August 15, 2002 -- ARRIVAL DATE!

August 16, 2002
Hotel Bougainvillea
Santo Domingo, Costa Rica

There are just some things that cannot be expressed adequately in words. Like this place. I guess I've never realized how beautiful clouds are. Here they are moving so low and so quickly with the cold-blowing wind. It is the rainy season so they are gray and white but mostly gray, heavy with rain, moving below a blue sky I can still see shimmering above them, with the tint that can only be bestowed by a setting sun on rainy clouds as they run over a garden so green and lush, so vast, it seemingly runs forever... all the way to the distant mountains fading into the clouds and mist, their peaks overrun by clouds and the first vestiges of twinkling lights of their mystic houses appearing in the dimming light. The birds, ones I am not familiar with; ones that sound exotic and foreign, chirp somewhere in the garden full of everything from tall trees and palms to flowering delicate trees and shrubs and very low aloe looking plants, terrestrial bromeliads and flowers of pinks, oranges, purples, fire red, light yellow. The breeze is very cool; cool enough to give me goose bumps as I sit here on the balcony gazing over a mystic and unbelievable world. The breeze rustles the trees in the garden and of course pushes the clouds along on their tranquil path. The coldness is exhilarating. The balcony does not have a screen and I am glad. The floor is of cold, clean deep blue tile. I feel like I could sit here forever. Being hugged by a fresh clean world, the smell of earth. To start a new life.

September 1, 2002
Heredia, Costa Rica

So I guess this is Costa Rica. Lets just say it's not quite what I expected in many ways. It's definitely not what I expected before I came. It's not what I expected after my first night staying at the extremely luxurious Hotel Bougainvillea even after knowing it was the extremely luxurious Hotel Bougainvillea (hence, not representative of the rest of the country), not what I expected after arriving in Liberia, not what I expected after my visit to the Rincon de la Vieja, not what I expected after exploring Guanacaste's beaches, not what I expected when contemplating Mexico, El Salvador or Ecuador, not what I expected yesterday. I don't know... it's difficult to explain to someone who's never been here what this place is like. At once it's more and less than I expected and something completely different as well. I know this is all in the abstract and if I could make myself concrete and precise I would but I can't. Concrete specificity is for people who know what they're talking about. That's not me.

But on to things I can describe and explain: my own experiences here so far... well, it started off with orientation in Liberia, a city in the beachy northern province of Guanacaste and a homestay with an older woman who at the time, seemed overbearing, nosy and rather inhospitable, but who I now know was simply extremely traditional and old fashioned... a real, old fashioned Tica to the core. Gallo pinto every morning, fresh made juices and foods, cold showers, no TV, rules about eating, friends, phone calls, showers, house keys, going out, fear of stepping out of her own double gated, razor wired jail-like compound after dark, she has seen Costa Rica change around her throughout her life, becoming less and less the friendly, rural, wholesome Tico world she grew up in and more a part of the world at large, a vastly larger, name-brand, more dangerous place. And Liberia is a pretty small place: a rural town posing as a city with everything that comes along with being one of the farthest larger "cities" in the country from San Jose. I didn't really see this at that time, just an old, senile, overprotective woman who was scared to death of Nicos (local slang for Nicaraguans), dark skin and skim milk, who scorned the thought of anything other than her native tradition of hot beverages for every meal and who religiously listened to 'las noticias' on the radio. Who kept a shrine to the Catholic God and all the saints in her bedroom, who kept her house spotless, who went to bed at 8pm and woke up at 5am. Who didn't own a car and walked to the corner grocery store. Who never went out to eat. The traditional, stereotypical, textbook Tica.

As time has passed and I've come to experience a far different life in a far different place, I've come to realize a few things about the traditional, stereotypical, textbook Tico... that he's just that: the traditional, stereotypical, textbook Tico... the Tico maybe of ages gone by. Today, he's a myth. Costa Rica isn't the place it once was, isn't a place of necessarily old-fashioned, homestyle, rural values. It's a place of (mainly superficial) progress and change, a place of Tampico orange drink, Kelloggs Frosted Flakes, McDonalds, Texaco, Adidas and Miss Teen USA. It's a place of N'Sync, dance clubs, Kentucky cigarettes, Colgate toothpaste, fast food restaurants, hair salons, Roxy Quicksilver surf shops, The Future Home of the "Shark" of the PGA Golfing World, dubbed American movies. That is not to say that urban Costa Rica is no longer a pomade-headed, bus riding, rice and beans culture. It still is. But nobody eats Gallo Pinto every day. Cereal and skim milk and maybe an egg or a piece of bread are just fine thank you. Tampico and Coca Cola are a bit easier than making a homemade fresco... and soup? Why microwavable ramen noodle soup will do just fine. Radio you say? Why no, Survivor is on TV today and we're going to go see XXX tonight at the movie theater at the mall. Why go home for lunch when we can go to Kentucky Fried Chicken? Hah, sandals and native clothes are for tourists! We prefer Adidas and North American styles with really high tall shoes, low waist lines and "like a glove" jeans thank you very much. Big cities are where it's at. And cars, and body piercings and tattoos and surfing. But do be careful when you go downtown and to the bus stop. Don't carry a backpack. And you might not want to go running cause the pollution gets kind of bad around here... you know car exhaust and all. And if you were looking for some nature we've got a bit here's a garden... a few plants inside a big concrete box, oh, what's on the other side of the garden wall? Yes, another street, concrete, concrete, concrete. Trash, trash, trash. People, people, people. Hiper Mas. Mas por Menos. Mega Super. Applebees, Friday's, Outback Steakhouse. Nicas, Nicas everywhere! Everyone speak English! Bilingual schools! A usually futile attempt at 'first world,' western luxury within a 'third world' philosophy and culture. But I think they've done better than any other Latin American country I've been to but culturally I'm not so sure if its such a good thing at all. El Salvador was El Salvador; Ecuador was Ecuador; Nonoava, Mexico was Nonoava, Mexico; but Costa Rica isn't itself. Like a whitewashed culture with little of its traditional flavor, like cultural damping, culture homogeneity, cultural blah. I kind of miss the unique, feisty Latin American flavor that is so prominent in other countries. Here, that thing I love so much is present but it's bland rather than spicy. Can't really explain it but I feel like I'm in the Ozarks when I could be in the Brooks.

So right now I'm living in Heredia (in the barrio of San Francisco) with Maria Christina and Rafael Arias. Maria Christina is a feisty retired airline employee and Rafael is a retired mariner who's been all over the world and back but strangely is a soft-spoken homebody. They have five children, all of whom live out of the house now and have their own families, four girls and a boy all of whom seem to be alcoholics in their own right (okay, so that's not quite fair... I haven't met Ana, one of the daughters yet, so I guess I can't say all...). Where the culture lacks spicy, my female-dominated family dumps a pound in the mix. Can you say Tica version of the Louisania YaYas? Once you've been to a family "gathering" it's quite easy to draw this comparison. Daughters Dimea, Geana, Isabel and mother Christina serve adequately as a family version of the YaYa "sisters." They are quite fond of Pilsen (local Costa Rican cerveza) with lemon and salt frequently as early as 9am and Cacique (local Costa Rican liquor) strongly mixed with ginger ale, Fresca or club soda not too shortly after. And not one, two, six or even eight drinks will do... rather they will drink continuously from the time the party starts (like at 10am) until the time everyone goes home (usually between 7pm and 11pm). It doesn't seem uncommon to go through two, three or more large bottles of Cacique and an ungodly amount of soft drinks and beer which usually must be replenished from a store three times during the day. Did I forget the cigarettes? Yeah, same as the drinks... continuous, nonstop. By noon people are screaming loudly, grabbing your arm whenever they talk to you and dancing to loud Brazilian or salsa or meringue music. By two or three, the few men (the "boyfriends" of the daughters, who are all but one divorced with teenage children), who can't seem to keep up with the women, are staring off into space in a drunken stupor, staring at some unfortunate female's breasts or finding a nice bedroom to pass out in... either that or continuously getting up and affectionately hugging everyone in the room. Strangely enough, there is a lack of drinking and smoking by the family men (i.e. Christina's husband Rafael and Isabel's husband) who seem to leave the heavy partying to their wives and sit back quietly and watch the ruckus of their wives, and the children with grandiose patience. But enough about the YaYas.

