Los Toros en Zapote

For New Year’s Eve, I went to the beach with some other Peace Corps volunteers in Cahuita, Limon.Because of having previously made these plans; I couldn’t go with my family to visit the paternal grandparents in San Jose for the holiday. But, fortuitously, Marlene R., the volunteer posted closest to me, called me up to say that her host parents had invited me to go with them to Los Toros a la Tica. I alluded to this festival of the bulls in my previous post. There is more than one festival, but I would venture to say with my limited Costa Rican knowledge, that the Toros en Zapote, are the most important. The bulls are only part of the year ending festival in Zapote, which is a region in San Jose. It’s just like a state fair, except for that the main stage every night is a bull riding extravaganza.

Now, the bulls aren’t that exciting on TV. I mean, it’s entertaining, but it’s anything but intelligent entertainment or humor, so I didn’t watch too much. As far as I know, there is no actual bullfighting with matadors and all that. There is bull riding, like in rodeos, and there were bull riders from the States, Brazil, and a few other countries. I don’t follow bull-riding back home, so I have no idea if these guys were any good at all, but I’m sure my frat brother Jeff could let me know. There were also cowboys lassoing the bulls after they were ridden. In fact, the kick-off event of the festival is a tope (toe-pay), which is a parade of anyone and everyone with a horse, riding through the streets, and los of toping by the participants (no idea if there is any etymological relation between the two different words). I didn’t prejudicially associate Costa Rica with cowboy culture, but, at least in some regions, there seems to be a lot of cattle raising. Maybe all the cattle farms are just by the highways, but along with the sugar cane, pineapples, and bananas, there are a lot of cows. Thus, a healthy dose of cowboy culture. Which I obviously love.

Besides the bull riding and lassoing, there is one aspect of the bull festival that makes it note and blog worthy. Los toreros improvisados (improvisational bullfighters), or just improvisados for short. So, if you’re of age (18), have little or no regard for your personal safety, and line up early in the day at a special line by the stadium, you can get in the ring-with the bull, and little else. From what I learned on the news, the improvisados are not supposed to have anything on their person except their clothes/costume and their national ID card. Although, in person, it looked like some had snuck in their cell phones as well. So, you ask, is there just a bunch of people in the bullring with a bull? Indeed.

I, like you most likely, also thought this was totally ridiculous when I first saw the advertisements a few days before Christmas, but that’s bulls Costa Rican style. This happens twice a day, at 15:00 and then at 20:00, every day for about ten days. And, well, there are other festivals in other cities throughout January. And yes, it’s about as crazy as you think. There are maybe one hundred to one hundred and fifty people in the bull ring. Some have sweet costumes, although most wear jeans and a t-shirt from one of the many companies sponsoring the event. There is a group of guys with special shirts that kind of manage the group, and usually bring the stretcher when someone needs to be carted off. Otherwise, it’s pretty much run around, try to get the bull to react, but not to react so much as to run one down and gore him. Most are successful on this last part, most, not all. You can make the front page of La Teja, Costa Rica’s absolute trash (yet I think most circulated) newspaper if you are so lucky (or unlucky) to be de-pantsed by the bull. This newspaper and Cacique, a distillery, also give out cash prizes to the improvisado showing the most courage/stupidity.

The absolute best part about the night was when the firefighters came out. Apparently every year the bull festival honors some public service group, and this year more than one hundred firemen and women from all around the country got into the ring with the bulls. Yes, I said bulls. Normally, there is just one bull out with all the improvisados, but they pulled out all the stops for the firefighters. After walking a circle around the stadium with posters warning of letting kids play with fireworks, and having the fire truck sound the sirens, the truck left, the firefighters got into position, and out came bull number one. Included in the ring was what might be the best invention ever, a four way teeter-totter, which generally attracts the bull, and puts the occupants in all sorts of danger. It was fun seeing all the firefighters in their bright yellow polos run around avoiding the bull. Then, the fireworks lit up (no irony to the now discarded warning signs, none at all), the horn sounded, and out came bull number two. He was smaller, and I assume, younger than the first, and a lot spunkier. My favorite firefighter was an agile, well built, bald guy that I think ended up getting rammed five times by the end of the night, but seemed fine, with just some dirty laundry to take home. Oh, then came out bull number three. And, oh yeah, no big deal, another. That’s right, four bulls were meandering around the ring, looking for an unsuspecting human to go after. I don’t know if it was the big stage and national television, or just the type of people that are firefighters, but they were much more daring and entertaining than the people that had waited all day in line to participate.

(yeah, I caught a Rayovac fanny pack)

All in all, the improvisados were incredibly entertaining live, although they do seem to be harassing the bull for fun, and it lacks any of the artistry or skill that real bullfighting entails. On the other hand, I guess the bulls are huge and have horns, and I think the bulls just go back to the ranch until the next year, so I can’t make a stiff moral judgement of the event. But, much like a NASCAR race, where people watch as much for the crashes as the racing, much of the attraction of the improvisados is when they do get pummeled, not when they deftly escape. I was actually talking to my program director about it, who had gone one night with friends, and I think he put it well, in that “it was great to go to, but I’ll probably only go once.” I agree, that is unless, I decide to throw caution and prudence to the wind and become an improvisado…

New Year, same old mistake

If it makes you feel any better, it rained for about half the time I was at the beach for New Year’s Eve. But, yes, one of the perks of being placed in Costa Rica is the plentitude of beaches you get when your country is part of an isthmus. I took the invitation from Sarah M. a volunteer located fairly close to Puerto Viejo to join her and some other volunteers in Cahuita. Cahuita is very close to other beach I have visited, and is one of the more popular beaches on the less popular Caribbean coast. It’s on the southern part of the Caribbean coast, about where Costa Rica and Panama meet. The trip took me about five hours and I was able to find the hostel where they already were just with text messaged directions. The great thing about beach towns is the massive body of water is a good reference point.

