For the benefit of my parents
I'm coming home in three weeks and change and every time I leave and then come back, my mom (and, to be fair, my father also) asks me what I've missed most (largely concerning food, around which my life generally revolves) so that she can provide it. Yeah, I know, it's the life. And my answer is usually, "Er...um...I like lasagna!" And that's all I can ever come up with on short notice. Suffice to say, most of my homecomings involve lasagna, as those of you who have ever come home with me can attest. But I digress...I've decided to compile a list of all those things that I have missed (edibles and otherwise) while being abroad. For my mother. For my father. For the fun of it. And because, I'm genuinely curious to see what shows up.
The List (in no particular order, with the exception of item number one):
1. People
2. Cell phone service: it makes me a little sick to admit it, but it's true
3. Lasagna
4. Black tea with cream and sugar
5. Coffee shops
6. Good well water
7. Ice cream!
8. Frisbees
9. Broccoli and cauliflower: steamed, please. With cheese.
10. Cheese!
11. Juice!
12. My shoes
13. Mexican tacos
14. Driving
15. The luxury of spontaneity
16. My dog
17. Laying in thick, green grass
18. Being outside at night
19. Cool weather
20. People pronouncing my name in English. And spelling it with an 'h.'
21. My bed
22. The SciFi, History and Discovery channels
23. Grilled anything (well, not quite...)
24. Sarcasm
25. Nerds
26. Hot water
27. Carpet
28. Whole wheat bread
29. Good Sandwiches
30. Milkshakes
31. Going barefoot
32. NPR
33. Rivers
34. Milk!
35. Peas. Not from a can.
36. My shampoo
37. Stars
38. Swing Dancing
39. Reliable internet
40. The clothes at home that aren't falling apart like the ones here
41. Seattle
42. Portland
43. Bookstores with selection
44. Fresh mushrooms!
45. Mystery pasta
46. Rosemary chicken
47. Gyros
48. Good oriental food
49. Serving myself
50. Decent speakers
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Friday, May 22, 2009
The Afterlife
I've been going to write something about reaching the one month mark for a few days now. It just hasn't happened for one reason or another. Now that I've sat down to finally write something, someone will probably call me. I might just have to tell them to go away. Anyway.
As I sit here looking at the 28 days, sprawling on the calendar before me, I can't help but think of how quickly February went by. Over the last few months I've spoken to a lot of people and the predominant message I have passed on has been, "I miss you and I can't wait to come home!" because, right then, caught up in the joy of talking to someone I haven't seen in months or the frustration of one foreign difficulty or another, it's the truth. However, right now I find myself very torn.
On one hand, I cannot wait to go home. I am ready for a change. My host family has been great but I think we're beginning to wear on each other's nerves, at least my father and I (we don't seem to interpret each other's indirect speech acts very well) and I've run into what every college student runs into after living on their own for a while and then coming home. Except with a new family that has more rules than I've lived with since before I was ten. Mom, Dad, I love you.
On the other hand, which I periodically find waving up and down in a frantic attempt to be noticed, I am not done here. I have so much more to learn. The problem with learning a language is that the more time you spend learning it and the better you get, the harder it becomes to continue studying in your original home. I feel like I've just recently become really comfortable with a lot of different situations and now (for rather distant values of 'now') I'm leaving. That can be explained away and justified in about ten different ways, so in truth, no vale nada, pero asi es.
I have also been thinking about what it will be like coming home. The more I think about it, the more I really don't know what to expect and the more it begins to seem almost more foreign than coming to Costa Rica. When I came down here, I had left the states to spend various amounts of time in Spanish speaking countries on several occasions. I knew roughly what to expect. I have never returned home after five months studying abroad. Most of the time I've been down here, the actual reality of the prospect of returning to a life that I've, in some ways, abandoned for five months, was overshadowed by the excitement of seeing all those people that I had likewise abandoned. Suddenly, I'm realizing that there will be more than happy reunions and a resurgence of juice in my diet, and that I'm not sure what that "more" will entail.
I do know there will be a long, hot, steamy shower and sleeping past 8:00 for the first time in four months...and I'm pretty excited.
