Mis últimos días en las montañas. (My last days in the mountains.)

Are you all getting excited? I’m going to be back in the States in a week and a half! If you want the exact number of days, I’m sure you could ask my mother. Last time I talked to her, she said we were at 17.

Getting ready to leave my new home has been bittersweet. Before arriving in Heredia, I wasn’t ready to go back to the States. I knew that Costa Rica still had a little bit more in store for me. But now, I think I am ready to get back to my beloved cold and snowy Iowa, where I will spend Christmas with my English-speaking loved ones.

Here in Heredia, I’ve been doing more of the same. Waking up at 5. Stumbling my way through the mud to work. Working. Stumbling my way through the mud to my house. Lunch. Resting (usually one of the highlights of the day). And then doing one of the following:

A.     Helping my mom with cooking, cleaning, etc.

B.     Playing with my little neighbor kids, who also happen to be my nieces and nephews.

C.     Writing one of several papers that are due before I leave.

D.    Walking to the “pulpería,” which is as close to a grocery store as we get up here. It’s about a 15-minute walk with Costa Ricans. Six minutes if it’s just my friend, Jen, and me…walking at United States pace.

My host parents and I have grown very close. My dad and I are always poking fun at one another, and my mom and I bond through housework. I am so thankful that my Spanish has gotten to the point where my family and I don’t have to waste time understanding one another, and we can move beyond that into deeper, funnier, and more energized conversations.

I’m not going to tell you any more, because I need to save some things to share when I’m with you all in person soon.

This is my last blog post. To those of you who are still reading, thanks for sticking with me. Last time I checked, I was over 1500 views on here. So if you take into account the 1000 from my parents, that still means you all are checking on me often. I appreciate you taking interest in what I’ve been doing this semester. Hopefully in the next month and a half, I will see you at Christmas, or at a gathering of high school friends, or at Northwestern. And if not, I hope to talk to you soon. Love and miss you all! Pura Vida.

A make-do update on my internship.

As you are about to read, Internet has not exactly been readily available here in the mountains. Now that I have access, I don't have much time. So I'm posting a copy of the e-mail I sent my mom. I know it's a poor excuse for a blog post, but at least it gives you some idea of what life is like here. Hopefully a better post is to come!

Hi [probably worried sick] Mom!

As you´ve probably gathered, it turns out I don´t have Internet at my house. Fortunately, the other LASP student´s family has a daughter with Internet in her room. But she´s only here on weekends, and her room is locked during the week. So I´ll try to get on as often as I can to assure you that I am FINE here and that you don´t have to worry :)

Where I live: I am living on the side of a mountain with a breathtaking view of the city (especially at night when it´s all lit up!). It is FREEZING here (not literally, because it rains instead of snows) and I had to borrow a heavy-duty coat from my host mom to use while I´m here. Of course, she just walks around in a t-shirt while I´m always all bundled up. She says I´ll get used to it. I hope she´s right, or I´m going to have a hard time adjusting to Iowa weather in three weeks!

My family: They are just lovely! My mom is 70 and my dad is 72 and I have a 32ish-year-old brother living in my house. My dad here is a lot like Dad: he cracks a lot of jokes and he´s really nice. My mom has been a bit of a challenge. Up until this morning, I thought she was very uptight and that she didn´t like me. But when I asked her if I could help her bake these little bread things this morning, she just lit up! She put an apron on me and she´s been talking to me all morning! I am very relieved to have cracked her, because I was getting worried that we would end up going the whole month without talking. The program staff is coming to my house tomorrow to check in, so I´m glad that I can report our progress. With the way she is and the way things are going, I´m going to come out of this process being able to cook and clean like a real Costa Rican woman!

Note: As of a week after writing this e-mail, I have determined that my host mom absolutely adores me. We are getting along very well now and I'm already getting sad about leaving her in two weeks!

