“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.
Friday, September 18, 2009
CR 091709 Thursday, 8am
“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.
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
“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.
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
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.
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.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
CR 091409 Monday, 7:49am
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.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
091309 Sunday, 6:30am
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.
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
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.
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.
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