A New Adult Getting Over An Old Childhood Fear

VWP: temerario (n.)--daredevil.

Monteverde

Our nighttime tour guide directed his flashlight's beam directly on the fuzzy, fat, eight-legged creature.  I didn't realize I had a fear of spiders until that moment.  Then again, I can remember my heart racing wildly fast when I'd seen a spider at various times during my childhood.  With a slight Costa Rican flair to his words, he said quietly (as if the tarantula might be able to understand him), "Actually, the best way to get rid of a fear of spiders is to touch them.  Who wants to?"  Some uncontrollable impulse inside of me caused me to instantly reply "I do!"  Just a quick insight into my inter-brain discrepancy about this decision:

Left side of brain: Um, who said that?
Right side of brain: Me! I did!
Left side of brain: What's your problem?! That's a tarantula!
Right side: Shut up--you're going to do this.

I tiptoed next to the crouched guide and let him guide my pointed fingers to the Orange-Kneed Tarantula's body, which appeared to be patiently waiting for a nice stroke from a new American friend.  As my hand was inched closer and closer, I pictured all the things that could go wrong, most of them based off the Harry Potter movies, strongly influenced by Ron's paralyzing fear of spiders.  What if a pair of massive fangs popped out of its head?  Or if it ran up my arm or something?  It was too late to say anything, and I doubt the tour guide would have let me back out then--he had already made fun of me for being an adult and still having a fear of spiders.  (I would like to take this moment to say my fear is completely justified as tarantula bites can be very painful and produce intense spasms and sometimes strong hallucinations.  Completely justified.) But the moment was over before I knew it had happened:  I poked the prickly hairs and the tarantula sped away a few inches to the left, burying itself under a convenient pile of leaves.  Let me assure you, I wasn't going back for Take #2.

This was just a short segment of a nighttime animal spotting tour in Monteverde, Costa Rica--a location recently voted one of the "7 Wonders of Costa Rica" by the nation's most prestigious newspaper.  With a name that can be literally translated as "Green Hill," this place boasts rolling green terrain and a seemingly boundless number of animals.  Eco-tourism is Monteverde's #1 source of income, even with the fact that it's a 4 hour ride from the capital of Costa Rica with a good 1.5 hours on a bumpy, ditch-ridden, unpaved road.      

So, back to the extreme adventures of Monteverde, Costa Rica:

A Three Toed Soth.  They always have a smile on their faces.

In addition to a nighttime animal-spotting tour (during which we saw opossums, birds, snakes, frogs, spiders, butterflies, kinkajous, and sloths), my friends and I also decided to do some activities with the Monteverde Extremo company, specializing in ziplining, bungee jumping, canopy tours, and other activities that are exhilarating for some and terrifying for others.  My friend Julie decided to go bungee jumping (brave soul), my friend Sirjana decided to take the calmer canopy bridge tour option, and Sam and I took what seemed like the middle road with the ziplining option.  With 14 cables and 4 km of line (5km=3miles, if that helps), we looked forward to a ziplining feast over the beautiful views of lush, green Costa Rican valleys. Instructed with a 10-minute orientation session and decked out in harnesses and gloves that were much too loose, 12 of us immediately began the cable course with the help of 8 guides who were stationed at the beginning and end of each one of the 14 cables.  The first two cables were easy, super short and simple so we could all relax into it a bit.  Then the third cable came: it was at least three times longer than the previous two and spread over a massive valley.  The view was like out of a tourist book, complete with a generously beaming sun.  The cable was so long that instead of one person going at a time, we would need to pair up so we wouldn't get stuck in the middle.  I was paired up with another American, a blonde 50-some-odd woman who yelled at me with a thick Midwestern accent: "Are you ready for this? I'm so ready for this! Yeah--let's go!"  I responded with a deeper-than-normal Southern accent and yelled back: "Whoooooo here we go!"  She was hooked onto the cable in front of me, I wrapped my legs around her torso, and I was left in charge of braking at the end by firmly pulling down on the cable with my right hand.

Suddenly, with a push from the guide behind us, the Midwestern woman and I were sailing through the air, tears streamed down the sides of my face from the speed, and my vocal chords screamed at their full capacity.  Eventually the end platform came into view, so I reached my right arm behind, grasped the cable, and began to tug down harshly on the wire.  However, my glove was so large that it began to come off my hand--panicking kilometers above the ground, and responsible for not only my own braking but also for the random stranger in front of me, I tried to keep on braking with my bare hand.  It burned.  It seared.  The guide on the end platform didn't seem to see my acrobatic struggle with my glove, and he continued to signal "keep braking" to me.  I somehow managed to keep my glove from escaping entirely in the juggling act, and even with my best effort to slow us down with my bare hand, we came in with a ton of speed.  The adrenaline junkie in front of me was unhooked from the cable and ran over to her friend to give a step-by-step account of the adrenaline rush.  On the other hand (no pun intended), I was afraid to look down at my own hand.  It was throbbing.  I looked down anyway, and saw a metal splinter in my palm and six battle wounds on my fingers.  Gritty and dirty, the cuts outlined perfectly where the metal had burned and then cut my hand.  Realizing I was incredibly lucky and fortunate for the little amount of damage in such a dangerous situation, I found a guide and told him in Spanish what had happened with my incredibly loose glove and my attempt to break without it out of necessity.  Another one of the guides quickly transformed into an on-the-go nurse, and he had me bandaged up in no time.  At first I was a little hesitant to go back on the course--I wanted to return back to the United States with all my fingers intact and didn't want to risk another accident.  (As I was writing that sentence on my laptop a mosquito flew in front of my face and I tried to kill it with the typical two-handed clap--I missed the mosquito and just ended up imposing searing pain on the cuts on my hand even more.  The healing process is a go!)

Tarzan Swing!