My job: The hardest part is waking up at 5 a.m. every day. I have to report to work by 6, and my mom insists that I am ready by 5:30 so I can eat a small breakfast before I return to the house at 9:00 to eat my REAL breakfast. Then I go back and work until noon, when I´m done for the day. I´m on my feet while I work, peeling flowers (running my hand down the stem so the leaves come off). That´s literally what I do. The whole time. I don´t mind, because I like jobs that I can just keep doing and feel productive without a lot of thinking. I have had some really good conversations with the other women who do the same thing. My body hurts a lot, but they say I´ll get accustomed to it. 

Hopefully that´s enough information to hold you over until the next time I get to talk to you. Please don´t worry about me; I actually really like living here. Probably more than I liked living in San José! I have a lot of free time here, and it´s hard not to think constantly about going home and seeing you all and Scott in a few weeks. But I´m going to continue to try to make the most out of the rest of my time here. I miss you a lot! See you soon :)

Love you the most,

Erin

Nicaragua.

I hope you're not mad at me for neglecting you for so long. Although life has been unimaginably busy here, I have different reasons for not having posted on my blog yet. I knew that creating a new post would mean talking about Nicaragua...and that's hard to do. How do I capture such a rich, life-changing, sacred experience into words in a way that my friends and family back home can understand? It's impossible. But I can't put it off anymore, so I'm going to try:

A month ago, I said goodbye to my host mom and got onto a bus with this backpack, with which I was to survive the next 14 days:

I knew I wasn't in the comfort of Costa Rica anymore when we were on the third rickety bus of the morning. It was an old school bus like we would drive in the States. But this one was crowded, everyone was sweating, and we couldn't understand anyone around us (more on the Nicaraguan accent later). As we were driving, the bus tire blew out underneath me and the bus driver didn't even blink. In Nicaragua, you just go along with things. So what if a bus tire blew out? We still have three more! I looked over at my friend Rebecca, and we exchanged these unspoken words: "What have we gotten ourselves into?"

Eventually the three other girls in my group and the pastor of our Nicaraguan church arrived in the community where we would be living: Teotecacinte. I thought there would be some organized way of figuring out which family would take care of which girl, but the whole week in Nicaragua was a lesson on lack of organization. They simply took us from the positions in which we were standing and said "Okay, there's a mom. You can go with her." At that point, I vowed to just go along with whatever happened throughout the week; my life wasn't in my hands anymore. From there, I "went home" with my new mom. 

Here's the only picture I managed to take of my house:

After giving me a brief tour, we tried to have a conversation. It was a disaster. I learned in the coming days that she just wanted to know whether or not I was hungry, but we simply could not understand each other. Nicaraguans have a prominent accent that took awhile to get used to. "Mas o menos," which means "more or less," becomes "ma o meno." I tried to ask her to speak more slowly, but she wasn't used to my Gringa (White girl) accent yet either! At this point, I wouldn't have believed it if someone told me how close I would grow to this woman in the next five days.

Here's a picture of my family:

My dad, Hizack, my mom, Katy, my little sister, Angélica, and my little brother, Jaxel. And yes, pretty much all Nicaraguans are that short.

Throughout the week, I learned what it's like to have a life without a schedule. I asked my mom what a typical day looks like for her, and she looked at me like I was crazy. The people I met in Nicaragua eat, talk, and go to church. Some work (like my dad who was out picking coffee all day), but many just wake up and go with whatever happens. For example, my house was about ten feet away from the church, so people were always stopping in to sit around and chat. My mom would make them coffee, or serve them lunch, and we would all just sit around and talk. I would spend my days in conversation, playing UNO with my siblings and neighbor kids, practicing music in the church, and doing whatever everyone else was doing. And when I say whatever everyone else was doing, I mean it! I learned everything from how to do laundry with a washboard with my mom to killing a chicken with my dad. Here I am pulling the feathers out of it. If only you could see my face...

