Front porch visit

If you happen to be Facebook friends with me, you'll know that I've spent plenty of time recently watching the Olympics and checking all the results online. In fact, for the past five days, if I haven't been at school working with students, I've probably been plugged in, treating my case of Olympic fever. Needless to say, I haven't yet organized videos and made a post about my recent trip to Corcovado National Park, nor have I written up any other posts. In the meantime, I'll  announce that I've added even more photos to my Picasa photo albums-link to the right and will share another reminder that I live in the tropics.

The other day, while at my computer working on something, my host dad, home for lunch, called both me and my host mom to come to the front porch. Right in front of the door was a tiny little frog. I think it's some type of poison dart frog, but honestly don't know. It is most definitely the type of frog that you find on any save the rainforest promotional poster. I opened up the door to try to get a picture of him without the screen, and luckily, instead of heading out towards the street, he cornered himself on the porch. Thus, I was able to get some up close shots.

With semi-trucks and punk teenagers with loud motorcycles driving by every day, as well as the fact that most of my street is developed with houses or semi-truck lots, I forget far too easily how close I live to the rainforest. The beetle I posted the other day and this frog are reminders to me of where I live and how, in some ways, different it is from good ol' Clive, IA.

Links to more Internet fun

Don't forget to subscribe or check out my tumblr (http://kferr027.tumblr.com/) which I update daily with photos from my service here in Costa Rica. I'm putting them up in chronological order (more or less) so you can scroll through them and see the different experiences and activities I was involved in throughout my time here. I just finished a series of pictures of houses from around Puerto Viejo de Sarapiquí, my old site. That could be completely boring to you, but surely some people find houses in different countries interesting (maybe it's just me). Sadly, they're only exterior photos, as it's probably rude to walk into a stranger's house and start snapping photos. 


Also, I've uploaded pictures from my recent trip to Corcovado National Park to my Picasa web albums (https://picasaweb.google.com/103245152853806638537). I'll soon post about the trip, which will include videos (videos of monkeys are a whole lot cooler than pictures of them), but for now you can check out the pictures (which is probably what most people want to see anyway). What's more, I recently noticed that my previous upload of pictures from my trip to Panama City (Panama) didn't work, so all those pictures are now up there as well. The previous link is to the general page, so you can click on any of the albums in which you take interest from there.

Additionally, two of my co-TEFL volunteers are starting libraries in their communities and are asking for donations in a community/donation matching program that the Peace Corps facilitates. Essentially, the community first comes up with a certain amount of money (25% or 33% of the project cost) and then the volunteer solicits donations for the rest. If you have money burning a hole in your pocket, or need to donate to charity for some reason, are a supporter of reading/literacy, or whatever other reason, check out either this project or this project. 


P.S. If you want to get better at typing: http://app.typrx.com/#.
P.S. If you want to learn all sorts of different things but not buy a single Sharpie or stack of note cards: http://ankisrs.net/. 

Beetle

Every once in a while things happen that remind me that I'm in the tropics and that, even though I live in a town with paved roads and electricity and spend plenty of time on my laptop or watching TV, I still live down the road from tropical rain forest. Like when yesterday my host brother and his friend walked into my room saying, "Ken, check this out." At first I just saw a board, but as they got closer to me I noticed a HUGE beetle on the board. This thing was bigger than a computer mouse. Its protective shell looked like it was made of wood. I only got one good picture of it, as beetles tend to crawl all over. I overcame my (super rational) fear and did touch and hold it. 

(this beetle has hairs you can see, and well, could probably comb)

This second picture is of it on the banana tree that's growing in the backyard. It doesn't look big, but that's because it's on the leaves of the banana plant are huge. One thing of note, César's friend found this beetle in his house. Granted, he lives closer to the forest than we do, and has lots of trees/plants on his property, and the house is more open to the world than ours, but, still.

Food I Didn't Eat in Clive, IA

A while back I was on the phone (read: VOiP) with my parents and my dad was asking about what I had had for lunch that day. It's a question he asks fairly often when we talk and did so also when I was in China, because, it's something so normal, daily for me that I rarely think to bring it up, but can sometimes have a very interesting answer. Most of the time it's the same answer, rice, beans, a type of meat, and cabbage, tomato, onion salad-all chopped. Yet, the day I talked with him I happened to mention that we had heart of palm salad. He didn't know what heart of palm was or maybe had heard of it but didn't know what it looked like/tasted like. So, he thought it'd be a good idea for me to blog about foods I'd eaten that were new to me. My guess is they're probably new to most Americans, although I'm sure you can get about everything on this list in some exotic food store, or in California or Hawaii or Florida, or somewhere with growing conditions similar to a tropical climate. Sadly, I've had plenty of other odd foods, but didn't have the camera around or didn't think to take a picture of it. I've provided links for some of the fruits-in case you want to find out more. 

 Cilantro. The home grown kind. Cilantro the way we think of it is available in every supermarket, but this type of cilantro, which can be planted and grown super easily almost anywhere, is commonly grown by many Costa Ricans in their backyards. It's kind of creepy how it smells exactly like cilantro, yet looks like dandelion leaves. 