Heredia. There's lots of concrete here. And lots of rain. And a lot of trash. I suppose there's only one thing a wet, dirty urban area can beget Cucarachas. For those of you who don't know what it's like to live in a tiny, urban house thoroughly infested with cucarachas, I assure you, you really don't want to know. Somehow, the first few days I lived here, I managed not to see a single roach. For this, I was quite pleased. The house I stayed at in Liberia had been infested with moths and these tiny, transparent salamander looking things that Pablo, my Spanish 'brother,' called "salamandras," which I will assume, for obvious reasons, translates into salamander. Que sorpresa. The way it worked was the moths flew into the house, and the little salamanders ran around on the floors and the walls and would lunge at the moths when they landed. I personally bore witness to the alimentation of a moth by one of those little transparent amphibians. As small as they were, they made quite a hefty noise. Probably louder than a tree frog. Although not really disgusting, we called the little salamanders "bichos," which for all of you non-Spanish speakers, does not have a very positive connotation. Anyhow, I was quite pleased to discover that there were no little salamanders running around on my walls when I got to Heredia. I had been going to bed rather early, around 9pm, and waking up with the sun, so I wasn't awake for much of the dark 'night.' Therefore I failed to discover how horrible the insect situation was in our house. The first time I saw one, was the first time I went to the kitchen for a midnight snack. I turned on the light, saw not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, but six smaller sized cucarachas on the counters run for cover under dishes, bananas, in drawers, beneath the microwave. They ran fast. Of course, I was appalled, called my family into the kitchen, told them I had seen cucarachas and they went to the can of Raid, sitting conveniently on the shelf and began spraying. Spraying everything. Bananas too. They were not concerned. As I would soon learn, the can of Raid was stashed so conveniently for a reason. Because it was used. Every night after that I heard a spraying sound in the kitchen. I guess I had heard it every night before but had just ignored it, not knowing what it was. Now I knew. It was the sound of Super Extra Strength Raid. I saw more little roaches after that. About this size: I-----I. They ruled the kitchen, running through every crevice, dominating as soon as the lights went out. They moved about the family room floor, white tile, easy to spot. They were sometimes in the sink in the bathroom, other times on the bathroom floor, a few on the wall. I generally had no qualms about killing these by squishing them with something. They were not big enough to have lots of guts and I was afraid to just let them get away to grow bigger. So I continued killing them, somewhat disturbed as you can imagine an insectophobic might be, but surviving. However, one night everything changed. Around 11pm, I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth and switched on the light. There on the wall above the toilet was the hugest roach I have ever seen, moving its huge, disgusting antennas around rapidly but without running. I swear if that thing had started running, I would have been on the next plane out of there. I could see the segments on its body clearly delineated. It must have been this big: I--------------------------------------------------I. Far, far, far too afraid to kill it myself, I woke up my host father to kill it. He found the raid can and sprayed it, it began to run, fell off the wall and he chased it and sprayed it again and again and again. Then he threw it away. Life has not been the same since. I cannot go into the bathroom without looking with paranoia at that spot on the wall where that bug sat. I look around to scout for other bugs and I frequently find them, antennas dancing. Many are about half the size of that first one. The roach last night was a big one, sitting by the base of the toilet. He was moving lots so I was afraid to leave him for long in case he hid. So I ran into my room and grabbed my Deep Woods Off and sprayed him. It didn't kill him, but he darted and I was able, very quickly and paranoidly, to use the toilet. He will probably be three again tonight when I get the nerve to go to the bathroom. If so, I will seriously consider the merits of a bed pan or a fake toilet for potty training toddlers. So now, I see relatively large cockroaches everywhere... even in seemingly safe places... such as on the couch (on which I will no longer sit) and in my room! The second largest cockroach I've seen yet, roughly three-fourths the size of the bathroom one, ran across my floor one night while I was typing on the computer. And I feel safe no more. There is nothing to eat in my room and it is not really damp. There is no place safe. I called my host dad to kill it. I slept with the lights on that night. And I jumped every time I felt a tingle on my body. Sometimes I have dreams... nightmares. I no longer will use the shower at my house, but shower at the gym after I work out. As a rule, I see roaches every day, not just one, but usually at least four, one of them being of formidable size. Always at least one in the bathroom. It is not a question of if or where, but of when... when I'll get up enough nerve to go to the bathroom. Tonight, it is 12am and I have not yet worked up enough nerve. These nasty, dirty insects are getting to me. It is to the point now where I think I smell them. And when I smell that roach smell, even if I don't see a roach, I freak out. I look in dark corners. I am scared to open the closet. I am living in constant fear and in constant paranoia. I am an insectophobic living in my hell.

September 12, 2002
Heredia, Costa Rica

Okay, so I've been here nearly a month. And I've been in school for basically four days. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and now Thursday -- I'm still in the middle of my school day trying to figure out how in the heck I'm going to waste the four hours between now and my next class (which is at 6pm... here it seems utterly impossible to avoid night classes... many of them). Oh, that's easy you might be saying: I could go shopping or go walk around town. But no, as usual its raining and I am in no mood to walk in the rain because this rain is not like the rain you're thinking of... this is rain on steriods, the kind that you can't escape from under an umbrella or a poncho or a raincoat, the kind that soaks you and your backpack no matter what you do to protect yourself, the kind that makes inavoidable floods in the potholes in the sidewalk nearly six inches deep and small gysers shoot from the manholes in the middle of the street and that seems to always find a way to leak or stream into the house, down walls and onto floors and furniature and clothes, ruining books and papers, dampening clothing, growing mildew and attracting bugs such as the formidable six inch cucaracha which really likes those damp clothes and papers and shoes and that wet backpack that you really can't avoid. Did I mention that it's the kind of rain that doesn't let your shoes dry, that day after day you must wear the same pair of damp, smelly gym shoes, each morning checking for cucarachas that might be hiding in the dank corners of the shoes. And sandals are quite out of the question... for quite obvious reasons... and some not quite so obvious that I'm not about to go into.

Okay, so I'd like to paint a nice, pretty portrait of my day so that we can both admire the utter greatness of life in Costa Rica, as a foreign exchange student in the rainy season... here goes: I woke up this morning at 6:00am even though I don't have class until 9:00am because I live really far away from the school and it takes quite a while to get here. Besides, I had a few errands to run in Heredia and I had to alot time to eat the five course breakfast I was sure to have waiting for me virtually the second I walk out the door of my room (as I have every morning). I, as a rule, am not allowed to cook for myself, pour my own cereal, put sugar in my own tea, or even chose what I eat for breakfast. This is all done for me before I even take a step out of my room in the morning. I am never asked before-hand what I want or like or if I even prefer sugar in my tea... it is obviously not my choice. If ever, by chance, I happen to wake up before anyone else in the house and go to the kitchen to pour a bowl of cereal before anyone else wakes up, if I am lucky, I may get as far as getting a bowl from the cabinet before it is snatched from my hand and my host mother runs to the refrigerator to get arroz con leche and heat it up from me. She then expresses 'upsetness' that I did not tell her I was waking up so early and that I was actually attempting to pour a bowl of my own cereal. If then, I am so bold as to tell her that I prefer cereal to arroz con leche that morning, I am promptly given a hurt and upset look and she twirls the arroz con leche around in the bowl while giving it a clearly caring and maternal look and I am forced to accept it, and she immediately perks up. I am then innundated with bread and pancakes and fruit and coolaid (which I don't even like) and black tea with tons of sugar (although I bought chamomile tea and honey) and offered 'gallo pinto' and oatmeal and like ten thousand other things which I first decline and then accept when I get the upset act. So I end up eating like 100 pounds of food at breakfast, most of which I don't even like and none of which I really want. So talk to her about it, you might say, but I have and it doesn't work. She either a) doesn't understand a word I say to her, even though she pretends she does or b) doesn't give a damn. My personal opinion is that she B, doesn't give a damn. So anyway, after breakfast I must wash my face with my washcloth that grows smelly mildew after only one use. I brush my teeth and make my bed and go to pack my schoolbag for the day, taking into account I will be at school from around 7:00am to 9:00pm. So I pack lunch (thank God I can have one meal out of the house!), an umprella and raincoat, my school books, money and purse, a change of clothes for working out at the gym, shower shoes and shower bag for showering after working out, and if I can fit it, something warm for all of the times that I got drenched walking around campus and then must sit, freezing cold in class for three or four hours. But as luck would have it, today that warm sweater didn't fit. Right now, I'm drenched and could use it.

So anyway, I leave the house and begin my way to the busstop under a very cloudy, humid and smoggy sky. You can barely see the mountains that surround Heredia. I can tell that it will rain early today. Walking down the hill to the bus stop, I see the bus is already there and a large group of people are boarding. I know that the next bus will not come for another 20 minutes or so, not prepared to wait, in my jeans and with an extremely heavy backpack, I take off up (notice I said UP) the hill to the next bus stop at the top of the hill, quite a few blocks away. The bus passes me and stops far ahead at the other bus stop and luckily there are many people boarding there, so I have enough time to sprint to the bus just as it is about to take off. I yell and wave my arms and it stops and I pay my 75 colones and somehow manage to squish me and my huge backpack into the isle. I must remind you that these are not TANK busses or for those of you who aren't familiar with TANK, these busses are not like the busses of North American mass transit. They are merely repainted school busses. The isles are narrow. The bus is already packed. There are three people crammed into each seat and the isle is full of standing people nearly all the way back. I stand in the isle with my big backpack, so crammed that my ass is touching people on each side. I try not to fall into them as the bus takes off and I am panting from the run and hot and sweating. The crowded bus is already hot. Eventually more people get on and the bus is more packed, so packed that I don't even know how we all fit. The driver just kept yelling 'sigan detras!' and we did. We squished toward the back. Finally, the 10/15 min bus ride ended in the Parque de Los Angeles on the southwest fringe of Heredia. Time to walk to the Universidad Nacional... on the northeast fringe. So I walk the crowded streets like I always do and nearly get hit by a car or bus like ninety times like I always do and make it to one of the public banks, which is on the way, to use the ATM. After being a moron and trying like five million times to use the ATM, freaking when my money didn't come out and relentlessy jamming my card into the machine and demanding it let me withdraw 100,000 colones, I discovered that I was trying to use a Visa ATM with a MasterCard. Duh. So I continued on to UNA with the idea that I would use the internet cafe across from school to order a few books I need for a massive reasearch paper in Forestal Ecology. Closed. After walking from the southwest corner of Heredia to the northeast corner, a 20 minute walk, I must backtrack. I eventually find an internet cafe that is open and I get laughed at when I didn't figure out that the computers worked... the moniter was just off. Online I discovered Buy.com does not ship to Costa Rica and that although Barnes and Noble does ship to Costa Rica, buying a few books would not only cost me a few hundred dollars, but would probably not get here in time for me to research my paper anyway. So I leave. It's near 9am and time for class. I walk back across Heredia in time to make it into class on time. The course is called Myths and Realities of Human Rights. It is a class of 30 people, only 6 are guys. Everyone, aside from me and another girl in my ISEP group, are Costa Rican freshman. We spend two hours playing name games and icebreakers. I can't understand half the students' names let alone remember them and I make an ass of myself when we play memory with the names. We put on a skit. I again, don't know what I am doing because the girl who takes charge of my group talks fast and unclearly. I have to ask like six times what is going on before I understand. We perform the skits and the teacher outlines the grading system on the board. We do not have syllabi. She writes in acronyms.
1. T DHCR 5
CDH - E ------- E 10
S P 10
P
S
2. F 6-10
.........
And so on. There are five numbers on her 'list.'
She spoke so fast, I didn't catch what all of the acronyms mean. But the numbers are the percentage of our grade for each assignment. The problem is, I do not know what the assignment is... only her version of the assignment's acronym. I do know that T=tarea.

So after the runthrough of the syllabus, there is homework. A few articles that we must read. But she only has the master copies. They don't have textbooks here. The teacher brings in a master copy of some articles or readings from a book and then the students must sometime find the time to make copies for themselves. Normally, someone drops off the packets at one of the five hundred copy places around campus and the studnets have to pick up their copy the next day if they can firgure out at which copy service it was left. But today, a student gathered money from everyone and went to make copies. An hour and a half later, he returned with the copies. All the while we waited and talked. By that time it was 12:30am. Three and a half hours of confusion and maddening frustration and really nothing. Again, in Costa Rica, time is wasted.