The day always worked its way up to 6 o'clock, when we would go to church (or 6:30. Or 7. Whenever people got around to showing up). The people in my community based their lives around this church. Talk about a wake-up call: I went from going to church for one hour a week to having church for two hours every day! The priorities in this culture were a lot different than the ones I am used to in the United States.

The other girls and I were very involved in the church. We were asked to sing songs in both languages every day we were there, and we spoke to the congregation on our last day there. My host mom asked me to help with Sunday school (which was actually on Saturday AND Sunday). We read from Ephesians 6 and made our own Swords of the Spirit:

Before we left to stay with our families, one of the program directors told us that this wasn't about learning what it's like to live in poverty, but rather about forming relationships with Nicaraguans. Although we lived in a way that many would consider primitive (dirt floors, cooking over a fire, bucket showers, etc.), that wasn't the point. The thing that struck me the most throughout the week was the level of hospitality I received from my family and the church community. It's hard to be a guest in the United States without feeling like a burden to some degree. However, I never felt this way in Nicaragua. They genuinely wanted me to be there, and I didn't even feel guilty about it. Just grateful. The hospitality I felt brought me to tears on multiple occasions. In the words of my friend, Katie: "They had nothing to give, but they gave me everything they had."

I look forward to talking to you one-on-one about Nicaragua when I get back to the States. This blog post does not do the trip justice.

A lot has happened since Nicaragua. Four girlfriends and I spent four nights in the beach town of Tamarindo, Costa Rica for my fall break. That was one of my first times experiencing the "postcard Costa Rica" that we all think of when we picture this country. It was gorgeous! I also took two more classes: another Spanish language class and a class called Faith and Practice.

On Monday morning, I am leaving for the next chapter of my semester: a month-long internship in a different part of Costa Rica. I will be living with an older couple and working on their flower farm. Part of this immersion experience is being isolated from all the other students and the English language in general. I'm not sure whether or not I'll have access to Internet there, so don't worry about me if you don't hear from me before I get back to the States on December 11th. Thank you for your patience with me and my snail-like blogging tendencies. See you all soon!

Summary: I had a life-changing experience in Nicaragua. I spent a week living with an incredible family, and I did a lot of things that were outside my comfort zone. I have never experienced the level of hospitality that I received while I was living there. I spent my fall break soaking up the sun on the beach. And I had two more classes. Monday morning, I will leave for the mountains of northern Costa Rica to live with a new family and work on a flower farm. Then I'll be home on December 11. See you then!

Be right back!

Hi all,

Tomorrow at 6:00 a.m., my group will hop on a bus and take off for Nicaragua. I can't really tell you much about what this experience will look like, but I've been told that it will "either be the best week of your life, or the worst." Hmmm. The first few days will be spent taking tours, listening to speakers, and completing other learning activities. (I get a grade for this trip.) Then I will spend a week in a home stay with a Nicaraguan family. I think this is where the real learning will happen. The point of the trip is to experience what it is like to live in the second-poorest country in the Western Hemisphere (after Haiti). We finish up the trip with a couple days as a group in a larger city in Nicaragua, and then start the trek home.

The bus is going to drop me off with four of my friends in the beach town of Guanacaste, Costa Rica on the way home. This is where we will spend four or five days for our fall break. 

I have my life for the next two weeks packed into a [seemingly] tiny backpack. I didn't think it was possible, but I am surprising myself every day here. I look forward to sharing my experiences with you all when I get back. Hopefully we can all learn from this trip. Take care!

Oh, and here's a picture of me on a zipline. I took a zipline and white-water rafting tour with a couple friends on Friday. We had a blast!

Summary: I am spending the next two weeks away from San José: Nicaragua for ten days and getting my tan on at the beach the other four. 

Embassies, volcanoes, and the circus. Oh, my!

I have done a fantastic job of neglecting my blog the past two weeks. A lot has happened in that time, so I will give you a short update:

• I wrote a paper about the problems of Limón and their causes and solutions. I would upload it to my blog, but I don't think many of the people in my audience are Spanish speakers/readers.