I can't even tell you how happy I am that I continued on with the course.  One of the two highlights of the course for me was the Tarzan Swing.  In case you doubt the image that the name instantly brings to mind, I'll explain it.  The Tarzan Swing consists of a quick 50 foot free fall from a platform (imbedded in the beautiful and strong trees of Monteverde) and then turns that momentum into a pendulum-esque swing until the guides then capture you with a large, cushy rope and pull you back to a lower platform.  The 50 foot drop was indeed pure fear.  I gushed out a long and nonsensical line of curse words in that moment that indeed may send me to hell.  After that, it was pure heaven.  You almost can't hear anything when you're swinging so high in the canopies of the who-knows-how-old trees.  On either side of the pendulum movement you're suspended for a millisecond and then arc back to the other side.  I wouldn't hesitate to describe the experience as thrilling and simultaneously relaxing as each arcing motion brought on a more serene state and feeling of pensiveness among the surrounding greenery.

Superman-ing example

My absolute favorite cable on the course required a "heroic" side, you might say.  Named "The Superman," this cable offers the option of flying through the air for 1 km like our favorite superhero, with torso and legs suspended in a straight line and hands either out like the wings of a bird or squeezed firmly against your sides.   About a second before they shoved me off the platform, I had this slight urge to ask the guides for a second time if it was okay for my harness to be a little loose, and then WHOOOSH.  I was flying. Volando en el aire.  It was like a silent picture movie, with the occasional "whoa" that would slip out of my mouth as I soared above little cabins and trees and rivers, all looking so minuscule from way up high.  I wasn't nervous, or feeling like my feet might slip out from their harnesses, I was just calm.  And satisfied, content, impressed, and thinking "Fuck, this is awesome."  Very sophisticated terminology, I know.  Nevertheless, it's completely accurate.  

Monterverde taught me a few things:
1. Tarantulas aren't so scary.  I'm still trying to convince myself of that.
2. Being brave is more fun than being timid.  It's not satisfying to turn down opportunities.
3.  Keep going even when it's hard.  I can't believe what I would have missed out on had I stopped ziplining after my hand incident.

4. Go do something extreme.            

Quirks of a Nation

VWP: ¡Que raro! (exp.) -- How odd!

During these past two months in Costa Rica, I've noticed some pretty quirky things about this small, lush, nature-rich country.  I figured since I only have four weeks left here, I'd start to unravel and expose to you all the small daily things that continue to puzzle me.

1. The San Jose government decides to bail on sidewalks.  In a city where walking is used much more than in the typical U.S. city, you'll rarely find a completed and safe sidewalk anywhere here.  One of my running routes includes a fairly busy road, called "La Calle Principal" (the main street) and I was quite surprised on my first Calle Principal run to find that the sidewalk suddenly cut off.  My two options were either to 1) walk through the trash-filled gutter or 2) slither by the cars on the road and pray I didn't get hit.   While neither option appealed to me at 7 am on a Monday, I tried to think of what my Jewish mother would want me to do while also keeping in mind that I didn't want banana peel slush on my new running shoes.  Sneaking on the side of the road during a break in the traffic flow did the trick, but didn't stop my curiosity towards the lack of sidewalks here.  Furthermore, when there are sidewalks, they're not attached to the street.  It's not like you can safely step down three inches from the sidewalk and then be on the street like you can in, say, Charlotte, NC.  The sidewalks are lined with large foot-wide gaps, commonly called "gringo holes" because gringoes/Americans expect for the sidewalk to be safe and instead end up falling into the massive gap when they obliviously step down from the sidewalk to the road.  The fact is that Americans would sue if this were the case somewhere in the U.S., but here, people don't seem to mind the (lack of) sidewalks.

Typical Pulperia

2. Costa Ricans are much more blunt about things like race.  Perhaps I'm most sensitive and attentive to this particular habit among Costa Ricans because I come from a country where the word "race" is still a very delicate topic.  Here, the word "negro" (literally meaning "black") is used as either a casual or affectionate term among all people, regardless of their race or background.  On the street one might hear a customer at a small outdoor fruit stand ask the owner, "Negro, how much is a bag of oranges?"  Or in another scenario, a husband might put his arm around his wife at the dinner table and say "Mi Negrita, how I love you."  I really have yet to grasp the background of this affectionate term, but it certainly highlights the need for open-mindedness while visiting a foreign country and understanding that things may be very different from my home country.  Another interesting example of this occurred the other day when my host-dad said to my host-mom that he was going to the "chino" to get some cereal.  When he referred to the "chino" he was actually referring to the "pulpería," a typical Costa Rican type of store that began to pop up around the country in the early 1900s, selling snacks, cigarettes, drinks, newspapers, flowers, soap, and other common items.  However, so many of Costa Rica's pulperías are owned by Chinese families, the word "chino" has just entirely replaced the actual word for the store type.

Obviously passionate about stars

3. Costa Rican men are trying to bring the manes back.  If there is one group of men who may actually understand the heat battle women with long hair fight every day, it's Costa Rican men.  With their rat tails, mohawks, hair gel, and images shaved in their hair, these men put Justin Bieber hair glory to shame.  To be honest, I often look at the hair styles on Tico men and feel that I may have been transported back to a 90's music video.  These hair styles are further promoted by the big names in Costa Rican music; Prince Royce, one of the most popular singers in Costa Rica (he's actually from the Bronx though), probably adds about 4 inches to the length of his head with his immense flow.  His most recent music video for his song "Darte Un Beso" (To Give You a Kiss) features a kind of dinonsaur-esque head crown made of dark, gelled hair that is very typical for Tico men.

Prince Royce + his flow

Anyone else see the simalarities?

