice cream all by herself. The pool boy is coming…

DRIVING TO LIBERIA WITH ELLIS

I am trying to surreptitiously record Kassidy as she sings along with Ellis with a big grin on her face. I’m failing. She keeps catching me. Every time I put the camera down she starts singing again. Ellis is grabbing onto our insides and making them the color of happy. When I sing, though, Kassidy says, “You’re interrupting my experience.” I start lip synching. She is embarrassed, not because anyone is watching, but because she’s twelve and it’s her job. “What do you think Ellis would do if she were in Costa Rica?” “Drink coffee” she says. We listen to Ellis for a long, long time, because I get lost again… which makes us think of Ellis’ song about getting lost and taking the scenic route. We’ve been on this scenic route before. This is the same wrong turn I took the last time. We are in Papagayo again. While we drive Kassidy quizzes me on metric conversions. Seriously. Ellis should come to Playa Hermosa and do a concert. We have an extra bedroom.

KASSIDY AND SCHOOL

I have done something very un-tica. Reading Thich Nhat Hahn right now, I know I’ve also done something very un-Buddhist. But I’m done something very Karen. I called the school. I badgered them for an appointment. The delay, it seems, is that in Costa Rica, if you are born in 1997, you are in 6th grade this year. 7th grade doesn’t start until February. They have decided to accept her into 6th grade as an oyente (auditor) and not count her grades. However, she’ll be allowed to participate in the end of the year graduation and festivities and will continue with this same class into 7th grade. We obtained a 2:30 appointment with the Principal, who is a thoughtful and lovely woman from Oregon named Doña Gwen. These Costa Rican girls are tiny, and Kassidy towers over them and feels like a giantess. The pace, though, of 6th grade, will be a much easier transition for her. Rather than being swallowed up by high school, she will be in one classroom and her teachers will come to her class. They want her to start on Monday instead of Friday because they want to be sure that the teachers are ready for her, that there is a desk, that she transitions smoothly. She has never done this before. She has been in the same school since she was three. The principal is impressed with her entrance essay on the houses that were torn down on the beach. She says that the English class won’t be anywhere near her level. She peruses the ITBS scores I have just brought in. She’s very smart. She’s very tall. Her Spanish, though, is not strong enough to carry her through the last 9 weeks of 7th grade and they are confident that she can get her feet wet here and move on with her class in January. She reminds us that there are only 11 grades (not 12), so that moving her ahead to 7th grade would be result in her graduating from high school at 16. Costa Rican grade levels are different because there are only 11 of them. I need to relax.

We meet Patty, a mom from Canada who has lived here for 20 years and raised her kids here. They spend every Friday afternoon at Aqua Sport, on Playa Hermosa, and live across the street from us. There is a group of English speaking ex-pats here who have kids about Kassidy’s age. She brightens considerably when she learns that Patty’s son is 6 foot tall. She asks Kassidy if she can hang with boys doing boy things – playing in the ocean, basketball and such. Oh yeah she can. =) I make a mental note to get her a less revealing swim suit. Maybe a Burka. I will not be at all surprised if Kassidy ends up being friends with older kids just because she feels more normal around them. It is her younger son’s birthday, so Friday is the party and we are invited to come to the beach. As Kassidy was trying on uniforms at the school, one of the Colegio girls tripped her. Patty explains that this is the Costa Rican sense of humor – very 3 Stooges – but she slips into protective mama mode is determined to introduce Kassidy to Chantelle, who is in 8th grade, but about Kassidy’s size and who she thinks would get along well with her. This would give her a posse of people from Playa Hermosa who she is friends with and who, eventually, she can ride the bus with. Right now, I will drive her in and I may sit hovering in the parking lot all day. This feels like the first day of Kindergarten. I cried.

There used to be more English speaking families at Ciudad Blanca, but Doña Gwen tells us that many of them left last year because the tourism business tanked and property values declined. There are now very few English speaking families, but several “mixed” families.

This afternoon we will go back to the school to buy books and uniforms. Monday morning, she will start.

UNRELIABLE ELECTRICITY

Wednesday night, apparently, an ICE (Instituto Central de Electricidad) truck drove through Playa Hermosa with a mega-phone saying that they would be working on the lines on Thursday and there would be no electricity from 7am-4pm on Thursday. Had I heard this announcement, or understood that this is the standard way to communicate critical information, I would have pulled the car out of the garage. We manually grunted the door open and spent the day in Liberia.

THE LIBRARY

Using the Pool Boy’s map, we went to the library. Oh my God Stephen Krashen would have a heart attack. Libraries are where I developed my passion for books. My mom took us every week to check out 5 (only 5!) books apiece, which meant that we only had 20 books to read once we had all read each other’s before our next trip. The Chicago library is where my mom set a Richard Scarry book on top of the car and drove away. She had to buy it and we had a beat up, tire tread copy that we got to read over and over again. My first time in the downtown library in Colorado my mom pointed out the first Nancy Drew book. I read them all.

This library had signs that said “No pase” where the books were. Another sign read “Libraries are sacred.” Fortunately, we knew which books we were looking for, so she looked them up, brought them to me, and then took my passport and had me sign for them so that I could read them right there in the library.

I did get an awesome picture of a card catalogue, though. Remember those? She didn’t use the card catalogue to find the books, though, she used a computer.

I am beginning to figure out why some books are so hard to find in the U.S. No ISBNs. They are filed by Dewey Decimal System number, but don’t have ISBNs.

We peruse the books for a few minutes and then decide to try to find them in a book store. It’s sad. This will probably be the last time we come to the library. Their collection is small, and there are only two girls there working on a computer.

There is also no bulletin board announcing local cultural activities. Kassidy is pretty fascinated with the Old Jail, though, so we’ll come back and take pictures.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF RAIN

We look like we have stepped into the pool fully clothed with an umbrella. Rain here is not rain. It’s not even that it’s raining sideways, although it might be. It’s that it’s like buckets, not like drops. You’re sloshed with multiple buckets of water and then stand there with your sopping wet clothes stuck to your body and your hair dripping like you’re getting out of the shower. People don’t even seem to bother with umbrellas. They go inside and wait until it stops. It rains frequently when it rains, but not for very long.

WAL-MART

I don’t feel guilty anymore. Maxi-Bodega is not a Wal-Mart. It is raining in the “Wal-Mart.” There are buckets collecting drops from the ceiling. It is raining on the televisions. They do not have Oil of Olay. I buy a book.

COFFEE

I make an important life decision. I am healthy. I sleep well. I have recovered from an extreme bout of work-aholicism. It has been 3 years and 2 months since my last cup of coffee. If it turns out that I am like an alcoholic and cannot handle this, then so be it. I’ll quit again. But I’m in Costa Rica… and I cannot find Chai. But coffee’s odor calls to me from every grocery shelf and it’s price… less than $2 for a bag of ground coffee… it seems almost sinful not to have some. 4 years ago I used coffee as a replacement for sleep. Now I will use it as a replacement for Chai. If it turns out that I don’t still like coffee… I’ll just smell it.

FAST FOOD LUNCH

We have about an hour until Kassidy’s interview at school, and I really want her to be happy before we get there. When we get there we will learn that the school psychologist will not meet with her because she doesn’t speak English. We go to the “mall” which is just a food court. I took some pictures in case any of you are even in the mood for a Cinnabun and a beer. The Papa John’s, the Burger King, the Chicken place, the Cinnabun… all have beer taps or cans of beer next to the water bottles. A personal sized pizza is 3000 colones, so just under $6.

KASSIDY’S INDEPENDENT SHOPPING

After we leave the school, Kassidy checks on movie times and buys ice cream entirely by herself. She has no idea why they wouldn’t sell her a movie ticket. She thinks it’s because they have fewer showings on weekdays. She also gets in the car with an ice cream cone and doesn’t know what flavor it is. I think this is funny. She thinks it might be coconut.

SETTING UP THE OFFICE

We also stop into the place where we bought her paints and buy a desk, a desk chair and little stacking file holders. They only have the floor model left, so we wrestle it into our tiny car and don’t have to build it when we get home. My aching back is happy. We have a practical solution to trying to run an office from a beach.

It’s Friday. The Pool Boy is coming today. I must get dressed.

CR 091709 Thursday, 8am

2009-09-18T08:54:00.000-07:00

“The world ages us too fast. We grow up too quickly, we stop dreaming too early, and we develop the ability to worry at far too young an age.” – Doug Wecker

I have hit a gold mine with the Pool Boy. His name is Héber and it sounds a little like “ever.” While I’m talking he looks at my ears. I don’t know why. I feel slightly self-conscious that maybe I’ve done something un-Tica with my ears, but I can’t imagine what. Maybe he’s an ear guy. I feel guilty for what I have used him for. I have violated all of my own moral and ethical standards. I am a hypocrite. My motivation, in my defense, is that age is creeping up on me and I am trying to fight it back even if the fight is just an illusion. I look at myself in the mirror and it makes me want to find the fountain of youth. I know it’s not an excuse. I know that even small transgressions add up to huge transgressions over time and that I am participating in the worst kind of subjugation and disharmony. And yet… I push past my guilt and embarrassment and go ahead and ask, with very little confidence at all, because I am afraid that just saying it outloud will reveal to some hidden moral tally-taker that I am unworthy of the pedestal I occasionally climb onto in order to pontificate on my own world view of the importance of social justice and equality.

“¿Dónde está el Wal-Mart en Liberia?”

I know. I know.

But none of the supermercados or pulperias here has Oil of Olay and I’m getting a little face tan with sunglass shadows. I have more pronounced worry lines with deep white un-tanned crevices.

I realize my error in wandering blindly around Liberia hoping to pass the “Wal-mart” and asking for directions to the “Wal-mart.” It is called “Maxi-bodega” here. Oh. How silly of me. It’s a Wal-mart in disguise.

After an hour and a half of sitting and talking with the Pool Boy… I mean Héber… I have directions to a book store, a library and the old jail. He calls this the “Tico Way.” The Tico way is to give directions in landmarks and meters. “It’s 200 meters past the old jail.” These are excellent directions if you happen to know what was housed in a particular building 50 years ago but isn’t anymore. Also helps if you know how far 200 meters is. 100 meters, by the way, is 328 feet. So… think about driving along and thinking in feet instead of miles. If someone told you to turn left 986 feet after the old jail… uh-huh.

He sets my heart aflutter by telling me all of the Costa Rican books I should read. I talk to him with a pen. This 22 year-old kid is more than willing to sit down and correct my Spanish vocabulary… which used to be right, I swear, and now is littered with words no one here uses because they have made up their own. At this point now, though, I have started making errors in my English writing, too. As my head begins to happily turn to Spanish mush, I am incapable of remembering basic English spelling rules. Lovely.

He tells me there are books of Costa Rican legends I should read. Cadejo and Latule Vieja. The Costa Rican book is Cocorí. He also says that the library is where I will find announcements about actividades sociales, like plays. He seems vaguely mystified that this is something someone would want to do, so I hope the library, in fact, has information.

