Little of This, a Little of That

So after a week of living with my host family, Halloween arrived. Our academic director, Alan is in a locally famous band here called Chanchos de Monte and the Chanchos always put on a Halloween show! All of us reunited at our beloved station, pulled together some costumes, and headed to the local gringo bar—La Taberna—for a night of hilarity. 

The next day I spent watching Halloween movies on TV and bonding with my host cousin Katerine over boys. Man that girl has some man drama! I learned from here that Costa Rican boys are “different” than American boys, “they’ll fall in love with you at night, and never call you in the morning.” I tried to explain that boys are like that everywhere, but it didn’t really translate—she has a very high opinion of you American boys. The movies we watched were from the US and not actually about Halloween, like that 4^th or 5^th version of Bring It On with Hayden Panetierre and Rihanna. I hadn’t ever really given the movie much thought, until my host mom and cousin were like “are girls in the U.S. really like that? With the cheerleaders and sex and stuff?” I think I managed to salvage the reputation of American girls everywhere and tell my family that the Bring It On series is not a fair representation, but who knows. My conversational Spanish is coming a long nicely, but my please-don’t-judge-Americans-by-Hollywood-standards translation has a long way to go…

On Monday I had another day of class. Due to difficulties at the breakfast table (at first I thought that watching TV and eating was just a difficult activity for a 5yr old…sound familiar Dad? But it turns out Chris is just superb at stalling) we were running late, so the 4-wheeler ride was nuts. I thought we were going to tip over at least 5 times. Thankfully, Cristobál had the steering under control (don’t worry Mom, he’s an excellent driver), so I arrived at Ecotourism Day with my classmates safe and sound. After a quick (read: excruciatingly long) lecture, we headed out in the community to learn from a business owner, a farmer, and some park rangers, about their perspectives on how the boom in tourism has affected life in Monteverde. We also got to talk to Kathy’s (our mom of sorts while we’re here) mother, Mary Rockwell, about her experiences in Monteverde. Man, she is the coolest lady! As a freshly married 18 year old Quaker girl, she, her husband, and a group of about 40 other Quakers decided to leave the United States to escape the then peace time draft (they left “while all that Vietnam business was still brewing”) and because they felt it unjust that so much of their tax money was supporting the military. Ranging from 2 to 60 years old, the group decided to settle in the military-free country of Costa Rica. They spent the first year living “here, there, and yonder” around San Jose, searching for a place to begin dairy farming. After about a year, and then approximately 3-4months pregnant, Mary and the group moved out to the yet-to-be-settled land that they would call Monteverde (literally “green mountain”). Moving their precious few belongings out to “clear off out the way” (read: Monteverde) by ox cart, over rocky trails and “roads” of mud up to their knees, the group slowly settled in. Truly a modern pioneer, this woman is amazing (Ellie you would have been obsessed with her, minus the whole pacifist thing). She started raising her family (which grew to 8 children) in a tent, helped found this place where I now live, and brought a new industry—dairy—to a land formerly without any real source of income. She seemed happy that the tourism industry had brought a greater success to the Cheese Factory, but fondly reminisced on the days when crime and drugs were non-existent here, and family was truly the most important thing.

I’m not sure how many years back, but the community of Cañitas raised money and put in a synthetic soccer field around the bend from my house. My family doesn’t go much, but it seems like somebody in everyone else’s host family is involved in La Sintética. My friend Laura’s host mom is on a team with all her sisters in a local women’s league, so last Wednesday, Laura organized a scrimmage between the two teams. It was so much fun! On the way to the field I ran in to my cousin, who was on her way to a salsa/merengue class and asked if she wanted to come. Immediately she abandoned all thoughts of dance class, and headed to the field with us (Laura I think you’d like her a lot). Team Gringa (plus Katy) looked pretty comical playing in hiking boots, but I think we did pretty well! I’m not sure if anyone kept score, but I think we gave Team Tica a run for their money! That night Katy invited me to go to her English night course, which I happily attended on Thursday.

Taught by a retired Chicago banker with pretty much no Spanish knowledge (he’s now a peace corps volunteer) the class was really eye opening, and kind of frustrating. It was fascinating to watch other people learn a language that I am so comfortable with, and so fun to see how happy they were when something “clicked.” Unfortunately, the teacher was teaching these poor Costa Ricans to speak English with a silly Chicagoan accent (sorry Craze, Kate, Pauline…and any others I may have just offended) and he had no understanding of how to dissect a language to teach it to others. He focused his class on pronunciation, and completely neglected to explain possessives, basic sentence structure, and a bunch of other things he seemed to assume that his students knew. I didn’t share any of my opinions with Katy, and she still attends the weekly class, but we have our own lessons after dinner. The whole family gets involved, and we trade Spanish vocabulary for English conjugations and sentence structure. Last night, amid much laughter, we had a crucial lesson: Words with which You Need to be Careful. One of my professors taught us the Spanish half of this lesson after a little guaro in Peñas Blancas, so I just taught the English half to my family. We practiced “beach” and “sheet,” as well as “ship” and “fork” (If you can think of any others, let me know!)

Friday was another long day of class, followed by a dinner at our director Alan’s house. Burgers were flying off the grill, the cooler was stocked, and chips and salsa were passed around. Alan has two white west highland white terrier puppies, whom with I immediately bonded, and all of us dog lovers got our snuggle fill. 

At some point in the night, long after the food was demolished, we were all lounging on Alan’s wrap around porch and somehow it became story time. Story time quickly evolved (devolved?) in to poop story-sharing time, and we howled with laughter as the story topping ensued. Constipation was out done by diarrhea, which was put to shame by traveler’s diarrhea. I almost won with my pooping in the woods story, but was out shone by a truly (bowel) moving tale…one which I am not allowed to share here. After all, what happens on Alan’s porch stays on Alan’s porch.