By this time it was pouring. I ate lunch at the cafeteria among some very unappetizing smells, the same kind of rotten odors that you get on the street, smells I can't describe or classify, except that they are very very strong and very very bad. Stray dogs come up and sniff me and want my food. One lays on my foot while I eat. The rain pours down. I am sick and tired of being frustrated and mad and confused and wet. I have to walk in the rain to talk to Freddy, the international studnet advisor, all the way across campus. I get lost and end up walking longer in the rain than I needed to and am completely wet. My jeans, my shoes, my socks, my shirt, my hair, my backpack. Undoubtedly by now, the ink on my notebook papers is smearing and running everywhere, probably staining my clothes. If so, this will be my third notebook rendered into a pulpy mess of watery, paper and smudged ink, that is utterly illegible. Oh well, the 'board syllabi' was meaningless to me anyway. I try to remember what shirt I packed today and wonder if I should get it out of the backpack and carry it around. I have already ruined a shirt with running ink. I talk to Freddy, arrange for some grammar help for the 15 page Ecology scientific research paper I was assigned my first day of Ecoloy class and leave again, through the rain to find the office of student life across campus to find out where the guitar classes are. I walk across campus, find out guitar classes are in the Casa Estudiantil and told that the Casa Estudiantil is near the biblioteca and the 'soda' the school cafeteria. I walk there and find nothing. I ask studnets and no one knows where the building is. No one has heard of it. So I ask the library. They give me directions to the office of student life, thinking that I meant 'la vida estudiantil' not the 'casa estudiantil.' So I again cross campus and make it to the building houseing the 'vida estudiantil' before I realize what happened. Frustrated, wet, tired and considering not even going to guitar classes I force myself up three flights of steps and get more precise directions to the Casa Estudiantil. After a few attempts at oral directions and a simple map, I discover that the Casa Estudiantil is the same building as the 'soda.' It is just in a room off to the side. So I walk back across campus through the rain, to the room, wait for the instructor to arrive (he was late as relatively normal here), just to discover that I couldn't take the class. I figured that being a foreign student who couldn't exactly tote her dad's guitar across the ocean, I should be able to make some kind of arrangement to borrow one from either the music department or an extra one from the instructor himself, just for use in the class. This was greeted with laughter and rolling eyes from not only the professor, but a few students standing nearbye. So dumb of me to have an American idea. I just need to be put in my place. Constantly and by everyone. This is NOT North America, they seem to say. So've noticed. So I left, agian walking in the rain and wondering what I would do with myself until my next frustrating, waste of time class that I probably won't even be able to understand anyway. I decide to walk to the internet cafe becasue I don't feel like working out because I am wet and tired and I frankly, am in a bad mood and having a rather bad day. I will go to class at 6pm, in the dark and in the rain(the sun sets here at 5:30pm), get frustrated by my own lack of understanding, withstand the scorn and disdain the teacher has for an American who has a hard time with spanish, bieng in her class, the isolation from companionship due to massive language barriers, undoubtedly more humiliation playing name games and more wasting time. More frustration and more spanish and more people who I can't express myself to. More people without patience for my lack of language skills, without patience for Americans, without cares if those Americans understand or not or even pass. People who make it known that they don't even want you being there. And I'll be a forced captive for probably three hours. Until 9pm. By then, the entire school is shut down. Offices are closed, rooms are locked, the place is deserted. By then it will have been dark for more than three hours. I know how it is becuase I've been here this late for the past three days. I will leave class and it will feel much later than it is because it will have been dark for so long and I will be tired and wet and cold and hungry cause I will not have eaten since around noon. I will walk out of the university, this time around carrying my pepper spray, and trying to ignore the tico boy walking close behind me hissing and whispering raunchy things in english and spanish cause he knows a gringa damn well when he sees one and loves scaring her. And I will make it to the main road and not want to walk 20 minutes through a deserted city in the dark and in the rain, so I will flag down a taxi driver who will know I am a foreigner and charge me double what the cab fare is really worth, even if I argue with him. If I am lucky, he will not start speaking english to me and saying things that make me get out my can of pepperspray again and sit it on my lap while I ride home. If I am lucky, I will not have to make up fake names and not have to tell the driver it is not his business where I live or what my phone number is. But I am usually not lucky. I speak like an American and I am alone and that is the only invitation a 'taxista needs.' I get in late and I am cold and wet but am forced to eat another huge meal that I really don't want. Soemthing small would suffice. I get in the shower which is only slightly warm and am vigilently on the lookout for cucarachas that are as big as my hand. If I am in luck, I will not see one and I will climb into my bed and go to sleep to the sound of the semi trucks and loud motercycles and cars speeding bye on the huge road only ten feet from my window. If I am lucky, the car exhaust will not bother me before I get to sleep. If I am lucky, no one will screech on his brakes or rev the engine loudly or crash into the garbage cans or another car right outside my window. Then, maybe I will fall asleep, wake up at six am and have a chance to do it all again. And that's if I'm lucky.

September 19, 2002
Heredia, Costa Rica

Well today, luckily, I am not having an I hate Costa Rica day again. So far, I've only had two such days, and after talking to some others in our group I guess I should consider myself lucky. Today was not a special day by no means... I had more battles with the cucarachas that are staging a take over of my house and my room, spent way too much time at the internet cafe, did some homeowork in the stiflingly hot library, and probably most interestingly, got a huge package from home today. I was rather exited... the only problem, was that we're talking about a pretty darn big package. I was already carrying a 25 pound backpack and then I had that monster box. No way, I was going to carry that thing around for the next 5 or 6 hrs, plus it wouldn't fit in my locker at the gym, so I decided to take the sucker home. I hailed a cab and on the way home our cab was attacked by flying fruit thrown by some kids having a good time after school. That was pretty amusing, but I wasn't nearly so amused when, yet again, I was charged an exhorbitantly high price for the cab fare cause obviously I don't pronounce Berta Eugenia like a native. I live in Berta Eugenia. I hate those two words - Berta Eugenia. They get me nothing but crappy cab prices. Grrr. Well anyway, at least I got home before the heavy rain started. Anyway, I'm listening to a Melissa UK crisis now, so I'm going to pack it in. A boring entry, yes, but I promise, I'll have something better to say after I get back from the beach this weekend!

September 22, 2002
Heredia, Costa Rica

Well I didn't end up going to the beach this weekend because we missed the last bus that left for Puerto Viejo, Limon. I rushed home from school Friday, packed rapidly, and I was running out the door the phone rang. Missed the bus. It left at three. There are no more until tomorrow, but some people have changed plans and are going to Manuel Antonio on the Pacific Coast. A beautiful beach, but there is an army of gringos going. If you want to go the bus leaves from San Jose in about a half hour. Thanks I said, hung up the phone and began to unpack my bags. I don't think I could get to San Jose in a half hour if I chartered my own personal bus service. Even without traffic. Even without a non-direct route, changing busses and waiting. Oh well, I don't like gringo armies anyway. So Friday night, I left in the rain, to see Road to Perdition at Real Cariari (the mall near my house), a rather stellar movie even if it's somewhat predictable. Saturday, after working out together at our expensive gym, Gimnasio Skorpio, my friend Alexis and I walked around downtown Heredia, ate lunch at the only vegetarian restarurate in town named Vishnu's after the Hindu god, and then together took the bus to Hiper Mas, the Tico equivalent of Walmart. On the way home, while I was standing at the bus stop getting soaked by the pouring rain, I saw a man on a moped get hit by a car. This is all too common in Costa Rica. Friday, five people were killed after being hit by a bus in Cartago. And they were two separate incidents on the exact same street corner. The first were four adults. The second killed an elderly nun. I can't tell you how many times I have had near misses. I always just assumed the drivers, accustomed to driving through the pedestrian-filled city streets, knew what they were doing. I guess I was wrong.

Later that night, after mopping up the grand quantity of water that had accumulated into a huge puddle on t he living room and kitchen floors, I met Alexis again at the Cariari and we saw Signs, which is not a stellar movie, but it keeps you engaged throughout nevertheless. I must have covered my eyes and or screamed like eight times. The theater was always full of nervous laughter. Maybe just not quite what I expected.

Yesterday, possibly most importantly, I received a much-needed lesson on how to say the name of my little barrio: Aurora. This, for anyone who speaks Spanish as a second language, is not a fun word. It is a downright nasty word. It does not sound anything like the Auroras in the States: Aurora, Indiana for example. Say the word like this and you will not get anywhere. Trust me, I have tried. Every time I take the bus home from school or home from the Real Cariari, I am always asked: "Adonde va?" "Where are you going?" Now this is a very important and tricky question. Bus fares vary depending on which barrio, or neighborhood, you go to. I technically live in the barrio of San Francisco, which overlaps with the barrio of Aurora. If I want to get the cheapest bus fares, when I come home from downtown Heredia, I should say: "I go to San Francisco," which is closer to downtown Heredia and thus cheaper. If I am going home from Real Cariari, I should say: "I go to Aurora," because if I say San Francisco, my bus fare doubles. But my problem was that I could never pronounce Aurora in such a manner as to make myself understood, which was a problem. I always ended up paying the inflated bus fare because after five unsuccessful tries to say Aurora, I would be forced to give up and say San Francisco. No longer. After my lesson yesterday, I got on the bus from the Cariari and confidently said: "Voy a Ah-ooh-lro-lra," and handed him seventy-five colones. Without blinking he let me pass. Finally.

