CR091109.doc 9:04am

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.