4. The obsession with fruit drinks.  There is a belief here in Costa Rica that from age 1-10 a Costa Rican child should drink a cold, sugary fruit drink every day.  Doesn't this sound like the opposite of Michelle Obama's healthy food effort in the U.S.?  Costa Ricans love their "frescos," these cold drinks made from a variety of fruits that usually compliment every meal.  To be sure, they're a good source of vitamins, but I have a feeling the true health benefits are canceled out by the large heap of sugar that clouds the bottom of the pitcher.  The typical fruits used to make these drinks are strawberries, caz, mora, guanabana, and star-fruit.  YUM.  But think about it, if you lived in a land that was practically overflowing with delicious and exotic fruit, would you just eat them as they are?  Nah, you'd make a delicious drinkable version.  

5. Can we just talk about rice and beans for a moment?  Coming from the land of bread, I can honestly say that Costa Ricans eat rice and beans more than Americans eat bread--and that's saying a lot.  The traditional breakfast in Costa Rica consists of fruit, eggs, and gallo pinto (rice and beans).  The traditional lunch in Costa Rica consists of meat, cooked platanos, and rice and beans.  The traditional dinner...yeah, you get my point.  But when I say "rice" I don't just mean some plain Jasmine rice.  Costa Ricans add shallots, sweet chili, corn, green beans, chicken and meat to their rice to bring it alive.  Or if you've got a pot of rice in the fridge that's maybe on Day 2, just throw some beans into a hot pan with the rice, and it's like you've made a new batch of rice.  My 18-year-old neighbor Esteban literally told me that "[he] could not live without rice."  According to him, he's always hungry unless he eats his rice and beans.  Another thing that adds to the Costa Rican rice-and-bean fetish is that most Costa Ricans prefer hot meals to cold ones.  My host mom says, "[she needs] to have three hot meals a day."  So you can imagine that she wouldn't be thrilled with a cold cut sandwich for lunch.  In order to alleviate the pain of making rice so many times a day, most Costa Rican homes employ the use of a rice steamer, making a huge batch of rice in the morning and just coming back to the rice steamer for more each meal of the day.                  

While some of these odd quirks about Costa Rica still grab my attention, I've come to appreciate these peculiarities for what they are.  I can totally agree that there is nothing more refreshing after a long day of work than a glass of rich guanabana fresco, and nothing gets your mind awake in the morning like trying to figure out how to avoid getting hit by a car while simultaneously not running through a mountain of trash.  And the dinosaur-looking hair is...well, different.  :)  

 

Teaching is a Divine Comedy

VWP: niña—girl (n.)  However, in the school setting kids do not call their teachers “maestra,” instead they call them “niña.”  So a child may raise his or her hand and say “Niña, puede ayudarme con mi tarea?” (Teacher/girl, can you help me with my homework?).  I realize it sounds strange to call your teacher “girl,” practically making her the equivalent as the student, but it’s the truth!

A classy-looking Dante Alighieri

This past week I began my new internship at Escuela Dante Alighieri, a public elementary school nestled in the Lourdes neighborhood.  That’s right, my school is named after the very man who wrote Divine Comedy in the 14^th century—pretty epic.  You might say that with the Costa Rican sun the walk to work can feel like an inferno sometimes…okay, I’m done with the Dante puns (for now).  My day starts at 7 am when I arrive at the school to assist Karla, an energetic and spunky Costa Rican, with her English classes.  During her college career at the prestigious public university here, University of Costa Rica, she majored in "Teaching English" and then lived in Wilmington, NC for a few years teaching Spanish.  Karla teaches three or four classes a day, five days a week, and rarely sees the same class twice in the same week.  With each class filling in around 15 kids, she's teaching more than 100 different first through third graders in a week.  Karla’s classes always begin with a kind of call and response interaction where she shouts out, very slowly, with a slight Costa Rican accent (I’m going to write how it sounds phonetically to me):

The classroom prior to
the daily student invasion

Karla: “Goooood morning!” (She puts a cupped hand to her ear to show she would like a response from the fidgeting, seated crowd.)    

Kids: “Gud moorning, teacher!” (There’s always a few who end a few seconds after the rest, causing a slight stadium echo feel)

Karla: “How are you tudae?”

Kids: “Fayne thanku.  Eand you?”        

Karla: “Whayt’s yur fahvoriet coulour?” This kind of question asking process continues on until we’ve covered the class’ favorite color, animal, number, day of the week, and month of the year. 

 During my first week helping out  Karla’s class she used me as a conversation model for the kids as they asked me “what’s your name?,” “what’s your favorite animal?” and “what’s your favorite number?” in order to get to know me.  Adorably, a few times kids would think they were asking a question to me, but instead they'd just say “My favorite color is blue” since they’d learned the response so many times but rarely had been the ones asking the questions.  After the third class (remember that we teach over 10 different classes in one week) of kids’ interrogating me about my favorite color, animal, number, etc. I soon learned that “My favorite animal is a dog” was a total crowd-pleaser, and in general kids approved of my favorite number being five by showing me a few smiles that were missing their front baby teeth.  Occasionally they were enthralled that “my favorite color is blue” and I would receive a short-lived applause.  It’s nice being the teacher’s assistant and not the actual teacher because I get to be the loved one and Karla has to be the heavy.  Being the good cop in the good cop-bad cop partnership when it comes to a classroom full of little kids is always a good thing; for my kindness and smiles I get rewarded by the kids with stickers, hugs, and small chats when they hunt me down during recess.  I have already started a sticker collection in the front of my journal, all donated to me by the kids. 

Behold two of my lovely stickers

Right now my favorite is a sparkly, slightly crumpled star-shaped sticker that says “You Rock!” Why, thank you.  

Karla does use me a lot even though I am just her assistant for the next month—because I have a true American accent, she likes for the kids to hear me speak as much as possible, and whenever we do an oral exercise (like reviewing the weather--sunny, cloudy, rainy-- or greetings--good morning, good afternoon, good evening) she always asks me to be the speaker.  It’s at times like this that I'm glad my accent is pretty much neutral between a Northern and Southern accent so I don’t shift all of these kids’ accents into Southern sweet tea mode. 