There are some things, that although quite westernized, are very characteristically Tico. A McDonalds with an internet cafe inside for example. And a McDonalds Express service which entails an army of men on mopeds driving around town with McDonalds carryout in little red crates on the back of their bikes. Here, McDonalds fries are still cooked the old fashioned way: in 100% beef tallow. Sort of the old school American tradition with a twist. Gyms are in vogue, but some of the women going to the gym, may as well be attending a fashion show. At my gym, the Skorpio, it was such a problem that the gym had to make a rule against men wearing unitards. But sometimes I just plain feel like I'm in the U.S. circa 1960. Like some parallel Spanish speaking universe. Everyone wears jeans here, but they are all skin-tight and so unbelievably low cut, that if they weren't like spandex, there is no doubt that they would slip right off. Belts with fringes running down to the knees, massive silver hoop earrings with the same circumference as a small bowl. Hair irons, hair grease and peasant tops. Other things are completely and distinctly Costa Rican: gallo pinto; palm fruit (pejibaye) with mayonnaise; bread and natilla (some bizarre mix between sour cream and custard); Dos Pinos (the brand name that makes everything here); mae; Pura Vida; Cacique; Imperial; La Liga, Soprissa and Heredia (all Costa Rican futbol teams) with their dirty soccer; carry out "frescos" in little bags with a straw; milk that doesn't need refrigeration; leaving bags at the front desk in little cubby holes when you shop; pedestrians, busses and taxis; nasty smells; stray dogs; lottery tickets sold in mass quantities on the street; slushies made with evaporated milk (pinto) between layers of flavored ice and condensed milk on top; fruit and veggie street vendors; piropos; photo copies instead of books... photocopies you have to make yourself; Soledad (the nationally popular telenovela); the annoying TV show in which bailarinas dance to the Brazilian song; "Yo Quiero Bailar" (the dance song); real cheese; Nestle cereal; bamboo and fragrant (yet exotic... grrrr) eucalyptus trees adorning a crumbling campus; little boys who throw fruit from nearbye trees to cab drivers to eat; "sodas" instead of "cafeterias," "pulperias" instead of "tiendas" or corner stores; "mi amor;" "tranquilo;" "con mucho gusto" instead of "de nada;" "muy amable" as a response to everything; "metas" instead of "calcetines," "sombrillas" instead of "paraguas;" soup with bananas, Lizano salsa, Marienda (a universally recognized snack break), three and four hour classes, four foot deep culverts on the side of the road; crazy bus drivers; crazy car drivers that swerve around slow moving busses; crazy taxi drivers that swerve around anything; an entire nation of people driving stick shifts; rice-making machines, the (literally) underground Heredian market and the complex dynamics of riding a bus, (which includes where to sit, whether to sit on the inside or outside, when to pull the "tambor" for your stop, how to stand if you have to stand, how to allow people to move to the seat inside of you if you want the isle, how to wait before you board, women before men, the elderly before everyone, who you should give up your seat to, which door you should exit from, when you should switch seats or stay where you are --- actually a very complicated and esoteric process --- there is a very correct way to ride a bus and a very incorrect way.)

I guess when it comes down to it, Costa Rica is a little bit of everything. Mostly for me, I guess, it's a little bit of of a strange life I never would have lived in any other circumstances. So I guess this makes today an 'I love Costa Rica' day. Every time I leave the Cariari I stand at the bus stop waiting, usually for quite a long time. If you turn from the street, past the barbed wire, there are mountains in the distance, dark, rugged shadows towering high like silent giants, barely visible in the dark night. On those dark mountains are a sprinkling of little twinkling lights. Little lights of all those cities in the Central Valley: Hereida, Alajuela, San Jose, Barva, Santo Domingo. I never know at which city I am looking and I guess it doesn't even matter. It is a 'skyline' you could look for for hundereds of years in the states and never find. Because there's nothing like it. Twinkling fairies on the side of an ancient mountain towering in the obcurity of a cool, tropical night. Past the buildings and the streets and the barbed wire are the lights, something inexplicable and untouchable like a mystical fairytale or an ancient myth that you can just about believe, but beyond your reach: it exists the other side of some line you haven't yet been able to cross. But you know you are seeing something spectacular, something wonderful and you remember why you came to Costa Rica in the first place. And then it hits you... you have caught a glimpse of real Costa Rica; you are finally beginning to learn. That impassible line has begun to blur.

September 22, 2002
Heredia, Costa Rica

There is a small garden behind my house. It is a small, square enclosed by rockish walls on two sides, a concrete wall in the back and an open 'wall' with the kitchen, consisting of an ornate green gate without even a screen. Instead, white lacy curtains cover the gate on the inside. They billow lightly with the wind. The floor of the little garden is tile. There are some hanging plants on which I frequently hit my head, a deep green plastic table and chairs, a metal birdcage containing the two parakeet love birds, 'pajaros de amor' as my host father calls them, some laundry line for hanging clothes to dry in the sun and of course, as the name 'garden' suggests, some plants. But there are not many. Just around the inside of the wall on little, one-foot wide beds of dirt. Most are flowers, little magenta flowers, tinier, low growing yellow flowers, and on one wall, some sort of vine which has crept up the wall and at the top, twelve feet high, has bloomed into a magnificent bushel of small, thin, gold flowers. The back wall, also covered by vines, sprouts a magnificent display of beautiful magenta flowers about four feet higher than the back wall. These two, are the reproductive fruits of some busy creeping vine. Where vines don't cover the walls, small ivy leaflets do. Below these climbers are the terrestrial plants, a tall pinkish red plant that looks like a crimson goldenrod, a small plant with large, broad, arrow-shaped leaves, dark green on the edges, crimson in the center and a large broad-leafed plant with huge dark green leaves with yellow zebra stripes: yellow at the main leaf veins. There are more, all laying in stark and beautiful contrast with the concrete all around, the exhaust fumes, the cars, the street. I do not know what is on the other side of the wall, but I like to imagine it is an open grassy park or a beautiful field from which little round birds, the ones that hop rather than run, are attracted to the magnificent flowers of the garden. I often see these tiny little creatures, with their cow lick in the front, so oddly shaped and so clumsy, yet so cute. Often, as I do now, I hear children laughing or playing behind the wall. I imagine them playing in the wild, green grass, with their mothers close by, sometimes yelling happily at them to be careful or to wait for their little brother. The kids are playing now, their happy innocent voices and the less innocent but no less content voices of their parents, along with periodic squeals of delight drift over the wall to me. I imagine them playing and happy. Beautiful and carefree.

Nevertheless, I will never go to this place beyond the wall, as happy a place as I dream it to be. I know what my neighborhood looks like. Concrete upon concrete upon concrete. No grass. No open spaces. Just a few sad, droopy trees and a garbage filled street and a line of buildings and crumbling sidewalk as far as the eye can see. I dare not search out this happy place beyond the wall, because sitting here and listening to the sounds of the outdoors, the smoky smell of the steak on the grill and the image of natural happiness these things evoke in my imagination is perfect, is beautiful. A dog barks. The grill smoke and the screaming children remind me of the warm summer evenings of my own youth, so far away in both distance and in time. I am content and happy. No, I dare not seek out this beautiful place. I want to live in this place in my mind, the place beyond the wall of my imagination. A beautiful park where nature flourishes lushly and abundantly, where happiness grows. I am sure this place is not as I imagine it. But as long as I pretend it does I will be happy. As long as in my mind, a world of family love and beauty and nature exists, I will be happy living, if only in thought, in that world beyond the garden wall.

September 23, 2002
Heredia, Costa Rica

I have only been here one month and I am convinced of one thing: cockroaches are the most advanced creatures gracing (or in their case, plaguing) the face of the planet. They can run, they can hide and they can multiply faster than Catholics in a third world country. They can bend in all kinds of flexy ways and climb on or in or over or through anything you could possibly imagine, which goes without saying that they can also conquer everything that actually exists. They even seem to manage to escape what would seem to be imminent death. For example, I have personally witnessed a roach survive being microwaved for two whole minutes unscathed. I have seen a running roach sprayed accurately with super-steroid Raid dead on for quite an amount of time, and the nasty little thing still ran and ran and ran and ran until fortunately it was crushed... the one thing they seem not to be able to escape. At least if you do it right... I have allowed more than one escapee to flee with his life after using improper crushing technique. You know, if I weren't so utterly petrified and disgusted, I might even admire the roach. But as long as it is my personal enemy number one, I will concern myself with avoiding them instead of admiring them. And on a psychological note, couldn't they have given the dumb bug as less gruesome and scary name that so insights me with fear as the spine-chilling word 'cockroach?' What about 'wall buggie' or 'little midnight bug' or 'super guy' or anything that wouldn't make me cringe at the sound? I like the name of the centipede in Spanish though, 'cienpie,' which, like the English version, literally means '100 feet.' But the Spanish name just sounds kind of cute. I also like the word for fly swatter: 'matamosque.' That literally means 'killfly' which is rather amusing to me. I like this highly advanced instrument for quite another reason as well. I have learned that it is indeed proper crushing technique to kill a roach with a 'matamosque.' Along with the impotent (but psychologically reassuring) Raid, this is a must for my Costa Rican home. I think that when Christopher Columbus landed on La Isla Uvita off the coast of Puerto Limon on his fifth and final voyage to the 'New World' and gave this great country a name, he must have initially named it 'Costa Rica en Cucarachas,' ie: 'Coast Rich in Cockroaches.' I bet the people didn't like that too much so they shortened it to 'Costa Rica,' simply 'Rich Coast.' The cockroaches have been forgotten. In any manner, although less gruesome, the name Costa Rica leaves the nation with a truly historic conundrum that has plagued its scholars for years: rich in what? I don't blame them. I would want to forget my nation was named after roaches too. In the event that my theory on this compelling question is correct, I will bring the useless Raid and the flykill with me to Puerto Limon for the 'Dia de la Raza' (Columbus Day). I do not want to find out as Columbus did, exactly how rica is Limon's population of cucarachas. Always better safe than sorry!

October 13, 2002
Heredia, Costa Rica

It's nearly two months into my year in Costa Rica... the fifteenth will mark the two month anniversary to the day. I'm well into my life here and for the most part, it's a fine life. But there is one thing that I guess I really hadn't planned for before I came, something I hadn't thought about and unfortunately something I'm having a really, really, really hard time with now. And at this moment it's bothering me, so I'm going to do what I like to do when I'm preoccupied with something... that is to write about it.

I have never in my life by any standard considered myself to be stupid. I don't say this to be arrogant or whatnot. It has just always been part of my defined perception of myself. I consider myself to be an intelligent and independent individual capable of doing basically anything I care to do. I would never want to appear to be anything else. I'm not one for the ditzy, cutesy girlie act and it would offend me to be treated as an airhead. I really don't think I've ever been treated that way before. That is, before now.
In this respect, Costa Rica has been quite a challenge. Here, I am stupid. I often have a hard time expressing myself and obviously come off as a very simple-minded, unintelligent Gringa. And I'm treated as such. It seems no one ever stops to think that maybe somewhere far away, deep behind a jumble of mixed up, incomprehensible expressions, lies somewhat intelligent thoughts. I am treated as if my thoughts were as simple as the mess of words that come out of my mouth. I am not intelligent. No one cares about what I say, no one respects what I think. I am never engaged in any remotely interesting conversations. I am never asked important questions. I am dumb and I obviously don't know the answer.

It really is more than my perception of the situation. Professors treat me as if the number of teeth in my head were higher than my I.Q. Male students do no more than hit on me unmercifully in a way that deeply insults my intelligence and the females, aside from occasionally asking for the time, pretty much ignore me. Even the members of my own host family, kind as they are, treat me as if I were dumb, as if I were so dumb I couldn't take care of myself, that I wouldn't know how to use a microwave or cook or find my way anywhere. As if I didn't know what Tylenol was and what it's for. As if I would burn down the house if they didn't tell me not to. As if I never have anything important to say. Not only is it insulting but also it hurts. It hurts when no one cares to listen. I have a hard time finding meaningful relationships with people because of the total and utter lack of respect I feel from them. I really can't tolerate people for long if they treat me as their inferior, if they treat me like I am simple, like a puppy or a toy. I get frustrated. They think it's cute. Then I have to walk away or I will cry.