As I sit here looking at the 28 days, sprawling on the calendar before me, I can't help but think of how quickly February went by. Over the last few months I've spoken to a lot of people and the predominant message I have passed on has been, "I miss you and I can't wait to come home!" because, right then, caught up in the joy of talking to someone I haven't seen in months or the frustration of one foreign difficulty or another, it's the truth. However, right now I find myself very torn.
On one hand, I cannot wait to go home. I am ready for a change. My host family has been great but I think we're beginning to wear on each other's nerves, at least my father and I (we don't seem to interpret each other's indirect speech acts very well) and I've run into what every college student runs into after living on their own for a while and then coming home. Except with a new family that has more rules than I've lived with since before I was ten. Mom, Dad, I love you.
On the other hand, which I periodically find waving up and down in a frantic attempt to be noticed, I am not done here. I have so much more to learn. The problem with learning a language is that the more time you spend learning it and the better you get, the harder it becomes to continue studying in your original home. I feel like I've just recently become really comfortable with a lot of different situations and now (for rather distant values of 'now') I'm leaving. That can be explained away and justified in about ten different ways, so in truth, no vale nada, pero asi es.
I have also been thinking about what it will be like coming home. The more I think about it, the more I really don't know what to expect and the more it begins to seem almost more foreign than coming to Costa Rica. When I came down here, I had left the states to spend various amounts of time in Spanish speaking countries on several occasions. I knew roughly what to expect. I have never returned home after five months studying abroad. Most of the time I've been down here, the actual reality of the prospect of returning to a life that I've, in some ways, abandoned for five months, was overshadowed by the excitement of seeing all those people that I had likewise abandoned. Suddenly, I'm realizing that there will be more than happy reunions and a resurgence of juice in my diet, and that I'm not sure what that "more" will entail.
I do know there will be a long, hot, steamy shower and sleeping past 8:00 for the first time in four months...and I'm pretty excited.
Monday, May 11, 2009
The Good Stuff
Remember the ziplines? Post #1, January 20th, "First Steps," crazy justification for going to Costa Rica? Yeah, that.
Guess what!
I did it!
Over a week ago, actually, but unfortunately I had neither the energy nor the mindset to properly describe the amazing experience right after I had it. I was fully occupied with blowing my nose, sneezing, sleeping, running to every pharmacy in Heredia and whining about it. But now I'm back.
So the story goes... as bookends to my crummy week of sickness, I had, what may be, two of my favorite experiences in Costa Rica. Last weekend I found myself (finally!) in the mountains of Monteverde with three compatriots from my Spanish class, sorting through the mountain of flyers, brochures, pamphlets, and trying to find the ideal zipline experience.
But first, a word about Monteverde: Monteverde is located to the north east of San Jose, reachable only by dirt roads (which its residents have fervently fought to keep from being paved) and is home to the Monteverde and Santa Elena Rainforest Reserves. These reserves protect the Monteverde cloud rainforest. Monteverde as a settlement was actually founded by a group of Quaker immigrants who settled and started making cheese. To this day, Monteverde dairy products are still some of the best in the country (if not the best) and the Quakers are still there, but apparently don't get out and about much.
The town itself lives almost purely off of tourism. It's a painful paradox, arriving in order to see some of the most beautiful, natural Tico landscape and being forced to buy into the huge tourism industry. On the other hand, it is precisely this tourism that keeps the reserves looking like forest instead of parking lots.
I felt kind of bad because I had come precisely to dribble my meager student budget into the coffers of tourism (some day I'll get over my distinct, largely irrational, loathing of this) but at the same time...ziplines! Your options for adventure activities in the Monteverde area are overwhelmingly numerous and range in price from "two hairs" to "arm, leg, neck and your first born child." All I can say is, thank goodness for student discounts.
After sifting through the options, myself and two of my friends finally settled on investing in a night hike and we managed to pick out which "canopy tour" company we wanted to go with. "Canopy tour" is a silly name. Zooming through the trees and across valleys on a cable is not a tour through the canopy. Worth the thirty bucks I paid? Definitely. Deserving of the lable placed on it? No.
The night hike was okay. We saw some glowing bugs, a great big tarantula, some sleeping birds... nothing that blew my mind but it was fun in it's way.