One downside to working in a kids’ classroom is my growing hatred for kids’ sing-along songs.  If you turned on a CD player right now and blasted “Old McDonald Had a Farm,” I might just smash the CD player to pieces.  You’ve all been warned now.  However, I have learned to appreciate the usefulness and effectiveness of using songs to teach little kids words, especially action words.   I have a feeling the kids will absolutely remember what an alligator is, for example, since every time we get to the part in “Five Little Monkeys Swinging On A Tree” where the alligator chows down on one of the monkeys, Karla always synchronizes the word “Snap!” (Alligator has caught the poor unfortunate monkey) with a large face-eating motion with her arms right in front of one of the kids’ wide-eyed, half-scared, half-excited face. 

After my lunch break I switch gears and help a fifth grade social studies teacher with her various classes.  I’m sure you can imagine that I appreciate the change in volume of the kids’ voices (at this point fifth graders are no longer screaming youngins—for the most part) and getting to return to Spanish can be quite the relief since English is really quite ugly sounding in comparison to the fluid vowels of Spanish.  I only work with the fifth graders for an hour and a half every day, so I’m still waiting to get a feel for the class.  However, the odd thing about the Costa Rican public school system is that they don’t have middle school.  Grades 1-5 are all lower schoolers and then grades 6-11 (or 12 if you decide to follow a technical skill career, not an academic one) are high schoolers. 

The kids participating in a reenactment of the Batalla de Santa Rosa during an assembly. 

Even though I can tell this school is struggling with certain issues, it is still an exceptional school in many ways.  For instance, the school is overcrowded, they lack green areas for the kids to play in, and they don’t have a physical education teacher at all.  At the same time though, the kids have a computer lab and on a weekly basis the school has mini-assemblies regarding the environment, civility, and peace.  More importantly, the kids themselves are affectionate and caring.  Some mornings I'm sluggishly making my way into school at 7 am, wishing I'd taken that last sip of coffee a bit more seriously, and then one of my students will run up to me and say "Good morning, teacher Kellie!" (They have trouble pronouncing Katie for some reason, so I'm generally referred to as Kellie).  Regardless of whether the English greeting was perfect or a little awkward or whether they call me Katie or Kellie, the students make getting up before 6 am totally worth it.  

A Game Played With Feet, Watched With Hearts, Loved By All

VWP: puta (n). -- whore. Don't worry, in a moment it'll make sense why I chose this harsh word.

Americans often seem to poke fun at foreigners' love of "futbol" or soccer.  It's almost like we can't imagine why anyone would take interest in a game that doesn't include helmet-clad men smashing into each other with 30 seconds worth of pauses for every 10 seconds of action (was that assessment of football a bit too harsh?).  However, here in Costa Rica, Ticos very much so prefer soccer: a game that applauds detail and precision as much as it does strength, requires teamwork as much as individual excellence, and commends sporadic decisions as much as preplanned plays.  I myself side with Ticos after gathering my fair share of tiny scars, shinguards, and soccer-patterned headbands from years of playing this sport.  While being here, I've watched soccer bring people together on a family, community, and national level.        

My first night back in Curridabat after a two-week long spree in the province of Limon was also the first day of the U17 Girls' World Cup Tournament, hosted right here in San Jose.  Even though my host mom here doesn't like to see girls getting all sweaty and "manly-looking" when they play soccer (I decided to keep my opinion to myself on that quote), my dad and I planned to set up camp in front of the TV and watch the 90 minute match with all the attention that we could muster.  We went to the grocery store and bought a few Imperials (the national beer) and a bag of lemon and salt chips--sounds oddly similar to the diet of Sunday football watchers in America, doesn't it?  Then we rested our voices for the rest of the day, only talking when extremely necessary, so we could really scream at the TV that night.  When I say "scream at the TV" I don't mean like, "Oh, come on!" or "What a crummy shot!"  Costa Ricans take the cursing during games to a whole new level, as any error committed by a soccer player receives a long drawn out "Puta!!!" (Whore!!!)  I'm not sure how this came to be the acceptable insult, but it sure is popular here.  While verbal smack-downs are expected and tolerated, many have also anticipated the probable physical violence that could result from such an intense fan base.  Some stadiums here actually don't let fans of opposite teams sit together in the stands!  Better safe than sorry, I guess. Even sitting in my family's living room watching the game on TV, I could feel the national support swell inside the stadium as the Costa Rican team battled against the adroit Venezuelan squad.  Whenever a Venezuelan player would be tricked by some sneaky Costa Rican footwork, the entire crowd would rumble with a boisterous "Aaaahhhh," further rubbing it in the poor girl's face that she just got humiliated on international TV. Sadly for the Costa Ricans, this only happened occasionally.  As the tied game (0-0 at half time) disappeared into a 3-0 win for Venezuela, crying and heavy-browed Costa Ricans were captured by the camera, many of them still with paint on their faces and the Costa Rican flag draped around their shoulders.   

I admire the way grown men in Costa Rica relate to sports because they don't play Fantasy Football. Instead, it's very popular for men all the way into their early 30s to continue playing soccer on a competitive national level, traveling to a different part of the country every Sunday to challenge another province's team. My host mom's brother-in-law is the president of one of these men's teams, and he has recently learned that he is terminally ill with a tumor.  He has been the president of the team for the past twenty years and has an immensely strong bond with the sports and his players.  While this man has his family supporting him, the soccer community in Curridabat has also reached out to help in any way possible.  This past Sunday, his team's game against the rival Pococi squad was dedicated in his honor.  As this sick, struggling man slowly maneuvered his way out to the middle of the soccer field, assisted by his daughters and wearing house slippers, the two teams and the referees gathered in solidarity to present a plaque, banner, and good wishes to Freddy.  The machismo cultural norm that men should never really hug other men was temporarily lifted by the bond created between these men through their mutual love for soccer as they gave heartfelt hugs to their team's beloved president.