I had a delightful time, learned an awesome new game, Banagrams-which is both easily portable and fun. There were ten of us, although I just stayed for one night, they all, being in the Peace Corps for more time, have more vacation days, and were staying for three. They had gone shopping and cooked a nice New Year’s Eve dinner, and then we headed to the beach to have a bonfire. A few of us had even collected and stacked firewood earlier in the day, and covered it with banana leaves from the rain. Despite these preparations, the firewood was still so wet that all sorts of attempts were made, but nothing thicker than a pine needle would catch fire. So, we still swam in the delightfully warm water under the stars, and had a jovial time.

The sun came out on New Year’s Day, and it was because of this, well, and my decision- making skills, that my journey home became all sorts of educational. I was having quite a ball riding waves. I knew the last bus from Guapiles (transfer city) to Puerto Viejo (where I live) left at 18:30. On the way in, the trip had taken me three hours. I asked some others from nearby, it had taken them about three hours and fifteen minutes. I wasn’t sure when the buses left Cahuita to head back, but I imagined every hour on the hour, which was the schedule coming in. I was right. What was unfortunate was that I arrived at the bus station at 14:15. While walking to the bus stop I had thought that I could head up to the main road and try to catch the bus, but wasn’t sure if I knew exactly the one to catch, and if it would stop to pick me up. So, I had decided to walk to the station. At 14:15, realizing I would have to wait until three for the next bus, I now cursed my decision not to try to catch the two o’clock bus on the road. Well, usually happens when one doesn’t plan ahead, the trip from Cahuita at 15:00 to get to Guapiles by 18:30 didn’t take three hours. Nor three hours and fifteen minutes. Instead, my bus pulled in at 18:45. And unlike Costa Ricans arriving to meetings, the buses here tend to leave on time.

So, having missed the last bus, I called my host family-no answer. I called my host sister’s cell phone. They were in the region, but were out in the countryside because my host mom’s uncle had died, so they were with the family and were planning on staying the night. I tried another volunteer’s host family, but they were out at a barbecue. While making these calls, and finding out approximate fares from the taxi drivers, another option (which I didn’t then realize) of taking a bus to a stop, then taking the last bus coming from another direction to Puerto Viejo, had passed. Oh, I of course, didn’t have my debit card, because we had been warned a million times not to carry them-as pickpocketing in Costa Rica is really bad, and robberies where they drive you to an ATM and then make you empty your account at gunpoint are also common. I was only gone for one night, and had brought adequate cash. And, of course, my “adequate” money wouldn’t pay for a taxi all the way home.

After some more chats with my host mom and sister, I decided I would just take a taxi home, get my debit card, take the taxi up to the bank, and the problem would be solved. So this is what I explained to the taxi driver, he agreed (why wouldn’t he, it was a bunch of sweet useless driving he got to charge) and we were on our way. Well, on the way my host sister called and said that they could pick me up at the truck stop at the highway intersection later that night. So, I just took the taxi that far. I didn’t have enough money to pay the fare (which my host dad later thought was too high), so I just gave him all I had and he called it square. I sheepishly explained to the waitress at the rest stop that I didn’t have any money, but was waiting for my family to pick me up, and she kindly let me sit and read. Well, about 45 minutes after waiting/reading, my host mom called, and she was worried about me waiting, and was unsure how long they would be there, so she had arranged for a distant cousin, who was also a taxi driver to pick me up, and I could pay him tomorrow. (Side note: my host mom has lots of distant cousins in the area.) So, he came half an hour later, as arranged, took me home, and I was able to hit the hay. He came by the next day, and the trustworthy fellow I am, I paid him. It’s quite telling how just fifteen minutes can turn a frugal and fun trip into one costing me all sorts of money-well, all sorts of money on a Peace Corps salary. Then again, those fifteen minutes of body surfing were pretty fun. And, as the economic/efficiency argument goes, if you’ve never missed a flight, it probably means you’re spending too much time waiting in airports.

A few years back, when I was traveling abroad, a lack of preparation on my part ended up costing me a lot in overdraft and international ATM fees. I remember afterward telling my dad that this would never happen again, I had definitely learned my lesson. He remarked that he had his doubts. Looks like, yet again, old Pops was right.

Christmas a la tica

For my third consecutive year, I sadly spent Christmas away from my family and America. I’m a really, really big fan of Christmas, I love the music that fills the air, the hopeful and fun movies, egg nog, my mom’s delicious broccoli bread she makes every Christmas, unwrapping presents, secret Santa gift exchanges, tipsy caroling, and even I (not a fan of winter or the cold) enjoy the first few snowfalls of the year. I had no false hopes of seeing snow, eating any broccoli bread, or unwrapping presents (you generally have to give to receive-all my giving was via the Internet-sans wrapping paper). But, my Christmas a la tica (a la tica means, roughly, Costa Rican style) actually missed almost every one of the elements listed above. It got off to a good start when I joined the trainees in La Fila (the next town up the road from El Rosario) and we ended our last night of training by going around to each of the host families’ homes and doing our best not to slaughter a few Christmas carols. (Our lack of lyrics lists like we rocked in China really hurt.) We even rolled through the Twelve Days of Christmas at one house, kudos to Megon C. and Barton R. for knowing all twelve days. Being in the bell choir growing up didn’t help me learn to many lyrics, although I can hum any Christmas carol you throw my way.

Yet, when I got to my site, the Christmas season was decidedly uneventful. In Costa Rica, the summer/dry season vacation runs from December 15 to February 15 (roughly). So, Christmas is right at the beginning of summer vacation, so all the students and education staff are off work, and most companies give vacation for the week between Christmas and New Years (similar to the U.S. of A.). So, everyone should be around to engage in all sorts of Christmas festivities. From what I garnered, in Costa Rica these festivities include making and eating tamales and putting up Christmas lights. And not much else. I think that gifts are exchanged in some homes, and some homes also put up Christmas trees-generally smaller than the ones we sport in Uncle Sam Land, but my family didn’t do any of that.

