Well to start out, I hope everybody had a nice Easter with family, friends, or loved-ones. I wish I could have teleported myself home to eat some good old mom’s cooking; I’m sure it was great mom! But there will be many more Oregon Easters to come so missing one or two will not be the end of the world. Anyway, on to my stories; I’m looking at this experience as an opportunity to try new things and see others’ perspective on life, so I’m keeping an open mind and jumping in headfirst. So as holy week approached I was invited to partake in traditional Costa Rican holy week activities, which I gladly accepted. The Sunday before I went to my host relatives home in a somewhat more rural area to make Miel de Cheverre and miel de coco (2 delicious customary Tico desserts) Cheverre is a vegetable that most likely resembles a watermelon from the outside and inside is stringy unflavored substance. We took machetes to the cheverres and got all the eatable substance into a huge caste iron wok looking thing that was filled with water and built a fire underneath it. We let that boil for a good 45 mins occasionally stirring it and then emptied the water. Next we put about a kilo of dulce (basically brown sugar) in with the Cheverre and stoked the fire once again. We walked through their garden and collected some orange tree leaves and cloves to add to the sweet mixture. We let that cook for a while and finally removed the leaves to get to the finished product; which my host cousin and I happily licked each leaf like it was a spoon with batter from cookies back home. My cousin´s name is Puala she´s studying pharmacy in the University. Her family is real nice, her dad owns a coffee plantation and that night we watched Slumdog Millionaire (translated to “Quien Quiere Ser un Milionario” who wants to be a millionaire) which I hadn’t seen and was really good even dubbed in Spanish, no wonder it won all those Oscars! Later we made Empanadas de Cheverre and put it also on Arroz con Leche (rice with milk), which was muy rico.
Costa Rica happens to be a Catholic country so holy week is no god damn joke; they have the entire week off. No school all week and the few businesses that are open, are only open till Wednesday. After that the busses don’t even run. This might be one example of why things just take longer to get accomplished down here; the pace is much slower. Unfortunately the United States Government doesn’t agree so we had training until Wednesday. It was nice to have some time off, some friends and myself jugamos bola (played soccer) and Frisbee in the local field. I also used this opportunity to spend more time in a church than I have my entire life, minus skate church of course. I’ll be honest here, I lied to my host family; my uncle asked me if I believed in god in a manner that there was only one right answer. He asked this after just talking about how loco somebody was in the community for being 7th day adventagist, how Jewish people are weird and wrong for not believing Jesus is their savoir, and how gay people are going to hell. I saw how incredibly closed minded he was so the last thing I wanted was to stir up a lecture on religion; so I said, “of coarse I believe in god”. When in reality I don’t really think I believe in shit! Why should I believe in Christ, Buddha, Allah, or the Feathered Serpent (the Mayan god, who had a more concise calendar than we use now thousands of years ago) In my personal opinion religions are foretold by a combination of factors including; location, genealogy, and social-economic status. Take Costa Rica for example; this region was conquered by catholic missionaries and religion has been passed down from family to family. Let’s not forget that it is a relatively poor country. It’s no coincidence that developing nations have a higher amount of religious constituents. There are indigenous communities in parts of the world who do not know who Jesus Christ is, and that is just fine. They do not need to be saved; they’ve gotten this far, they’re doing all right. As for gays, I think that their desires are weird and different, but it shouldn’t condemn them by any means. I am fully aware that this is a huge stereotype, but I had to say it anyway. Probably for the fact that I sit back and watch people prejudge others here on their religion, which I do not agree with. What really matters is the quality of your character, and that can originate in any religion or non-at all. This is also not to say that the Catholic religion is not a positive aspect here, I just had to rant for a bit. On the contrary, the vast majority of people in semi-rural Costa Rica that I have met show very positive morals, many that far exceed those of my own. All in all, my religious experience here has been interesting, I have no idea when to sit or stand in church, went on four processions, two of which depicted the crucification of Jesus. One guy walked about a mile with a large wooden cross on his back and then they actually put him on an even bigger cross, minus the nails of course. And this was in the heat of the Costa Rican sun. (I should have pics showing this) In the end the processions were actually very interesting and I am glad that I got to see them, it was an experience that I won’t soon forget. I did have a funny incident that occurred during this holy week; after going to “bastante” masses at the church one day we decided to play some ball in the local field, afterwards we went to the “Super Corazon de Jesus” (Super Heart Of Jesus) the local grocery store get something to drink. And a beer sounded mighty nice, but unfortunately I was unaware that it is illegal to sell beer or booze during holy week. This was a big bummer; but I survived.
Ok enough holy week talk… Going back to a week ago Saturday, I got my first tourist experience in Costa Rica. My host dad being the director of the school had planned a fundraiser to go to Jaco beach. If you don’t know what Jaco beach is its one of the more popular beach destinations in Costa Rica and filled with gringos. He told me about it a few weeks prior and said there were some open spots so I should invite some other trainees. Not wanting to over extend the welcome I told two other trainees about it and they were excited to finally get to see the beach. I had actually gone to a beach in Guanacaste the week before while visiting a volunteer in his site, but this would be for the entire day. To my surprise my host dad informed me that there were 12 spots on the bus and he wanted me to fill them, so I was able to invite 9 more people to spend the day at the beach. So my friends were pretty stoked with me and more importantly my host dad. It was a 4 hour bus ride each way and we left at 4:30 in the morning but all totally worth it. The water was warm and the sun was even hotter. We tried to keep as much Peace Core issued 30-sun screen on as possible but inevitable some of us gringos got burnt, my back was a little pink, but others turned out like a lobsters. At lunch I got some ice cream with some friends and enjoyed some shade. We got talking about how weird it felt to be in probably the touristiest beach in Costa Rica. Up until this day, we had been kept so busy that we had not been able to experience any of the tourist spots. Even there in Jaco Beach where we probably heard more English than Spanish it was weird because we might have looked like tourists, but we’re not and we’ll be here for another two plus years. Which is crazy to think but also great to know I should have time to see some of Costa Rica’s beauty. Around 4:00pm I decided to pay about a dollar to rinse off the sticky salt water and sand that I had been playing in all day and decided to have a cold beer with a friend before sitting in the bus for four more hours. I don’t think one beer had ever tasted so good!
The other day I was over at a fellow trainee’s house named Kyle but the town has renamed him el gigante (the giant) because he’s 6’5’’ which is taller than 99.9% of ticos. He’s got a cool family as well, his host sister speaks really good English and has been in the US a few times; she’s a manager for HP computers and only 26 years old. Her older brother lives behind their house in a house that would be considered nice in US standards and likes to plays soccer with us. Ricardo’s twin daughters are 11 years old and along with the grandma are probably the cutest people I have met. They also took pleasure in showing us their neighbor’s gallinos de pelea (Cock fighters) and explained how the neighbors fight and sell the roosters. Cock fighting is illegal in Costa Rica but this isn’t the first time I have heard about it, so I’m not sure how much that rule is enforced. (I should also have some pics of the roosters)
Well that’s what I have been up to lately so nothing too exciting but I’m still enjoying it! This Saturday I am looking forward to a dinner dedicated to welcoming our training group and saying goodbye to Tico 16 a group that is finishing their service. Afterwards we all rented rooms at a hotel in San Jose called the Royal Dutch, which is supposed to be a great time when all three groups get together, there’ll be about 100 of us gringos there. On the second floor there’s a casino and a bar on the third floor so needless to say it shouldn’t be too hard to have a good time. All right, until next time, pura vida mae!
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