• A man who is working to become one of Costa Rica's next presidential candidates gave a presentation to our class about the Latin American perspective on the United States. It was hard to hear, but also a very healthy part of the process of shaping our own perspectives on the United States and the way our native country plays the power game in a worldly context.

• One week ago, I attended a festival that was entirely devoted to a fruit that I absolutely detest: pejibaye. My friends Amy and Jamie love pejibaye and were eager to attend the festival. Wanting to take advantage of every cultural opportunity I could find, I went with those two and their parents to another province of Costa Rica, Cartago, to attend the festival. We tried all sorts of pejibaye-based foods (including ice cream) and danced and shopped explored the community.  

This is the group that went to the pejibaye festival.

• On Tuesday of this week, my class took a trip to the U.S. Embassy in San José to learn about the United States perspective on U.S.-Latin American relations. As you could probably guess, it was very different than what we had heard from the Costa Rican speaker. Our time at the embassy was both eye opening and frustrating. Again, it's part of the learning process, and I'm still working through it.

This is the embassy. We felt at home walking in and seeing pictures of American flags and famous U.S. sites.

• On a lighter note, I went to a Costa Rican circus yesterday! We had a blast. It seemed to be a combination of a circus, a play, and a live concert. There was a lot of talent in that big top! Watching the clowns unicycle and juggle made me miss my talented family even more.

• Today, I went to the tallest volcano in the Central Valley of Costa Rica. Supposedly, on a clear day, you can see both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans from the top. It wasn't a clear day, but we still had some amazing views!

As Patty said on my Facebook today, it was a "lava"ly experience.

I have some big projects due this week. On Wednesday, I will give my final oral presentation for my Spanish classes. Then I will be done working with that program. I will miss having class here:

Then on Thursday, I will be presenting a group project about the War on Drugs to finish up the seminar class that I am taking through LASP. Then we will celebrate being done with these projects with a long weekend before heading to Nicaragua!

I hope all is well back home. I hear it's a bit chilly. This is hard for me to imagine when I walk around here in a short-sleeve shirt or a tank top every day! Thinking of you.

Summary: Just look at the pictures, they explain almost everything. I'm finishing my two classes this week and then leaving for Nicaragua at the beginning of next week!

Limón. And I'm actually including pictures this time!

Note: I didn't take any of these pictures, so I am giving photo credit now to all the other people on my trip.

I spent this past weekend in Limón, Costa Rica. Limón is a city on the east (Caribbean) coast of the country. It is known for its indigenous population (the majority of the people living there are Black) and its ports. Eighty percent of Costa Rica's imports and exports pass through Limón. However, the money brought in from this exchange does not remain in Limón; this province is the poorest in Costa Rica. Walking through the streets, we witnessed a lot of poverty and homelessness. Upon interviewing some local people, we came to find that the residents of this city find "falta del trabajo" (lack of jobs) to be the biggest problem in Limón. This is interesting, because when we asked residents of San José what they thought to be Limón's biggest problem, the common answers were drugs and violence. I found it interesting that our questions were answered in this way by the two different people groups; I will explore this relationship in an upcoming reflection essay. Limón has a reputation of being dangerous and drug ridden among Costa Rica's other provinces. However, there is only some truth to that claim, as we learned through our interactions with various Limónites.

On Friday morning, we piled into a bus and took off for Limón. On the way there, we stopped at a coffee plantation, a pinapple plantation, and the Del Monte banana packing plant:

When we peel open a banana, do we think about the work that went into planting, raising, harvesting, cleaning, and packing that banana? I rarely put much thought into the work that goes into anything I buy or consume. My group watched as the workers at this plant cut, cleaned, and sorted the bananas that had been picked from the field. I even watched as the women placed the stickers on the bananas before packing them into a box. Interestingly, the men do most of the hard labor, while the women are left in charge of the sorting and small, manuel tasks. The bananas are sorted into first choice, which are sent to the United States, and second choice, which are sent to San José. They are putting in long days, and are paid $25-30 a day...sometimes less, depending on their output. This is a lot of money compared the the workers in the coffee and pineapple plantations, who often work sun-up to sun-down in the Limón heat for about $10 a day.

