Here are a few more pictures for the visually starved. The ones you see of me with the funky hat are from this last Monday, the 15th, which is the equivalent to our Fourth of July celebration. ¨El quince de setiembre¨is the official day of independence for Costa Rica. We watched the ¨desfiles¨ or parades of kids from the local colegios drum their hearts out for about 2 hours... band after band after band of kids drumming. Yeah. Anywho, the top one is of me, my classmate Rachel from Wheaton College, her mama Lorena who is quite hilarious, and of course mi hermana Carmen. The lower of the two is me, mi papa Don Mario, and Carmen. We decided to make a quick ¨trueque¨of styles... I rocked his hat for about half an hour as he proudly wore my youthful lid for awhile. It made for a good picture. The other two are from a while back, mi mama and Carmen at the church after the service and the other is of some street art right outside the Museo de Los Niños. There it is...
My apologies for not being prompt in keeping this thing updated. It´s been a hell of a week, if i may. I guess we should back up to last weekend. For our first trip together as a group outside of San Jóse, we made the journey last Friday cross country (all 2 1/2 hours worth) to the port city of Limón. The main focus of the trip was to explore the relationship between racism, discrimination, and poverty which was to be elaborated upon in an essay, which we turned in two days ago. Our primary task was to conduct at least 3 interviews with ciudadanos of Limón, especially those from African descent, which Limón has about 50% of the Afro population in Costa Rica. However, the excursion definitely was not all work and no play. I mean c´mon people, we´re in Costa Rica :) So following a rather busy and tiring Friday, we made for the beach on Saturday and spent most of the day body surfing the waves and soaking up the sun. It was a much needed and much appreciated mental rest (for the most part) from the constant grind of thinking, doing, living, and being in a whole new world where everything is a process. It was nice to just ¨be¨for a while. Both nights in Limón, many of us went out dancing, which turned out to be quite an experience. Not only is dancing fun, it´s seems to be a necessity life in Latin culture if you´re gonna be a well-rounded individual. I brushed up, with a little help from my friends, on my mad salsa skills, a little merengue, and of course just some straight up crunk with a reggatone twist. It was tight. No, i didn´t take any pictures, but we all seemed to agree we need to go back. Definitely one of the highlights so far.
Upon returning to reality once again, the week suddenly began with independence festivities on Monday. Tuesday we all went to the US Embassy and got the US perspective on CAFTA, a free trade policy between certain Latin American countries and the US which most Costa Ricans have no support for. Extremely boring, yet somehow mildly interesting simultaneously. Moving on... Thursday we had the pleasure of hearing from Oton Solís, the Costa Rican presidential candidate who was narrowly defeated during the last election and is projected to win next time around. He came and spoke to us for about 2 hours about the Latin American perspective regarding CAFTA. Great man with strong, competent convictions about the state of his country. Definitely would make a fine president, especially in Costa Rica. This week also contained our daily, 4 hour Spanish classes as well as the brutal task of knocking out two rather lengthy essays regarding poverty, race, and Costa Rica culture, both due during these last two days of the week. Let´s just say TGIF.
Other than that, the same old struggles remain. Speaking and trying to converse in another language is hard. Really hard. Most of the time, it´s impossible to understand mi mama. She speaks at an ungodly rate as it is, and if that isn´t challenge enough, sounds as though she constantly has pudding in her mouth. Every few days I have stretches of comprehension with her, but most of the time it takes a few attempts to get her gyst. Breakthroughs. Walls. Dark tunnels. Open fields with flowers... sometimes. I sincerely love my family and we have already had some epic times together... haha, epic times. But it´s definitely clear that this is one long roller coaster. And I know we´ve just barely conquered the first big dropoff. There´s many more to come, this I know. My best attempt to describe my current state might be this... I´m in a straight-jacket, my mouth is covered by duct tape, my ears have too much wax in them, and my feet are in a gunny sack. And i´m trying to punch, yell, comprehend, and run all at the same time... and I can´t. One word might narrow it even a bit more. Paralysis. Sometimes, this word defines my state of being. But, sooner or later, I´m confident one thing will break free, and i´ll find some feeling again. Another noose will be loosened, and then another, and another.... As cloudy as it may seem sometimes, I still can see the brightness of another Reality in it all. I´m fighting to get free... but I´m not fighting alone.
I got sick for the first time. Nothing big, but just enough to make me think I may have caught some Caribbean-tired-and-more-tired sickness. Saturday night, I went to a real life, legitimate, once in a lifetime opportunity, Central American fútbol game. One word. Epic. Okay… maybe two words. Epic and rowdy. Let me explain. Prior to the game, I was patted down by a member of the fuerza publica (the police) for anything made of a hard substance; loose change, cell phones, cameras, pencils, rocks, whatever…. apparently they’ve had trouble in the past because overimpassioned fans have thrown objects at opposing teams’ players and have drawn blood on separate occasions, especially with the loose change. So basically, all you can take inside the stadium is your ticket (oh yeah, one of our classmates got his front pocket picked). So of course, we bought the cheapest tickets possible, thus our reward was standing in the most incredibly enthusiastic, marijuana smoking, anthem singing, rowdy section. I couldn´t have hoped for more. Throughout the course of the game, I heard and involuntarily memorized just about every Spanish swear word as well as a some Saprissa fight songs that filled the night with variety and unrelenting passion. Ten seconds after one song would subside, a new one would commence, more than often accompanied with drum blasts and bleacher bounding. Meanwhile, about every 30 seconds, our entire section would flip off the opposing teams´ players and fan section clear across the stadium. At one point in the game, dozens of Saprissa fans shot off about 6 rounds of roman candles and an allotment of different fireworks. Just because. I don’t know how they managed to smuggle them through police patdown, but they did. A lot of them did. We also threw hundreds of paper rolls, which turn into streamers once thrown into the air, onto the opposing team´s goal before the game started. Yeah... epic. En resumen (in summary), we thoroughly experienced 2 hours of genuine Costa Rican culture, donning Saprissa jerseys we bought for 6 bucks right before the game. Immediately after, only our rowdy section was required to wait for 45 minutes inside the stadium until all the opposing teams’ fans exited. Knife and rage fights break out routinely after games such as this, so apparently this was a new precautionary tactic. Nice. Besides inhaling marijuana smoke all game while being ill in the pouring rain, it was definitely “vale la pena”. Definitely worth the pain.
