Estoy Aqui!!! - January 9, 2011

Costa Rica Blog 08/01/2011

Estoy aqui!! Right now, I am sitting on my bed in my room with my orientation host family  trying to comprehend the misplaced juxtaposition of life that seems to define what I have seen of Costa Rica.  The fancy exercise bike (that I happen to share my room with...it lets me be the little spoon) sits just below a water stained ceiling with a single unprotected lightbulb dangling from a loose wire below it (mmmm safe!).  The sound of the flatscreen TV in my temporary host parents bedroom(they are watching Family Guy right now...Pedro Griffin sounds pretty funny in Spanish!)  is complimented by the cacophany of roosters, chickens, and barking stray dogs right outside my window. The kitchen has a microwave, oven, hot running water, and a fridge, but we eat all of our meals outside, surrounded by a canopy of exotic trees and clothes drying on the clothes line.  "Interesante" is the unica palabra to describir my vida aqui (just showing off some of my Spanglish skills!).
So, for the first month or so we have orientation in a town called Orosi, which is about an hour and a half outside of San Jose.  I was welcomed to Costa Rica just past the customs booth at the airport by a big cardboard cutout of a VERY creepy and disconcertingly happy looking guy holding a sign that basically translated to "Remember, sex in Costa Rica with people under 18 is illegal!".  It wasn't quite the Costa Rican beauty in a swimsuit holding a bowl of freshly cut mangos in one hand and a cold cerveza in the other for me that I, and I can only assume the other volunteers naturally expected, but it did indicate to me that I was about to explore life in a very interesting culture.
   Though we literally spent only 16 hours in San Jose, I was already glad to leave and head into a quieter and more rural part of the country.  Again, Costa Rica feels like a world of unlikely contrasts, and the dirty streets and barbed wire protected casas of San Jose didn't quite match up with the surreal picturesque beauty of its surrounding mountains.  I'm glad I am now in those mountains!  However, given that we really only explored the lines at the different immigration offices, I would like to travel back to the city with some locals at some point to explore more of what it has to offer.
My host family has been extremely accomadating to me which has been really nice during this transition, but they haven't extended that much warmth and friendliness to me, so my time in the house can be lonely and they seem to spend most of their time just hanging around the house.  They speak zero English and I have actually been very pleasantly surprised by my abilities to communicate with them thus far.     My mom, Marta, cooks and cleans the house all day and doesn't speak much to me, but she makes a killer gallopinto (rice and beans, the staple of a Tico diet).  I would like to get to know her better, but striking up conversation has been hard so far because I usually just get a simple answer to all of my questions and then the conversation stops.  I also have a 28 year old host brother named Guillermo who is out of the house most of the time with his girlfriend and a 22 year old host sister who seems really shy.  My host dad, Orlando, has been the most outgoing and has been really patient with my currently very small, but growing proficiency in Spanish. I have also been having trouble keeping track of who is who in the extended family as tons of people are always coming in an out of the house.  I was soooo positive that I finally deduced who were brother and sister, but then they started making out and I realized that either I'm wrong, or Costa Rica is a liiiiittle more liberal than I expected. Though the family keeps to themselves and right now I feel much more like a random guest who happens to live in their house than a welcomed temporary addition to the family, one of my major goals of the next month is to try to break through the anguage/culture barrier and connect to them in a deeper way and really get to know them.   However, with all that said regarding the Sanchez family's reclusivity, I did have quite an amazing experience with them last night...