Soccer isn't just a sport here in Costa Rica; it's a uniting mechanism on every level.

             

                    

If Only Americans Worked With "Ahorita" In Mind

VWP: ahorita (n.)—right now.  This is the traditional meaning of “ahora.” However, in Costa Rica it appears to have picked up the opposite meaning.  If someone says “Me voy ahorita,” it doesn’t mean “I’m leaving now,” instead it means “Yeah, I’ll leave sometime soon…or maybe tomorrow.” 

Before my alarm clock goes off at 6:45 am, I hear a series of other sounds in the early morning.  4:00 am is when my host brother’s crazy dog (chained up to a dog house) begins to bark ferociously.  This new mom of four perritas is extremely overprotective and therefore the being-chained-to-an-immovable-object concept does not work out well for those attempting to sleep.  Around 4:10 am I hear my host mom’s voice rings out “Cállate! Cállate!”  In this way, she is using the sass of the Spanish language to literally command the dog to shut up.  At 5:00 am the howler monkeys in the forest begin to create their menacing and eerily deep “hoo-hoo-hah-hah” sound (turns out, Hollywood wasn’t too far off in their A-list movie monkey sounds).  Then at 6:00 am my host brother begins to talk loudly with his construction co-workers and friends in the front yard, discussing their plans for the workday.  So, by the time 6:45 am rolls around, it feels odd to be woken up by some electronic, non-animal, non-human noise.  At that point, it’s easy to roll out of bed, throw on some athletic looking clothes and make my way to the outdoor patio kitchen for some morning chow.  I have become an expert in Costa Rican breakfast making, which is no easy task when breakfast resembles lunch and dinner in terms of hardiness and size.  It’s never a surprise when I see gallo pinto (the dish of fried rice and beans that appears to be eaten with everything) stirring around in the pot, sometimes accompanied by a fried egg or an onion, pepper, and garlic-topped piece of meat.  Next on the plate is what some would call a tortilla, but I call it what it is: fried dough.  Seeing a fried theme here yet?  Regardless of it’s fried status (or maybe because of it), it’s delicious and usually topped with a local fruit jam.  Fruit is usually put out on a plate in the middle of the table, ranging from pineapple (not from a can!) to melon and more exotic native fruit.  With this kind of feast for breakfast, it makes you wonder why cereal, yoghurt, and oatmeal even pretend like they belong in the breakfast food category. 

At 9 am Rosa, my host mom, begins saying “vamos a empezar ahorita” or “we’re going to start right now.”  In reality, we don’t start our work in the organic farm until 9:30, hence the VWP side note.  Our work in the farm tends to be relaxed, but also very productive.  In her backyard farm, we accomplish a myriad of chores in the course of two hours: feed the pigs and hens, retrieve the eggs from the hens, use the hen manure as fertilize for nearby trees, plant pineapple, cilantro, yucca, beans, and corn, soften soil for planting, and check up on the health of older plants, like the Panamanian chili plant (which apparently can burn your tongue off) and some papaya trees. All of this Rosa upkeeps herself, and every plant has been put into the ground, taken care of, and maintained by this one woman.  With this kind of network of food and plants in her backyard, Rosa cuts down immensely on her grocery bill since she never has to buy fruits, vegetables, or eggs.  At 11:30 we break for lunch making and freshening up time before we have to leave for El Yue at 1 pm.  We need this much time to make lunch because Costa Ricans would never dream of eating a cold PB&J sandwich or a salad with cranberries and carrot sticks for lunch.  Forget that! Costa Ricans demand hot food for every meal of the day, with maybe a once a week exception for cereal at breakfast.  Usually lunch looks like half of breakfast, almost always with rice and beans, and in addition there’s some kind of meat, maybe a cabbage salad, and always a fresco (a cold fruit drink of sorts).  I can’t say whether this is just unique to Rosa’s family, but they’re big fans of yard-to-street whooping.  Her kitchen and table is situated on an open patio within clear view of the gravel road, so if she sees one of her ten siblings walk by or a neighbor pedaling by on a bike, she yells “Oy!” like I’d heard three years ago at a South Africa v. Australia rugby game.  The patio is probably 75 feet from the road, and sometimes even with this much distance between the two speakers, they never raise their voices much louder than a normal American’s voice on a plane…and yet they hear everything.  However, with the “Oy”-ing also comes the imitations of her grandchildren.  Four-year-old Nani and five-year-old Ryan, who live on the same plot of land, will yell at the top of their small (but very full of air) lungs “Oyyyyyyy!!!!” to any car, bike, human, or dog they see going down the road. 

After lunch we make our way to El Yue, which is about a 25 minute walk from the house, and you can be assured that at 1 pm in the afternoon, we’re both a sweaty mess by the time we reach our destination.  However, sometimes we get lucky and one of Rosa’s sons will offer to drive us or one of her friends will pull over on the road and offer us a quick drive (this is an obvious violation of the ICADS rule “never get in a car with a person who is not associated with ICADS,” and yet it’s so much better than walking the whole way).  I head to El Yue to teach English classes to kids in the form of an after school program.  Literally on the first day I was handed 15 kids and told “teach them English.”  That was the sum total of guidance and structure from the organization.  From 1:15 to 2:30 pm I teach my first English class, never being quite sure who will show up.  Sometimes I’ll have a new kid who I’ve never seen before, sometimes I’ll only have one kid in the class, or other times I’ll have 8 kids all at once.  We never sit in a proper classroom, just usually around a table under a patio where you can feel a nice breeze and also earn some funky tan lines from tennis shoes.  There’s a huge variety in the knowledge these kids have when it comes to English (some know how to say “My name is ____” and know the word for “butterfly” and others appear to never have spoken a word of English).   One thing is sure though: it’s definitely easier to teach these kids basic vocabulary, like animals, colors, and numbers, rather than attempting to get a grammatical concept through to them.  I am grateful though that all the kids have a good level of enthusiasm during class, and never hesitate to shout out “hello, teacher!” if they see me at a local soccer game or at the beach.