What we did do, though, was enjoyable nonetheless. Two days before Christmas, my host dad’s brother came over, with his son and daughter, and each of their respective significant others. My host cousin, the female, was only fifteen and had a boyfriend that looked to be about my age, needless to say my host parents had all sorts of things to say after she left. The next day, another paternal cousin arrived; he was about my age, and works as a mechanic at Purdy Motors, the exclusive dealer of Toyotas in Costa Rica. He was very enjoyable to talk to, pretty interested in college life in America (I told him what was up), and we chatted plenty about cars/highways/driver’s licenses/etc. in the States. The uncle was pretty funny, rocked a black cowboy hat despite working and living in San Jose, and shared my host dad’s fairly crude humor.

As we should all do during the holidays, we ate often and well. We did keep it traditional and had tamales three or four times. They were all quite tasty, made even better with Salsa Lizano-Costa Rica’s do it all condiment. Other than that, we did three things: watched movies, watched El Chinamo/Los Toros-two special Costa Rican TV events that happen around Christmas/New Years, and visited relatives/friends. The movie selection was well, not, umm, exactly Christmas-y. I wasn’t on the movie selection committee, which included the cousins, significant others, and my host siblings. The following movies were played at the house, I chose to watch some, and passed on others-either because I had seen them or didn’t see much value in watching, you can make your own call. The Taking of Pelham 123, Up, Angels and Demons, American History X, The Avenger, and Grown Ups. What a Christmas-y selection, eh? El Chinamo, despite only being on once a year the two weeks surrounding Christmas and New Years, was anything but a Christmas special. The show consists of three main parts: a sand soccer tournament between teams made up of various Costa Rican ‘celebrities’, a karaoke/do you know the lyrics contest, and jokes by stand up comedians. It takes place in a big studio hall, with people at tables throughout the room making up the live studio audience. A lot of money is given out. It’s lots of lights and sounds and giving out money. It, like many medicines, is best served in small doses with large breaks in between. Los Toros will be discussed in the next post.

So, the only other Christmas (if we can say that) activity that we engaged in was to visit family and friends. The day after Christmas, we went to visit a friend of my host uncle’s. No one else really knew him or much about him, but he lived near us (the host uncle lives in San Jose) so we went. After we missed the turn off the highway and asked directions, we headed out of the small town of Cairo (not anything like the real one, from what I can imagine) and into the country. This is obvious not only by the scenery, but by the road’s progression from paved, to gravel, to gravel mixed with fieldstones, to mainly fieldstones and some mud, to mostly mud and some fieldstones. All but the first category include plenty of potholes. Well, now come to think of it, if it’s not a paved national highway there are still potholes. So, we slowly and bumpily made our way to the farm. It was an okay looking farm, it didn’t really have any good views, nor was it really well maintained-which is just fine, there are things (like farming aka makin’ cash to feed the family) that are more important than keeping the lawn intact and trees trimmed. The entire time there we hung around awkwardly and ate a meal without our hosts (they ate immediately after-as there wasn’t adequate seating). Our “Christmas meal” of rice, salad, yucca, and boiled chicken was, shock, about the same as a meal any other day of the year. The chicken was very good (about as local and fresh as you can get); I always love salad, am not a big fan of rice (I like the taste, don’t like its inefficiency in both production and delivering nutrients), and have decided that yucca is my answer when Ticos ask me what food I don’t like here. I have had some good yucca here-in cake and fried with some mayo/ketchup to dip it in. But unless it’s all sorts of fried or mixed with something, yucca is to me, incredibly bland and dry. As in the middle of a piece of yucca makes saltine crackers seem all sorts of moist. This is pure conjecture, but I have doubts that it serves any nutritional purpose besides loading me with already prevalent simple carbohydrates in my diet. Yes, you, bored reader, are right; the most exciting thing about this visit was my analysis of yucca. I mean, my host brother and cousin were watching a movie on a cell phone so I thought it appropriate to take a short siesta on the porch, and I did. And it was delightful.

Our second visit was a lot more fun, because, we had chicharrones and I got to see the area where my host mom grew up. To explain, the polar opposite of yucca on my Costa Rican food spectrum is the chicharron. Chicharrones are pork rinds, and the Costa Ricans do them up as well as they can be done up. They fry them just enough to make them crispy and moist on the outside, and perfectly tender on the inside. The trip out to the farm where my host mom had grown up was considerably more treacherous than that of the previous day, but as my host dad didn’t come, Olmitan, the cousin, drove. He was lots of fun on the mudded out roads leading to the farm, not taking his control of the treacherous roads seriously-which was the right attitude to take. We pretty much just hung out there as well, but as it was grandma’s house, it wasn’t awkward. I went on a journey with my host uncle (my host mom’s youngest brother-who co-runs the farm with grandpa), the fraternal uncle, and the cousin in to town to pick up some groceries and to sell some cheese. We intentionally ran into the cheese truck on the road into town, and he traded his cheese for a huge back of rice, bags of groceries, and some cash. This was a pretty sweet exchange to see, and apparently is common around there. The truck comes each week to buy up all the cheese and milk, and brings with it orders from the grocery store in town-which it trades for the cheese-thus saving the farmers a trip into town. While waiting for the grocery store to open, I actually ran into Chris and Tarah, a Peace Corps couple that works in the town. We chatted about our non-Christmas Christmases. After getting back I enjoyed even more chicharrones and a glass of beer with the uncles. With the beautiful views of the rolling hills, pastures, and forests along the Rio Sarapiqui, it was quite a pleasant trip out to grandma and grandpa’s house. Oh yeah, didn’t bring my camera. Sorry.

