Saturday, February 03, 2007
Finally...
After a week of power outages, long waits, limited time slots, problems with blogger.com and slow downloading, I finally found a great computer! It is Saturday morning and I am sitting in a gelatto shop in an Italian resort not too far from my house in Petrero. My only issue is that this computer is programmed to display everything in Italian. Well, also that there are not many attractive Italians running around here at 10 a.m.. But this awesome capuccino I'm drinking makes up that.
My last weekend in Monteverde was bittersweet. I got close to my family and friends there, so it was hard to go. The twins, Melanie and Melissa, 3, cried when I left.
Just before I left Monteverde, I found several great places to hear music. One, Bromidias, is just beautiful...a two story house up a dirt road, in a hill, in the middle of the jungle. It has a tiny amphitheater, a little bar, and a big patio and campfire outside the front door.
Two big accomplishments in Monteverde: I am finally speaking Spanish. Very poorly. Very slowly. With a terrible accent. But I communicate now.
Even more surprising: I think I am making peace with our friends in the insect world. Some evidence: I have now pet a giant tree cockroach, touched a female hercules beetle, let a tarantula crawl on my arm, pulled a giant grasshopper off a plant to look at it more closely. At dinner, when ants crawl across my plate, i casually sweep them aside and keep eating. On a related note, I don't flinch anymore when an iguana runs past or a lizzard crawls up the walls. I have also stood in the middle of a cloud of Marfo butterflies - they're irridescent blue with black tipped wings. This probably doesn't qualify as much of an achievement in the befriending bugs category, but is nonetheless a pretty amazing experience. I still don't want to find a scorpion in my clothes, but if I do, I think I'll be able to handle it. Maybe.
But now I am off the mountains and on the beach, at a different branch of CPI, the same school I attended in Monteverde. The school is in a town called Flamingo, which used to have a reputation for its marina, its white sand beach, rich yachters and high end drugs and prostitution. However, the marina is pretty much closed - my Tica mama says it's because of alleged contamination, but there really isn't contamination, it's just that some developers want to re-build the marina in Portrero. But who knows. Anyway, while Flamingo is entirely there for tourism, it doesn't seem packed with visitors.
Because it's there for tourists, Flamingo is far too expensive for any Ticos to live there. So I live in Portrero with a Tico family. It's about a 40 minute walk from school. Portrero is also on the water, but the sand is black there. The "town" is built around a dusty football pitch. In addition to games, the field also hosts stray dogs, chickens and roosters and nightly revival meetings held by a small group of evangelicals. They go at it into the night (the evangelicals, though the roosters do too). The small crowd sits in portable pews in one corner of the field, listening to a preacher who seems to simply jump up and down and shout "Siempre!" (always!) a lot. And when they're done, they stack their pews up neatly, and this is where we students wait for the bus to take us to school in the morning.
Did I mention there are monkeys? Congo monkeys play in the trees early in the morning and at sunset. But it's getting harder to find them... all the construction around here is pushing them further into the jungle.
My family is Maria, who is about 37, her husband Alcides, who is in his 50s, their daughter Xonara, who is in her teens, and Xonara's son, Steven, who is four months old. They have a pink house with a large yard and two dogs. There are brahmas (type of cow) in the field behind us. The house has one large room that is kitchen, dining and living room, with a couch and tv. There are two bedrooms and a bath. My room, with it's own bath, is attached to the rear of the house. There is no hot water in the house.
I believe that Alcides is a taxi driver, but I don't know for sure. This family is quite sweet, but also a bit more reserved. It's difficult to get a conversation going. Almost every family in Portrero has a student in their home. I will move out Sunday morning, and a new student will move in that night. My family is never without someone in their home. It's a business that is supporting the whole town. I imagine after a while you feel more like the owner of a hotel and less like a person opening your home as part of an exchange program.
In fairness, I also haven't put as much effort into getting to know this family. I am only there for a week. Tomorrow, I am moving into a B&B that the school uses for students. I decided to switch because I realized it would be my first opportunity since I moved out of my apartment in Dallas- and the last, for a while - to have my own room, my own space.
To get to know my Monteverde family, I had to spend hours in front of the television with them. (Watching TV is a cultural thing in Costa Rica.) But I have no desire to do that here. Class ends at noon, and usually I go to the beach or to a pool with Estelle, my classmate from France who currently lives in Switzerland. Estelle is tall, blonde, super cute, in her mid 30s. She is in the middle of changing jobs - from selling weapons to governments and other clients to working for a company that buys raw materials for pharmaceuticals. We pretend to other students that she doesn't speak English, and for this reason, I only speak Spanish with her. This is great practice. It's rare too. Most students speak English as soon as class is over.