The land I’m on right now, Palo Alto, used to be owned by the family by the beach. 100 years ago to claim land, all you had to do was cut down a tree and make a fence and say, “This is mine.” The grandparents did that. Over the years they gradually sold off pieces of land and then, with large sums of money and no idea how to invest it, use it or save it, they spent it and are poor again. They still have more land here near Palo Alto (he points to the hills). They will sell more. Scott has told us the same story. To hear Heber tell it it sounds primarily like a story of lack of education. They are fishermen. They just want to fish and live. Marcos is one of the smarter ones. He bought a boat. He has a business. He has a way to make money.

I am also learning that everyone in Playa Hermosa knows everyone else. I was originally cautioned not to tell people where we live in order to provide an extra layer of insulation. I try to be vague and the waiter says to me, “Oh, my wife works for Beachfront properties. You must be the people who just moved into Palo Alto.” Nice.

Time here, moves slowly. The school still has not called. The test has been graded. She has been placed in 7th grade. We are now waiting for them to call to schedule an appointment with the psychologist and then she needs to go buy a uniform and books and then can enroll. I know I’m not supposed to, but I’m going to call again today. Because… seriously. But even so… I am trying to adapt to the pace of everything happening slowly and late. What I don’t understand is why people drive so fast if they’re so committed to a slow and leisurely “Pura Vida” pace.

The Pool Boy… I mean Héber… explains. It’s not about pace, it’s about freedom. We’re always late, he says. But once we’re driving, we don’t want anyone telling us how to drive. I was pulling out of a side street to join the main street in Liberia and trying to make a left turn. Apparently I took too long because the TWO cars behind me sidled up NEXT to me and made the turn. The three of us then pulled simultaneously into one lane. Huh? I have seen absolutely no accidents. I have placed myself on a self-imposed learner’s permit, though, and avoid driving outside of Playa Hermosa at night. Better safe.

We are going to Liberia today to visit the… um… Old Jail… and the library. I’m crossing my fingers that we can also go to the school and finish this up. Kassidy has great days when we do a lot during the day. Even though her heart’s desire is to stay home and watch T.V. all day, she gets sad at night if that’s all she does. It is interesting, though, seeing what shows she’s willing to watch in Spanish in order to be able to watch them. She has talked to Laura Jane and Morgan in the last couple of days and caught up on school gossip. She has just finished Chapter 1 in her American History book and learned from them that the class skipped the entire first unit and jumped to the second one. Whoops.

I hear Congos Aulladores. The relationship between howling and rain has turned out to be completely unreliable. Yesterday, though, after a scorching hot day, it rained for about 15 minutes. I stood outside and let it drench me while the temperature dropped and fog thickly descended upon the shore and the surface of the pool dimpled with rain drops. The weather here is the best teacher of presence. If you think, “I’ll go stand in the rain later” it will have stopped raining by the time you go. If you think, “Oh, I don’t want to miss the sun set,” but then don’t immediately step outside, the sun will have already dropped off the side of the earth and you will have plunged into darkness. If you think, “It’s so hot. I think I’ll go for a swim”, but don’t put a suit on that very minute, a lightening storm will prevent you from even putting your feet in the water.

At 7:00, when it’s cooler after the rain, we go back to El Pescado Loco for dinner. Luis is our salonero and we order ceviche and arroz con pollo. We have decided not to order drinks to see how much it really costs to go out to dinner without Foo Foo drinks. About $13, including the automatic 10% gratuity.

While we are waiting for our food we take pictures of each other and then the restaurant and then the salonero, Luis, and then the food. The pictures of me motivate me to take that sojourn into Liberia. Back at home we talk to Aunt Heather on Skype. We have a web cam. She doesn’t. It’s not fair. She’s telling us how her new roommate doesn’t know how to properly make coffee. She is watching me laugh so hard I cry. She is watching Kassidy wipe the tears from my eyes. She is watching me spit my drink out. All we can see is a big grey question mark.

The moment I started writing, the electricity went out. It’s 9:20 and it’s still out, which means no internet, either. There are black outs and brown outs here. A brown out is the opposite of a power surge. It just sort of … wanes… I wonder if parking in the garage is really that great an idea.

*Update: Today was a non-electricity day. ICE drove around in a truck last night telling everyone there wouldn’t be electricity from 7am until 4pm today.

SPANISH LESSONS

He enters my name into his phone and says, “R-O-doble uve-A-N.”

I’ve heard doble vay and doble oooo, but never doble uve. (Like grape, with an e instead of a.)

Librería does not always mean book store. We walked into a “Librería” in Playa del Coco and there were greeting cards and wrapping paper. Not one book.

People named José are nicknamed Chépe.

Pulpería is what Heber calls a tiny neighborhood grocery store. If you just need a kilo of sugar, you aren’t going to go to the Supermercado, you go to the pulpería.

Cajuela is the word for car trunk. He uses it when explaining what I saw with the police. These are random, massive police check points designed to check ids and search for things like drugs.

I explain what happened Saturday night. Marcos got chest to chest with the drunk parker. “Guaro Vaquero” is what Heber calls it. It’s like “Cowboy drunk”, when someone gets drunk and wants to fight.

If you have stuff to do… errands… obligations… they are called mandados. Tengo que hacer unos mandados. Mandado is “algo importante que tiene que hacer.”

On my phone it says, “Buscando Red” when it is re-programming. But other than that I have not heard “Red” at all. Everyone says “internet”, and all of the signs say “Café internet.”

I ask him how to say dirt road and paved road. “Calle de tierra or Calle de lastre” for dirt road and calle asfaltada for paved road… only no one says that. It doesn’t matter if it’s paved or not. Only the landmarks and meters are used to give directions.

CR091609 Wednesday 6:30am

2009-09-18T08:53:00.000-07:00

“Nobody gets to live life backwards. Look ahead, because that’s where your future lies.” – Ann Landers

Synopsis: A handful of cultural and climate tidbits, the story of why I believe in God (a pontification on school girl crushes, swimming with Kassidy

I can hear the ocean.

And singing crickets. And geccos. They chatter like monkeys. I think. Or maybe the monkeys are nearby taunting me and throwing their voices. I’m fairly certain that I’ve been wrong all along and that the chattering sound is not a monkey. I cannot imagine that this huge noise is coming from such a tiny thing.

I smell burning trash, and can see the smoke stack down near the beach. Must be leaves. You know why. =)

We drove around Playa del Coco yesterday. There was burning trash along the side of the road. We passed a house – a regular house with a regular sized yard that you might see in any middle class California neighborhood… with a cow tied up in the back yard.

Gas here is pumped by the attendant and I don’t know if I’m supposed to tip them or not.

There is an ATM fee here every time I use my debit card. If I buy dinner with it, there is a bank charge. This was how I travelled the last time and there were no “international fees” except at ATMs. I’m irked. It doesn’t look like there are fees on the credit card. It’s best to let the banks do the exchange rate, though. When the stores and restaurants do it, you lose a little to estimation every time or to an out of date exchange rate.

Sunscreen is about $10 a bottle. It’s going on the list of things I bring back from the states. With Oil of Olay.

Laundry has to be washed and dried immediately or it sours. I can’t run a load of wash overnight and dry it in the morning because when I open the washer in the morning the clothes will be dry again. Cereal and chips go stale the day after they are opened. Costa Rica needs a “Chip Clip” business. Or Tupperware. If you hang a towel to dry, it will still be wet the following day. I think I remember something about drying towels outside in humid climates. Can’t remember where I read that but it was something about Americans finding that odd until they realized that when they hung their towels inside they never got dry.

Very little to share this morning because yesterday’s blog went out after the parade.

I dreamt about Jason last night. We were giving a workshop together at a school I had presented in months ago. I had left all of my posters up on the wall of the classroom I had used and they were annoyed. (That would never happen.) I introduced Jason while he was setting up and talked about the first time I met him. Dreams are like time travel when you’re faraway. Aw. So nice to see Jason. Haven’t seen him in… okay… 2 ½ weeks. He is the Fall Workshop presenter for the Colorado Congress of Foreign Language Teachers this weekend in Glenwood Springs. There’s a wine festival there this weekend, too. If you’re a foreign language teacher you should go and hear the very best presenter ever speak on reading techniques and strategies. (I said that in my dream and Jason brushed me off and said, “I am not.” I said, “You’re right. You’re the second best. I’m the best.” Cocky in my dreams, aren’t I?) You should also go to support our new President, Dale Crum. Seriously.. gonna be a killer workshop. Diana and Linda and Meredith are going, too.

Today’s meditation from The Art of Power was on impermanence. “We have a tendency to think that we will live forever. And therefore we do not have the insight we need to live beautifully and really cherish our loved ones.” This very thought struck me last night when Kassidy wanted to go swimming. How can I not gather this moment when she is twelve into my arms and breath it in and memorize it? How can I waste a minute of it when her being here means that she’s not there with everyone she misses? I can’t. So I don’t.

When I was 11 and 12, I had a crush. Now I can put it in relative perspective and see it only as harbingers of heart break to come but not as anything substantive. (Bitter much?) In my workshops I talk about my first big one in 5th grade. He was in 7th. He had this beautiful 1985 mullet that swung when he did his cool guy walk. Because.. when you’re 15 and in a Catholic school, you have to at least have a cool guy walk. He and his girlfriend (who I wanted to be more than anything) liked Duran Duran. My first name went well with his last name and by 6th grade I had saved a step by already practicing my married signature. Although I can remember his hair, his walk, his jacket and the leap my heart made and the lurch my stomach made every time he walked by (we had no classes together), I cannot remember a single conversation with him, even in passing.

At the end of his 8th grade year and my 6th grade year, we both left the school and moved on to public school. People ask me why I believe in God. This is why:

It was Christmas Eve of my 7th grade year. The church was packed for midnight mass. We were in there like sardines, but there was a small space to my left. Just as mass was beginning, he and his dad slid into our pew and he sat next to me. I’m sure I smiled at him. I’m sure I said nothing more. Every moment of that hour and half long service was full of him. I couldn’t think about anything else. I was obsessed with every single movement I made and what he thought of it. I’m sure I sang. I was confident in my singing then, and wouldn’t have even picked up the hymnal book I knew all the words so well. I’m sure I thought about whether or not he noticed that.

And then....

Wait for it…

The Our Father.

He reached down and he held my hand. Or maybe I reached up and grabbed it.

I held hands with him for a whole minute. I have never been so grateful to God.

We shook hands at the sign of peace.

Mass ended.

They left.

I never saw him again.

Ever.

That was 23 years ago. I was 13.

Now, when I fall in love, I know I want something different. I want a man who will talk to me. I want one who will hold my hand for more than one minute. I want one who’s heart leaps and stomach lurches when he sees me. I want a man who will practice writing his first name and my last name on notebook paper. (Okay, maybe that last one is negotiable.) The heart dance of our school girl crushes is what lets us know later in life who we like, but just like when we were twelve, will never tell us why.

I learned the hard way, that no matter how you feel about a guy, never, ever, ever come out and tell him in junior high. Crushes are so much worse when they end in unforgettable humiliation. Boys never know what to say when a girl launches the entire mass of her crush on him. I have never been able to put this life knowledge to good use until this year. She was 12. He was 14. He was moving. “Don’t tell him. Just don’t tell him.” I advised, controverting the advice of every other 12 year old around her. “Trust me. Don’t tell him.” When the heart breaks, it breaks. How quickly and completely it mends is truly all that matters.