Our other activities on Friday included a stop at the Restaurant Ellis, where we ate typical Costa Rican food, free time for exploration of the city and interviews with the locals, and a "charla" (talk) with Marcel Taylor Brown, who was the first Black woman to serve in Costa Rica's Parliament.

I had an especially interesting conversation with a man in an ice cream shop during free time. (By the way, the ice cream here does not hold a candle to what we have access to in Iowa.) He had a lot to say about the lack of work in Limón--he did not have a job, either--the government, drugs and violence, and the need for parents and the Church to step up and start educating the young people of the city. It is one thing to hear that there is no work, but to meet someone so intelligent and capable who cannot find work makes it a reality.

Here I am on the main street of the area in which we were staying. Don't worry, I was in a group.

Saturday, we woke up early and headed to a reservation to talk to a woman from an indigenous tribe. The United States and Costa Rica are apparently the only countries that put their native people on reservations. She had a lot of interesting things to say about the Brebre tribe's way of life, religion, and the failure of the government to take care of Costa Rica's indigenous people. One of this tribe's main missions is to raise iguanas (a valuable resource for medicine and food) and release them into the wild. We were able to visit the iguana farm, and some people worked up the nerve to hold one. I was content staying on the other side of the fence.

Then it was time to hit the beach! We went to a national park with beautiful beaches and found a place to settle for the afternoon. It was the perfect day for beach-y activities.

I spent most of the time in the water, but I also relaxed in the sand and played some Ultimate Frisbee on the shore. We ate a Caribbean lunch of fresh fruit and meat and plaintain-filled empanadas.

Some of us in the water. Can you tell there was a slope in the ocean floor?

Saturday evening, the program staff threw us a surprise party, complete with authentic Carribean food, a live reggae band, and dancing. It was a great way to end the night:

Sunday, we attended mass at this beautiful Catholic church before heading back to San José:

We stopped again at the Restaurant Ellis on the way home:

The weekend was relaxing, yet exhausting. It was emotionally draining to witness the high levels of poverty and homelessness in Limón in just the two days that I was there. Also, we came across a fatal accident on the way home. Although we waited in traffic for one or two hours due to the accident, it was a small price to pay in comparison with the family and friends of the two people who were killed in the accident. The students in my program are very supportive of one another, and we are able to process these emotional struggles together.

I think this is quite enough for one post. I will post again soon with an update on my emotional progress (which is much better now) and my classes, etc. I hope you all have a great remainder of your week!

Love you,

Erin

Summary: I went to Limón this weekend. I toured plantations, listened to speakers, and went to the beach. I had a lot of fun and learned a lot, but it was also emotionally exhausting at times. Hopefully you had time to look at the pictures!

Cliché roller coaster analogy and what I did this week.

Remember in my last post when I was stressin' a little bit about the culture shock? Well, this week brought me right back to where I started: Loving this country. My emotions so far could probably be compared to the Wild Thing at Valleyfair. (Feel free to skip the analogy if you haven't ridden it.) Leading up to the trip was like waiting in line for the ride. I was feeling very nervous, but also excited. I kind of didn't want to go, but at the same time I was ready for it to be my turn to ride. When I arrived in Costa Rica, things just seemed to keep going up and getting better (this is the really long part that takes you to the very top of the scary hill). Then I came crashing down (going down the scary hill at a million miles an hour). I missed home, I missed English, I missed pizza, and the new culture was just scary in general. But then things started to get better as I began to adapt to this new way of life (uphill again). I realized that I liked new family and friends here, that my Spanish wasn't that bad, and that I really AM capable of trying new foods (I might regret saying this when I get home and everyone tries to get me to eat strange foods at Christmas). Then came the middle part of the ride that just goes all over the place and you don't really know what's going on. This is when I was overwhelmed with new things to do, homework, heavy discussion topics, witnessing poverty, finding my place in a household, etc. It was crazy, but I had a lot of fun doing it (not the poverty part). Now things are kind of chill. I have found some time to relax, I feel comfortable around the other people in my group and my family, I have gotten back into the swing of coursework, and I'm having a good time (this is the part of the ride where you get to catch your breath before the scary tunnel). I hope that I can continue to adapt. However, I am open to the possibility that there is going to be a tunnel like the one on Wild Thing. If I am to grow from this experience, I think most of that growth is going to happen when I step out of my comfort zone and face the idea of taking risks and messing up. And even if it scares the crap out of me, I hope to come out of it smiling, trying to catch my breath, and wanting to get right back in line.