 Cashew. Or, perhaps, wild cashew. The nut is underneath the shell and a poisonous layer of skin-opening and roasting cashews is something only to be done with extreme care. But, the 'cashew apple' that hangs down below it can be eaten with no worries. These grow on big, wide trees. My host dad really likes them, I found it kind of sour and not particularly appealing. I had no idea this was how cashew grew. 

 Known as 'granadilla' in Spanish (which means 'little pomegranate') and apparently called sweet granadilla in English, this fruit is not passion fruit-but is quite similar. The little crunchy black seeds are surrounded by a fleshy, slippery, clear substance that is sweet at times and more often a tad sour. I was told to eat the seeds and the fleshy goo (seen in the right half below) and did so. It's not bad, a very interesting in mouth experience with the contrast of the slick flesh and the crunchy seeds. 

 Heart of palm, 'palmito' in Spanish (at least here). Palm trees (I believe any type-either coconut or peach palm or palm fruit) are chopped down when they are quite young and the outer bark is stripped away, leaving the inner part of the trunk, which is still soft. You can see it chopped in the bowl above, the few half moon shapes indicate the approximate diameter of the part of the trunk that is used for heart of palm. It's a very soft vegetable (?), and doesn't have too much taste. 

Arazá. I don't think there's an English name for this fruit. I visited the farm of an RPCV couple (former  Peace Corps volunteers) that lives near me and they introduced me to this fruit. My host parents didn't know what it was called, but luckily a neighbor kid confirmed the name given to me by the couple as I had half forgotten it. The fruit looks and smells delicious, but is super sour-so is usually cooked with rice to prepare a type of juice. 

Guanábana. Soursop in English, this fruit has been featured in my previous blog post about making ice cream. All the ones you see above came from the tree in the backyard when it was at maximum production, as in all that fruit came down in one or two days. The shell is hard and the spikes sharp when it's growing, but it becomes soft and the spikes soften when it's ripe. Thus, it's important to pull them down from the tree when ripe, because when they fall they'll probably explode. The fruit inside is white and very moist, almost creamy. As the name indicates, it's sour, and if not fully ripe is very sour. A hard stem goes down the middle of the fruit. 

Water apple-Chinese style. This is a variation of the water apple (manzana de agua) which is very popular here. The regular water apple is about the size of a pear, and is, as it's name indicates a very juicy fruit. The fruit seen above was introduced to me as 'manzana de agua china', which may or may not mean it has Asian roots. Either way, it's similar to the water apple, with a juicy, white flesh that is a bit sweet but hasn't much flavor. 

Ice cream bean. 'Guaba' in Costa Rican Spanish. I believe I've blogged about this food before. It grows in huge, wide trees. This pod is cracked open and there are 15 or so dark black seeds surrounded by a soft, white flesh that is kind of like a mix between ice cream and cotton candy. They are delicious. The last time I had one my host mom bought a bag from a guy selling them on his bike. My host brother and I sat down and each ate three or four pods immediately. 

 Plantains are an incredibly common and important part of the Costa Rican diet. Yet these super fat and quite short plantains are not so common, I've only seen them two or three times in my time here. When I had them they tasted exactly the same as your regular plantain. 

This post ends with probably the least notable of the pictures. Above is an avocado, which is something I do eat in Clive, Iowa. But, every avocado I ever saw in the US was the Hass avocado, which makes up something like 80 or 90% of the avocados sold in the US. Not the case in Costa Rica, which grows lots of avocados. They are often much bigger than the Hass variety, and come in all shades of green, as well as the dark, dark green that Americans are accustomed to. 

Trash and Education

Without getting too deep into ideas and hypotheses I don't know enough about, one of the fundamentals of microeconomics is that incentives matter. As makes perfect sense, people tend to do things that give them the best payoff or the least pain. I know even less about psychology or sociology, but when it comes to how we act, I feel that incentives tend to matter as well: we tend to do what is easiest, best for us, hurts others the least, and hurts us the least as well. Obviously, what we're taught and told to do affects us, but a big part of my belief is that the incentives of profit and pain play a big part in what we choose to do. One curious example that I've noticed in my new high school has to do with trash. 

Being one of the biggest tourist destinations in the world and a developing country that is doing a pretty good job of developing, I'm sure that there are huge swathes of Costa Rica that don't have much litter. Unfortunately for me, I haven't spent much time in those places. Liverpool, Limón is most definitely not one of those places. The stretch of land I most often see-the road between my house and the school/pulpería-is lined with litter. And, just maybe, this has to do with what people learn when they are young. Sadly, what they learn and what they're taught is not the same thing. And this is because of the incentives that go along with the teaching.  

