for peace and dogs

Miércoles el 7 de noviembre

I hung out with people my own age today! Sort of. Rebecca was invited to give a presentation to a class on sustainable development at the United Nations University for Peace in nearby Ciudad Colón, and she invited me along as her interpreter and to talk about my project with the association. I really enjoyed putting "guest lecturer for the UN University for Peace" on my resumé today. It was an adventure, and I was both glad and embarrassed that there was someone else who spoke Spanish in the room, to help me out when I missed things and to notice. It is a really cool place though. In this class of like ten students, there were students from the US, from Argentina, from Costa Rica, a couple from Africa, one of whom is going to bring Rebecca African seeds for her garden, and I don’t remember where else.

Lunch was pasta with pesto, and I really enjoyed eating American-style and watching the very international mix of students and talking to Don Rony, who I think is one of the coolest teachers I have ever met. I’m hoping to get some more information and maybe arrange a visit, both for me and for Katie T., since they have masters in peace and conflict studies and in international and human rights law.

After lunch, we took the U’s bus into Ciudad Colón, where we serendipitously caught a ride with a friend of Rebecca’s into San José. We bought the fabric for the dress Cecilia is making me, looked at shoes, hunted through the souvenir stores, and found the cutest manger scene as a gift for my mom. I wanted to get us ice cream at Pop’s on the way home, but Rebecca wanted to stop in the second hand clothing stores they have here filled with the extra clothes shipped in from American Good Wills, and we ran out of time for ice cream.

This has been a week of weird, weird dreams. In the last seven days, I have dreamed that I lost my virginity at a frat party, that I was a hired escort at a prom, and last night, various dreams involving water and old ladies. Those were probably due to the fact that due to heavy rains and landslides upstream, the usually very beautiful Río Tabarcia that runs past our house overflowed its banks and threatened to come up to the house. I was sitting in my room, sorting through photos, when first I got the warning from Rebecca that I had better unplug my electronics because if lightning struck, it could fry them. I spent a few minutes working from battery, and then was ignoring her warning, when she told me that I should pack a bag of essentials because they were preparing in case they needed to leave because the river had grown so much. This was my first experience actually preparing for an emergency, and I must say it is a worthwhile experience to have to go through one’s things and decide what things you don’t want to lose and what things can be pushed aside. I’d like to say I went with a pair of underwear, a pair of socks, and a light heart, but instead I filled my backpack with things I didn’t want to leave behind: my computer, my mp3 player, my bible, my map of Costa Rica with my journeys marked on it, my new shirt from Nicaragua, my camera, and the hideous number of drugs I need to have with me "just in case." We packed up the Land Rover – turns out I am not the only one; Rebecca brought her new silver shoes – and went to my dad’s aunt’s house across the property to wait.

The river shrunk; it’s back to its normal, wet tumult. I was forced to watch a dubbed episode of Hannah Montana – a Disney show that makes me fear for generations to come – and to converse with a very old woman who wasn’t entirely sure of the geographical difference between South Africa and South America, but who knew when the town was founded and who built the church, but that’s all the harm that came to me. Moreover, one of Rebecca’s friends from her education work, a twenty-something English teacher who lives upriver, called to let us know it was going down there, so we needn’t worry. In the meantime, at Rebecca’s behest, he invited me to the talent show at the church on Saturday. We’ll see whether I manage to make friends with someone about whom I know only what Rebecca has told me: he’s an attractive, brown-skinned, shy, recently-converted Catholic.

Today was much less of an adventure, but still interesting. I went with Rebecca and Nago (my dad’s name is Abednago; it makes me really happy) to one of the schools where she works to help a group of kids paint their outdoor tables. Encountering public education in another country is always an adventure; in Costa Rica, unlike in the US, if you don’t do well in your classes, you don’t move on. In the US, social promotion has led to students entering high school who can’t read. In Costa Rica, the lack thereof means that among this group of fourth- and fifth-graders with "discipline problems," there were several kids over the age of twelve. Maybe it was because we were outside painting, or because the kids respect Rebecca, but I didn’t see any behavioral issues with these kids beyond what is considered very low-grade "acting out" in all the schools I’ve attended. However, I have a dozen pictures of kids covered in green paint; I told them splatter-painted pants were quite the fashion in California, and they were all kinds of pleased with themselves. We ate munchies as lunch, and I stopped at the internet café for a delicious, $1.20 hour-and-a-half connected to the world. The water was icy, but I’ve eaten gallo pinto twice today, so I am pretty happy.

At the three-quarters mark:
Things I have gotten used to: ants in my coffee, cars whizzing by at ridiculous speeds, putting my toilet paper in the trash can instead of the toilet, walking uphill (to some extent), not having internet, the rain.

Things I am still freaked out/bothered by: toilets without seats, damp toilet paper, bugs in my bed, dogs licking my feet, cold showers, the fact that trash cans full of used toilet paper smell bad, being covered from chin to ankle in bug bites, the fact that I know fewer than five Costa Ricans my own age.