I was talking with Orlando on the porch yesterday right after they picked me up and was able to decipher in our conversation that someone in the family had recently died.  I shared my condolences and really wished that I knew more Spanish, both so I could really understand the details of what he was saying and so I could extend to him more than just, "Lo siento, lo siento.  Mi corazon es con tu familia".  So then, about an hour later, Orlando asked me if I wanted to join them.  I was about 20% sure that he was inviting me to dinner, but in the spirit of maintaining solidarity with one of my resolutions to do anything that a Tico friend invites me to, of course I said yes.  As we were walking down the street, I realized we definitely weren't going to dinner, but since I had already agreed to join, I didn't want to then ask "uhhh..a donde vamos??".  We showed up at a tiny tiny house with about 50 people shoved in like sardines, all of whom were surrounding an ornately decorated table, covered in flowers and a picture of a Jesus and I realized that we were at the memorial service for the lost loved one.  Still today, I do not know who died, as it seemed inappropriate to ask at the service and Orlando had already told me.  I'm realizing that if I really want to learn this language though and get the most from this year, I'm going to have to let go a little more of my apprehensions when it comes to looking stupid and not be afraid to learn what I want to learn, even if I have already been told and just didn't understand.   Anyway, the oration was amazing and I definitely had some moments where I had to ask myself, "Where am I?? Whaaaaaaaaaat am I doing".  For about an hour straight, all 40 or 50 so members (none of whom speak any English) of this massive family chanted the same short passage from the bible over and over and over again in typical ridiculously fast Spanish.  All I could make out was, "Santa Maria"...I'm not going to lie...it took me the first 7 or 8 times they said it for me to realize that they were talking about Saint Mary and not the boat that the pilgrims used to come to America.  I think I need more sleep.  The 6 of us (including Guillermo's girlfriend) left the service around 9pm and came back to the casa to chat and drink coffee.  Though I mostly sat there in bewilderment as the 5 of them laughed and talked too quickly for me to understand, it at some point came up that Orlando plays guitar and I mention that I like to sing.  Next thing I know, Orlando whips out a guitar and the brother tells me to sing.  After a long two days of traveling, confusion, nervousness, and immigration lines, I went to bed feeling pretty darn good after a night filled with new experiences that ended with me singing "Yesterday" by the Beatles as my new host father played some Spanish guitar.  Goal number 2 of my time in Orosi is to get Orlando to give me some lessons!
In many ways, and by many, I mean almost all ways, orientation thus far has felt a lot like summer camp.  This morning, all of the volunteers and their host families met on the field in town for some outdoor games like balloon toss and tug of war.  Unfortunately, my family didn't join:-(.  I was a little worried I would be the only volunteer flying solo, but it was actually a really nice opportunity to get to know the other volunteer's families and play with the little kids, as there are none in my house.  The volunteers all seem really cool and are all in their 20s and 30s so I think it will be a good month of bonding with them, but the best part of the day was when I decided to stay on the field after everyone left and try to mingle with the locals.  I brought a frisbee with me and a friendly toss with some local teenagers blossomed almost instantly...it was really fun but there was one flaw to my plan when it came to frisbee and meeting new people: you are standing really far away from them!  We played for about 20 minutes and then they left, but there were these three kids playing soccer who came up to me and wanted to learn frisbee, so for the next two hours we talked and laughed and made jokes and I tried, slightly successfully, to teach them to throw a frisbee.  One of the kids was named Marcos, who is 13, and we were bragging how we were "nombre hermanos".  The other two were named Oscar, who was 7, and Carles who was 11.  I actually felt really confident in my Spanish talking to Carles and Marcos and learned that they love America because we have Metallica and the girls have big boobies.  How refreshing to see that the true American ideals and values have made it to Costa Rica!...yikes.  I think the two hours that I speng hanging with those kids speaking only Spanish and pretending to fight like Jackie Chan and sing songs by Guns N' Roses has been my favorite time so far, plus it got me really excited to go to my placement and have 25 kids to teach and hang out with!  I realize that this is an absurdly long post for only two days of action, but I wanted to start it off right!  Thanks so much for reading and I can guarantee future posts to look forward to!!  In the meantime, I think I can confidently say that two days ago, we were just a group of awkward, loud, confused gringos y gringas who spoke barely any Spanish, but now we have transformed, like a timid caterpiller into a proud and majestic butterfly, into a group of awkward, loud, confused gringos y gringas who speak a little Spanish.