Just tonight at dinner my host mother brought up something I had written on my 'family evaluation form.' I had written that my family spoke to me very little and I was not improving my Spanish much by the current living situation. Obviously someone from the program had spoken with the senora because she addressed the issue quite frankly. She told me she was sorry there wasn't more communication between the family and myself, but she didn't know how she was supposed to communicate with someone who spoke so little Spanish. She said in years past, many of the girls spoke much more Spanish than I, obviously due to having taken more classes. The blood rushed to my face and I just sat there playing with my food. I have taken Spanish for five years, presently working on my sixth. She spoke to me as if I have only taken a year or so. Like I didn't understand what she was saying to me. After six years she treated me like a one-month tourist speaking one-month Spanish. I spoke 'so little' she said. Then as if to fix it all she began discussing the colloquial Spanish sayings in Costa Rica, phrases so common, but obviously far too advanced for my puny intellect. She discussed the words 'mae,' and 'pura vida' as if I must have heard them but never understood what they meant. She told me about how people in Costa Rica say 'Bien, por dicha' when someone asks them: '¿Como esta?' Had she not noticed that I had used some of these phrases myself? But what was I to expect. This was the same woman who had previously insulted my intelligence by putting meat in my food and then lying about it as if I were too stupid to tell the difference between shredded beef and a pieces of garlic (which she claimed the meat was). She never admitted the truth. I guess she never respected me enough to do so.

So at dinner I tolerated a half hour lesson on Costa Rican sayings. This after two months in the country. At a nice pause, I politely excused myself and went to my room to do homework. But how can I concentrate. I am near tears. I am very tired of being dumb, of tolerating conversations on nothing more important than food and dance clubs and the kind of weather we have in Kentucky. I am tired. I am tired of being insulted and I am tired of being inadvertently disrespected. Even if these offenses are committed by well-meaning people. Maybe this fact makes it the worst. They are not trying to insult me, they genuinely think that I'm slow, dense, dimwitted, dull. You can only have people treat you like this for so long before it really gets to you. Before it gives you a complex, before it makes you start avoiding people and ceasing to talk. I'm about there. And it's not a fun place to be

October 25, 2002
Heredia, Costa Rica

Strange what time does to you. All that awful exhaust and pollution gagging the air that once made me cough and sputter and hold my breath and stay up nights with wood-splitting headaches actually no longer bothers me. In fact, unless an old agricultural truck loaded down with its mountains of produce to sell on the street markets, spews a deep black stream of filthy exhaust directly in my face as I walk down the street, I do not even smell it. I am oblivious. And the guerrilla band of cockroaches that induced my mind to entertain thoughts of defection from ISEP, Costa Rica and even the entirety of Latin America, still disgusts me, but no longer provokes panic attacks or sleepless nights. Last night, as I was laying on my bed reading, I happened to glance over at my closet door. I saw a movement in the dark shadow and for a moment, a relatively small cockroach emerged into the light before scampering back into the shadow. He ran along the shadow line where light meets dark, making quick but minor incursions into the light before retreating to the shadows. But even in the shadows, I could see his quick, jerky movements. I sat there watching him, feeling too lazy to go do anything about it. It was around 1:00am and I was tired. He made it across the bottom of the closet door, followed along the wall as all the roaches breaching my room have done in the past, and ran into the narrow space between my bedroom door and the floor. I had a feeling I knew where he was headed. To a little hole in the wall near the door. (I have actually discovered the hole where the cockroaches like to enter my room as well.) Just like all the ones who came before. I resolved just to let him go on his way, into the hole. He would live. That is, unless he did something stupid like dart out into the open, across the white tile towards my bed. In that case, he would die. But that's exactly what he did. He sprinted at top speed, cutting out of the shadows and into the bright light. I had just enough time to get up, quickly slip on my sandals and STOMP. Just as he attained the halfway mark to safety. 'Stupid idiot,' I thought, 'You could have lived.' Being already up and out of my warm, comfy bed, I decided to use the bathroom, opened the door and willed any roach that wanted to do war and lose to come out. Two accepted the challenge and were quickly crushed. I returned to bed, read a bit more, turned off the lights and didn't lose a wink of sleep.

Time has also changed the way I perceive this culture, its merits, its faults. It changes the things I notice, the things that strike me, the things that I realize are common and not so common. 'Tico time' has repeatedly infuriated me, wasted my precious hours of life, tried my growing patience. Today, I still don't understand it or necessarily like it, but I accept it. I expect it. I respect it. (Now is it just a coincidence these words all rhyme or should I have been a poet?... =) ) Anyway, I guess studying abroad is not completely about understanding other cultures. It is that, but equally important, it is learning to respect what you don't understand. Even those seemingly idiotic, imbecilic things like 'Tico time' and five inch spiked heels.

I guess until now, I didn't really understand how profoundly different the culture I'm living in actually is. Not merely superficially discrete. Yes, I knew my diet had completely changed to the mind numbing constancy of rice and beans and some weird, exotic fruits and vegetables I'd never before heard of, I knew this was a culture of busses not automobiles, I knew I was studying on a crumbling campus in a crumbling colonial city littered with filth, drawing mammoth rats, armies of ambitious roaches and the world's largest population of hungry, stray dogs, where paper thin walls sprung up overnight and the most memorable sound was the sound of the unrelenting rain on the corrugated iron roofs, I knew I was living among a tranquil, laid-back people unafraid of affection, with long French pedicured toenails, a somewhat irrational fear of Nicaraguans and the genuine disposition to share everything they own. But maybe I didn't before realize what tragic simplicity and profound complexities wove the fabric of this beautiful culture. This culture I sometimes hate vehemently, other times love profoundly. Earlier, I had sometimes cursed myself for coming to Costa Rica, choosing the third world over the comforts, luxurious pleasures and similar cultural philosophies of Europe. And the lovely changing seasons! God I hated Costa Rica... would be happy to never breathe the air from these God-forsaken shores again for as long as I live. But the utter cultural shock, the indescribable, sometimes maddening faults, perversions and differences of a life and a culture so far from anything I could have ever imagined must be taken in context. Must be taken along with the beauty, wisdom, perspective of a far removed mindset. All of this, the yin and the yang, make this experience great, make this experience complete. 'You seem to be mad and upset and disgusted and disdainful and embittered so often,' my mom worriedly said to me one night on the phone, 'Do you wish now that you hadn't gone to Costa Rica?' How could I blame anyone for asking this question? How could I expect anyone to understand? 'You're right mom, I'm so often mad and upset and disgusted and disdainful and embittered and sometimes I just hate this country, but I also love this country. I couldn't dream of having done anything else.'

November 2, 2002
Heredia, Costa Rica

God! To just crush the brittle bones of a seething, gory earth, kick and claw the tear-streaked sky, screech wildly until clouds fell, gnash and fight and growl and howl with the storming spirits for every little last bit of that horrible, unbearable hot pounding inside my skull, pressuring and pressuring and pressuring and pressuring my mind, my whole being to explode from the inside out, to release itself into a mad torrent of divine primordial violence, savage cursing in every vile tongue known to man or beast, spreading my arms wide and high into the bloody heavens, standing on the jagged edge of the earth, the edge of all being, imploring the bastard gods hiding in white castles to cut me down, strike me down to the earth in a glory of madness, screaming and crying, vanishing to nothing, my soul rising and assaulting their very beings and then raging wildly with savage madness at those impotent, mute gods sniveling, shrinking from the infernal power of their own creativity. My head ringing with a cacophony of the mad clanging of life and death and immortality. I desired deepest, that moment of blind, deaf, violent insanity, that moment of perfect release. But I was walking down a bustling open corridor full of students and teachers oblivious to my mad torrent of feelings and I am not brave enough to realize their release. That is for the few brave insane people of this earth locked away because they do things the rest of the world does not understand. But I am not brave and I needed to rage and I couldn't and I was helpless and hopeless and angry and pathetic and sank to the ground and tears came uncontrollably, shaking, sobbing under an apathetic gray sky. Because I wanted to grasp the earth, and shake her and crush her shrieking and rip the world apart and let her pungent, hot blood soak my hands, smear it slippery on my face, convulse wildly to ancient war dances under black stormy skies of a thousand universes and crying, cut out my own heart. And I couldn't.
For those of you who have never known it, this is frustration.

December 25, 2002
Heredia, Costa Rica

Un lluvioso fin de semana en octubre una muchacha emocionada, feliz y un poco ingenua fue a Cerro de la Muerte con su clase de ecologia. ¡Que experiencia para esta muchacha! Sobre todas las cosas del mundo ella le encantaba las montanas: el aire fresco y limpio y la belleza de nubes y bosques pristinos y vistas maravillosas en todas las direcciones. Para ella, estar en la cumbre de una montana era la esencia de la vida. Pues, felizmente, ella metio sus pertenencias en su mochila para el viaje: un poco de ropa que abriga, algunas bolsas de plastico, unas frazadas (porque no tenia una bolsa de dormir), su cepilla de dientes y todas su pertenencias de higiene, un cuaderno y pluma, una capa y alguna comida. La proxima manana a las siete, ella reunio con su clase a su universidad. Era una extranjera a este grupo de estudiantes que hablaban la misma lengua y habi­an estudiado juntos por algunos anos. Pero ella no le importaba. Supo que podria comunicar cuando ella lo necesitara.

Un bus los trajo a las montanas de la Cordillera de Talamanca. El camino era tan bonito pero tambien era tortuoso y difacil y ella se sintio de nausea. Cuando llegaron a su primer destino estaba lloviendo. El plan era caminar por el bosque montano de robles en una propiedad privado por cuatro o cinco horas. Ella se puso su capa y bajo del bus en la lluvia. El mundo estaba envuelto en neblina. Ellos empezaron caminar. Arriba en el monte, en el bosque viejo caminaban. Un bosque que parecia como lo que caminaron los dinosaurios millones de anos en el pasado, una tierra antigua, salvaje, sin cultivar. Un sueno.