I woke up this morning thinking about school girl crushes because today is his birthday. No… I don’t remember that because I’ve been obsessed with him for 23 years. C’mon. It’s on my Facebook sidebar, because we are “FB friends.”

I know it seems like I’m sharing intimate details, but this is something everyone knows about me already. In my workshops I talk about it as a syndrome. Everyone has their own… insert name of first crush here…. The straw they never grasped, the chance they never took. The crush that makes them nostalgic even now. The point is… as adults, we grasp the straw, we take the chance, we write our first name on notebook paper followed by all the dreams we still want to achieve.

God or fate or coincidence have continued to do this… dumped people in my path that it was imperative that I know. What I did with that acquaintance was up to me. I walk away now from the boys who don’t talk to me… and the ones who have mullets…. Kassidy asked me yesterday if I had a “type.” I used to. Before therapy. Now I like ‘em really smart with big hearts, but they still have to make my heart leap and my stomach lurch every time I see them.

Last night Kassidy cajoled me into the pool and she wore out her anger and jumped on my back and swam under my legs and played and laughed. We talked about the people who will come and who will want to play in the pool. “The great thing about “Aunts” is that they just get cooler” She said last night while looking at pictures of “Aunt” Maria’s baby, Hardie. “’Aunt’ Andrea would swim with me like this.” Paradise is lonely without our friends. It’s still Paradise… it’d just be more fun with company.

Gotta go… the pool boy is here and my audience is required.

CR 091509.doc Tuesday, Costa Rican Independence Day, 2:34, after the parade

2009-09-18T08:52:00.000-07:00

CR091509 Tuesday, Costa Rican Independence Day 2:34pm, after the parade

I woke up this morning at 6:30 when the fan stopped. I lay there thinking of all of the things I would have to do differently today if the electricity did not come back on. The car is in the garage. Walk to the bottom of the hill, catch a bus to Liberia to see the parade. It stays off for about 15 minutes, long enough to make the clock start blinking and kill the alarm. I am dimly aware of this as I fall back to sleep.

Oh, well. Guess we’ll be late for the parade. This is good training for me. It’s an effort for me to adapt to Costa Rica’s pace. Kassidy has still not started school. The next step is to meet with the school psychologist before she can be admitted, but she was placed in 7th grade based on her entrance exam. I think. It’s what I was told, but things keep changing there, so I’m not positive.

My muse starts composing from the minute I wake up. She is unhappy that I am getting up to go to a parade instead of sitting on the balcony to greet her. She punishes me by continuing to speak in my head in an “I had a farm in Africa” kind of monologue and I am helpless without a pen. I listen and hope I remember it later. I don’t.

Last night we went to Playa Hermosa to see the children from the escuela play music up and down the beach in the local celebration of Independence. We couldn’t find them. Wrong beach, we were told. It’s down at Playa Panama. We decide not to chase the parade and instead go home and sit next to each other on the bed studying. She is working on American History and I am reading Los Cuatro Acuerdos because the on-line Advanced Spanish class starts today. I am also learning about the Ice Age because this is the only class I had taken on to home school her in, assuming that the Costa Rican curriculum probably won’t cover 7th grade American History. We went grocery shopping today and came home with Kassidy treasures: spaghetti with alfredo sauce. I eat beans. Seriously… no one over 30 can really eat alfredo sauce.

We are bibliophiles and we are so addicted we should join a support group. They should hold it at a book store. We brought 50 pounds of books with us to Costa Rica and when we arrived began collecting more. I’m trying to read them as fast as I buy them, but when I hold a book in my hand, I just can’t help myself. I think of Jason every time I see books in Spanish. There was a section in the grocery store. We bought only two each. We have had to create new bookshelves here.

Yesterday while I was writing the burglar alarm went off. I walked out of our room and saw a man walking in the front door with a key in his hand. He walked over to the alarm panel and entered in the code and the alarm stopped. I’m not sure what the point of a burglar alarm is if the burglar has a key and the code. He is the property manager, Tim. If he were Costa Rican, I would explain that this is a culturally unacceptable practice and that we prefer knocking, but he is American. So, cocky as he is, I’m sure he’s aware from my stunned voice that I find his presence here to be entirely intrusive. I tell him so at the end of our visit, but am kind about it, because he has successfully jerry-rigged the house so that it has internet access. He says he came in because he honked and knocked and I didn’t answer. Mmm… I wonder how Chad or Johnny Mac or Andrea might respond to this philosophy and am fairly certain it would have something to do with Clint Eastwood.

Kassidy has taken to wearing jeans and long sleeves and it turns out this is her version of a burka. I encourage her to go ahead and wear shorts to the parade. It will be very hot. She does and she looks young and, surrounded by so many families here to watch their children play in the band, no one looks at her at all. I think she relaxed a little.

We finished out the day by going shopping for birthday presents in Playa del Coco. Tomorrow we will find a post office and experiment with international mail.

There is a barbeque outside. It’s a regular charcoal grill. I look at it and dream of grilled fish, prepared by whomever the next person is who comes to visit who knows how to use a grill. It had been on my list to learn to grill (Have I not mentioned the “list” yet? More on that later. It’s probably enough by way of explanation to say that “Move to Costa Rica” was once on my list.), but my grilling lessons were on gas grills and this is too intimidating. Maybe I’ll find some directions on-line. “Learn to grill” is beneath “learn to scuba dive”, so it may not be next.

I need a desk. I’m told that to get one I may have to have it made. There was a furniture store in Liberia and I saw this one. I’m thinking about it, but he said he could build me a different one in 15 days. This one is 6500 colones – roughly $125.00. What do you think? For a desk I can’t bring back with me?

Also…I bought a hat. I know. It doesn’t seem like news. But I tried on another one and Kassidy said, “No. You don’t wear wicker.”

SPANISH LESSONS

To be drunk is anda boracho. Toda la gente anda boracho. Uf! Ellos andan muy borachos. Pedro, who is painting the second half of the house now, asks about designated drivers in the states. Here, he says, they keep drinking. They drink less, but the person who drives still drinks. I realize that this means that I am the permanent designated driver, since I feel strongly about my definition.

The words I need in Spanish that I don’t know are paved and dirt. When I’m asking for directions here, it’s important to know if they mean turn left at the first paved road or turn left at the first dirt road.

I took some “I don’t think that word means what you think it means” pictures today at the parade. In Playa del Coco there were packs of cigarettes with warning messages on them. Not to be missed. At the gas station in Sardinal there was a sign prohibiting smoking INSIDE the gas station. Right. Very smart.

Buses stop at bus stops and also anytime someone waves them down. This is done with the arm raised, palm facing down and then the arm makes a rapid and repeated downward motion.

When you walk into a store, one clerk follows you and stays constantly a few paces behind. One fun thing to do if you’re bored is to walk rapidly and then stop abruptly and see if they walk into your back.

There are bikes everywhere. No one wears helmets. Seeing a second person on the cross bar or the handle bars is common. Adults transport their children this way. We saw a couple driving in Liberia with a baby on a front passenger seat lap. We saw two people on a scooter with a baby between the mom’s legs on the floor of the scooter. I was shocked. Isn’t that against the law??? The police actually saw her and stopped her. I could not hear the conversation, but they must’ve told her, because a minute later the second passenger had hopped off and was hailing a cab. The mom drove off with her baby still between her legs.

Desapacio is posted on all the road signs. I haven’t heard lento at all.

A very happy birthday to a friend who has known me long enough to remember when I was jail bait, who kissed me on the cheek and left the smell of patchouli on me, who made me feel important when I was just a groupie and to whom I send a strong hug and sloppy kisses. Love you, John Horn.

CR 091409 Monday, 7:49am

2009-09-15T00:40:00.000-07:00

Kassidy and I are walking on the beach as the sun sets. We’ve decided to walk from one end to the other to see how long the beach is. It’s an inlet, so it’s not that long. We barely leave footprints, Kassidy collects shells and the bottoms of her jeans fill with water and sand. We stop to read what someone has written in the sand and then she guesses which of the couples we pass are the same ones who stopped to write their names in a heart on the beach. We are both carrying our Foo Foo drinks.

This is a good day. She Skyped her cousin Sarah this morning and got excited about the prospect of them actually coming for a visit. She sat and watched T.V. for most of the day because, while I had truly intended to get up and go to church this morning to go meet people, I forgot to ask what time church was, and I used that as an excuse to just go next week. She found Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and had seen it so many times that she was able to watch it fairly effortlessly in Spanish. I figured it was a reasonable use of time. She is also happy because she found “Lost” on T.V. Everything here is re-runs and there is no on-line access to shows. Sigh. Can someone Skype me during the Grey’s Anatomy premiere and face the web cam at the T.V. for an hour?

When she grows up Kassidy wants to speak Spanish… and French. And….Italian… and Chinese. I tell her about Andrea’s friend John who is a professional polyglot. I marvel, too, that my daughter is interested in languages. How cool is that?

We order Arroz con Pollo and Ceviche from El Pescado Loco. My lovely daughter tells the salonera in Spanish, “This is the best food I’ve ever had.” When she learns we are friends with the family on the beach she tells us that they are cousins. (There are 200 people give or take, so this isn’t surprising,) She sends her two daughters, Valeria, 17, and Daniela, 15, over to talk to us. The girls start talking and I start steering the conversation toward things they have in common. Soon they are having a conversation that sounds like this… “Jason Miraz?” And then one of them will sing part of the song and they all laugh. “Fergie.” They are comparing their tastes in music in English. They girls speak English about like Kassidy speaks Spanish. The difference in this conversation is that they have been in school in Sardenal for the past year and have no friends in Playa Hermosa. They had been living in Heredia, near San Jose, with their parents and three brothers. They came to Playa Hermosa for vacation and when they arrived their parents told them to pick a school because they were moving. The girls were devastated and cried on the phone to their adult brothers back in Heredia for 6 months. Mom was an elementary school teacher who decided to quit because it was “hard on her heart” and come back to her original home and rent the restaurant from her father. The girls are eager for friends. Kassidy understands their resentment and their sadness about moving and there’s nothing she likes to do more than listen to music. Apparently LimeWire works here.

SPANISH LESSONS

Independence Day

September 15th is Independence Day for Latin America, not just Costa Rica. (September 16 is Mexican Independence Day) Sunday an “antorcha”, a torch like the Olympic torch was run all over Latin America. It was supposed to arrive in Playa del Coco about 7 en route to Nicaragua. It is a symbol of, according to the salonera, a woman in Guatemala who knocked on doors getting all of the people to storm the capitol with little hand held candles. Once she had rallied them and they all marched, they were able to collect signatures. I am finding nothing on-line to elaborate on this story.

Tuesday there will be parades with the school bands from all over, including Nicaragua. The biggest parade near here will be in Liberia next to the park from Kassidy’s pictures from the moving car. There are parades in every city, and if you want you can go from city to city going to the parades. I did find The University of Peace, located here in Colón, Costa Rica and the only accredited Masters and PhD program endorsed by the U.N. Wouldn’t that be fun?