Lunes el 29 de octubre
Today was my first day with the goats, and although I really enjoyed it, I am sad about the fact that I can’t get the smell of goat udder off my hands. Also about the fact that I didn’t bathe completely today because I still can’t figure out how to make the shower warmer, and I have drunk ice water warmer than this shower. However, I ate very well today, including my first glass of goat milk (it’s really not as different as you might think) and two different not wholly intentional eatings of animals (delicious grilled chicken at lunch and yucky ham in my sandwich at quasi-dinner). I also went to the meeting of the association of organic producers of which Rebecca (my host mom) and Maritza (the goat lady) are a part. Like most meetings, it was productive and even interesting, but way longer than it needed to be, and I was really tired by the end. And then we got to walk home. In the dark. Over a scary, wet bridge with no railings and an unsure weight limit. And then we stopped at one of the lady’s houses, and I somewhat got over my fear of using the awfully omnipresent toilet-with-no-seat because I really had to pee. This phenomenon is one I haven’t figured out, and don’t really want to ask. (Imagine: "The rest of your house is nice; are you really too poor to afford the toilet seat?")

Sábado el 27 de octubre

I’m not sure how many ants I’ve eaten here inadvertently, but I’m sure it’s several since they live in the sugar and in the dishes. I’ve pulled two out of my coffee so far, and I’m sure I’ve missed some. But it’s okay, more protein, right?

I enjoyed and was exhausted by the tour of the neighborhood that I received from María this morning. Our first stop was the house of the Southern Baptist missionaries from Kentucky. They are extremely nice, and it was very welcome to find a bastion of English (especially twangy English) in the midst of my Spanish speaking, albeit also a bastion of slightly crazy folk. I was invited to all four of the church services they hold during the week, in addition to their other activities. I plan to go at least once, just to see what an evangelical service is like in Costa Rica.
After lunch, a nap, some sitting around, and some watching of an odd movie that I think had very young Edward Norton in it, we visited the house of a young couple in the neighborhood to fulfill the family tradition of giving away a manger scene every year. It was an excellent opportunity to talk about holiday traditions (along with the fact that we had pumpkin at dinner) and to let Rebecca know that I am looking for a manger scene from Costa Rica for my mom.
After dinner, I alternately helped María with her homework and did tongue twisters with her. Then, as I was writing this, she invited me to ice cream, which I never turn down. It was an interesting combination, vanilla and fakey lime and the weird strawberry flavoring they have here, but tasty nonetheless. Then Rebecca and I chatted a bit, discovering that Katie T. is not very far away, a half hour or so, and I could probably get there with the twenty-something English professor who works there in Acosta. What luck if it turns out he’s attractive. Then she invited me to join them in watching some weird end-of-the-world movie, which I just left from because it was psyching me out.

Although I still have the vaguely persistent desire to go home, I think I will be sad to leave this place in just three and a half weeks. I still love this town, and I’m excited to get to see the "town center" of Tabarcia tomorrow.

Viernes el 26 de octubre

Today is my first day at my independent project in Tabarcia, and after nine hours, three of which I spent sleeping, I love it. The outdoor kitchen overlooks the river, Río Tabarcia, and the constant rush of the water sounds like rain and is very relaxing. Everything so far is very tranquil, despite the fact that there are four dogs, one of which (the nicest actually) is the size of a small pony, and a ten-year-old daughter who reminds me of me at her age in that she is starved of playmates by the fact that her brother is almost seven years older, and so we played a horrendously long game of Uno, and I had to turn her down for a game of Life after dinner so that I could go to bed. My host mom is much more the mom I was expecting than Haydee; where Haydee is frenetic and insistent even in her accommodating-ness, Rebecca is easygoing and very kind. We talked for some two or three hours, from the time I got up from my nap until Maria assaulted me for a game before dinner, about the environment and people and racism and traveling and love. The house is not what I expected after the niceness of my house in Curridabat, but I think more like what I was expecting when I came to Costa Rica. I have my own very tiny room where I haven’t figured out quite where to put things, and I am mildly perplexed by the fact that there is no sink in the bathroom. However, the house is comfortable, my pillow is soft, and the dogs don’t lick my feet.

Martes el 23 de octubre

Too long since I’ve written, and lots happened. I pierced my tongue ten days ago, I went to Nicaragua for five days, and I’ve all but chosen my goat project. Nicaragua was an excellent experience, worth the fun bus ride up and the somehow hideously longer and more uncomfortable return trip. We saw immense poverty, but actually not as bad as Tijuana, and amazing efforts at reducing it.

Here I am having a much better day with the world, after a weekend of being tired and grumpy and annoyed. I feel loquacious in Spanish, speaking better and again willing to ask questions to improve. My host mom, a very kind and earnest woman, sometimes just annoys me with her dogmatic and fatalistic world view, and I don’t always do as well as I should letting go her comments about God’s will and the shame of lost purity. But I do find that I learn from her, and I want to be grateful for that anyway, even when, for the thirty-seventh time, she points to my plate and says, "PiZa! PiZita!"