Despues de ellos salieron del bosque primario, fueron para el hogar y caladero del dueno de la propiedad. Por este tiempo ella tenia hambre. No habia comida al almuerzo. Sus zapatos, zapatos de tenis, estaban completamente mojados. (Todo el resto del grupo sabia que debia llevar botas de goma.) Sus dedos de pie estaban helados con frio y humedad. Cayo en el excremento de vaca. La sustancia desagradable cubria sus zapatos y sus pantalones mojados y sucios con barro. A pesar del frio, ella tenia que empapar sus pies y piernas en el agua frisima del caladero montano. No obstante, ella estaba con buen humor; la experiencia era tan magica para preocuparse con la frigidez o la "caca," como dijeron sus companeros. Entonces, ellos salieron el mundo magico de bosques encantados, dinosaurios imaginarios y excremento de vaca. Ella salio con asombro pese a sus pies mojados y frios y su ropa sucia. Para tal experiencia, toda su incomodidad era tolerable.

La proxima manana, sin embargo, ella no estaba de tan buen humor. De hecho, estaba en humor bastante agrio. Despues de ellos habian salido de la propiedad del bosque del roble, su profesor habia insistido que ellos realizaran otro recorrido... al paramo. No le molestaba a la muchacha. Aunque el sendero hasta el paramo fue demasiado agotador, la vista del encima era celestial. Podian ver el mar caribe y kilometros y kilometros de montanas azules, picos ascendentes de la neblina hacia el cielo, el sol dorado se poniendo. Flores y aire fresquito. Bajaron y regresan a la cabina de la universidad para dormir. La cabina universitaria no tenia espacio. Pero habia una chabola podredumbre. Seis camas. Un bano con agua corriente. No electricidad. Cabana fria. Treinta personas. Para repetir, seis camas. No bolsa de dormir. No zapatos secos. Cabana fria. No estufa que funcionaba. No ducha. No comida caliente. Mala noche. Y por eso, ella amanecio de mal humor. Hambre. Frio. Suciedad. Dolor de la cabeza. Seis de la manana. 'Vamanos por otro recorrido' dijo el profesor, 'Entonces vamos a realizar una investigacin.' Quedamos en el bosque por seis o siete horas.

Se puso sus zapatos frios y mojados, su ropa seca y su capa. Fueron al bosque. Malezas bloqueaban el sendero. El sonido metalico del machete se oia por todo el bosque silente. Caminaban, subian, y algunas veces caian. Finalmente empezaron sus investigaciones. Habia algunos grupos de cinco. Cada grupo tenia que armar estruendo por 100m del monte y hacer un estudio de los robles alla­. Empezo a llover. Para simplificar y minimizar el drama de lo que paso, el trabajo era futil e imposible alcanzar, todas las personas estaban completamente mojadas, frias y cubiertos en barro grueso y negro a pesar de sus capas. El grupo de la muchacha, el ultimo grupo para terminar su trabajo, se perdio en el bosque en la vuelta. Ellos se perdieron por casi una hora en la jungla sin ver aun un vestigio de un sendero. En chiste, un de los muchachos dijo a la muchacha: 'Que suerte tienes! Algunos gringos pagan mucho dinero para hacer esto. Puedes hacerlo gratis!' Sonrio ironicamente. Entonces: '¡Que frio!' Y algo sobre una puta que la muchacha no entendio. Probablemente mejor. Eventualmente, mojados y sucios llegaron a la cabana.

La muchacha no tenia mucha ropa seca. Ni zapatos secos. Un camino mas al paramo: un paramo de vegetacion baja y esponjosa de un arco iris de colores, puya, la planta sumamente rara que la muchacha no habia visto desde su viaje a Ecuador y flores chiquititas y brillantes. Muchi­simas flores. Mojada, fria, sucia, cansada y hambrienta, la muchacha sonrio. Este es Costa Rica penso ella. Yo regrese al bus contenta, incomoda pero feliz. Este viaje habia sido la historia de mi vida en Costa Rica: una historia de ilusiones falsas, la realizacion de suenos, lo desagradable, lo inspirador, perdida, descubrimiento, falta de preparacion, conocimiento nuevo, chabolas podredumbres, bosques magicos, puntos mas alto del paramo y puntos bajos... una experiencia inolvidable. Ademas, fue como debe ser la vida: el epitome de la intensidad del amor y del odio, la cumbre de sentimiento, la cima de lo emotivo que viene de ser viva. Eso es. Yo estoy viva.

December 3, 2002
Heredia, Costa Rica

Had to delete this entry until I figure out how to do HTML again.... otherwise it's unreadable.

December 6, 2002
Heredia, Costa Rica

So this is where it all falls apart huh?

Spring 2003

December 13, 2002 - December 28, 2002

South Caribbean Coast, Costa Rica

You know, I didn't write a single entry during this time, which is a sad thing, seeing as it was one of the most eventful and interesting periods of my trip so far.  But I guess I did not write about many great things the fist semester like orientation in Liberia, the trip to Rincon de la Vieja including climbing the volcano and riding the horses, the little trip to Rincon in Corcovado, Volcan Poas, that little freezing cold cloud forest reserve above San Rafael de Heredia where the bus stalled, we had to hike up a hill for no reason and later on, it seemed like the bus was going to tip over, the going away party with the moms and of course, the bus problems again, my field trips to Cerro de la Muerte and Sarapiqui, Nicaragua, Thanksgiving dinner at Teresita's house, Central American Independence Day, Jaco with Alexis, Mike, Ben and Sam and the nasty cabin.  Wow.  So I guess it shouldn't be a shock that I missed some more good stuff.  But anyway, I'll try to give you an idea of what I did in these few weeks.  Quite a bit happened after all.

I think Alexis left for the States on the 12^th.  And aside from Becca and Sam and Justin, she was the last to go.  I felt quite alone.  Costa Rica just didn't look the same.  I was in a fever to get out of there.  I left the next day, having no idea what I would find when I got to the Carribbean.  Or even if the farm was open for Christmas.  The bus ride was nice except for the washed out bridge on the way down the coast south of Limon, caused by the massive flooding in the area.  We had to stop on one side, get off, walk a kilometer or so up river on a dirt path, board motorized dugout canoes and cross to the other side.  There we boarded another bus and kept on our merry way.  We arrived in Puerto Viejo at dark.  I somehow managed to find some random place called the Jacaranda run by this bitchy Trinidadian woman named Vera.  The place was about 10 dollars a night and although it was dark and sort of wierded me out, the decor was pretty exotic, hippie and cool.  And, of course, the essential, there were hammocks.  I had the pleasure of using a very smelly bug net and a fan.

The next day, I was out to explore and beach it a little.  I ended up walking quite a bit and I actually felt like I was in Ghana because of the totally black Rasta population, the jungliness and the utter un-Costa Rican feel.  There was a sunken boat a little out in the water.  It had a small tree growing out the top and a little black boy swam to it and then stood on top.  The mist rose out of millions of uninterrupted palms in the background.  His silhouette against the golden breaking sun.  I stood on a dusty dirt road by the beach.  This must be what Africa looks like.

I would only hear Reggae music for the next few weeks.  At night it was loud, no matter where you were.  Every Rasta man wanted to take me to his home or go to a bar.  Those things I refused.  But that night, I smoked a clove cigarette on the beach.  I have never smoked before in my life.  I hated it enough to do it only one other time after.  And I haven't done it since.  That night, before I went to bed, I read on the hammock in the tropical, hot, African night under the dim red light of a paper lantern.  I read Taipan.  It seemed as exotic as my surroundings.  The next day I simply chilled again.  Made friends with a few native surfers, surfing Salsa Brava, a Hawaiian style, hard hitting reef break.  I watched for a while, wrote Christmas cards and basically did nothing for the rest of the day.  The next morning, Monday morning, December 16, I tried to leave early to catch the bus for Manzanillo, about 17 k south on a dirt road.  The farthest south the roads go along the coast.  Vera wasn't there to pay.  I yelled and knocked but the woman, who was sleeping in her room, didn't even wake up.  I ended up telling one of the neighbors that I would be back to pay soon.  She would just have to trust me.  I left for the bus late, and surprise surprise, I missed it.  There was not another one until 3pm.  However thankfully, a Rasta man in a pickup truck saw me walking down the road with my pack and picked me up.  I swung my pack in the truck bed and climbed in the cab beside him.  He drove me as far as the hotel in which he worked, in Punta Uvita, about mid-way between Puerto Viejo and Manzanillo.  He wouldn't accept money for the lift.  Actually I think he laughed at me for even offering.  We had passed the bus on the way, so I sat by the side of the road to wait.  I didn't have to wait long.  I hitched a ride with the little bus and made it to Manzanillo around 8am. 

I had a very long wait in Manzanillo.  The dirt road ends there at that tiny little Rasta village (I'm not sure it's even big enough to earn the term village...) where I was to find a man named Bako who worked at the village bar to take me out to Punta Mona by boat.  Either that or go 5 miles on a poorly marked foot path through the jungle with my 60 pound backpack.  I decided to wait for Bako. 

Well I had quite a bit of waiting to do.  Bako never seemed to be doing anything at all and I found myself talking to this friendly Rasta man named Omar who was about my age.  We spoke in Spanglish most of the time although Patua (an adaptation of Jamaican Creole) was his most comfortable language, and surprisingly, I actually enjoyed his company.  He would turn out to be my first and last true Rasta friend.  Sometimes he would leave for a bit and I would read or chat with the village girls, who eventually decided to braid my hair.  I think they ripped more of it out then they braided.  When they were not harassing me, they were skipping rope barefooted around the little open area.  Actually, everyone in town was bare foot.  And most of the men were drunk although it was quite early in the morning.  Everyone seemed to congregate in the little open area or at the bar, at one side of it.  I think I knew every face in the town by noon.  I watched a few tourists come in and then leave.  The only ones I talked to were a couple from Oregon with two little girls about ages 8 and 5.  They asked me where they could find psychedelic mushrooms.  I was rather disgusted by the question, and Omar, who was with me at the time, surprised them by saying:  "We don't eat mushrooms around here."  He appeared rather disgusted too.

Finally, a boat came from Punta Mona, carrying a few volunteers and the two people I will not forget soon.  One was Ana, the little, 30 year old Colombian woman who I would begin to think of as an evil black widow and Arrington, the old Caribbean, Nicaraguan Creole who is the Punta Mona cook.  The man was skinny as a rail but muscular in a stringy way, always without a shirt and never without his big, toothless smile.  That man breathed nothing but marijuana.  Padi, the old Creole salt who owned the land that is now Steve's hippie commune came as well, the boat captain.  He still lives on a small patch of land right next to the farm.  His white dreads short around his toothless scowl.  That man was a live one if ever one existed. 