Ziplining was every bit as cool as I had anticipated. There were over 14 cables strung out across an entire valley, one of which was over a kilometer long and sent you zooming across at a height of over 500 feet. Quite simply put, it was one of the coolest things I've ever done and I can probably leave Costa Rica happy, now. Or something like that.
Unfortunately, as a result of schedule constraints, that's about all there is to tell about Monteverde (well, at least with respect to what actually, ever gets posted here...I can natter on forever).
As for the other awesome event, Saturday I went on a tour of a coffee coop and coffee farm. The prior being bland, dry, almost interesting but mostly boring. The latter saved the trip as we got to meet Don Arturo, the passionate, charismatic, politically minded owner of a small coffee farm who fed us well, chatted us up and invited us to come back again. It was one of those beautiful experiences that defies brief description.
He also has a crazy dream of taking a group of people from his community, backpacking through the Costa Rican mountains down to the coast while teaching natural history and English. He's looking for teachers. He asked if I would be interested. "Oh my God, please, please, please, I'd love to!" seemed a bit of a strong answer. So I just gave him my email.
Life, eh?
Guess what!
I did it!
Over a week ago, actually, but unfortunately I had neither the energy nor the mindset to properly describe the amazing experience right after I had it. I was fully occupied with blowing my nose, sneezing, sleeping, running to every pharmacy in Heredia and whining about it. But now I'm back.
So the story goes... as bookends to my crummy week of sickness, I had, what may be, two of my favorite experiences in Costa Rica. Last weekend I found myself (finally!) in the mountains of Monteverde with three compatriots from my Spanish class, sorting through the mountain of flyers, brochures, pamphlets, and trying to find the ideal zipline experience.
But first, a word about Monteverde: Monteverde is located to the north east of San Jose, reachable only by dirt roads (which its residents have fervently fought to keep from being paved) and is home to the Monteverde and Santa Elena Rainforest Reserves. These reserves protect the Monteverde cloud rainforest. Monteverde as a settlement was actually founded by a group of Quaker immigrants who settled and started making cheese. To this day, Monteverde dairy products are still some of the best in the country (if not the best) and the Quakers are still there, but apparently don't get out and about much.
The town itself lives almost purely off of tourism. It's a painful paradox, arriving in order to see some of the most beautiful, natural Tico landscape and being forced to buy into the huge tourism industry. On the other hand, it is precisely this tourism that keeps the reserves looking like forest instead of parking lots.
I felt kind of bad because I had come precisely to dribble my meager student budget into the coffers of tourism (some day I'll get over my distinct, largely irrational, loathing of this) but at the same time...ziplines! Your options for adventure activities in the Monteverde area are overwhelmingly numerous and range in price from "two hairs" to "arm, leg, neck and your first born child." All I can say is, thank goodness for student discounts.
After sifting through the options, myself and two of my friends finally settled on investing in a night hike and we managed to pick out which "canopy tour" company we wanted to go with. "Canopy tour" is a silly name. Zooming through the trees and across valleys on a cable is not a tour through the canopy. Worth the thirty bucks I paid? Definitely. Deserving of the lable placed on it? No.
The night hike was okay. We saw some glowing bugs, a great big tarantula, some sleeping birds... nothing that blew my mind but it was fun in it's way.
Ziplining was every bit as cool as I had anticipated. There were over 14 cables strung out across an entire valley, one of which was over a kilometer long and sent you zooming across at a height of over 500 feet. Quite simply put, it was one of the coolest things I've ever done and I can probably leave Costa Rica happy, now. Or something like that.
Unfortunately, as a result of schedule constraints, that's about all there is to tell about Monteverde (well, at least with respect to what actually, ever gets posted here...I can natter on forever).
As for the other awesome event, Saturday I went on a tour of a coffee coop and coffee farm. The prior being bland, dry, almost interesting but mostly boring. The latter saved the trip as we got to meet Don Arturo, the passionate, charismatic, politically minded owner of a small coffee farm who fed us well, chatted us up and invited us to come back again. It was one of those beautiful experiences that defies brief description.
He also has a crazy dream of taking a group of people from his community, backpacking through the Costa Rican mountains down to the coast while teaching natural history and English. He's looking for teachers. He asked if I would be interested. "Oh my God, please, please, please, I'd love to!" seemed a bit of a strong answer. So I just gave him my email.