Site Visit to Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui

The last trip I took as part of my training was a visit to my future site. We had all found out our sites during a delightful day at a country club on the day before Thanksgiving. It was a delightful day, spent looking at our folders to figure out where we’d be living, who’d we be living near, who we would be working with in our sites, and eating some a delicious Thanksgiving dinner (thanks U.S. taxpayers!). Although, things weren’t so great the next morning, as it was deduced that either the fruit juice or gravy had stricken about half the group (including staff) with food poisoning (yours truly included). Of course, after my adventures across the Pacific, food poisoning without two nights in the hospital is nothing.

Moving on to more pleasant topics, my visit to Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui was absolutely wonderful. Before the site visits, our entire training group, staff, and a great number of counterparts all got together at the retreat center in Tres Rios (where we spent the first week of training). A counterpart is ideally the person representing the local government agency or community group whom Peace Corps volunteers use as a partner, resource, or guide during their service. For example, many of the Community Economic Development volunteers work with local groups similar to a chamber of commerce. As for us in the TEFL project, we work with MEP (el Ministro de Educacion Publica-should be easy enough to translate). For this retreat, some counterparts couldn’t come, so some host families came, or other members of the groups, but not necessarily the counterpart. Yet, heavy rains had swept the waters of Rio Sarapiqui over the main bridge in town, and only one of the five counterparts from our region, the principal of the elementary school in the town where Beth D. is serving. Fortunately, he was a really cool guy, and not only gave me and another volunteer, Marlene R. rides to our new homes, but had us over for lunch at his house, and we enjoyed a nice chat with him and his wife and a walk around their pretty property.

(the patio where I often sit and read)

As we were driving along the street trying to find my house (Costa Rican directions are at best approximate), Marlene and Beth joked about one house, wouldn’t it be crazy if this was your house. Well, as it happened, when the principal asked the lady sweeping the porch, in fact it was my house, and she was Ester, my new host mom. While some people may be living in straw huts in Zambia, or in slums in Guatemala, my host family kind of fits with the Peace Corps in Costa Rica theme. I live in a gorgeous, spacious, and super peaceful house. All the floors are tile (fairly standard here) and every corner has a beautiful tropical plant. The house sits on a spacious lot, maybe a bit bigger than where my parents live back home. Marvin, my host dad, is a truck driver for a company that exports tropical plants to hotels in Spain, France, and the Netherlands. So, as the price is right (read: free), along with gorgeous plants in every corner, the yard is chock full of tall, green, and splendid tropical plants. My visit to the home was a wonderful time, as I was able to relax, see some of the surrounding areas, and get to know my new family. One great piece of news was that both Stephany (10th grade) and Bryan (7th grade) were ‘eximidos’ from every one of their year-end exams. What this means is that they maintained a 90 in each of their classes during all three trimesters and thus are exempt from taking any tests. I learned this as I was trying to figure out why they weren’t going to school even though it was still in session. It was the second round of finals (you get three chances in Costa Rica-what a sweet gig), but they got all three rounds off due to their assiduous studying during the year.

(the Chinchilla Jarquin home)

During my trip we took a little trip in the family’s Suzuki mini-SUV to swim in one of the many rivers passing through the area. We drove through some dirt roads on a tree plantation (maybe teak) to a delightful little pool in Rio San Jose. There was a little cascade that fed the pool, and we passed an hour or two swimming in the watering hole, wandering along the banks, and getting massaged by backing into the cascades. On a roundabout way home, we took a little adventure through some country roads. Now, if you haven’t gotten the hint, Costa Rica’s infrastructure is decidedly an area for improvement. Country road here doesn’t mean two-lane gravel, it means one lane stones thrown into the mud, or sometimes, just deep, thick, barely passable muddy paths. We took this trip with the intention of finding the farm of the father of one of my host dad’s coworkers. We were looking for this farm to buy some queso fresco; as I mentioned in another post, this stuff is all the rage here, and buying it from the farmers can save some cheddar (yeah I did). Of course, you have to find the farmers. The problem was that my host dad had slightly messed up the name of the guy we were looking for, but through stopping and asking three different times, while essentially describing everything he knew about the family-as he realized the name was wrong. Eventually we found the farm, sat on the porch while my host dad and the farmer chatted, bought a big block of cheese (maybe a six inch by six inch cube), and headed home.

The only other really notable occurrence of my visit to Puerto Viejo was the cutting of the lawn. I can’t say mowing, because no lawn mower was used. The lawn at my house is, like I said, about the size of a normal lawn in the States (on a quarter/third acre lot). In lieu of a lawn mower, my host dad used the next best thing: a weed wacker. Granted, it was one of the dual handled ones that are much easier to maneuver over large areas (yes I have professional experience backing that statement). The best part was not simply the fact that he weed wacked his entire yard, it was his get-up. He was rocking his knee high rubber rain boots, a full-length rubber apron, goggles, and a wide brimmed hat. I’d make fun of him, but there were all sorts of rocks flying up from the gravel driveway that I probably would’ve been decked out like he was. I remember in China I was amazed at how they cut grass by grabbing it in one hand and then chopping it with a cleaver like knife. Well, Costa Rica has not been a letdown at all, and here’s to hoping one day I can get to weed wack our lawn!

El Rosario

From October 9 through December 18, I lived with the Mora Fernandez family in the town El Rosario in the district of Desamparodos. El Rosario is too small to make it onto Google Maps the last time I checked, but San Gabriel is probably the town nearest that makes it onto the maps. El Rosario doesn’t have too much going on, three small sundry shops, one mini-supermarket, one bar, one small restaurant, and one bar restaurant. Add that to the elementary school, the community hall, a soccer field, a church, and maybe 200 houses spread over lots of land and hills, and you have El Rosario. It consists of just two streets: the main highway and a street perpendicular to it, where I lived. My family’s house was up a hill from this main street, and was a really interesting house. It was two stories, with tile floors on the main floor, and wooden floors on the second. My host mom, Xinia, explained that she really likes the rustic look, so the stair rail was nicely done with lacquered branches. The ceilings weren’t all finished, and most of the pipes and cables came through holes in the wall that hadn’t been finished off with putty. My room featured a bed, a plastic lawn chair, and the world’s most interesting shelf-as no two shelves were the same size or made of the same wood. Despite the house’s rustic and unfinished character, there wasn’t a thing to complain about, it wasn’t clean-but you couldn’t really call it dirty either.(me with Haiden, Stuart, and Jose)