However, even for a native English speaker and for someone who wants to be a teacher, teaching local Costa Rican kids how to speak English is no easy task, especially with a lack of guidance and structure from the organization.  The big question is simply: where do I begin?  Do I start with “My name is Katie” or with “I am, you are, she/he is” or with vocabulary like “boy, girl, mom, dad?”  Should I speak only in English or a mix of Spanish and English so they can at least partially understand me?  Additionally, it’s hard to figure out what is confusing for native Spanish speakers when it comes to learning English.  For instance, “you” looks very similar to “yo,” which is the pronoun for 1^st person (me).  Could that get more confusing?  Thanks a bunch, language gods.            

While I found teaching ESL classes difficult, I also found it rewarding to just expose these kids to a subject that is becoming more and more useful and necessary in the world.  I enjoyed my time working at El Yue, but I will be returning to San Jose next week to begin a different internship at a public school in San Jose to get a better insight into the Costa Rican education system.    

The Caribbean Vibe

VWP: rice and beans (phrase)--this is not a mistake that it's in English, this is an Afro-Caribbean dish with rice, beans, and sweet milk.    

With my bus to Sixaola leaving at 10 am from a central San Jose bus station, I figured I’d have a chance to sleep in on Saturday.  However, my tica mom had other ideas: she insisted I be at the bus station at least 2 hours early to ensure I got a ticket for my bus, which when I reminisce on it, was probably a good idea.  Arriving at the bus station at 7:45 am after a teary goodbye session with my tico parents (they once again repeated “we’re so sad you’re abandoning us” and I once again said “I’ll be back in just a few weeks!”), I bought my ticket to Sixaola, the Costa Rican town in the Limon province that borders Panama and tried to be suave as I maneuvered my chunky suitcase (it comes up to my mid-arm and is wider than a comfy armchair), backpack, and extra beach bag.  Sitting down with my load, I had the opportunity to notice exactly what it must be like for a local tico to see a gringo.  In front of me was another gringa buying her bus ticket.  She had two big backpacks on, one saddled on her front like a baby holder and the other one on her back threatened to flip her over backwards with its extreme bulges, and her Nike shorts, University of Missouri t-shirt and floppy bun-on-the-top-of-my-head look just shouted “HEY GUYS IM A GRINGA!” However, this only provoked me to consider using her as a suitcase-watcher if I should have to use the bathroom and leave my suitcases behind for a minute.  Don’t worry mom, I decided not to trust anyone at the bus station and just had to deal with having all three bags in the tiny bathroom stall with me.  Finding my seat on the bus was a struggle; I was looking for Asiento 37 but all the numbers above the seats had been conveniently wiped off.  Luckily, Gringa was there to help me out, shouting in English, “What seat are you looking for?” Apparently I also was obviously gringa-looking, however, I just wanted to point out that I guess I’m getting tan enough to not be called a yucca potato--notoriously white and pasty--unlike when Gus was in Costa Rica.  Turns out, my seat was right next to this American girl, and I didn’t realize in the moment how nice it would be to talk with someone in my home language for a few hours.  A recent grad from University of Missouri and recently certified in teaching English as a second language, my Texan seat partner ended up being a good and chatty bus companion for the four hour bus ride. 

So here’s the thing about Costa Rican buses: they don’t tell you when the stops are, how to recognize your stop, how to indicate that you need to get off the moving bus, or anything else that may make your travel easier.  When getting on the bus I had told the bus driver (who was wearing a Cuba hat that made him look kind of like Castro) that I was going to Pali at Hone Creek.  What are the chances he would remember that during a four-hour bus ride?  I didn’t worry about this bus-stop issue until after the regulation bus break at a snack place with bathrooms, when most people buy an empanada with cheese or beans or pick up a bag of plantain chips.  But, once we started on the second half of our trip, I realized that I was going to need to eventually get off this bus before Sixaola, because I definitely didn’t want to work my way back all the way from the Panama border.  I tried to remember my conversation with my internship coordinator in San Jose: she had said something about a big yellow building, or did she say something about seeing the beach?  Maybe she was talking about a big highway?  For someone who spent three years in high school memorizing 10 minute long acting monologues, my memory failed immensely in this very key moment.  Suddenly the bus stopped on the side of the road across the street from…a sloth sanctuary.  Murmuring among the other bus passengers started and I was beyond confused as to whether this was my stop or not.  The Castro-look-alike bus driver appeared to be staring at me in his rear view mirror.  Or was that just my paranoia and nerves kicking in?  I felt like I stared back at him with a ridiculous face of confusion for about five minutes straight, and then the bus started back up again.  Well, whether that was my stop or not, I didn’t get off.  Cursing under my breath, I nervously imagined a scenario where I finally get off the bus and I’m at the Panama border without enough money to take a taxi back to Hone Creek, so I just end up going to Panama City (this didn’t happen in real life).  Luckily, I noticed the “Pali” at Hone Creek (which turns out to be the name of a convenience store) and asked the bus driver to open up the bottom of the bus so I could retrieve my chunky suitcase.  When I told him where it was under the bus he assumed I was crazy and said it couldn’t be on the street side of the bus.  He’d have to dodge cars while opening up the bus since he had forgotten to put my suitcase on the sidewalk side way back in San Jose.  Once he realized I was right, he kept saying “you never told me you were getting off at Hone Creek”—please see earlier sentence in the story to prove that he was completely lying at this point.  My memory of meeting my new host mother, Rosa, is somewhat overshadowed by the bus driver complaining to her “she never told me that she was getting off here,” but even so, I can remember Rosa giving me a wide smile, a traditional Costa Rican cheek peck, and a soft “I’m Rosa, and I’ll be your host mom.”  I remember reading in the host family write-up that Rosa was supposedly 51 years old and a widow.  This lady that was standing in front of me appeared to be about 40 years old and had a man with her who could have been her husband…I wondered whether Rosa’s friend Rosa had come to pick me up (in the write up, it also pointed out that Rosa Emilia, my mom, runs her business with her friend, Rosa Maria).  But no, it turns out that my host mom has just kept up her youthful appearance very well, and this man was one of her two sons, and a young boy in the back seat was her grandson. 