But we still didn't leave.  Eventually Ana went off with the volunteers to San Jose, apparently to go after her residence card which she had just obtained.  The woman, unfortunately for all, was now a resident of Costa Rica.  Arrington and Padi chilled at the bar and drank and drank and drank.  It got late.  Late afternoon.  Maybe around 5pm.  A soccer game broke out on the beach among a bunch of the young Rasta guys.  I expressed interest in playing and Omar had no trouble in dragging me out to the beach to play.  I began playing in the little impromptu game of all local males and only later found out from Jason, another of the guys I got to know, that I was the first girl, local or otherwise to ever play soccer with them.  For some reason, that sort of embarrassed me.  Although it was a little better when he told me that I had to come to town the next game they played.

Around 5:30pm, the last bus from Pureto Viejo came in, and with it, an 18-year-old freshman from the University of Oregon, named Kate.  She was also going to Punta Mona.  We had been waiting all day for her.  I wonder why no one had been able to communicate that to me?  So as the sun is setting over the water, we prepare to head out for Punta Mona on the boat.  Arrington took the front, Kate and I the middle and Padi instructed a young man how to steer the little boat.  I believe now, although I did not know at the time, that that young man was either Jerry, Padi's grandson, or Jason. By the time we got going, it was pitch black aside from the moon.  It was amazing to fly over the water in the cool night air.  After about 30 minutes on the boat, passing Punta Mona Island, we land at some beach and they announce our arrival.  There are only two lights back a bit in the jungle.  We walk in and are greeted by the only two volunteers at the farm at the moment, both of whose exact names elude me now (Kristy and David).  The girl was about 28, blonde and originally from California (I believe her name was Kristy).  She had a huge colorful tattoo covering her entire back and one on her foot as well.  She, as it became apparent over the next two days, was rather busy fucking the other volunteer (I think his name was David), a Spaniard from Madrid.  Despite the open sex, I got to like Christine, very soft spoken and sincere, quite a bit like Meghan Peot, whom I got to know in Ecuador (she had worked here for 6 months and was the one who had recommended the place to me).  David was also a pretty good guy.  I saw a cockroach on the first night.  I didn't know it then, but I would soon find out that cockroaches are very territorial creatures.  A group of two roaches came out every single night in the exact same place in the little shared bathroom in the main guesthouse.  They would disappear every day, but every night, they were there.  No one bothered them and they bothered no one.

Arrington played Swamp Ophelia while he was smoking in the kitchen after we went to bed.  I left my bed, sat on a hammock and listened.  Those hammocks would become the home of my ass in any free moment for the next two weeks.  Lovely, lovely hammocks.

Well I really can't go through what happened each day from here, firstly because I don't clearly remember what happened what day, and secondly, because it would take a novel.  So many people came in and out, so many people moving about, so much to do, it would be crazy.  But I will briefly describe the few people who became rather constant at the farm.

Steven Brooks - Curly haired hippie god of communal sex and good vibrations.  This man basically placed himself in a little microcosm in which he played the role of God.  I thought he was very testy and impersonal although he seemed to be worshiped by the rest of the women there.  He's the owner by the way.

Alita - The shorthaired chick from Montreal who was 24 but acted like she was 35.  She was the practical and annoying one of the group, always clashing with Steven and his insanely unbounded and impractical idealism.  She was the one mediating for Kate and I when we got into "trouble" near the end of our stay.  That in itself annoyed me, although I probably liked Alita more than many of the people.  She really didn't do much work though.  Her lectures on "living in community" were probably the worst.

Jessica - Steven's friend, a 30 year old hippie chick pretty much never doing anything at all except for running around in a bathing suit or quite naked.  She had lots of advice to impart over the sexual nature of Rasta men for some strange reason.  She lived once in Miami (where Steve's from), but now is a West Coast mystic.

Miquael - French Canadian man who was probably my favorite person and the only sane person at that freaking farm.  He worked a ton and was not fazed at all by any of the weird stuff going on there, although he wasn't really part of it either.  He's traveled quite a bit, especially in Western Africa. 

Aaron - Pothead and hmmmm... pot head.  Kate and I had to share our little open sided, wooden bunk house with the guy, which I guess wasn't that bad... it was just he was pretty much like a walking zombie all the time and the place always smelled like weed.

Jonathan - The hippie man if ever one existed.  I think he was more into the life of the place than even Steve.  Hair longer than mine, a big beard, guitar playing and singing Bob Marley, Dillon, and whatever else came to his head.  He has hiked both the Appalachian and the Pacific Crest Trails.  He worked the greenhouse and lived in a tent on a platform out by the greenhouse.

Jerry - The rabid dog of the freaking place.  This boy was a Rasta man, the grandson of Padi, who actually lived on Punta Mona.  He was accustomed to go the rounds to the beds of all the females in the place and ask the women to sleep with him.  Unfortunately, he took a special liking to me and came to my room and tried to crawl into my bed with a handful of condoms on Christmas Eve.  The ass got chewed out by Steven the next day.

Garret - Steven's friend from Miami who had planned on staying for a year.  He got there a few days before I left and honestly, the guy doesn't seem like the type.  Way to serious and quiet.  Way too normal.

Lindsey - Garrett's girlfriend, a 35 year old who seemed to me to be a 17 year old Notre Dame senior.  She taught me the trick of putting ginger in your water bottle to keep the water tasting good.  She brought to the farm all these weird books about the eastern art of tantric sex and love making which preoccupied everyone for about a week.

Jenny - The 40 year old mystic and 'witch' who told Jerry on numerous occasions to go to hell, to my immense pleasure.  She played the guitar and the mandolin and I ran into her a few months ago in Bocas del Torro with her boyfriend and a few other Punta Mona people. 

Sam and Doug - 55-year-old twins who are friends of Steven's and help him run the permaculture course.  I heard stories Doug at least, that were not too agreeable.  Doug, at 55, has a beautiful 25-year-old Italian wife and her beautiful little kid.  Apparently this is the first time he has been faithful to his wife for more than 10 minutes and the son of his wife is, in reality, like his 50^th kid.  Apparently he likes minors. Well, I guess I wouldn't be so damn judgemental if he weren't such a bitch to boot. 

Dara - Nudist queen.  Enough said.  (No wait, she was also Meghan Peot's best friend while she was there.  She also did the ISEP UNA program a few years back and lived in the same family as Alexis did... the family of Blanca and Laura and Josue.)  But she didn't like clothes.  And, por dicha, she was the only one of the hippie girls who didn't advocate "The Keeper" and we therefore got along. 

Grandma Rainbow - At seventy something years old this old Jewish hippie woman.  She lived in a tent on the grounds, was always practicing yoga and smoking pot.  Last I heard she was still living there in that tent.  She always wore only some wrap over her body and nothing more.  She probably had more knowledge than anyone there about moons and witch stuff.

Kate- Of course I must mention Kate.  She was 18, a college freshman, and the only one I really had anything in common with.  She was a little bit lazier than me, and quite the herb smoker, but at least both of us were not lost hippie causes.

Ana - The black widow.  What can I say about Ana?  Kate and I hated her, and she hated us.  Ana was very sexually pushy/vibey with everyone she came into contact with, especially Steve and Jonathan.  She was a conniving, manipulative, skinny little spidery bitch who just loved to be loved and had to be at the center of every man's attention.  I think she despised women as a rule (excluding herself).

There was also a girl there whose name I forget, but she was quite annoying:  the expert on hippie communal living, although she seemed more to me like a hippie wannabe.  The other woman was that Spanish woman whose name also eludes me.  She was a yoga instructor in her 30's somewhere.  She was beautiful but she sucked at chess. 

Well, there were lots of people coming in and out, staying for a day or two, or maybe even a week.  I can't even go back to remember them all...  I guess I can, though, talk a little bit about some of what went on there, although I doubt you would believe me if I told you everything.

They grew their own pot there.  Steve denied it (as technically it is illegal), but some days when I would be walking down a trail to some remote fruit grove, or to the rice paddies, or to the river or the water basin to wash my clothes and I would smell it.  The fresh smell of cannabis in the air.  And it was forever on hand.  Volunteers were expected to do all kinds of work on the farm, which was basically a self-sufficient organic farm.  There were lots of things, but especially fruit.  Fruit trees and fruit trees.  Everything you could possibly imagine.  One day I asked Jonathan, who is super knowledgeable about plants, what kind of fruit tree they didn't have.  He said, "Just name it sweetheart and we've got it."  I tried to stump him... at first with somewhat common things that I had not seen around: 

"Grapefruit?" I asked. 

"You bet, Padi's got a load of those trees near his house," Johnathan answered.

"Guayabana?" 

"You bet." 

"Jack fruit?" 

"Got one right over there.  Fruit's ripe too." 

"Bread fruit?"  "Got one."

"Papaya, Mango, Passion Fruit?  Caranbela (Star Fruit)?  Cas?  Marinon? Jocote?"

"Yep, yep, yep.  We've even got Indonesian cherries.  You ever tried an Indonesian cherry? (Indonesian cherries are wonderful yellow star-shaped cherries.)  And we've got 28 different species of banana and just as many species of plantain."

I could not help but be stunned.  In addition to all this fruit, grew millions of types of oregano, "romero," lemon grass, citronella grass, ginger, "asin-asin" for salads, chaya (the meat of Punta Mona), cranberry hibiscus, mint, pipa, orange, five million types of lemon including mandarina and sweet lemon, yucca, rice, palmito, pineapple, onion and garlic and other spices, pumpkin, watermelon, cantaloupe, ayote (squash), beans, lettuce, various types of cabbage, the fruit of the Jamaican hibiscus (which I can make excellent salad dressing with), "rose jamaica" for tea, cinnamon, and god knows what else that I can't think of right now.