Arroz con pollo is white rice with chicken. It is a very popular dish and a staple of the diet here. It was… soooo… good. No Uncle Ben’s in here.

Ceviche is made with raw fish or raw shellfish, onions, garlic, peppers and then soaked in lime juice. The lime “cooks” the fish. It is served cold. Very good. Lots of flavor. Some people prefer it spicy. This one was only minimally spicy.

A bus is called a buseta. They understand “autobus” but don’t use it. They use troque for truck instead of camion. Pedro asked me if I would give him a “ride.” Puede darme un ride? Nyuh-uh! Spanglish has come to Costa Rica.

091309 Sunday, 6:30am

2009-09-13T13:37:00.000-07:00

09.13.09 Sunday, 6:30am

SYNOPSIS: Salsa dancing, Machismo, another cultural faux paus, a sunny day at the beach, cell phone problems, Costa Rican Independence Day Tuesday

The truest expression of a people is in its dance and in its music. Bodies never lie. ~Agnes de Mille

DANCING WITH TICOS
I smell like sweat. Not my sweat. Even showering last night when I got home does not seem to have removed the faint odor of sweaty man and cologne. But I was dancing --- really dancing. Not pretend dancing in Colorado Springs, taking salsa lessons. Dancing in a building that looks like an enormous barn with no walls. El Ranchito.

I was not dancing well, of course, but I was dancing with excellent partners. Even bad dancers here are better than most of the men we dance with. It’s something born in Latin American hips, I think.

Norberto, of Papagayo Tours, who we had dinner with Friday night, is here. We will dance, “ahorita.” I know already that “ahorita” here is as indefinite as it is in Mexico. We stand waiting for the live band to come back on. He does not want to dance to the DJ.

I am asked to dance by three different men. I turn them down. If I understand Gloriana and Cecilia correctly, you dance with people you know or are introduced to, but not strangers. I am already pushing my luck by dancing with Cecilia’s husband Marcos and Norberto, who are not friends and don’t like each other. Norberto has absolutely nothing kind to say about anyone in this family. I’m just an observer, but the idea that I have misjudged people --- well, let’s just say it’s sort of a habit of mine.

MACHISMO
Norberto says he wants to dance only with me. I am intrigued on a Spanish teacher level at the first-hand experience I am have the privilege of witnessing. Wow. Machismo. It’s not just something you read about. Remember that this is the man whose shoulders the waitress was rubbing only the night before?

Norberto dances and puts his hands on my hips and says, “Feel it in your hips.” Sigh. Even my dancing betrays my white girl-ness. I have all the steps. I can follow. But these women are doing something strange and alien with their hips that I feel silly watching and imitating. I feel like Baby in Dirty Dancing. But I am ever so grateful for the salsa lessons I took in Colorado.

There is no entrance here. No bouncer. No one is carded. This is a 19 year old traveler’s dream.

Marcos is a close talker, an interrupter, a shoulder tapper. Most of them allow me, by my standards, no personal space. When we dance, Norberto doesn’t even bother with the dance floor. He starts dancing there on the edges, banging me into people nearby and setting my feet down on the tops of others. I wonder who I know who I will bring here: not Heather. People are smoking, but it’s open air, so you can hardly tell. Mostly you notice that when you move through the crowd, the crowd does not disperse. It stands and looks at you until you squish past like a gymnast. I do not think Americans are rude. I think the clash of cultures makes them appear rude. I am “friends” with these people immediately. I am offered a daily delivery of fish by Marcos. Never buy fish again, he makes me promise. I do. But mostly because the fish I bought in Liberia was flavorless. But for an American, to incessantly have your shoulder tapped during a conversation is irritating. In fact all unwelcome and uninvited touching is unusual among strangers.

At 11:00 I am ready to go home to Kassidy and to check my internet access one last time before going to bed. My neighbor with whom I share an internet connection has disconnected my line because hers is not working. She then left for work, leaving my cable connected to her computer all day. She is nice and kind, but seems to lack an understanding of how crucial it is that I get my connection back before she goes to bed.

I have driven and am not drinking. I suggested we take two cars, but they said they didn’t have enough gas to go to Playa del Coco. Marcos, already drunk, says he will stop drinking and drive my rental car home. Excellent idea! He will not stop interrupting my objections and while I am fighting to tell him that he can’t drive my rental car and feeling like I am talking to an obnoxious high school student, I realize that I am talking to a Costa Rican man. A Costa Rican man. And I hope that I do not have verbal bullying to be part of every conversation with a man here.

After we dance Marcos says that I should call him and we should come dancing just the two of us. I don’t understand. He says it again. I say, “Sometimes I just don’t understand the Spanish.” He is left befuddled and unable to explain while I walk away. Is it possible that this 26 year-old husband of my friend is propositioning me? And I remember the Culture Shock book I read on Costa Rica that Johnny Mac made fun of me for reading that said that Latin American machismo requires that all men, regardless of marital status, hit on all women in order to be considered virile.

At the end of the evening, Marcos does not want to leave. Gloriana and Cecilia do not want to leave. I understand. The night is truly only just getting started. The band has only just come back from a break. Regardless, I’m going home. I go out to the car and a truck is parked behind my car. I try to back around him and he comes out to help guide me out of the itty bitty parking space around his gigantic truck. I am impatient now. Wouldn’t it be easier to move the truck? I see.. too late… that he is perhaps the drunkest man I have ever met, and he has just gotten behind the wheel of a car to, I hope, move his truck in reverse. He does not. He lurches forward, towards my little car, and I scream. Marcos is on him. I move the car out of the way. Marcos is chest to chest with this plowed man.

The parking lot is packed with double-parked cars and I decide to take a taxi here from now on.

Yes… it was fun. And now I am fed up and want to go home. I want my internet access back. I want to talk to a man back home who at least pretends to treat me like an equal. I want to wash some of this sweat and cologne off of me.

Dancing is wonderful training for girls, it's the first way you learn to guess what a man is going to do before he does it. ~Christopher Morley, Kitty Foyle

MASSIVE CULTURAL MISCOMMUNICATION
I have made a cultural mistake today. I was unwilling to leave Kassidy at home in “The Manor” (what she is calling the Big House now, after the house in the Charmed T.V. show) not because she wouldn’t have been safe, but because she would have been scared. So, I suggested that she come down to the collection of houses on the beach and hang out with the cousins while the Aunts and I went dancing. They suggested that the girls (the two female cousins who are about Kassidy’s age) and Floriana, the three year old, come up to the house to swim. This seems reasonable. Three teenage babysitters for one child, plus company for Kassidy. They say they will come at 7. They call at 8:20 and say they are coming “ahorita.” (Every German reading this is appalled, huh?)

At 9:00 they arrive. We don’t actually leave to go dancing until 9:30. Scott and Clara Rosa and Quiana and Kevin. Plus the two teenage girls. Plus two or possibly three teenage boys. Plus Floriana. Plus two adult women I have never met who are introduced as cousins. Plus the three who are going dancing, Cecilia, Gloriana and Marcos. Scott is here because he suspected that this might not have been my intention and wanted to keep an eye on things. Fabulous. One of the boys jumps into the pool fully clothed because he doesn’t have a bathing suit. I decide to clean later and just go along with it for now. What it is I did wrong, I cannot exactly put my finger on.

The good thing, though, is that Kassidy spent the evening talking with these girls. She was included in the conversations, feels that they like her, and is fairly certain that the boys have crushes on her. (For which I am only relieved. The attention of other 12 year olds is a vast improvement over the attention of the men in Liberia.) “Why do you think they have crushes on you? Did the girls tell you?” “No. I could just tell by how much they laughed. I’m just good at reading people. (She didn’t get that from me.) Besides, I was thinking about it and I was the only girl in the room they weren’t related to.”

TAKING ADVANTAGE OF NON-RAINY DAYS
Saturday morning Pedro came to keep painting the house. He asks why we haven’t gone to the beach in two days. I am beginning to understand their perspective after Friday’s rain. A sunny day in September is rare. Wasting it is unwise. In October it will rain every day and we will not see the sun for a week at a time. We go to the beach.

I have left the camera card in the computer, uploading pictures. You’ll have to trust me that Kassidy swam and laughed and was her usual beautiful, smiling self. “Swim with me, swim with me!” We did an interesting dance. We jumped waves while watching our belongings on the beach. I asked a woman sitting near us, “Is it safe to leave our things here while we swim.” “No mucho.” She said. I resolve to bring only towels and sunscreen and water to the beach from now on. Every time someone walked down the beach, we left the water (called “el mar”, by the way) and returned to our towels.

The beach is lovely. It is also very hot. I order a Foo Foo drink from El Velero and Kassidy gets a mango smoothie. We pay the equivalent of $6.00. Sitting on the beach, I think of all the times I have wanted to be right here, sitting on the beach with a Foo Foo drink, reading. I have a copy of Los Cuatro Acuerdos (The Four Agreements) that I begin teaching on Tuesday. In my beach fantasy there is a handsome and tanned man rubbing sun tan lotion on my back. In reality there is a child who is rubbing sand and sun tan lotion into my back and saying, “Mommy, come swim!” This is good, too. Very, very good.

CELL PHONE
The cell phone lent to us by the owners of the house has stopped working. It says only ‘Call failed.” Apparently the monopoly of cell phone service here put out a message on radio stations telling everyone to turn their phone off and then on again sometime during the day. I didn’t do it because I wasn’t listening to the radio. I have no idea what the reason was or what the implications are. When Verizon wants to communicate something, they send a free text directly to the phone. But… you know… a radio commercial… that works, too, right? I’m becoming used to, if not at all comfortable with the phrase, “Es Costa Rica” as an explanation for why some things don’t work.

COSTA RICAN INDEPENDENCE DAY
Kassidy should start school on Tuesday, we tell Janet, who we are meeting for the first time at the desk of El Velero. There’s no school Tuesday, she says. “EVERY TUESDAY?” I ask, probably louder than I should have. (Can you tell I’m ready for Kassidy to go back to school?) No, just next Tuesday. It’s Costa Rican Independence Day. I have forgotten this. Apparently so did the secretary at the school. We will go to Liberia Tuesday to see the parade.

If anyone would like to make this part of their lesson plan this week, I’ll post pictures. I’m going to have to pull out my books to recall the details of how Costa Rican independence came about, but I’ll try to read up.