Life, eh?
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Two Days Rest
Well, it has been my dubious privilege to be living in Costa Rica during the outbreak of the swine flu. Even better, I managed to snag myself the amazing cultural experience of getting sick in Central America while a potential pandemic thinks casually about sweeping the globe (very casually, it seems to have not even gotten up and had its morning coffee yet...). Regardless, I woke up Monday morning feeling as though I'd spent the weekend backpacking through the jungle sans sleep (which I hadn't) and with a throat lined with something akin to sand paper. The weather here has just turned and the rainy season will soon be fully upon us so I figured it was a good chance it was just allergies. I didn't want to overly alarm my host family so I didn't mention anything until I was sure I was coming down with a cold.
In the intervening three-ish days, I have contracted your good, old, garden-variety, stick-it-out-til-you're-better cold. My usual response being: force fluids, sleep lots and take more hot, steamy showers than you can count so just maybe my defective sinuses will not become infected. But there's a wannabe pandemic on the loose so instead, to ease the worry of my families everywhere, I got to do the run-around with the University's health department. What fun.
You cannot make an appointment via the phone. You must show up, in person, ID in hand, as early as possible and hope that you're close enough to the front of the line that they're are still available appointments that day. And if there's not, well, sorry, come back earlier tomorrow. Tuesday morning didn't work, they were full. Got up at six o'clock this morning, made it down there by seven and finally got in to see someone at nine. Once you're in, it's a quicky easy process, but I'm thanking my lucky stars that I don't have something really bad, because otherwise it would have been a truly miserable morning sitting around waiting to talk to someone.
All said and done, yep, just a cold. The doctor sent me off for some of the usual cold drugs and literally wrote me a prescription for two days rest which I'm to present to my professors. Actually, that part struck me as sort of cool. Where I would have stumbled my way through classes because, well, "I'm not that sick," it gives me a chance to actually: Stop. Do nothing. And... wait for it... get better. Which, when you think about it, is not something the North American culture is really so great at.
Anyway, I'm now sitting at home, feeling the congestion in my sinuses slowly increase and dreaming longingly of a hot shower. Due to some interesting mechanical complications, my shower is not cold, but neither would I call it lukewarm. On the bright side, I have almost four boxes of tea, courtesy of my mother and boyfriend which will definitely be pulling their weight in the next few days.
Also, my apologies for any poor grammar, hispanicisms or other brain slips. I'm not entirely on top of my game right now. I have a doctor's note if you'd like to see it.
In the intervening three-ish days, I have contracted your good, old, garden-variety, stick-it-out-til-you're-better cold. My usual response being: force fluids, sleep lots and take more hot, steamy showers than you can count so just maybe my defective sinuses will not become infected. But there's a wannabe pandemic on the loose so instead, to ease the worry of my families everywhere, I got to do the run-around with the University's health department. What fun.
You cannot make an appointment via the phone. You must show up, in person, ID in hand, as early as possible and hope that you're close enough to the front of the line that they're are still available appointments that day. And if there's not, well, sorry, come back earlier tomorrow. Tuesday morning didn't work, they were full. Got up at six o'clock this morning, made it down there by seven and finally got in to see someone at nine. Once you're in, it's a quicky easy process, but I'm thanking my lucky stars that I don't have something really bad, because otherwise it would have been a truly miserable morning sitting around waiting to talk to someone.
All said and done, yep, just a cold. The doctor sent me off for some of the usual cold drugs and literally wrote me a prescription for two days rest which I'm to present to my professors. Actually, that part struck me as sort of cool. Where I would have stumbled my way through classes because, well, "I'm not that sick," it gives me a chance to actually: Stop. Do nothing. And... wait for it... get better. Which, when you think about it, is not something the North American culture is really so great at.
Anyway, I'm now sitting at home, feeling the congestion in my sinuses slowly increase and dreaming longingly of a hot shower. Due to some interesting mechanical complications, my shower is not cold, but neither would I call it lukewarm. On the bright side, I have almost four boxes of tea, courtesy of my mother and boyfriend which will definitely be pulling their weight in the next few days.
Also, my apologies for any poor grammar, hispanicisms or other brain slips. I'm not entirely on top of my game right now. I have a doctor's note if you'd like to see it.
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