(the left side of the road is what the side of most of the roads in my town look like)

I will say, the elementary school teachers do a pretty good job of encouraging students to put trash in the trash cans-and they also have to pick up trash-thus realizing that even if they litter, they might end up having to pick it up in the end. The high school, though, is another story. From 7th-11th grade, students are given a much more mixed message. I haven't seen a teacher (except myself) reprimand a student for littering. I only observe the English teacher, and she has mentioned once or twice to students not to throw trash on the ground. What is most often done by the students is to put the trash in the desks-this avoids the oh so burdensome task of walking to the trash can but also avoids dropping it on the floor, which the teacher might see and might correct. These desks house different students every period, so plenty of trash builds up during the day. I don't think I've ever seen a student take out the trash at the end of a period. Lots of students do just throw it on the floor, because most of the time there's seldom a penalty for it. 

Now, in many places in the world leaving trash on the floor would build up into piles, and leaving it in the desk would cause an uproar from the student in the next period. Yet, at my high school, and at Puerto Viejo, and I imagine many other schools in Costa Rica, this doesn't happen. That's because (far too many in my opinion) janitors sweep up rooms after every few periods. Before they sweep though, they walk through the rows of desks and tip them all over-spilling all the trash stuffed into the desk during the previous periods. This constant sweeping of the classrooms, as well as the hallways-they even sweep up bits of trash around the campus. I could be wrong, but I think that this constant clean up has two detrimental effects. First, I think it makes it look like it's not a problem to throw things on the ground, because the students know that it will get cleaned up. Almost like the concept it to throw it on the floor and let the frequent cleaning clean it up. Secondly, it prevents the accumulation of trash all over the place so that no one sees the real effect of littering (it's crystal clear the minute you step off the high school grounds). It's clear to see the problem in the second effect, but not so much in the first. Some might say, why not just have the janitors constantly cleaning up. My problem with this system is it's super inefficient. Every student could just throw the trash in the trash cans, and they'd get cleaned out once a day or so. Obviously, stringent reprimanding (and punishment) of students for littering could solve this problem. Or fewer janitors/a change in the cleaning method. As labor laws are very tight in Costa Rica, I'll bet the former has a better chance of success-yet I'll still hope for a combination.

I scream, you scream

I think I've hinted once or twice in my blogs at the challenges I've had working with teachers at the school. This leaves me with a fair amount of free time. Luckily the EuroCup has filled many of my afternoons for the last three weeks. One of the ways I stayed cool in the hot afternoon was to eat ice cream that my host mom makes from the guanábanas (soursops) that fall from the tree in our backyard. (I've never heard anyone ever say the word soursop-maybe I don't go to enough exotic fruit stores-so I'm going to use the Spanish word in this post.) The tree was producing a bunch of guanábanas just after I arrived, and it has been producing a bunch in the last few weeks. My host mom makes juice, bread, and ice cream with the guanábanas, as well as gives a bunch of them away and freezes a fair amount of the flesh (after taking out the seeds). Well, I can't really remember if it was me, my host brother, or my host mom, but someone suggested making ice cream and selling it. Well, I was totally game as was my host brother. 

(two big guanábanas)

Making ice cream with guanábanas is quite easy. Well, rather, making ice cream the sell it out of your house in bags Costa Rican style is quite easy. That's right, ice cream in a bag. I was first introduced to pop in a bag in Laos, and the bag was open with a straw. I was fairly skeptical of this situation-it was mostly so that vendors wouldn't lose the glass bottle deposit. But, here in Costa Rica, I'm a huge fan of the drink in a bag method. Small, long plastic bags are filled with pop, juice, ice cream, or slushee mix, and then tied. Thus, one just has to bite the corner and suck the liquid through the hole. It's super convenient. It works even better for ice cream than for pop, as the ice cream is somewhat solid-so no risk of it squirting out. What's more, the bag of ice cream can serve just like a bag of ice-something smooth and cool to rub on the back of one's neck or across the forehead. Back to the easy process. We use guanábanas-because the tree provides them for free. Peeling and de-seeding the guanábana takes by far the longest period of time, after that, add a bit of water, plenty of sugar, and a good bit of milk-and you've got your ice cream mix. No, I don't know the exact amounts, we play it by taste-blend it a bit, taste it, make adjustments-repeat if necessary. After that, using the cut off top of a Coke bottle as a funnel, the mixture is poured into the bag, tied, and put in the freezer. About twelve hours later we've got ice cream ready to sell. 

(a big guanábana opened and deseeded)

I made a little sign and put it on our gate, but the sales were pretty weak the first few days. I believe we sold none the first day and just two the second day (to a neighbor kid). But, like any other business endeavor, it takes time to build up clientele. Since then we've made lots of ice cream and sold plenty of it. There are currently 25 or so bags of ice cream in the freezer, and we've sold at least one hundred, maybe lots more in the two or three weeks this venture has been going on. Our best clients are a group of teenagers that hang out around the corner and smoke marijuana-often our busiest hour is 8-9 pm-and it's these guys fueling it. Making and selling the ice cream has been great for me, providing a nice afternoon/evening activity-as well as having me climb up on the roof fairly often to check for any ripe fruit. Moreover, plenty more people in my town recognize me. César, my host brother, has benefitted a lot from it too-as he hasn't any job and I think I'll give him all the money-it's a good way for him to earn a bit of pocket change.

(the finished product in the freezer door-some chocolate and strawberry mixed in)