CR09.12.09 8:01am

2009-09-13T13:35:00.001-07:00

CR091209 8:01am

SYNOPSIS: Kassidy begins to paint, inspiration, why Costa Rica smells like pot, Spanish lessons for Spanish teachers, torrential downpour, dinner with two Ticos

“In life there are no ordinary moments. Most of us never really recognize the most significant moments of our lives as they’re happening.” – Kathleen Magee

INSPIRATION
I wake each morning, brush my teeth, grab a glass of water instead of Chai (sigh) and walk out to the balcony with my laptop. I read from Thich Naht Hahn’s “The Art of Power” and then I write. I’ve been encouraging Kassidy to start writing, too. She’s a lovely writer, but the idea of pecking her ideas onto a computer doesn’t appeal to her. She likes to write long hand. Yesterday she woke up and asked where the old towels were. She spent the next couple of hours painting. I’m posting a picture of her painting. Her description and interpretation of it is lovely, too. I do not understand painters or painting, but I understand the desire for expression that wells up inside and makes the fingers itchy. Artists don’t create for anyone else. They create because they can’t NOT create. This voice of mine, I realize now, has been squelched. I have lost touch with it and when the undeniable urge to let it spin and whip into a torment that results in something tangible, I have delayed it and put it off and told myself I didn’t have anything to write about anyway. One night I stayed up all night, unable to stop writing. In the morning, Isabela was born. A year later, Isabela had been edited by 25 people and was published. But I was most proud of the birth because I let her rip and in the morning when the sun came up, I went to bed, exhausted and happy, but not empty. My mother used to say that it was useless to ground me, because I’d just go to my room and write. An only adequate punishment, she said, would have been to take away my paper. I am learning that when we teach that voice to subdue itself, that it suffers from the neglect.

The book that is taking form in me now is not the one I’m supposed to write. The book I’m supposed to finish is the one about Carlos that is almost done. The book I’m supposed to write should be appropriate for beginning Spanish students. We shall see. If you write or paint or draw or compose you already know… creation is intoxicating and fun. Triplets and quintuplets…. they’re distracting, difficult to keep quiet and it’s impossible to feed that many mouths from so few breasts.

I love the rainy season. It has been so hot, but finally the monkeys howled and it rained for about ten minutes. I stood in the pool and watched it dimple the surface. I was disappointed when it ended. About 6:00 when we were at the restaurant a torrential downpour began. “Inundación” José Cruz started to explain. Yeah…I got that one. It dropped the temperature while it came down in sheets. I made another mental note to never leave home without the umbrella on monkey howling days.

I know now why Guanacaste smells like already smoked pot now. They burn the leaves. There are smokestacks in every direction of burning trash and burning leaves.

SPANISH LESSONS AND DINNER WITH TICOS

Okay, Spanish teachers and students…. I think we need a new section. This will be a combination of words I am learning because Costa Rican vocabulary is different and words I am learning that are simply standard Spanish that I’ve never had occasion to use before. I’m not sure I’ll know the difference.

Mesero is the word I use for waiter. I have also heard Mozo. The correct word here is salonero or salonera. Because, it is explained to me, a mesero would only serve your mesa. A solonero serves the entire salón, and he waves to the entire room.

Oh. Es obvio.

Mono is a generic word for all monkeys. In the same way that Eskimos have so many words for snow, Costa Ricans words for every kind of monkey. Congo Aullador is the howler monkey.

Cielo raso means ceiling. Hay catorce geccos en el cielo raso. Leño means wood, which I’m sure I already knew, but I was using madera. Leño is what you cook with. We use the one word “wood” pretty liberally in English. I need some fire wood. It’s a wooden chair.

La pescaderia y el restaurante son contiguo. I stop him for a definition of what I think I’ve heard, “contigo.” It sounds the same. My head is translating, “The fish market and the restaurant are WITH YOU.” Huh? Contiguo. They give synonyms. Al lado. Oh.. like contiguous. Got it. Never heard it before. It is not plural to match son.

But I’m having so much fun interrupting the conversation to learn new words, that they start teaching me slang. Nolberto is talking to the salonera and she asks him what he’s going to do tonight. He says, “Voy a echarme un rol”, which means, I’m going to go to bed. “Voy a echarme un rolcito” Means I’m going to take a nap. José Cruz says that this is a “palabra pachuco” but that I have to be careful. Among friends saying, Es una palabra pachuco” is fine, but telling someone you aren’t friends with that he is a “pachuco” is an insult. I think it’s connotation is uneducated, crass.

This last piece of slang I’m just not getting. “You know that black stuff,” Nolberto points repeatedly to his ear, “that you put on an infection? You get it at the pharmacy. It’s black. “ Still pointing to his ear. “It’s medicine.” It’s called “jodo.” I’m clueless. “It looks like coffee.”

Iodine? Yes, iodine, they both say with absolutely no certainty. I’m equally as uncertain, but at least now they can finish the story. “Voy a tomar un jodito” means I’m going to have a cup of coffee. Totally slang. If I say it, I am told, I will sound like a Tica.

I’m thinking of drinking coffee again. I miss my Chai, which I cannot get here. But I haven’t had coffee in more than 3 years.

Okay Spanish teachers…. Here’s the kicker…. I’ve been thinking about this all night and I’m trying to talk myself into this not being as egregious an error because it may be because they use the Usted form all the time here with everyone.

Here’s the conversation:
He says, “La mama de mi hija es dentista.”
“Su mama es dentista en San José? I ask. (Her mother is a dentist in San José? I think I’m saying. He says I’ve said, “Your mother is a dentist in San José.)

He smiles and says, “No. No mi mamá. La mamá de ella.”

I can only use “su” if she’s here, he says.

I do it again a minute later when I introduce a member of the big family of the torn down houses to José Cruz.

“Su papá es el dueño del restaurante.” (I think I’m saying, His father is the owner of the restaurant. José thinks I’m saying, Your father is the owner of the restaurant.)

José Cruz smiles again and says “El papa de él.” (The father of him.)

Darn it. I tried arguing with him that “Su” means his, hers, theirs or yours, but he’s pretty sure he can speak Spanish. I also try to argue that Vladimir is, in fact, here, so I should be able to say su. But I’m still wrong, and now I’m not sure why.

I’m going to go with this… when you eliminate the “tú’ form, su is used it its place, so it cannot also then refer to another person and you are required to be more specific.

Or maybe I’m just wrong everywhere. It’s possible. And it is shocking.

I am explaining our travels in Paris two years ago, and how we were there during the strike. “No podíamos viajar en tren. No podíamos mover…” He corrects me. “I see the problem.”

He says, “PodIamos.” I am horrified… did I conjugate a verb incorrectly? What did I say? He says it again. PodIamos. With a stronger accent. (This is so odd translating a Spanish conversation from last night back into English.) I try. I cannot hear the difference between that and what I’ve said. He wants me to sound less American, so at random intervals he punctuates a word I have said too fast with forceful accents.

Kassidy is counting geccos in the restaurant while we talk. It is a high ceilinged, large windowed modern wooden structure with a big sign that says, “National Sarcasm Society”… “Like we need your support.” (In English.) But has a T-shirt hanging from the rafters that says, “I don’t speak English.” The menu is entirely American, but the two Ticos who have asked us to join their table are eating scallops that they caught today and brought to the restaurant so that the kitchen here could prepare it for them. I THINK the salonera might be the girlfriend of one of the guys. Can’t be sure. Hard to read. But the shoulder rub after dinner gave me a clue. By the time we leave she has counted over 60 geccos (tiny lizards) and taken pictures of them. The Ticos laugh at her because they say she is counting the same ones over and over. They move really, really fast.

They are the owners of Papagayo Tours. We have come here to this building to check things out. There is a small gym that I can use for about $30 a month, a movie theater that shows previously released English movies in Spanish with English subtitles, a Sports Bar and a tour information office, which turns out to sell printer supplies and has to call the tour guy to come talk to us. By the end of the conversation I am entirely uninterested in the tours that have been described and I’ve had an extremely difficult time getting him to cough up prices. I am learning that any time someone gives you a quote in American dollars, that they are marketing to tourists. I make a mental note to convert everything to colones and live like a Tica.
José Cruz is telling me that when the tourist guys at every corner wave your car down to try to get you to go scuba diving that all I need to say is, “Soy Tica” and they will leave me alone. I love this idea… but I think I’m going to wait until I can punctuate my syllables with a more Costa Rican accent.

The problem is… I do want to learn how to scuba dive. Just not as an American.

I use them to answer my biggest questions… do I have to tip the guy who helps me back my car out of the parking lot? No. Definitely not. They are there to protect your car in the lot while you’re inside, but if someone comes along and tries to break into it, they will run away. So, no. You don’t have to tip them. I am relieved until he tells me that he does tip them.

At about 7, we go home, still intending to return to the movie theater at 9:30 for Hancock. I am dubious and tired. Each of the men kisses me on the cheek as we leave. Kassidy artfully hangs back and waves. She likes the two guys we’ve been hanging out with all night and would have said goodbye, she says, but Vladimir has been drinking and is a little sloppy drunk. “The night we met I had a dream about you and me” he pulls me close to say as we leave.

So, apparently, in Costa Rica, people say things they shouldn’t when they’re drunk. I’m glad that’s not true in Colorado. I have appropriate responses in English all ready to fire. In Spanish I can only come up with “Gracias,” and we leave.

The difference among these men is striking. The Papagayo Tours people are educated and intelligent. Nolberto went to Canada to study French in a month long immersion program. He speaks fluent French and his English is pretty good. They like Americans but hate Europeans. Many of both have come to Costa Rica and started their own tour companies. The Americans are polite, they say. The Europeans treat them like slaves and Indians. “I am not an Indian.” (All his words… I would have politically corrected it.) They teach me about universities (which are free if you can get accepted) and trade schools (also free). They teach me about geography, and now I have a hand-drawn map on the back of the movie schedule of all of the regions of Costa Rica. Vladimir, whose father’s house has just been torn down, is a fisherman. When we met them with the family, they were all kind. (Although the grandsons in their mid-twenties were awfully attentive, come to think of it.) And now he seems out of place here. I wonder how much of a class system there really is here. Is education an opportunity provided to everyone, or only those who aren’t required to bring in the fish for the family from a young age?

I like these Papagayo Tours owners. They are proud to have a Tico owned company. When I tell them about going to Liberia and wanting to castrate the men who were looking at Kassidy they said, “What? How old is she?!?! 12?” And were angry. Nice reaction. Kassidy is involved in the conversation and every time she tries to say something in English they stop her and ask her to try again, feeding her the words she is lacking.

I am deliriously happy that I have gotten to speak Spanish for an entire evening. I plow into those conversations with reckless abandon, hoping I make mistakes and hoping they will be corrected. Language acquisition theory says not to, that eventually I’ll figure it all out just by listening. But there is a certain finesse in a language that comes only through this process. I have studied Spanish for 24 years. I’m ready for finesse.

Pura Vida, they say to us when we meet. I don’t know what it means. I don’t mean that I don’t know what the words mean. I mean that this is the entire philosophy of the country and motivates the pace and the decisions and the relationships. I’ll define it when I’m sure I have a handle on what it looks like to live a “Pura Vida.”

I feel like Andreas, a wonderful German man we met at CSYP and adopted into our group of friends and volleyball players. “Monkey tennis?” He dove into the experience heartily, although I’m not sure he enjoyed playing volleyball.