My bedroom

Pulling up to a purple house on a large lot with palm trees, plants, and flowers, it hit me for the first time that this wasn’t just a weekend trip, I wasn’t going back to ICADS for classes, and I had said goodbye to my San Jose family and house.  I’m living in a room that’s adjacent to the main house, with its own sink, refrigerator, and bedroom.  I feel like I should be a bit more descriptive with my room so as to portray its true self: the fridge isn’t plugged in, the big dip in my mattress causes me to question its previous owner, the windows are permanently open to allow for a nice beach breeze, and my walls are decorated with cards sent from my mom and grandma from the U.S.  It’s a modest but homey room, and it definitely portrays the laid-back feel of the Caribbean coast.  Another thing about the open windows:  my host mom is a widow who lives alone, but on the same plot of land lives one of her sons with his family.  His sons are four and five and love to move my curtains to the side and spy on me through the bare windowpanes.  With no true windows, it was also easy to hear the grandson telling my host mom “La muchacha todavia esta durmiendo” (the girl still is sleeping) this morning at 8:30 am.  Her son’s family members aren’t the only ones around, which is easy to understand since my host mom is one of eleven kids.  Brothers regularly pop in for lunch, or her cousins will come over for coffee, or her other son and his kid will eat dinner with us.  Neighbors come over for fruit, and other community members stop by to say hi.  Might say I’m living in the house on the block for a few months!  

The view from my kitchen table

Life here in Hone Creek (an English name due to the Afro-Caribbean influence here) is much different than San Jose.  In my mom’s backyard are guanabana, apple, cacao, orange, lemon, and mora trees.  Whenever she wants a few oranges to eat, she just goes to the backyard with a tall tree branch and knocks a few down from the tree.  I’ve never seen such an inventive woman: her trashcan is constructed out of used plastic bottles, her flower pots are coke-can tabs strung together, and she dries out cacao seeds to make her own chocolate (I must be a taste tester for her!).  She also started up her own business in 2001, called El Yue, an organic farm and community center to protect the environment and secure family wellbeing.  She told me the story behind the business’ birth:  she and a few women in the community noticed the abuse of the local land and the instability of family security.  They planned to get a few loans and open up El Yue.  Soon after the first few meetings, some women’s husbands began to threaten them, citing that a business was a man’s job and that if they continued to scheme this business, they’d hit them.  After that, only my host mom and her friend Rosa were willing to continue on with the business idea.  I admire my host mom immensely for her bravery and commitment to her ideas and wants for her own community.   

Along with the fact that this village houses some of the strongest women I've ever come into contact with, there are some other special features to this community.  Some things are so different from my other house in Costa Rica: I found a hand-sized frog in the shower this morning, my four-year-old host grandson plays casually with a machete, and the kitchen here is outside on the patio.  I enjoy the change of scenery, and I know it’ll push me to become even more adjustable to whatever surprises are thrown my way in my last two months in Costa Rica.   

Watch Out for the Gringo Holes!

VWP: con permiso (phrase)--with your permission

Let me break down my average day in Costa Rica at the Institute of Central American Development Studies (aka ICADS).  This studying portion of my three-month stay will last for 5 weeks before I adventure out into a different city to intern in a Costa Rican school.  After a night of intermittent car honking and the occasional animal noise outside, my iPhone joins in on the noise at 6 am buzzing with "Uplift," my current alarm song.  I refuse to use a song that I actually like as my alarm because I realize that I will grow to hate the tune after associating it with frequent sleep deprivation, so for the meantime a meaningless mix of electronic noises will do.  This next fact may sound pathetic, but the most exciting part of the morning is trying to predict what my Tica host mom will make for breakfast--she continues to surprise me with quite a diverse array of traditional food and more modern chow.  Sometimes I get more Costa Rican flavours, like gallo pinto, a mix of rice and beans; however, sometimes I get a little taste of home with pancakes (here, "panqueques") with Aunt Jemima syrup!  One piece of the breakfast puzzle is always a definite: fresh fruit.  In a tropical island, you can always count on the most scrumptious fruit for breakfast, even if you have no clue what to call the fruit in Spanish.  I can remember a song from fifth grade chorus (it's engrained in my memory because of how awful our young, shrill voices sounded) called "Shake The Papaya Down."  This past week I actually had my first papaya! It's a rich pink color, tinged with a bit of orange, sweet as a refreshing popsicle, and healthy as grass juice (don't quote me on that one).  Other common fruits for breakfast include bananas, mango, watermelon, carambola (literally star shaped), guanabana (said to have cancer healing powers), and

Carambola fruit

callemito (purple and impossible to get out of clothes)--who needs strawberries and blueberries when I've got those?  Then with a little peck on the cheek from my mom, an energetic head pat for our dog Bella, and an adjustment of my big North Face "Hot Shot" backpack, I'm ready for the walk to school.

