my weekend in el puro campo!

Hey everyone! Been about a week and a half or so since my last post, so here’s another one for you to enjoy, nice and long! :) My biggest news from last time is my trip to Guanacaste this past weekend with my host family (hence in part to the delay in posting), but allow me a couple minor topics I was going to write about anyway first!

Last Tuesday I was in my economics class talking to Carlitos (one of the program directors down here), and somehow we started talking about South Dakota. Apparently he’s been to Sioux Falls, and did some traveling around the state while he was there. He seemed to be a little surprised that so much open space existed in that part of the country (I’ve learned that when you say “rural U.S.” the Ticos tend to think of Texas fairly exclusively). Eventually we started talking about some of S.D.’s highlights, including Mount Rushmore, Sturgis, and of course Wall Drug! Carlitos learned about Sturgis via lack of hotel rooms when he was traveling around the black hills. He couldn’t believe how many bikers there were, and when he started telling my professor about the whole idea behind Sturgis, the prof gave me a look as if to say, “Is it really that crazy?” I told him I’ve never gone, but if the newspapers are any indication, then yes, I told him, it’s pretty loco. Carlitos agrees with me that Wall Drug’s advertising is one the most annoying aspects of the United States in general. “I really don’t care if they have 5¢ coffee, especially when they tell me every five minutes on the highway!!” He was amused, however, by the total lack of native South Dakotans working at Wall Drug (“Yes, we did end up going..” he admitted), and instead the montage of student workers, mostly internationals.

Over the past couple weeks I’ve had a much unexpected source of Costa Rican trivia education in the form of game show television – ¿Quién quiere ser millonario? ("Who wants to be a millionaire?"), Costa Rican style! They just started showing down here, and Jessica, Erick, and Eli are way into it. For those of you who have seen the show in the States, it’s basically the same thing here; it just lacks the English language and Regis Philbin. For those of you who haven’t seen it, contestants who come on the show basically answer a series of questions of supposedly increasing difficulty, the last question being worth a million dollars in the states – here the most you can win is 25 million colones (roughly $50 thousand). For me personally, the most notable thing about the show is the fact that an enormous percentage of the questions are based on Costa Rica-specific things, including the first few questions which are usually ridiculously easy. Not for me! Questions like “Who was the first Costa Rican to be nominated for a Nobel Prize?” and “Finish the lyrics of the following traditional Costa Rican lullaby. . .” keep me interested and educated! Occasionally there are questions which are very United States-based, and of course everyone expects me to know the answers (Jessica was surprised to learn that President Obama’s middle name is Hussein, for example).

The past two weeks have been pretty insane at school – not for homework or studying reasons, but rather because February 9th was the first official day of classes for the actual university here and as such all the local students are back. Unfortunately, disorganization is currently the daily theme, as it turns out to be impossibly difficult to make schedules that include classrooms with only one class in them at a time. I would like to not be so harsh, but it has been rather ridiculous. We have to ask in the USAC office before every single class where we need to go, and in many cases we end up having to move in the middle of class to another room because a class of Ticos is scheduled to use the room. One of my professors here has even said, loosely translated (read: he used more colorful language), that the guy in charge of scheduling in the university’s facilities is a “useless idiot.” Not that we let things like not having classrooms bring us down!

So, on to this weekend. Thursday was Jessica’s graduation, which I could not attend because there is limited seating for all the graduates and their families. Nevertheless we all went out for dinner after they got home, including Jeca’s boyfriend Daniel. Jessica was having a great day, fully enjoying the formal completion of her education at the University of Costa Rica. We got home around 9:30 that evening, and Eli told me we would be leaving at 4:00 the following morning. Why does all travel start so early around here??

We actually ended up leaving around 5:30. Same thing, right? Good thing, too, because I didn’t get out of bed until about 4:10. Whoops. Originally I thought it was going to be just Eli, Luis, and myself, but we ended up picking up a sister of Luis’s, Mayra, which was completely news to me. Mayra, Luis’s elder by a few years, is an extremely soft-spoken person, and to be honest I had a little difficulty understanding her all the time because I could barely hear her! Nevertheless, she’s very sweet and made a good travel companion. After picking her up at her house and giving a ride to her son to work, we headed off for Guanacaste, and I promptly went back to sleep in the backseat of the (new) car.

When I awoke, we were in Guanacaste – a Costa Rican landscape unlike any other I have yet seen. In many ways it reminded me of central-western South Dakota, with some wide-open plains and long flowing grasses (very brown and dried due to the lack of rain in this season). In other times, some of it, including scattered mountain “micro-ranges,” oddly shaped trees, and other interesting vegetation, reminded me of landscapes I’d only seen on TV in programs about Africa. Dakota, Africa…a strange combination, I realize, but you’d just have to see it. Eli of course was very excited the whole time, very happy to be in her home country. Although she’s been in the Heredia San Rafael-San Pablo area for many years now, she still considers Guanacaste home. The whole weekend was very much a nostalgia-fest for her, and she was all too eager to explain to me the intricacies of each and every plant, animal, building, and basically everything else in sight of which she had any knowledge.

