Meeemoooorieeeeeees

Well geez louise, dios mio, mon dieu! It has been quite a while since I last wrote anything and while thoughts which could be the beginning of a blog entry scroll through my mind daily, I just haven’t really had the energy or oomph needed to sit down and write something.

Here is something rather simple. While I was in Costa Rica, I jotted down memories whenever something funny, silly, frustrating or generally interesting happened. A list of a few of my favorite memories.

One day while napping, I am awoken by really loud sneezing. I hear 15 sneezes (in a row. No really, fif-yesfif-teen sneezes.). Nice, juicy, clearly spewing, not covering your mouth sneezes. They’re my host brother, and I think to myself, well at least this kid doesn’t cook the food. I wake up, go to the bathroom and go to the kitchen, to see my host brother chopping a big papaya. (I have never seen him cook before, but I figure post quintuple spewing sneeze is a good time to start.) Luckily, I later learn that he is chopping papaya to sell for a school fundraiser. Phew! Mucus and phlegm to the money-donating Samaritans and not to me!

One of the last days I was in the house, my host dad comes up to me, looks me straight in the eyes and motions like he’s going to tell me a really big secret. “Coqueta es capaz de comer una persona,” he whispers. Coqueta, his beloved dog, is capable of eating a person. Good to know.

When we went to the Festival Internacional de Las Artes, we went to Alajuela, a city about 30 minutes away dubbed the City of Mangoes. There was a huge statue of Juan Santa Maria, the hero of Costa Rica who fought against Mr. Crazy-cray, William Walker. There was something peculiar about what he was holding…a bouquet of ….flowers? I asked Juan Carlos why the national hero of Costa Rica for whom the airport is named and a national holiday is celebrated, is waving a bouquet of flowers. He informed me it was a torch. Oh. I knew that.

During one of my first few days in Heredia, we had orientation. A Tico grad student was giving us a tour and I asked him a really random question. “Do you ever have those moments where you wonder if what you think is reality, is really just a dream? And that all we know isn’t actually real?” Right after that came out, I sort of thought, well, I don’t know if that even makes sense in Spanish and secondly, if he did understand it, he probably thinks I’m a crazy-cray. Instead, he goes, “Of course, all the time. How beautiful.”

In Nicaragua, on our first full day there during Semana Santa / spring break, we were riding a
bus to the lagoon. A uber duper drunk man stumbles onto the bus (which was decorated with stickers of school boys looking up the skirts of busty women on the stairs) with a nearly empty bottle of liquor in his hand. He shuffles around in his pocket to find his pay. Instead of money or coins, he pulls out a handful of blue candies and, with a toothy smile, shoves them at the man who collects bus fares as his pay. “Ya estoy gordo,” replies the guard. I’m already fat enough.

When Kristin and I went to Upala to visit Diego’s family, we were really close to the Nicaraguan border up there and some of the relatives were leaving on bikes to go on a hefty ride to Lake Nicaragua. Mauricio, Diego’s little brother, said goodbye to them, “Que dios le vaya, porque yo no.” In Costa Rica, lots of people say, May God go with you. Mauricio added a little bit, May God go with you….’cause I won’t.”

A few different times, my host mom made (Costa Rican) ‘arepas’, sort of like, or really really similar to pancakes. She insisted that they’re different from ‘panqueques’ because you add sugar before you cook them instead of maple syrup. She liked to knock on my door and surprise me with a snack, and one day, she knocked and said that she had just made homemade arepas. Yaaay! They were very good, but I did see some opened Aunt Jemima pancake mix sitting on the counter. Very homemade. :)

My host dad wasn’t home a lot. A lot of the time, he was at his farm during the week and came home during the weekend. The last week I was in Costa Rica, my host dad stayed home. One day he even made me lunch when my host mom had a doctor’s appointment. Four boiled hot dogs, raw cabbage, a big pile of tortillas, and big blobs of ketchup and mayo. Mmmm, mmmm good.

In Panama, Amanda and I made amigos with some guys from Texas from our hostel. Our hostel was amaaazing, and had an awesome common area where people hung out and watched movies. We watched some cheesy movie with Keanu Reeves about surfing. In the end, Keanu Reeves tells the felon to go surf to his death... in Spanish. He says, go with God except in absolutely horrible Spanish in the acting style of Keanu Reeves: bad. "Va-yuh con Dee-ohs." One of our Texan hispanic hostelmates goes, that's the best fucking Spanish I've ever heard!"

When Amanda and I went to Montezuma, we were climbing to the waterfalls when I saw some giant ants on the path. "Siafu, big damn ants," I said. I was quoting the new Indiana Jones movie that we had just seen, from the scene when Harrison Ford finds huge, flesh eating ants. I felt a huge sting, looked down and saw ants running around the holes in my keens, happily biting my flesh away and I start screaming bloody (expletives) murder. Amanda, who is in the clear, watches me and says, "Uh, Erin. you're still standing in ants. " I spent the rest of the afternoon soaking my feet in the cool water of the Montezuma cataratas.