9/11

We come home and are too tired to go back out to the theater. I work and Kassidy flips channels. We land on the History Channel and watch the documentary on 9/11, When it happened she was 4 and I didn’t tell her. I picked her up from school and never turned the T.V. on again until after she was in bed. What she over-heard at school I glossed over. Now she watches horrified, “Why didn’t you tell me?” Because it would have tipped the balance of good and evil in the world and at 4 years old she hadn’t seen enough good to keep this in perspective yet. She wouldn’t have been innocent anymore. She wouldn’t have trusted me to keep her safe anymore. It would have changed the trajectory of her childhood the way it changed the trajectory of all of our adulthoods. I didn’t say that, though. I just said, “You were little.”

We saw only about 50 minutes of the 102 minutes before she turned the T.V. off. I understand. Even at 12, 50 minutes is all she can keep in perspective. Before the Pentagon. Before the Pennsylvania flight. Before the second tower came down. That was enough.

My heart was with the people impacted first hand yesterday, whether they sent someone off to war or lost someone on 9/11. The people who are still impacted by it on a daily basis and have endured far more than 50 minutes.

CR091109.doc 9:04am

2009-09-13T13:33:00.000-07:00

CR091109.doc 9:04am (I stayed up until 2 last night reading the Time Traveller’s Wife.)

Only one thing has to change for us to know happiness in our lives: where we focus our attention. The good news is that we can choose. – Greg Anderson

Synopsis: Kassidy takes the entrance exam at school, shopping and the Farmer’s Market and cooking in Costa Rica, a couple of cultural tidbits, I hear howler monkeys… check FB for audio and video.

I dreamed last night that I unpacked a suitcase full of bunches of basil and spinach. Greens that were slightly wilted, but had survived the journey.

Yesterday we went into Liberia so that Kassidy could take the exam to go into 7th grade at ICS. The English exam was a piece of cake, and if they don’t accept her simply on her essay, which is written at a level few of the teachers there could have attained, I’d be surprised. She asked if they could translate the Spanish grammar exam into English for her so that she could take it. It was un desastre total. The math exam was interesting. The did send someone in to translate it for her. When I arrived to pick her up he was on-line trying to translate a word in the test that he didn’t know in English. Turned out to be thousandths. When we walked out she said she just didn’t know any of the measurements, so we was sure she flunked the math exam. The section on calculating volume was in liters.

Why do don’t we teach the metric system in the U.S. again? Why do we insist on handicapping travelling American children? It’s not BETTER… I mean, if it were BETTER, that’d be one thing. But meters, kilometers… they’re easy. Our system of inches and feet and gallons is so arbitrary.

While she took her test, I wandered around Liberia. On one street all of the cars were stopped and pulled off to the side of the road and there were police everywhere giving people tickets and searching their trunks. I am entirely positive I am not speeding. I am in a rental car with legitimate license plates. I happen to be carrying my actual passport. I cannot imagine, though, what Costa Rican law I might not know about and might be inadvertently breaking. I drive through what might have been a road block. They barely look at me. By the end of the day I will have driven through this main throughfare five times. Later in the day there will be a news crew interviewing a police officer. I still have no idea why.

I went to the grocery store in Liberia. I am looking for Oil of Olay. This is my fourth store since we arrived. No one carries it. I’m beginning to wrinkle and shrivel as we speak.

In this grocery store, each section of the store has it’s own employee whose job it is to select, weigh, bag and label your purchases before you walk to the register to check out. One in the bakery, one in produce, one in the deli.

I arrive to check out with two pastries that I will use to appease Kassidy when I pick her up from the test and two plums. When I approached to purchase the pastries, a pastry employee came over, put what I wanted into a bag and labeled it. When I went to check out they had to send another employee bag to produce to weigh my two plums. The guffaw I have committed would be the equivalent of reaching into the glass fish counter at King Soopers, grabbing a handful of raw salmon and walking up to the register with it.

When I pull out of my parking space, an older man in a yellow vest is helpfully guiding me out of the space. This is the second time someone has performed this entirely unnecessary service for me. The first one worked at the mall. I am beginning to understand that even though I consider this to be like washing my car with a newspaper at a stop light in L.A., that I am probably supposed to be tipping him. I don’t know how much and I am not about to hand him a coin in a denomination I don’t understand. So I drive away, aware that this is how we Americans get our reputation.

The Farmer’s Market (La Feria) is freaking hot. I do not have a thermostat and it wouldn’t matter if I did because all I remember about Celsius is that 0 is freezing. It’s not 0. I’m guessing it’s slightly cooler than hell. The Farmer’s Market is longer than any I’ve ever seen. It’s down one side of the street and I imagine we walked two or three city blocks worth of distance. We buy a kilo of Mahi Mahi (El Dorado), grapes (because Kassidy doesn’t care what’s in season or what grows here), garlic from China, an onion, a pineapple, cheese, two large carrots spinach and some red leaf lettuce stuff I can’t remember the name for in English. I think we spent less than $20, but I can’t be sure. They asked for colones. I handed them to them. I tried to add in my head, but adding in Spanish while trying not to look foolish is really taxing.

We wash everything. We make our produce choices based on which person behind the table looks cleanest. I approach a 14 year old or so boy at one stand for Chayote and pineapple and he adjusts himself through his shorts before picking up the fruit. I am too stunned to object. .He grins and shares a knowing look with the other kid behind the table. What the “knowing” is, I don’t know, but since it seems to a private joke and since Kassidy does not seem to have been his inspiration I silently hope for dirty magazines in the back of the truck. I will myself to relax. I will Kassidy not to notice the current state he is in that made the adjustment necessary It’s the last thing we do before walking to the car. Hand sanitizer. Why am I keeping it in the cabinet at home? I need it with me.

And I was distracted. I have no qualms whatsoever about being rude to American men who offer me unwanted attention. By this I do not mean the gentleman who sits next to me at the bar and offers to buy me a drink, I mean the American men who shout through car windows or make lewd gestures on the street. But I am angry with Costa Rican men. I have considered the wisdom of castration. These men are making eye contact. They are approaching and initiating conversations, they are whistling and making kissing gestures. And the object of their attention is twelve. She is startled and flustered and grossed out and also slightly flattered. I read in all my Dummy books about Costa Rica that this is normal and not to be taken aback when we are called “Amor” by every shop keeper. But I’m thinking about asking Linda to borrow her Burka (sp?). I have attained cultural understanding… but not of this culture. Why would anyone NOT want to cover their daughters head to foot and protect them from hoodlums? Seems wise to me.

Liberia is the biggest city I will venture into in a car by myself. I’m told if I want a book store I should go to San Jose. There’s no way. I’ll take a bus.

We came home from the Farmer’s Market and watched T.V. Tim Burton’s The Corpse Bride and How To Lose a Guy in Ten Days were on in Spanish without subtitles, but Kassidy had seen the movies before and wanted to try. She said, “What did he say” only about four times.

I made the Mahi Mahi while Kassidy read Nicholas Sparks at the kitchen counter. I turned the music on really loud and poured myself a glass of $4 wine from a box and smiled while I cooked. This is my favorite thing to do at home, and it usually means that people will begin piling through the front door without knocking momentarily. Or at least Stephanie will be. Everyone else will be late. I have to remind myself multiple times to cook for only two people.

I thought I’d make El Dorado like I do salmon, but I didn’t have any herbs or lemon. It was flavorless and bland. I made Chayote, a squash from Mexico that we started eating the last time we travelled there. Cheap, plentiful, yummy when prepared well. I salted and peppered it. The salt is in a bag and I don’t have a shaker, so I over-salted it and it tasted like a mouthful of ocean instead of squash. I threw everything into the Big Salad, but it was just strange, like someone else had made my salad. All of the ingredients were substitutions. How do you mess up a salad?

By dinner, Kassidy was taking out her frustrations on the nearest punching bag. Dinner was disappointing. Kassidy was explaining how I have ruined the natural trajectory of her friendships forever. I have completely run out of patience with this, although I know that Donna Reed and June Cleaver would have outlasted me. Dinner ends without either of us really eating. She goes upstairs. I sit by the pool and think about Julie Frost, my inspiration, who took her son to Guanajuato, Mexico and wrote in her first letter home that there were moments in the beginning of thinking, “What on Earth was I thinking?”

Kassidy realizes she has exhausted my patience and converts to a sweet and compassionate child again. We sit by the pool and talk and then go upstairs to read A Separate Peace.

We won’t know the results of the test until later today or Monday. She can start on Tuesday. So I stayed up late last night working so that we might be able to go see something today. I’ll let Kassidy pick, but I’m partial to getting to see a volcano. Karen vs. the Volcano. This would be a guided tour. I’ll just get lost. Enormous turtle watching season doesn’t start until November when they come up on the beach to lay their eggs.

I set Kassidy up with a blog yesterday and will set myself up, too. It’s weird writing. I can’t imagine people are going to stick with it, and don’t’ want to impose…. But at the same time, this is why I’m here. I need to exercise my writing muscles and this is how I committed to starting. Somewhere here in Costa Rica is the idea for the next book. I just have to be ready to write it when the story is ready to write itself. They say that writers are supposed to write every day. It’s like deciding to keep a dream journal and finding that you remember more of your dreams once you start writing every day. My head is writing all the time, even when my fingers are otherwise engaged.

Just jumped up to grab the camera. This howler monkey is further away from the close one the other day that made me think someone was draining a septic system or killing that gigantic dog from Harry Potter. Hope you can hear it. I’ll post it. I don’t think you can see the hummingbirds and butterflies that are all over, but you might. The shaky camera at the end is me dodging a wasp. The wind is blowing and it’s slightly cloudy, which might make it cooler today. He’s still howling….

I am dreading turning on the internet access, because today is 9/11. Here there will be no commemoration or mourning for it. This place is entirely unaffected. It is the only country in Central America without a military. It’s slow and peaceful and oblivious.

DAY 5 Thursday, September 10, 2009 7:50am

2009-09-13T13:31:00.000-07:00

DAY 5 Thursday, September 10, 2009 7:50am

“We are not passive spectators, but active contestants in the drama of our existence. We need to take responsibility for the kind of life we create for ourselves.” – Nathaniel Branden, PH.D.

Synopsis: Kassidy is drawn to activism, I start working again, Kassidy "parte de la familia"

I am alone. The house is quiet. I am using this time to keep working, as people are beginning to notice how terribly behind I’ve gotten on my to do list. It occurs to me for just a moment that I should take advantage of this time somehow, but it’s not practical, so I plug along. The Advanced Spanish DVD is on-line now, thanks to an hour and a half on the phone with my brother teaching me how to use this really cool software. (Noon on Wednesday).

This morning Quiana and Kevin woke up and made a dash for the pool and Kassidy joined them. Their Spanish is comical, but Kassidy is hanging in there. She was trying to teach Kevin how to swim. How do you say, “kick”? How do you say, “flatten out”?

“Se quedan flojos” Quiana tells Kassidy about the goggles. Kassidy continues to make adjustments for her, but has no idea what she has said. (They’re loose.)

When they decided to go down to the beach to watch the demolition of the house and the restaurants, Kassidy asked to go with them. The encouraging thing was that she voluntarily chose to hang out with Spanish-speaking people on her own. I think Scott the builder is enough of a bridge for her that she was willing to take a chance.