The clear head of the household was Xinia, the mother. Xinia has seven children, four of which live at home. It was never made clear to me how many fathers there were of the children, but I am confident there are at least two, maybe three. She seemed to maintain contact with at least one of the fathers, but I was never privy which children were his. Additionally, the house which we lived in was given to her by a former significant other, who as far as I know, moved to the U.S. with a younger lady, and may or may not be the father of some of her children. I’d peg Xinia at about 50, based mostly on the fact that I know that she was quite young when she had her first child, who’s now 35. During my two plus months at her house, I never developed what I would call a good or healthy relationship with Xinia. To begin with, she was at times hard to understand, as she spoke with a thick country accent (yes you can have a hillbilly accent in Spanish-she does). Additionally, besides eating and sleeping, I don’t know that Xinia and I have much in common. Her television tastes went no further than telenovelas and as she often saw me reading, commented that the only book she had ever read was the Bible. I think she is literate, but only at a fifth grade level (when she was forced to drop out of school). In my opinion, Xinia has had a very rough life. She was raised by her father and his drinking buddies, was forced to drop out of school and begin working as domestic help to help pay for her younger sister to attend high school. And from what I can tell, the romantic relationship world hasn’t been to good for her. For me, the biggest problem I had living with her and her family was her strong tendency to shift moods. It would be inappropriate to delve much further into the situation than saying some days she would be very friendly, open to my questions, and be quick to grant permission if I needed to come home late or something similar. Other days she would be cold, cast offish, ignore my questions, claim I hadn’t notified her about something, rude, stressed out, finicky, or castigate me for doing something with the previous days she had said was just fine. Living with Xinia was difficult, but it certainly worked on my patience and as my buddy Aaron says, ‘built character.’

(This post is all sorts of long, take a break, and check out what some other TU grads are up to)

The oldest of the seven children in the family was Mauricio, about 35, who works in the tools/appliances section of a supermarket in San Jose. He had laid much of the tile and done the lighting in the house, as well as in his own, just fifteen minutes up the road, where he lived with his wife and soon enough another, as she’s expecting. Mauricio is a cheery, funny guy always making jokes, often a little too involved for me to understand. We’d most often see him when his wife was working late or at a friend’s house and he would show up to grab a meal, and as this was all he came for, leave soon thereafter.

Xinia’s second child is Cristopher, who everyone in the family calls El Indio (or the Indian/Native) because of the braided poneytail that reaches the small of his back. He came by the house only a few times, as he lives in the next town with his girlfriend, who at 55 is older than his mother. Cristopher works as a gofer/messenger for a law firm in San Jose. Although I was told that his mature girlfriend had helped him put his partying days behind him, I believe he brought a bottle of wine over to the house two of the three times I remember.

Jose is the next oldest of the children, and he lived upstairs with his wife, Sharon, and their son Stuart. Stuart’s name should really be written Estuart, as Spanish speakers cannot pronounce words beginning with the ‘s’ sound without adding an ‘e’ to the front of it. Stuart was a smart seven year old, but about as ornery as a seven year old could be. Living in a house with older uncles had given him access to plenty of words that one doesn’t generally expect out of a seven year old’s mouth, but Stuart delighted in showing off his lexicon. I liked him a lot though, as I can relate to ornery elementary school kids. You know when you’re at a concert, fair, or football game and there’s a guy selling ponchos if it’s raining, gloves and hats if it’s cold, and thunder sticks all the time? Well, that would be Jose’s ‘job.’ So he was pretty much always around during the day, but I would randomly hear his motorcycle at one in the morning as he came back from some event in San Jose. Sharon was super nice, and did the lion’s share of taking care of Stuart even though she worked as a maid every day and her husband was, um, chilling. Young men also came to the house all the time looking for Jose; sometimes he would walk to the end of the driveway to talk to them (and maybe engage in a transaction). I don’t have any conclusive evidence, but I tend to think that if Snoop Dogg and Willie Nelson lived nearby, they’d be happy with Jose’s business.


(I told you it was long, if you need a breather: TFLN or xkcd)

Next in line was Yerlani, the only daughter of Xinia’s seven children. Yerlani worked in San Jose (selling clothes or shoes I think) with her three children. She, like her mother, didn’t have a father figure for her children. She would drop by the house occasionally with her kids, who were cute and funny, but her visits usually involved a tense discussion about my host mom (and her real mother) not being a babysitter. A fun and random event was one night when Yerlani dropped off her two youngest children at about 21:30 as she had come in town to get a big block of sugar from the sugar cane processor in town. I remember hearing her come back about an hour later, and apparently return to San Jose that night with the kids. One: I didn’t check to see if she really came to get a block of sugar. Two: I didn’t check because I was already sure that wasn’t while she was here. Three: it was times like these that I wish I had been more involved in the El Rosario gossip circuit to find out what (and with whom) Yerlani was doing that night.