Costa Rica, and Latin American countries in general, don't treat women with the same respect that we receive in the U.S.; cat calling and under-the-breath "que guapa" ("how pretty") often just need to be repelled by death stares.  Literally, if an old woman was covered from head to toe, wore a hideous mask, and smelled like rotten peppers, she would still have to deal with this outdated disrespect.  So my Tica Mama prefers that I walk with Robert, a peer of mine who lives nearby and attends Pitzer College in California back home.  At 7:15 Robert and I meet up at the corner store, characterized by a large red sign that at first pretends to be a Coca-Cola advertisement but then throws off its disguise as we walk closer and the "Pilsner" beer logo comes into focus.  At 7:16 we pick up Lily, another one of our peers who will attend Smith College next year, and then make the ten minute walk to El Banco Nacional (the National Bank).  I often wonder if the security cameras outside the bank ever question why seven or eight gringos meet on the building's steps at exactly 7:35 am every morning.  Until they start interrogating us, I think we'll keep it as our meet up spot.  Lauren, Sarah, Samantha, Will, Zoe, and a few other of my classmates meet us at the bank at our designated time, and we set out on the second half of the trip: a walk up a very busy main road that at times has no sidewalks and at other times is spotted with dangerous looking "gringo holes," which are very useful in trapping oblivious American tourists who forget to always look at where they're walking.  There are no real street addresses in San Jose, so most people just use landmarks to give directions.  For example, my house is past the park and up the street from the stadium.  Very specific, I know.  Similarly, our landmark for school is the Pop Eyes fast food restaurant (how appropriate for a bunch of Americans), and the we make a right onto a tranquil street speckled with many private businesses.  Most of the time none of us gringos actually fall into the gringo holes and we make it to ICADS by 7:55 with five minutes to spare before our 4-hour Spanish class begins.

The ICADS backyard

ICADS Patio and Classrooms

  Throughout these initial 5 weeks, we will have two different Spanish instructors.  My first instructor was Ligia, a large, boisterous, rosy-cheeked Tica whose dramatic facial expressions and energetic demeanor made it possible for us to pay attention for two hours straight until coffee break.  ICADS purposely makes classes extremely small to allow for personal attention, and at five people my class is most definitely the largest.  We rarely talk in English during my class, instead we discuss everyday topics completely in Spanish; during one class our conversation often evolves from what we had for breakfast to our views about San Jose's crazy drivers and then international gender double standards.  It's odd, but in my high school spanish classes I learned words for very heavy topics, like environmental sustainability and human rights and government procedures, but I never learned everyday words like "awkward" (torpe) or "greasy" (grasosa) or "eggnog" (rompope).  We're spared 15 or 20 minutes for a quick coffee break in the patio--a lovely open space with two big tables, plenty of chairs, and a massive white umbrella.  The patio is half surrounded by small but open-air classrooms and the other half is adjacent to a grassy area which houses fruit trees and little bugs.  It truly is paradise.  After the next two hours, we're all very excited for lunch and conversations in English. There's no cafeteria at ICADS, so instead we all either buy our lunch daily or stuff the refrigerator with food to make lunch throughout the week at school.  If you don't run out of food and need to hustle to Plaza del Sol's grocery store just a few blocks away (in the scorching afternoon heat), then the hour and fifteen minutes for lunch is very relaxing.

A political rally during a field
trip to San Jose

The second half of our day until 5 pm can vary quite a bit, but the constant is that it's always in English.  Most days we're in the same room, a brown classroom with a traditional desks-in-a-row set up with a white board, lined with large wooden doors that are adorned with patterned glass windows. Some days we have experts (some local Costa Ricans or from America) present information to us, sometimes ranging from health care systems to education in Costa Rica and Costa Rica's natural resources.  There is one fatal problem here: the fan in the lecture room.  There are two fans in the room to provide some air circulation during the blazing Costa Rican afternoons, and one fan does its job very well besides the fact that it looks as though it could swivel off its fixture and behead whoever is unlucky enough to sit below it.  But the other one creates this nerve-fraying rhythm, a kind of click-click-click.  Needless to say, sometimes the lecturers can't handle the fan's noise either so we just put up with a little bit of natural perspiration.  Other days we have process groups; these small five-person clusters provide a forum for discussion about what we learned over the past week, questions we have, or our general sentiments towards our time in Costa Rica.   Or sometimes we take a field trip--some of our field trip destinations have included the U.S. embassy, famous sites in San Jose, and this week we are headed for a coffee plantation.

On the way to the gym

Even though it only costs about $0.30 to ride the bus, most of us walk home together in a kind of animal pack formation at the end of the day.  Slowly people peel off as they come to their houses, and Robert, Lily, and I continue to our houses, which are the farthest away from school.  After school I go home and change into workout clothes and just a block away from my house is the local gym, embedded in the middle of a yellow and blue soccer stadium.  Most of the material in the gym looks like it's from the 1990s, but honestly a bike is a bike and I just try to avoid the treadmill that has the sign "este maquina no funciona bien" (this machine doesn't work well).  There's no air conditioning in the gym, just the pure and clean Costa Rican breeze, and there's usually a Jackie Chan movie playing on the TV with spanish subtitles.  However, my workouts always must end promptly by 6:45 so I can be showered and ready for dinner at 7:10 pm.  In our introduction packet, ICADS warned us that Costa Ricans tend to be pretty sensitive to body odor and that students would be expected to shower every day, so you can bet that I wouldn't dare show up to the dinner table all disgusting after a trip to the gym. During dinner my Tica family and I always watch these overly dramatic telenovelas; I'm not sure of the past seasons' plot lines, but this one seems to be exploring the love triangle theme, the I-found-my-dad theme, the you-can't-marry-her theme, and blackmail.  If I'm going to leave the table to go work on homework or go to bed or meet up with friends, it's expected that I say "con permiso" (with your permission) in order to avoid rude behavior.

So, let's try it out:

Con permiso.