My last weekend in Monteverde was bittersweet. I got close to my family and friends there, so it was hard to go. The twins, Melanie and Melissa, 3, cried when I left.
Just before I left Monteverde, I found several great places to hear music. One, Bromidias, is just beautiful...a two story house up a dirt road, in a hill, in the middle of the jungle. It has a tiny amphitheater, a little bar, and a big patio and campfire outside the front door.
Two big accomplishments in Monteverde: I am finally speaking Spanish. Very poorly. Very slowly. With a terrible accent. But I communicate now.
Even more surprising: I think I am making peace with our friends in the insect world. Some evidence: I have now pet a giant tree cockroach, touched a female hercules beetle, let a tarantula crawl on my arm, pulled a giant grasshopper off a plant to look at it more closely. At dinner, when ants crawl across my plate, i casually sweep them aside and keep eating. On a related note, I don't flinch anymore when an iguana runs past or a lizzard crawls up the walls. I have also stood in the middle of a cloud of Marfo butterflies - they're irridescent blue with black tipped wings. This probably doesn't qualify as much of an achievement in the befriending bugs category, but is nonetheless a pretty amazing experience. I still don't want to find a scorpion in my clothes, but if I do, I think I'll be able to handle it. Maybe.
But now I am off the mountains and on the beach, at a different branch of CPI, the same school I attended in Monteverde. The school is in a town called Flamingo, which used to have a reputation for its marina, its white sand beach, rich yachters and high end drugs and prostitution. However, the marina is pretty much closed - my Tica mama says it's because of alleged contamination, but there really isn't contamination, it's just that some developers want to re-build the marina in Portrero. But who knows. Anyway, while Flamingo is entirely there for tourism, it doesn't seem packed with visitors.
Because it's there for tourists, Flamingo is far too expensive for any Ticos to live there. So I live in Portrero with a Tico family. It's about a 40 minute walk from school. Portrero is also on the water, but the sand is black there. The "town" is built around a dusty football pitch. In addition to games, the field also hosts stray dogs, chickens and roosters and nightly revival meetings held by a small group of evangelicals. They go at it into the night (the evangelicals, though the roosters do too). The small crowd sits in portable pews in one corner of the field, listening to a preacher who seems to simply jump up and down and shout "Siempre!" (always!) a lot. And when they're done, they stack their pews up neatly, and this is where we students wait for the bus to take us to school in the morning.
Did I mention there are monkeys? Congo monkeys play in the trees early in the morning and at sunset. But it's getting harder to find them... all the construction around here is pushing them further into the jungle.
My family is Maria, who is about 37, her husband Alcides, who is in his 50s, their daughter Xonara, who is in her teens, and Xonara's son, Steven, who is four months old. They have a pink house with a large yard and two dogs. There are brahmas (type of cow) in the field behind us. The house has one large room that is kitchen, dining and living room, with a couch and tv. There are two bedrooms and a bath. My room, with it's own bath, is attached to the rear of the house. There is no hot water in the house.
I believe that Alcides is a taxi driver, but I don't know for sure. This family is quite sweet, but also a bit more reserved. It's difficult to get a conversation going. Almost every family in Portrero has a student in their home. I will move out Sunday morning, and a new student will move in that night. My family is never without someone in their home. It's a business that is supporting the whole town. I imagine after a while you feel more like the owner of a hotel and less like a person opening your home as part of an exchange program.
In fairness, I also haven't put as much effort into getting to know this family. I am only there for a week. Tomorrow, I am moving into a B&B that the school uses for students. I decided to switch because I realized it would be my first opportunity since I moved out of my apartment in Dallas- and the last, for a while - to have my own room, my own space.
To get to know my Monteverde family, I had to spend hours in front of the television with them. (Watching TV is a cultural thing in Costa Rica.) But I have no desire to do that here. Class ends at noon, and usually I go to the beach or to a pool with Estelle, my classmate from France who currently lives in Switzerland. Estelle is tall, blonde, super cute, in her mid 30s. She is in the middle of changing jobs - from selling weapons to governments and other clients to working for a company that buys raw materials for pharmaceuticals. We pretend to other students that she doesn't speak English, and for this reason, I only speak Spanish with her. This is great practice. It's rare too. Most students speak English as soon as class is over.
# posted by Anne @ 8:28 AM 