Haiden is the fifth of Xinia’s seven children and by far the one I spent the most time with. Haiden’s real name is Jeffry, but he gave himself his own nickname after the composer (spelled Haydn) as Haiden, is, if nothing else, a lover of music. Haiden was the first in the family to graduate from high school, something his two younger brothers would also do. He is probably the definition of the Costa Rican saying ‘Pura Vida’-directly translated as ‘pure life’ but better understood as ‘everything’s good, everything’s fine.’ Haiden is a nature lover, and he took me on a hike of the hills above the house during my first few days, then twice more took me and other trainees on adventurous walks through the coffee fields and forests surrounding El Rosario. Walks with Haiden involve him picking all sorts of fruit off of trees to eat, and him identifying various plants, birds, and insects. He can do this as he is studying natural resources management at UNED, the national distance learning university. Every night when I walked through the garage to go brush my teeth (my room had an outside entrance) I would pass Haiden, fully engaged with the computer, reviewing some family or phylum of the animal or plant kingdoms. His knowledge in nature, and mine in how our development and population growth are affecting it made for a number of wonderful conversations with Haiden.(taking a break during one of Haiden's nature walks)

If he wasn’t studying or tending to his tomato, cucumber, or lettuce plants, Haiden was either playing or listening to music. As an adolescent, he would go to school in the afternoon, and spend his mornings on the buses of San Jose, singing with his brother and begging for change. (The gift of the house by Xinia’s ex-boyfriend did a lot to bring the family out of poverty). One day, a man they often saw in the neighborhood’s where they would play in the streets, invited Haiden, his brother, and other boys up to his apartment. This man, Craig, was an American retiree, and much to my surprise, wanted nothing more than to share some treats with the kids. It was then that Haiden learned to play guitar and piano. It was this kindness from the American retiree that instilled in Haiden a feeling of debt to the US. So, I assume that when he heard about Peace Corps having trainees in his town, he jumped at the opportunity to host one. Unfortunately, it wasn’t Haiden who I had to deal with every day about food, laundry, schedules, and use of the house. Back to the music, eventually, as Haiden explained, the neighbors got suspicious of the old retired foreigner having the kids from the street up to his pad, and the authorities encouraged him to stop. But, as Haiden very emotionally told me, not before his love of music was started. I’m glad, because it meant Haiden would often be jamming Beatles or Simon & Garfunkel from his room, and would play songs for me from time to time. It was crazy how much classic rock he knew, and somewhat humbling when a Costa Rican was playing Beatles and CCR songs that I didn’t even know. I had a great time at the family party singing karaoke to the Beatles’ “I Saw Her Standing There” with Haiden and Barton R. It was a fitting way to end my short, but wonderful friendship with Haiden.

Jason and Manuel are the last two people who lived in the house with me. I can group them together because they are very similar in many ways. They both work very hard and fairly long hours, Jason as a purchaser for ICE (the nationalized telecom and power company) and Manuel as a manager of a supermarket in San Jose. They both have girlfriends, which took most of their time. Jason would spend any free time he had studying, as he was studying psychology at a private university. Manuel spent it either on the phone with his girlfriend or playing videogames. One really fun thing I did with them was to play a futbol sala game (similar to indoor soccer) with them. They are on a team which plays weekly in a league, so I threw on my tennis shoes and shorts, along with a team jersey and hit the synthetic turf. They initially placed me up front, with the simple instructions given to every forward: put the ball in the net. I was unable to do this, and for added effect, whiffed what would’ve been two wide-open shots against just the keeper. I am not using the term whiff loosely, it wasn’t like a wasted the cross by shooting wide or too high, I straight didn’t even make contact with the ball, despite winding up and kicking about as hard as I could. After convincing them to let me play defense, and where I played in all of my limited intramural soccer experience, I think I held my own. I was generally slow to switch positions, as the directions (in Costa Rican indoor soccer slang) had to be repeated or put into standard Spanish. I could’ve gone to play two other times, but one game I was ready for got cancelled last minute and I couldn’t go to another because the Peace Corps forbids riding on motorcycles-and that was the only form of transport. I highly doubt I was missed.

All in all, my time with Xinia’s family in El Rosario was a generally fun, quite interesting, and occasionally trying experience. Luckily I was super busy during training, so I only dealt with my problematic host mom in doses. On the other hand, I certainly hope to have opportunities to connect with Haiden and some of the other brothers during my two-year stint here.

Puerto Viejo de Limon

During our training, we were allowed to spend two nights out of our training communities (aside from the nights we spent at official Peace Corps activities like the trip mentioned in my last post). Although there are some awesome mountains/volcanoes to hike here, none of them looked to doable in one night (the two nights can’t be consecutive). So, I went ahead and joined about 30 of the 45 other trainees in taking a trip to Puerto Viejo de Limon (not to be confused with Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui (where I now live). Puerto Viejo is a very popular beach with tourists and is located on the Caribbean coast, just a bit above the Panamanian border. It was chosen not because it was necessarily the closest beach, but because a small group of trainees had been planning a trip there, and then a bunch of the rest of us just leeched onto their trip. We all got up nice and early and met in the next town over to catch the bus. Some people awoke before five to be at the meeting town by seven. Of course, the bus we had hired showed up 20 minutes late. Man, I really, really hate getting up early, hurrying my way somewhere only to then have to wait.

But, eventually the bus came, and we rolled through San Jose, across the Central Mountains and its forests, pasts plenty of banana, sugarcane, and pineapple plantations, and soon enough we had a left window view of the ocean. The trip was awesome for two reasons: we had rented a private bus-so there were no stops except for the ones we asked for and because of the first reason, the bus was filled with fellow trainees. This second reason was great because it meant we could yell jokes, play some music, chat about all sorts of things without the smallest worry of offending a host country national sitting next to us.

Once there we did what one does at the beach: lay on the sand and listened to tunes, kicked the soccer ball around on the sand, chilled in the water, and all that jazz. I regrettably neglected to carry my camera with me on our first day there, which was beautiful and sunny-but did on the second, which was gray and drizzly. We stayed at a hostel that offers an amazing accommodation option for frugal travelers like myself. In big open air rooms that are connected to communal bathrooms and showers are slung forty to sixty hammocks, one right after each other in a row. With check in you get a sheet and a padlock for a locker-which make up the waist high walls of the hammock rooms. And, like the Motel 6 commercial used to say, it was the same as the Ritz once I fell asleep. I had lunch with some comrades after we couldn’t resist the storeowner’s claim of the “best gyros in town.” You never know quite what you’ll get with the expat restaurateurs in tourist towns, as he evidenced. He certainly didn’t see the irony of advertising the best gyros in a small, Latin American beach town. He also seemed to think we admired his broken English or broken Spanish catcalls at the passing females, apparently admiration and entertained disgust are the same body language in Lebanon. The gyros were good, and the only ones we saw or tried in Puerto Viejo, although his shirtless, cigarette smoking service could’ve used an improvement here or there. In the night some of us ventured into the center of town to check out the local dance scene. I took the opportunity to enjoy a beverage or two while sitting on a nicely placed piece of driftwood with a beautiful ocean vista just steps in front of me while soaking up the knowledge of some friends. A fairly agreeable way to pass a night if you ask me.