An update on what I've actually been doing, physically: I love my classes. Seriously. The class I have on Tuesdays and Thursdays (the one that features the guest speakers) forces me to wake up at 6:30 a.m. But I like the class so much that I am actually okay with that! My Spanish classes are helping me a lot. I haven't learned anything new, but we are working on "cleaning" what we already know. This is good, because if my little mistakes are never corrected, then I will just keep making the same mistakes! It helps the most with my verbal Spanish. I am pretty sure my host family can't tell that I'm on my seventh year of studying Spanish, because they only hear the Spanish I speak. I am much better at reading, writing, and listening in Spanish...I think that's how it goes for a lot of people. I spent the week working on a group presentation about Costa Rica's national flower, the Guaria Morada, to celebrate Costa Rica's Independence Day (September 15). Here's a picture of the Guaria Morada:

And here's a picture of my group and our awesome 3D visual aid:

It looks exactly like the real thing, right?

Nothing overly exciting happened until Thursday. First of all, my friend Jen introduced me to a great little bakery on our way to class. I plan to go there often. Very often. In the evening, I got a dance lesson from my sister. I told her a few of my friends were planning to go dancing on Friday night, so she taught me the basic steps of Salsa, Merengue, and Bachete.

I was able to put my new skills into practice on Friday night when eight of us went to a Latin dance club. We had a blast! We danced the night away. I heard the second never-thought-I-would-hear-this phrase of the week (the first was "You look tan." on Tuesday): I was dancing with a Tico and he told me, "You're a really good dancer." He was obviously lying to try to charm me, but that's just a minor detail. Being North American and blonde has its perks; life here is like a constant ego boost!

I went to a movie theater with some friends and a host sister yesterday to see the not-so-new Batman movie. Like most movies in the theaters here, it was in English with Spanish subtitles. This is something we don't really think about when we watch movies in the United States. People in non-English speaking countries often have to read the whole movie! I lot of TV shows here have Spanish dubbed into the shows we watch in the United States. And then there are some shows and movies that are filmed in Spanish. The Batman movie was really confusing, even though it was in my first language. But I liked it!

Today, a small group of people from the program met up to go play soccer at the University of Costa Rica. It started raining just as we were about to leave, of course. But I am so glad it did, because it made the soccer game that much more fun. What really made the game fun, however, was that we played with a bunch of Tico boys. They were playing when we got there, and they let us join in. There was mud flying and people falling, but we had a great time. And don't tell Scott, but I got a Tico's digits. We might call him to try to meet up with this group again; they were so fun to hang out with!

Here's a group photo after the game:

This coming weekend, my group is going to Limón, one of Costa Rica's largest cities. It is on the Caribbean coast. It's for class and we will have to do academic activities, but hopefully I'll have some beach pictures next time I post!

Miss you all.

Summary: I am in a good place right now, emotionally. I am ready for the challenge of stepping out of my comfort zone to try to get the most out of my time here. Classes are going really well. I know everything there is to know about Costa Rica's national flower. I went dancing on Friday, read a movie in Spanish on Saturday, and played a muddy soccer game today with some of the locals. Life is good.