Stickers and bananas

I've got an excuse, but a poor one, for my lack of posts since getting back to Costa Rica 10 days ago. I've been having very odd Internet problems, and it took me a few days before I could chat with some of my more enlightened friends to figure out what the problem was. I'm actually still not sure, but now have a temporary workaround. So, blogs should be coming up. It was great to see everyone I saw back home, and unfortunately my time was limited, so I wasn't able to visit everyone/everywhere I would've liked to.
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It's not every day that you meet someone that does something that you end up seeing every day. Well I didn't today, but I did a while back. I hope everyone bears with me as I recount blogs from long ago, I've got plenty of free time, but haven't seemed to get myself to write blogs of recent. 

On with the story, which may not be that interesting for you, but it was quite interesting for me. During the week long celebration of Independence Day at the night school (more on that later) there was some sort of assembly or "civic activity" every night. Now, don't imagine a gym full of students paying attention to a well planned out program. Instead, imagine a few people on a sidewalk next to a field, talking on a not quite loud enough speaker system, it's night, so you can't see them too well-as if huge number of students standing on the flat field between you and the sidewalk weren't blocking them anyways. So, in this type of environment, a lady gave some speech about staying in school (having already completed that task, I stopped paying attention). Well, there was some down time after the speech, so I chatted up some students standing next to me. 

After determining (sadly, I have to add) that I knew more about Costa Rica's independence from Spain than they did, I asked them about where they lived, if they worked, etc. One student, not surprisingly told me she worked on the banana plantations. I asked what she did, she said she worked in the packing plant. I dug deeper, and found out she puts the stickers on the bananas. She works for the Chiquita subsidiary, so we're talking about the blue and yellow stickers with the Chiquita banana lady. My guess that my impressed, amazed, intrigued look was a bit different than what she gets from most of the rest of the people in town. She said it's not the worst job, but is hard on her back, as the conveyor belt with the bananas is pretty low so she has to bend down to put the stickers on. I was incredulous and thought a machine would have put them on, or at least a sticker gun, but nope, they have little racks with spools of the stickers and put them on all day long. She added that putting stickers on bananas eight or nine hours a day is pretty boring, but she can chat with the other ladies/girls doing the same thing. She seemed fairly ambivalent about the job-it was not much fun, but it was a job, indoors, with good hours (the men that work in the fields get up super early) and she likes her coworkers. Either due to my amazement that I had met a banana sticker lady, or to my incredulity regarding the lack of machines, she brought some stickers for me the next night. So, as you can see, there's proof. They now adorn my bike.