(Re-cap: Costa Rica passed a law that nothing could be built within 50 yards of the beach because those are public areas. There are no private beaches in Costa Rica. The buildings that had been there for a hundred years wouldn't move, so Costa Rica started tearing the structures down. Wednesday morning they arrived with police, people from the city, demolition people, etc. etc and the family stood and watched everything get torn down.)

“I wanted to go up to them in the bulldozers and say ‘I know you think you’re doing this for tourists, but I’m a tourist and this will not help. Tourists come for history, and you’re destroying history.'” she tells me when she gets home.

And I SEE my daughter again, all self-righteous and angry and dedicated to a cause. To the core of her she is motivated by fairness and justice. For the same reason she is angry that we are here (it wasn’t fair and she didn’t get a vote), she is also ready to take up arms for this family she has just met.

They took a family picture on the beach and Kassidy stood a ways apart, she said. “Come here,” they told her, “You’re part of the family.” And then, she relates, “Clara Rosa put her arm around me.”

She asked me how to start her own blog.

And then we talked and talked and talked. And we were normal again. We put music on really loud and went out to the pool for a night swim. We were warned about mosquitoes and bug spray, but there aren’t any. Maybe it’s because there hasn’t been any rain.

Today we will go into Liberia, where Kassidy will take a test to try to get into 7th grade at ICS. You can google the school and see what it’s like by putting in ICS Ciudad Blanca Liberia.

Today we learned that you can get a wicked sunburn at 8:30 in the morning. We learned that water is a precious commodity. There are only two hours of water a day here, but there is also a back up tank. Yesterday the water outside the house was off, which means that the inside of the house was running on the tank. No idea why, but we’re being very careful with water.

Now, Thursday morning, we are sitting on our balcony over-looking the ocean during the totally pleasant early morning hours. It’s not hot yet. This side of the house is in the shade in the morning. For the first time, Kassidy is up early, so she is sitting beside me eating cereal and using binoculars to hunt for monkeys. A yellow breasted bird is drinking from the swimming pool. A drive to Liberia stretches out in front of us. The Farmer’s Market is in Liberia on Thursdays and Fridays, so we’re going to go check it out. There are bird sounds and chattering sounds and cooing sounds coming from everywhere as though the trees are alive. I am gentle with this moment, careful not to poke or prod it for fear it is so fragile it might crumble in my hands.

“It’s too quiet here,” Kassidy says.

Sigh.

09.09.09 DAY 4, 7:22am

2009-09-13T13:24:00.000-07:00

DAY 4, 7:22am
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 Your spark can become a flame and change everything. – E.D. Nixon

Synopsis:
Visiting the school in Liberia, Tearing down the house on the beach, Kassidy determined to speak only Spanish, missing dad

Our address: Residencia Privada, Palo Alto, Villa Quetzal, Playa Hermosa, Guanacaste.
We’re told that the mail system is mostly reliable, but not to ship expensive things.

My grandparent’s house is a place of baking cakes and decorating them, of stealing chocolate pieces intended for candy making, of the strong smell of garlic cooking, of oranges picked directly from the tree and eaten immediately and positioning orange quarters in our mouths so that we looked like monkeys. It is a place where every child in three generations who ever walked through the door was measured against the door frame and a pencil mark was scratched above our heads. It is where I learned to play pool badly and garbage and pinochle. It is the house where my dad and uncle built and played in a tree house in the orange tree. It is the house of hundreds of Christmases and church days and pictures on the front lawn. It is the house where my grandfather built a room in the garage to accommodate their growing family and never have to move. It is the house where, after assuring the bank that they were a two income family and could not have children, that my grandmother found out she was pregnant. It is the house where I learned to grow strawberries and zucchini. It is the house that survived earthquakes.

A tiny little house like that housed a mom and her fifteen children. She raised them in a house no bigger than most master suites. She owned property all over Playa Hermosa and many of the children stayed right there on the beach. Three still lived in the house they grew up in. One lived with his family in the house immediately behind it. Another lived yards away on the other side. Together they ran the family business, two side-by-side restaurants on the beach.

The law in Costa Rica does not allow grandfathering of property, so structures built within 50 feet of the beach are being torn down this morning. 100 people, all related to each other, went to the beach yesterday to tear off the useable pieces from their grandma’s house so that they can back the house and the restaurant up a few yards and build again. Last night they built a bonfire from the scraps and sat around it talking and mourning.

It does not feel strange to laugh and joke and chat and play while the history of this family is in flames. They are somber, certainly. But those who I imagine are most devastated are the Aunts and Uncles who were raised here and they are outside the house set back a little in a circle of chairs drinking. It seems too invasive to be that close and instead we are with the descendents of the people who grew up here, where the grief is more tolerable and the conversation wistful and nostalgic.

Kassidy became determined yesterday to speak Spanish. She sat on the beach near the bonfire and played with three children at just her language ability, Floriana (3), Quiana (6), and Kevin (4). “Mom… how do you say, ‘Mermaid.’” I walked over and she had Floriana buried from the waist down in sand with a mermaid tail. She had brought a container of juice and one of the older boys walked over and asked if he could have some.

“No estás importante,” she is saying as I walk over. When I tell her that rather than saying, “It’s not important to me, sure, go ahead and have some juice”, which is what she thinks she is saying that she has said, “You aren’t important” she breaks into peals of self-conscious but authentic laughter and all the little kids laugh along even though they don’t’ know why. At the rental car place she said, “¿Tengo un baño?” (Do I have a bath room?) The employee said, “out the door, on the left” in Spanish.

Her determination is born of fear. We visited the school yesterday. It looks like the schools in California. The classrooms are all air conditioned, but there are no hall ways. They all open into the outside. The entire grounds are surrounded by a gate with two guards. No one goes in or out without them knowing. It is comforting. As people tried to talk with her, she realized how imperative it is that she improve her Spanish instantly.

The school is next door to the mall, and we are so happy to find a greater variety of things in Liberia. It occurs to me that creative and angst-ridden people need a voice, so we buy paint and paper and canvases. We cannot find an easel. We have come for a Spanish English dictionary for Costa Rica, since all their words are conveniently different from any I know. We have not yet found a book store, but we found a small section of books. There are children’s books that are completely uninteresting to my child prodigy. She chooses Nicholas Sparks.

When we got home last night she said, “I can’t believe how much more Spanish I’m speaking in just an hour!” (After talking to the little kids.)

Driving back from Liberia we had to stop because there were cows in the road. Seriously. Lots of cows. I had the ridiculous and paranoid thought, “Cows don’t attack, right?” No… they don’t…they just stand and look at you. Turns out, though, that the cows were not between Liberia and Playa Hermosa. I missed a turn. We were in Papagao, about 20 minutes down the road. I’m thinking about returning the car and walking more. Without a GPS I might as well. We talked in the car --- really talked, the way we do when it’s comfortable and easy and I’m remembering not to tell her what to do, but just to listen to her. We are trying to speak in Spanish and when I lapse into English she chides me. “No tienes hambre” she says. (You aren’t hungry.) I begin my Spanish teacher speak, “Oh, yo no TENGO hambre. Hmmm… yo no tengo hambre tampoco.” (I’m not hungry, either.)

When we get home Tuesday night she is wild about Floriana, the three year old, who spent most of the evening on her hip. She is happy that Floriana’s mother, Gloriana, really likes her and went on and on about how fond she already is of her. The three children in the family who are more or less her age (12-15) are not talking to her yet, but stood in her vicinity rather than shunning her all together and were involved in the conversation, though not in direct conversation with her. We’re talking about going dancing Saturday night and leaving all of the kids (3-15) with one of the Aunts, so they are all interested in the conversation. She is fine. She is at the very least beginning to make lemonade from lemons. I am encouraged and let my guard down a little. We are talking about cuddling and watching a movie before we go to bed and then getting up early to watch the bull dozers and be supportive of the family. We are chatting. We are having a good time. She is reveling in the feeling of having been understood in Spanish. “I thought it would be harder.” She is teasing me. We are smiling.

And then I make this enormous fumble. “It’s not too late. Let’s call your dad.”

By the time she is off the phone she is crying. She opens her email and reads a message from him and cries more and she starts to write back. “What mom is writing is bs.”

We look at the pictures. I have photographic evidence of her happy. I feel betrayed by the moment. What are the perfect things to say from far away to express enthusiasm instead of aching to a child who teeters on the edge of despair, but rarely falls in? I don’t know. I imagine if anyone else knew, they’d be saying those things.

She is genuinely miserable and it expresses herself through the two fingers she types with. It’s not enough to just tap it out. She has to make sure I read it, so I know that the only bright spot in her day today was Floriana. It’s not enough to be miserable. She has to be miserable at me. Even that’s not enough. She has to be dramatic, too. I know there will be more and more bright spots and I know that soon she will have friends here and it will be hard for her to leave them to come home, but to say that doesn’t sound prophetic, it sounds insincere. So instead I say, “Do you want to sleep in my bed?” So she watches Charlie’s Angels in Spanish with English subtitles and I fall asleep next to her.

Day 3, 09/08/09, 8am

2009-09-13T13:22:00.000-07:00

Day 3, 09/08/09, 8am

Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending. – Carl Bard

Synopsis: Tuesday morning. We ended up on a boat Monday with the Tico family of the ex-pat from Michigan who built this house. There are pictures in Facebook and FamDing. Kassidy smiled again. Appointment with the school Thursday morning at 10 to be tested, but we’re going to visit and tour the school today. Internet connection is still weak. I’ll call people once I’m sure they won’t have to put up with garble. This blog lacks literary excellence. I am unhappy with its style, but yesterday’s was as mundane. Finding my voice…

Monday morning the Spanish speakers began to arrive. One to paint the house. One to unlock the padlock where the paint was stored. The builder stopped by with his Tica wife and their two children.

By 3:00 we were on a boat with the builder, his wife, her three sisters, two of her three brothers, her brother-in-law and the 5 children fishing for dinner. Kassidy helped reel in el Dorado (Mahi Mahi) and later that evening we ate the best fish I’ve ever had. The builder, an American from Minnesota, said “you’re in.” We had been accepted as part of the family.

This morning Scott and Clara Rosa and their children Quiana and Kevin are waking up downstairs and preparing to use the pool. We have been invited to their ranch, as well.

I am as magnetically drawn toward people as I am to the ocean. Can’t help myself.

The monkeys here are howler monkeys. Congas Aulladas is what I think they’re calling them. I can’t describe it. I have paragraphs of words attempting to bring to life what it would sound like to hear a dog scream and a mother gorilla mourn simultaneously, but that does not exactly explain it unless you add some other sound… like the sound a plunger would make if what was being plunged was a toilet the size of Wisconsin. Plus… I think there’s a sound like heavy machinery, which is what I assumed the noise was in the beginning. I assumed that there were workers sucking a septic tank with a large truck or drilling into the ground.

When the Spanish speakers arrived they told me it was the monkeys, so it would rain that afternoon.

The monkeys lied.

On our second full day in the rainy season (“¿Como se dice “rainy season” en español?” “Invierno.” Gheesh, I feel stupid.) and there is no rain.