After stopping in the city of Nicoya to pick up some groceries for the weekend, we headed to Eli’s sister Flor’s house, way out in the middle of nowhere between a few hills that separate civilization from, well, Flor (flor is the Spanish word for “flower”). Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean that in a pejorative way, but it is just very separated from all things modern. This of course did not bother me in the least, as I had brought a few good books and a healthy curiosity in the campesino (rural folk) lifestyle and landscape. The toilet and shower, for example, are in separate shacks behind the house and the shower actually has no door but rather a piece of sheet metal that one simply places in the “doorway” when bathing. Eli and her sister were of course sincerely worried that I would be bored in Flor’s quaint home for the next few days, and after the second time Eli asked me if this was the case I very frankly told her (in order to avoid a four-day barrage of the same concern) that I do not bore easily and I was perfectly content to spend a tranquil weekend without internet or television in the beautiful land of her childhood; she did not ask again.

The weekend did in fact play out very quietly. I spent many hours in the shade in front of Flor’s house reading either my Bible or Les Misérables (which I finished on Monday – best book I’ve ever read; I highly recommend it to everyone reading this blog!). Though of course the human company I kept was more than sufficient (including much more extended family of Eli’s), I also had quite a zoo to keep me company, as roosters, cats, dogs, and a small parrot that never shut up roam freely about the property. Their dog in particular, Oso (“bear”), befriended me quickly and I spent about half the weekend petting him. The family that I met over the course of the weekend was innumerable – Eli’s mother had 15 children, and as such Eli herself has roughly 87 nieces and nephews, most with children of their own. Having met only a fraction of these, I was fairly confused most of the weekend and could never quite keep straight whose sister was the mother of whose cousin, etc etc. At the very least, I got plenty of names down, and pretty much everyone I met this weekend was extremely nice. I suppose my only complaint would be that a combination of culture (which is indifferent regarding speaking in third person about someone in the room) and my being a North American (which leads to assumptions that I don’t speak Spanish) gave way to many situations in which people asked Luis, Eli, or Mayra about me even if I were right in front of them. I more or less got used to it, though, so no worries.

On Saturday Luis and I hiked up a large hill near Flor’s place which has many fields (mostly for grazing) strewn about it and is where Eli was born and raised. Eli herself was visiting more family and friends at the time and didn’t feel up to the climb anyway. I’ve very rarely spent any time at all with Luis alone, and so this was a good experience. He showed me many things along the way, including a few birds I’d never seen before and some fruits which were even more foreign (some of which we ate along the trail). When we reached the summit, we sat down for a half hour or so on the hillside, predominantly in silence, and simply enjoyed the view towards the other side (opposite Flor’s) of the hill/mountain. After hiking back down we joined Eli at an old friend’s house and chatted about all that had happened in the lives of everyone since Eli had last traveled to this area (six years ago).

Saturday was actually Eli’s 51st birthday, although between the two of us we continue maintaining the idea that she is half that old. We had a cake that evening, and many of the nieces, nephews, and I’m not sure how the others were related came over to help us celebrate (and eat the cake). The following morning we went to church around 10:30, joining Flor’s very small, friendly, and rural congregation for a very long, hot, yet enjoyable service. That afternoon we left for the town of Dulce Nombre (“Sweet Name,” which Luis and I had seen from the hilltop the day before) where more of Eli’s family lives. More family catching up, more friendly people to meet. Monday morning we had a good breakfast, spent some more time at Eli’s nephew Marvin’s house, including riding their horses, and then left to head back to Heredia. Luis repeated a few times how nice it was that I didn’t have classes Monday, because this was the last weekend before classes started at most elementary and high schools nationwide, and as such many families were spending it in Guanacaste and driving back in the general direction of San José Sunday afternoon would have been a nightmare.

And so here I am, back in the city after an immensely refreshing weekend el puro campo (“the pure country,” or rather, “the truly rural land”). After only three days of classes I’ll be heading out this Friday (wow, that came fast!!) for Nicaragua with Ashley and Ashley. Please excuse in advance the lack of blog post for at least two weeks, because I won’t be back in Heredia after Friday until Monday the 2nd. Please pray for our safe travels as we explore the lands of our northern neighbors! I’ll give you a full report when I get back, I promise. Thanks so much for keeping up with me. As always, I’d love to hear from you all. I realize that the pictures at the top of the blog have not changed in ages, and if they are not new by the time you read this blog they should be soon.

God bless!