On my second day I took a walk up to the absolutely gorgeous Playa Negra, named so because of its truly remarkable black sand. I had headed out there to meet up with other members of our group, and with all of us sans cell phone and me not making a fixed time or place to see them (the beach isn’t that big, I had bet on chance) I never ran into them. I thoroughly enjoyed my walk out there, wandering along the beach, sitting on a log to read a bit, until the rain started to move from mist to downpour. I then spent a large portion of the day sitting a bus stand trying to wait out the rain. Luckily I had brought my Kindle with me, and oh, well, it wasn’t that bad, as I had a marvelous view through some palm trees and tropical plants of the Caribbean Ocean foaming onto mounds of black sand. Walking back to meet up with the bus soaking wet wasn’t the most enjoyable experience, but then again, being able to wander over to the ocean and walk ankle deep in warm water made it much more tolerable.

What wasn’t exactly tolerable was the bus ride back. Some consistent rain in the Central Valley had caused landslides to block the main highway through some of the highlands. So, instead of the less than six-hour journey, ours pushed nine. It was a good enough trip, as the collective damp smell of everyone’s wet clothes didn’t bother me at all. As we bumped (and I mean bumped) along the road from Puerto Viejo to the main highway and the humidity wasn’t allowing for my wet shirt and shorts to lose a drop of moisture, I mentioned that I could use a beer. As Barton R., a fellow trainee from Southern California, responded with “I’ve got a Guiness in my backpack if you want to split it” I then realized that some people just plain live their lives at a higher level. With such an auspicious start there was no reason for the elongated bus ride to not be a good time. Although, I can’t act like I wasn’t delighted when I was able to lay down in my bed late that night.

PCV Visit to Buenos Aires

Most of my training time was spent in either El Rosario, or Tarbaca-where we had our twice weekly group training sessions. But, on occasion, I got out of the central highlands and headed one way or another. My first trip out of the area was to visit Morgan P. a current Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV). As part of training, each trainee visits a volunteer to get a better look at what Peace Corps life is like. Normally, trainees visit a volunteer from their specific program, but as TEFL is brand spanking new in PC Costa Rica, we visited PCVs working in the Children, Youth and Families program, as they often work with the schools as they work to provide enrichment activities in the community. They often do things like have summer camps, after school programs, lead community service projects for students, and other things which I think a lot of Americans take for granted as ‘part’ of school, but that really aren’t.

Morgan, (who graduated from the same Washington DC high school as Danthemanstan) lives and works in Buena Vista, a small town on the edges of Buenos Aires, a good sized town in southern Puntarenas province. This area is in between the Pacific Coast and the Talamanca Mountains and it is all pineapple. All pineapple. Well, now, that’s a bit hyperbolical, as there are some sugarcane and banana plantations mixed in, but in general, anywhere you look you’re bound to see pineapple plantations. Also, to clear things up, as many fellow trainees apparently didn’t know, pineapples don’t grow in trees, they grow more as a bush, with the fruit below the broadly spread spiky leaves. Morgan was kind enough to take me on a hike through the pineapple fields to the top of the tallest hill near the town, and man, did we see lots of pineapple. All the fields are owned by Pindeco, which is either a subsidiary of Del Monte, or they only sell to them. (Her host dad works at the packing plant, and says every box says Del Monte). My bus trips from San Jose to Buenos Aires and then in reverse included a stop halfway (it was between four and five hours) at a rest stop. This rest stop reminded me of how very much I love cafeteria style eating. I just love having all my options right there in front of me as well as doing nothing more than picking up a tray and then setting it back down to eat an inexpensive meal. I was even able to heed Morgan’s recommendation and got the beef in red sauce on the way back!

Morgan was an ideal volunteer to visit, as she does lots of work with the schools and students, has shown quite impressive initiative in starting projects, and most importantly, was honest and straightforward in answering all my questions and telling me about her experience thus far. Even better, Morgan, like me, is fairly direct and frank, so I was able to get some great information about how she had dealt with the putatively “indirect” Costa Rican culture. Personally, I tend to believe the adage that the differences within groups are much greater than the differences between groups. Morgan kind of concurred in saying that there are very direct Ticos and very indirect Ticos (no duh!); contrary to the concept that all Ticos are indirect. And for better or worse, she said she didn’t really change her way of speaking and hasn’t run into any friction being direct with Ticos.

I helped corral some of the naughty boys while Morgan taught a quick English class to some first graders (they were cute as buttons-even the ornery ones). I accompanied her to a workshop making purses out of recycled coffee bags. Not surprisingly, according to Morgan, it was raining, thus no one showed up except for two neighbor kids and (reluctantly) the husband of the lady who was supposed to be hosting it. Morgan explained that it wasn’t really the rain, but that provided an easy excuse for the ladies. She said not to be surprised because, in her experience, Costa Ricans don’t share the American penchant for honoring commitments. She said she generally triple or quadruple checks/reminds before meetings. My thoughts are also that this might not be solely a Costa Rican/American thing, but also a difference between socioeconomic groups, in that the Peace Corps often involves the volunteers working with members of a very different socioeconomic group than they pertain to in the States.