Sitting on the boat, Kassidy’s grin spreading wide across her face, she says, “Let’s do this every day.” The fish appeared to be attempting to commit suicide. They were jumping above the surface of the water, swimming near the boat. I was reminded of the Sarah Sample song about knowing a boy who caught a fish with his bare hands. There was a water snake that is only found here. We saw the heads of turtles popping above the water. We were told to watch for dolphins because they like to swim in front of the boat. We watched the sunset while the children walked up to us and asked for cookies in English. Even though dad speaks English, they generally speak Spanish at home.

We brainstormed new classes we need to put on line. Spanish for tourists in Costa Rica, Costa Rican Spanish. (We teach “gracias” and “de nada” for thank you and you’re welcome, but here they say, “gracias” and “con mucho gusto.”), and English classes. His mother lives in Minnesota and wants to be able to travel hear and speak to the grandkids.

I love this new routine in which I wake up first and Sit by the ocean, read a little and then write, but it will end shortly and I’ll likely write later in the day. Kassidy has an appointment Thursday morning to be tested at ICS Ciudad Blanca, which is a private school in Liberia that all of the students here in Playa Hermosa are bussed to. There is an elementary school (escuela) in Playa Hermosa, but not a junior high / high school (colegio). The escuela here has 14 students in a one room school house. ICS, however, has a reputation for being academically rigorous and when Tico children enter it from the public school system they are often held back. We will go today and purchase books so that she can get a head start and start studying for the test. While the classes are given in Spanish and English, the homework is assigned in English and the materials are in English. Kassidy is monumentally relieved.

Once she starts school, she will leave here about 7 in the morning, be in school all day and return on the bus in the afternoon. I think she’s trepidacious about the idea of a new school, but eager for the lazy days of summer to give way to the pace of school. It is possible to get tired of summer vacation.

The ink is almost completely gone and yesterday we lay on the bed together and day dreamed about what bedrooms our guests would stay in when they come. She has assigned bedrooms to everyone who has said they are coming already.

Esteban, one of the brothers, wasn’t catching any fish and then his line broke. “Who did you get pregnant, Esteban?” his sisters teased. I was reminded of lizards outside the door and Alexandra’s mother.

There is a new law in Costa Rica that there can nothing built within 50 yards of the beach, as that property belongs to Costa Rica, is public and is for tourists. Clara Rosa’s grandmother raised 15 children in a house within that 50 yard mark and ran a restaurant, also within that 50 yard mark. No structures were grandfathered except those that still had the original documents from the government of Spain. The houses are supposed to be torn down today. The Aunts and Uncles still live there. There were three ex-pats sitting outside drinking their last beer and saying that this was the last good place in Playa Hermosa. The grandmother had owned most of Playa Hermosa once upon a time.

Clara Rosa’s part of the family lives in a stretch of an alley. Scott has built houses for the family one after another. Her mother raised 8 kids on her own and Scott built her a 3 bedroom house that she can rent out to vacationers. It’s a small house, but totally reasonably priced. I think he said something like $350 a week. When tourists come, she moves in with one of the kids, who all live one, two or three houses away. They will build more houses on this lot as the boys marry.

09.07.09 Monday, 8am Not All Who Wander Are Lost

2009-09-13T11:38:00.000-07:00

09.07.09 Monday, 8am

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

Synopsis: Playa del Coco Beach, dinner at El Velero, feeding a ferile cat, Kassidy, conversations with the potential school, hornet’s nests outside the house, the worker’s arrive, meeting the builder, an invitation to go out on the boat, over-tipping, the pool boy.

I can hear Spanish.

It’s a Monday morning and there must be some handy men or construction workers at the house down the hill. We’re at the top of a hill and the sounds from the valley float to the top like gifts in outstretched hands.

Yesterday as we drove back from Playa del Coco where we replaced the swimming suit that is on Kassidy’s bedroom floor at her dad’s house, she started counting monkeys. I haven’t seen one yet.

“Wouldn’t it be funny if the whole time you were here you never saw a monkey?”

The ink on her hands washed off under sun screen and ocean waves and swimming pool chlorine. It streamed and smeared down her hands leaving only trace evidence, like a wound that begins to heal because the body begins to self-repair. What inside of her is erasing the ink?

There are as many stray dogs here as there were in Guanajuato. They are harmless and starving and myopically seem to not even notice the people in their quest for food. While Kassidy felt compassion for them, it wasn’t until dinner, when we were approached by a very smart, ferile cat, that her heart strings were tugged.

According to the waiter, “THAT – is not a cat.” It’s an evil cat and they feed it from the kitchen in the back, but aren’t fond of it. She manipulated Kassidy until there was a discussion about possibly feeding the cat her leftovers. The way a dog responds to “Wanna go for a ride?”, it quickly sauntered back, while making eye contact with her. This tiny little ferile, calico cat wasn’t wild and untamed. On the contrary, it had learned that tourists like cats that remind them of house cats. I reached down to feel her bulging, low belly.

“Pero está embarazada.”

The waiter conceded. Wild, pregnant, calico kitty had chicken parmesan for dinner.

On the way home from the restaurant that is almost directly across the street, I turned the wrong way. A kilometer or so down the road we reached the grocery store and realized we were going in the wrong direction. I am the driver. Kassidy is the navigator. I have found that trusting her sense of direction is profoundly more reliable than trusting my own regardless of how confident I am. I am always wrong. It’s a handicap, remediated entirely by having a GPS. I think the GPS MIGHT work to get me from place to place once I’ve been there because the satellite and the coordinantes should work even if it doesn’t have a card for Costa Rica. I’ll try it today. The point is… I was lost. I was lost so close to home that I could have walked. I will be lost again. Jason gave me a compass for my birthday in a little metal frame that says, “Not all who wander are lost.” If you see me wandering… I am probably also lost. If you see me lost, though, I’m probably so used to being lost that I’m enjoying extracting myself from the situation again. I laugh at my handicap. Everyone else should, too. As long as you don’t see it as willful disregard for maps and directions and instead see that I am simply incapable of finding my equilibrium again once I’m turned around.

It’s appropriate that Jason gave me a compass because he’s also the person who tells me when I’m heading in the wrong direction. On Skype last night with Jason and Diana I learned that for the billionth time I misread someone. I tend to take what people say at face value. It does not occur to me that a person’s communication is more complex than simply telling the truth, so when they speak, I believe them. Is this not the same thing as not being able to find my way without a GPS? I lead with my heart. I listen with my heart. I make decisions with my heart. I am oblivious when I trust people and their intentions are inconsistent with their words. Costa Rica will be interesting because my understanding is that people are very polite and friendly, but say whatever is necessary to be perceived as polite and friendly. If anyone has a compass that would help me understand what people really mean when they talk that might be just as helpful.

Kassidy began speaking in Spanish Sunday. It was silly, broken Spanish with a smattering of giggled English words. She also swam in the ocean and when it pulled her under she smiled and laughed and looked happy. Just for a minute. But when it was over, she didn’t appear to remember her commitment to herself not to ever be happy again.

When I was almost exactly her age, all four of us were sent to California to stay with our grandparents for six weeks. I remember the agonizing feeling of being wrenched from the most important people in my life --- my girlfriends --- and deprived of the ability to spend the summer doing what they were doing. Back in the a days of long distance, we rarely talked. But we wrote letters and kept each other updated. I still have them. Dawn and Gena wrote mountains and I kept them bundled the way an army wife would.

I shared this with Kassidy in an attempt to bond.

“If it happened to you, how could you do the same thing to me?”

Failed.

“Did you ever forgive your parents or did you hate them for the rest of your life?”

Yikes.

But when we got home and got in the pool, me gingerly carrying my injured, bandaged arm above water, she swam under my legs like a dolphin and we talked. Our friends Diana and her daughter Marie and Janie and her daughter Molly have lovely relationships and survived their teenage years without the distance Kassidy expects in our relationship.

She is on the cusp of adolescence, but also still so very dependent. She wants to cuddle on the couch. She climbed into bed with me some time in the middle of the night. This may be my final opportunity to savor the morsels of childhood she’s still throwing from the dinner table. There is still no joy in the world that lights me up like making her laugh.

So… what did we learn today? When you dial a wrong number you say, “Disculpe.” Products in grocery stores from the U.S. are ridiculously expensive and hand lotion from Costa Rica is just as good. It is going to take me a while to figure out money. I paid with a credit card last night, but apparently you can’t leave a tip on a credit card. It is never a good idea to be taught about money by the person you are wanting to tip. I think I tipped about 20%, although my little books on Costa Rica say 10% is normal. Money is in colones and you can get a rough estimate of the conversion by doubling the number and moving the decimal point. So 500 colones is more or less $10.00. That’s as far as I’ve gotten. Right now I’m looking at prices and choosing the least expensive butter, but not having any idea what it costs.

I can’t believe I didn’t pack a Spanish / English dictionary. We need to find a book store. The ice maker is jammed…. there is a hornet’s nest on the blade of the fan….the internet signal is too weak so the modem connection cable needs to be moved…. Until you need the words, they are low frequency vocabulary. Once you need them, you find yourself pointing a lot.

A worker arrived to work on the roof, but one of the padlock keys had been changed, so he is sitting by the pool with me, speaking to me in Spanish and teaching me about Costa Rica. His nephews go to the school Kassidy will be going to. We will be spending our future Sundays at church if we wish to meet anyone in Playa Hermosa. (I may need to go shopping.) He has a girlfriend in Atlanta who visits often because she is finding $100 tickets into San Jose, a 6 hour / $3 bus ride away. He also told me that tips are included in the fine print on every bill, so when I generously tipped at dinner last night, I was raising the total tip to somewhere around 30%.

The next arrival was the guy with the key who works for the property manager. He lives in Liberia and gave me helpful advice on renting a less expensive car. His four year old son also attends the school in Liberia. More Spanish.

I spent the morning on the phone with the school in Liberia. Kassidy is scheduled for a test on Thursday morning. We will go visit between now and then to pick up some materials and see where they are in the curriculum and tour the school.

Speaking in Spanish feels like nails in my mouth right now. It’s strange. Yes… I speak Spanish. But as it comes out of my mouth right now I hear the errors in agreement and my need for subjunctive in every day conversation is incredibly high, so I am editing in my head as I go (Was that past? So I need imperfect subjunctive?) If I speak slowly my monitor jumps ahead of the words and corrects them before they come out. Mostly, it just chastises me after I’ve already said the words.

The builder of the house is married to a Tica and they have two small children. Apparently they are good friends with the owners of the house and the children learned to swim here. She recommended a different school that is closer. We may go check them both out. They invited us on “la lancha” this afternoon and we, in turn, invited them to spend the night in the two empty bedrooms downstairs. They are from Santa Cruz a little more than an hour away. According to my book on Costa Ricans, invitations are made easily and followed up on rarely. Since he is American and she is Costa Rican, I wonder which cultural customs they follow. They will be back to pick us up in a few hours when it’s not so hot. Or not. No idea. We’re going to get dressed for it just in case.

And there is a noise…. One I can’t possibly describe. I will wait until tomorrow morning and try to record it. Apparently the monkeys know when it’s going to rain.

And… Andrea… Shannon? I met the pool boy.