Paso a paso

In high school, if I'm remembering correctly, my Spanish textbook series was called 'Paso a paso' (step by step). Ironically, that phrase turned out to be pretty useless here in rural Costa Rica. 


While I would argue that people in different countries, and even different regions of the same country are much more similar than they are different, differences exist. Sharing and hopefully learning from those differences is much of the Peace Corps' goal/mission. There are big differences, the ones you notice day one, like that the taxis are red here or that people eat rice and beans with every meal. Then there are the less obvious differences that come much later. Which is where the stairs come in.


While stares are often a part of me living in rural Costa Rica, stairs are not. (Bazinga!) I noticed this not because I often think about going up and down stairs, but because I've been occasionally doing some running (I have a race coming up). Now, perhaps my calves are just getting weaker with age, but I've noticed that they have been getting tired first when I run, and are much more sore than any other part of my body the  days after running (sparse running brings about this long soreness period). After some thinking, I think that it may be to a lack of use of the old calf muscle-due to a combination of lots of bike riding (working the quads and gluteals) and not going up any stairs. It's probably more the bike riding, but, isn't it crazy that there's only one building in all of my life that has me going up stairs.

(the world's longest staircase, clue: not in Sarapiquí)

I don't really know why Costa Ricans aren't building more two, three, and four story buildings. Land is pretty valuable in this country-with it being very productive for farms, much of it protected, and in some areas-flat land is hard to come by (three mountain ranges in a country one third the size of Iowa). Maybe the economically feasible building materials  make it hard to build two stories, maybe all the earthquakes discourage taller buildings, maybe Costa Ricans just don't think it's a big deal. Even San José, the capital city, is marked (in my opinion) by it's extreme lack of tall buildings. Many are now being built, but it seems like that should've happened long ago. Either way, I climb maybe 12 stairs, twice a week for my community English classes (given in the community multi-purpose building) but that's it. I guess I could do some jumping exercises, but I'll probably just deal with the sore calves. If nothing else, you can say you've learned something today: not a lot of stairs in Sarapiquí, Costa Rica.


And, I'd be remiss if I wrote about stairs and didn't reference the classic Mitch Hedberg joke about them. It's about halfway through this video.