I also observed a college English class taught by one of the high school teachers Morgan knows at the campus branch in Buenos Aires. This provided a wonderful example of something our training staff referred to as Tico time. The class began at 18:00. I had to ask directions twice to find the campus, so was hoping I could still slip to the back row when I arrived at 17:58. Of the six classrooms, two were locked, and three had classes going on. Yet the sixth classroom was open with the lights on, but no one was in it. So, I asked the young women at the reception desk, and she said that yes, the English class was in that room. And yes, it began at six. So I grabbed a seat in the back, pulled out my notebook, and worked on some Spanish homework I had brought with me. If I remember correctly, I actually got the Spanish homework done, as the teacher didn’t arrive until 18:15, with a few students coming in at 18:20, and class starting at six thirty when a few more students sauntered through the door. I’ve been working really hard during my Peace Corps time to correct my chronic punctuality problem and tried getting after it this past summer to prepare (with some tough love from my brother Petey) but, it really seems like this country has it out for me, and will do nothing to reward any of my efforts. I’ve noticed something here I remember seeing in Spain, in that if you ask about whether something really starts at its supposed time, a look of annoyance is given in return. It essentially says “yeah, the class starts at six, but clearly that doesn’t mean six, why can’t you get that?”

Oh, I also took, as far as I can remember, my first bucket shower while visiting Morgan. A combination of political problems with the indigenous tribe that controls the water source and bad infrastructure causes for common water outages in Buena Vista. Love new experiences. The water problem did allow me to witness some pretty developed rainwater collection systems. They have a big 50-gallon bucket that collects from the main gutter, as well as about five or six little buckets collecting off a roof edge without a gutter. At a house in the poorer slum-esque part of town, a house had their big 50 gallon drum elevated on a platform, with an exit tube running back into the kitchen, thus using gravity to pump the water into the house. With a Brita filter for drinking water and a faucet filter system-such a rainwater collection system (with enough reserve tanks) can supply an entire house with its water needs-without all the energy and resources that go into city plumbing networks. Pretty cool, eh? In a place with pretty consistent rain three quarters of the year, it’s also quite practical. Here’s to hoping that my experience as a Volunteer will allow me to learn one or two more things from some relatively poor and rural Ticos.

Derrumbe Day

Many of you who were fortunate to grow up in the good ol’ Midwest know very well what snow days are. Well, I guess that actually the Northeast, Pacific Northwest, Rocky Mountains, and Alaska also know what snow days are, but I digress. Well, you can bet dollars for dimes that nobody in Costa Rica has had a snow day. What they have I learned, is derrumbe days (I’d translate it all to landslide days, but I can’t lose that alliteration). On November 3rd, I was awakened a bit after five by one of my host brothers, Manuel. As I groggily listened, I thought he asked if I had class today. I looked at the clock and responded that yes, but I wasn’t planning to get up for another hour. He then made it clear that I didn’t have to go to class today (He did so a few times, as my responses were probably reflective of both my rough Spanish and early morning thinking.) So, I got myself up, threw on a t-shirt, and tried to figure out why. He was able to explain to me that Peace Corps had called, and that with all the rain over the last few days due to Tropical Storm Tomás, there were landslides blocking the route from our training communities to Tarbaca, the town where our Tuesday and Thursday training sessions were. Of course, Manuel already knew this. Manuel and Jason, two of my host brothers, both work in the San José area. Manuel manages the early shift at a supermarket, and usually leaves for work around four thirty. So, he had already driven up to the landslide blocking the main road, driven back through town, tried the other route down to the valley, and met more landslides. So, as he so enthusiastically put it: “all the roads are blocked, there’s nothing to do today.” And returned home to spread the news to Jason and I, who normally leave later.

Well, in fact, there was one thing to do: visit the landslides. The three of us, and Mauricio, a brother that lives up the road a bit-who works with Manuel at the supermarket, piled into Manuel’s Toyota Tercel and went to see the main landslide blocking the way. We passed plenty of small landslides, only blocking half a lane, or so thin that they could be driven over. There were plenty of fallen limbs strewn across parts of the road as well as a few dangling in very precarious positions overhead. When we turned one corner I quickly realized that we wouldn’t be going anywhere today, or maybe for a few days. This landslide was huge, sloping from twenty or twenty five feet high on the right side of the road, to still waist height on the left edge of the road. A telephone pole had been taken down, and the lines were hazardously crossing the road at eye level. After the three brothers chatted and joked with some friends and neighbors who were also checking out the landslide (or just then realizing they didn’t have to go to work), we got back in the car and headed to Rio Conejo, a neighboring community, because Jason’s girlfriend had invited us for breakfast. I thoroughly enjoyed the cheese tortillas dipped in sour cream (freshly made tortillas with about a sixty-forty mix of flour and cheese), fried eggs and coffee.

By now the day didn’t really seem much like a snow day-I remember sleeping in as one of the main benefits of snow days. But, Costa Rica is an early morning country, so on landslide days you don’t go back to bed, you just head to another town to get breakfast with friends and family. We ended up having classes cancelled on Friday as well; activities that weekend were cancelled, as were classes on Monday. Needless to say I caught up on reading, and enjoyed a couple of movies with some of the girls in my training community. I’ll be honest; at first I didn’t really believe my host brother Haiden when he was talking about how much it was raining. Throughout my first month in the Costa Rican central highlands it would rain almost every afternoon or evening. Yet, it was always bright in the morning, and seldom rained overnight. Well, the storm in the Caribbean blocked the clouds from passing over the central mountain ranges, and Haiden was right, the three straight days of rain overwhelmed all the rivers, brought about devastating flooding along the Pacific Coast and huge landslides and flooding in the Central Valley. A number of lives were lost in neighborhoods built dangerously close to rivers, where entire blocks of shanty houses were washed away. Peace Corps put the entire country into an emergency stage, and a few volunteers and many trainees were without electricity or water for a number of days. In fact, the emergency precautions would forbid the trip I took to see the landslide and have breakfast, but weren’t in effect at that time. We only lost electricity for 18 hours or so at my house, so it wasn’t too serious of an experience for me, but I can say that it was certainly my first landslide day.