Of all the structures, only the kitchen and the main guesthouse have electricity which is solar powered.  The "running water" for showers, sinks, and for the bio-toilets is provided by rainwater collected in massive holding containers on the roofs of most of the structures.  The gas for the stove is powered by gas produced in the bio-digester, which basically turns human shit into usable gas.  The oven was solar powered.  All soap products were biodegradable and all food waste was used as compost.  Instead or lawn mowers or weed whackers, we used machetes.  We used footpaths, which we generally walked barefooted.  We were eaten alive by mosquitoes and sand flies, which lived in our bed and ate us during the night.  I slept outside with just a tin roof over my head.  No walls.  No doors.  There was neither electricity nor water.  We got around by using flashlights and at night, it was much easier (and less frightening) to simply walk out of the structure (which was on stilts) and find a tree to pee on instead of walking alone, through the forest to the little toilets, which were up by the ocean.  At sun up and often a bit before, the loud cry of congo monkeys woke me.  One time, a big five foot iguana fell from a tree onto the tin roof of the bunk and started crawling around in the middle of the night, giving me the fright of my life.  He began to climb the tree again and then feel again, and then he did it again and again and again.  I was praying it was just coconuts falling on the roof.  Only the next day did I see it happen in the light and only then did I realize what the sound had been the night before. 

Around 7am, someone would sound the conch horn and we would eat.  Always fruit and something else and some weird fruit and oatmeal drink.  The bees loved the morning.  There would always be thousands buzzing around the fruit, hundreds climbing all over it.  They weren't the stinging kinds of bees.  One time, I think it was Sam's wife, ate one.  Having little insects climb all over your food was just something you had to get used to.

Maybe around 8:30am everyone would go out and begin working.  Maybe planting rice in the rice paddies.  Maybe slashing room around the shore to plant pipas, or maybe turning compost, working in the greenhouse, clearing trails, re-soiling vegetable beds, clearing out around the bases of fruit trees, separating rotten wood from good wood for fence posts (I had that job once... it was so awful.  I tested to see if the thin, tall wood poles were rotten or not by hitting them against the ground.  If they were brittle and broken, they were bad and I put them in a wheelbarrow to take to the fire pit for the Winter Solstice fire.  If they were sturdy, they were good.  One pole I hit against the ground did not crack, but when I hit it, something POPPED and a huge pile of termites and termite eggs just fell out of the center and onto the ground, creating a huge, disgusting moving mountain.  The entire stick was hollow and full of them.  That was my last job working with rotten wood.)  We literally had hundreds of different jobs.  Then, a few people would stop work to help Arrington with lunch.  Whoever wasn't needed continued with the morning's work. 

Who knows about what time it was, but the field workers would hear the conch horns signaling lunch.  Slowly, everyone made their way to the kitchen, we made a circle, everyone holding hands, which was the ritual.  There was a moment of quiet and controlled breathing before Steve would say something.  Maybe a welcome to any guests or new people.  If he had been gone, he would say how happy he was to be back.  Then anyone else who wanted to say something would give his piece.  When there was nothing left to say, everyone raised their hands and all let out a scream that sounded like a war whoop.  When the whoop began to die, Steven would scream "Lets eat!"  And we all ate on plastic Japanese dishes with chop sticks.  Salad from the garden was inevitable, usually de "asin-asin."  Then there was always something else.  And of course, another weird fresco.  We were always in the open air.

After he ate, Jonathan would inevitably begin playing his guitar and singing Bob Marley, or "One" by U2 ("One Love" was the farm's motto.)  And maybe there would be some relaxing.  Talking, reading, everyone rushing to claim a hammock.  And slowly, people began filtering out, back to work.  The same thing was repeated at night for dinner.  I always read after dinner on a hammock.  Kate and I usually went back to the bunk together that night because the trail was pretty unnerving to walk alone in the dark (especially if neither of us remembered our flashlight).  Usually we went back around 10 or 11pm.  That is, right after we went to the bathroom of the main bunkhouse and brushed our teeth and watched the roaches playing in the same place they had been the night before and the night before that.

Neither of our beds had pillows.  A sheet over the foam mattress and a sheet if we were cold and a cloth bug net.  The nights were always thick and hot.  The sheets always felt wet and there was always sand in the bed as we lived so near the beach.  Then right before the sun came up, it was cold.  I don't think I ever slept well there.  Especially not when the full moon shone in my eyes.  I always felt vulnerable to insects and scorpions and later, to any "Jerry attacks."  I had to fight to keep my sheets on my bed.  I did not like the way the nasty foam mattress felt.  I would generally wake up in the morning with more bug bites than I had had the day before.  They were miserable.  My legs were covered with them.  On Kate's legs, the bites were all you could see.  Grandma Rainbow offered us use of her "healing clay" she claimed came from Israel.  I tried it, but I don't think it worked.

At the Winter Solstice celebration around the fire, everyone smoked and Jenny and Steve took turns playing the guitar and singing songs.  The Spanish woman who was there for a while danced the flamenco around the fire.  They sang songs invoking the spirits.  And before it all started we faced each direction and Grandma Rainbow said the traditional Wicca chants I had learned to recognize if not memorize.  According to the "We-Moon," this is a night of women.  Therefore, as far as I know, there was no orgy.  It was actually a nice, night.  The stars were amazing.  More than I've ever seen anywhere in my entire life.  I had to save Kate once from going off with Jason (which we all know how that would have ended up), and embarrassed at her near mistake, she went to wait for me on the hammocks.  When Jerry got a little bravo, I left too, and we went back to our cabin to sleep.  That night, someone came to our bunk.  Kate and I heard him come in.  But it was pitch black and we didn't see and thing.  He sat down on the tree stump and lit a roach someone had left there on our makeshift table.  Only then, did I see that it was Jerry and not Aaron (who also slept in the bunk with us).  I'm sure if I could have seen myself in the dark, my face would have been bright red with rage.  I was fuming.  Neither Kate nor I said a word, but I knew she was awake too, watching Jerry in the dark.  Both of us just hoped that if we ignored him and pretended we were asleep, that he would go away.  No luck.  The glow of the little joint stub slowly went out and then all was black again.  He didn't make a sound and I had a hard time believing he was still there.  But I knew he was.  He was a patient son of a bitch.  And determined.  Finally, after maybe five whole minutes of interrupted silence, I heard him whisper:  "Jessica?"  'Wonderful,' I thought,  'This bastard is not going to leave me alone.'  I still ignored him.  'God damn it Jerry, go away!' I thought.  But he didn't.  He called my name again, louder this time.  "I know you awake baby." I couldn't hold it anymore. That "baby" thing really gets under my skin.  "How many times do I have to tell you my name is not baby" I said coldly out of the darkness. I knew he could not see me because of the mosquito net.  But I had not realized what a bad move responding to him was.  He had been so patiently immobile earlier because he was not sure in which bed I was sleeping.  As soon as he knew, he could act.  The next thing I knew, the one side of my mosquito net rises and a heaping dark hulk begins to climb in next to me.  "I'm sorry baby" it says.  My blood gets hot and I feel a shock run through my entire body.  And then I kick the hulk and push it out of my bed.  I flip on the flashlight that I sleep with and angrily shove it into Jerry's face.  I shine it right in his eyes as I begin screaming at him.  I don't remember exactly what was said.  Only that I've never yelled at anyone so furiously in my life.  And as he did not seem to back off from my bed, I began shoving him toward the stairs.  Kate, by this time, had joined in the cursing as well.  Only upon pushing him toward the door, did I notice what was in his hand.  In Jerry's hand was a packet of condoms.  Bright colored neon condoms.  And then I flew off the wall. I nearly pushed him down the stairs.  And I can only imagine how many times I said 'fuck.'  Kate, who did not see the condoms, being under her mosquito net, later asked me what the hell had happened that caused that sudden and vigorous outburst of swearing.  I think all I could manage was: 'that mother fucker climbed into my bed with a handful of god damned multicolored condoms.'  That strangely didn't seem strong enough for Jerry's infraction.  I could not think of anything biting enough for what I felt at that moment.  My accustomed expression of anger:  'god damned mother fucking hell' was not enough.  I stormed to the little cubbyhole that kept all my stuff and found my Swiss Army pocketknife and my other five-inch blade that I got last summer.  I crawl back into bed after sending my flashlight around the surrounding woods to make sure Jerry had really gone.  And then I pulled the knives close to me, along with the flashlight.  I had not slept with a knife since I left Nicaragua.

The morning after that incident, I told Alita what had happened.  And I believe she must have immediately told Steven.  Later that day while I was writing a Christmas letter to my family, I hear and see Steve absolutely bitching Jerry out not far from the bunk house.  My favorite part was he told Jerry that he had to leave Punta Mona for a while.  He had been bothering other people lately too and last night's incident had been merely the last straw.  I did not feel sorry for the ass at all.  I don't think he knew I was there (because I was lying on the floor writing), but Jerry came to the bunkhouse.  He climbed the stairs and saw me there, and I was suddenly sort of scared.  He was fuming.  His eyes looked really, really wild.  He saw me and sat down and picked up the knife I had forgotten about on the little makeshift table that I think belonged to Aaron.  He started playing with it, testing its sharpness, all the while staring at me.  I was nowhere near the steps.  But he began talking.  He could barely speak; the anger was so strong in his voice.  He asked why I had told Steven and why I had not told him before that night that I did not want to have sex with him. (!!!)  I was afraid of the knife and I gave vague, agreeable answer.  I did not want to make him any angrier.  I let him talk.  He began rambling on about good vibrations and positive vibes.  He really rambled.  Made no sense.  He said he that there should not be bad vibes between us, but then said something, which even though he had a knife and was rambling like an idiot, I had to respond to.  He basically said: "You know I see you baby, and I feel you baby and I feel you the one.  I feel you the one I be with.  I can tell you a good woman and the woman that right for me.  And there should be no bad vibrations there.  You get me?  Only positive vibrations.  You don't need to go makin bad vibrations baby.  We gotta be in tune with Ja and live in those beautiful vibrations, you get me?"  So basically he's telling me that I don't have the right to tell him to get the fuck away from me.  Because Ja wants him to be with me.  And he kept referring to we (the word us is not in the Rasta vocabulary).  We, we, we.  And I finally interrupted him and said quite coldly, "There is no we Jerry."  And of course he goes on, "Don't be like that baby... blah blah blah."  And suddenly I feel the overwhelming need to get out of there.  And I interrupt him.  "Jerry, I accept your apology if that's what this is, and I wish none of this happened.  But I'm not going to have sex with you so you need to get over it.  There is no we.  And you need to stay away from me.  And don't every call me baby again."  By that time I was up and walking toward the door.  I could see he was angry, but he thankfully didn't get up though he kept fingering the knife.  I walked down the stairs and away from the bunk toward the kitchen house and he started calling me "Jessica, come back up here.  Come here."  I just turned around and yelled up at the bunk "You know Jerry, I don't want to."  And I kept walking.  He remained in a silent and dangerously angry sulk for the rest of my time there.  I figured he would come back to the bunk at night but he didn't, thank God.  Steven didn't make him leave until the day I left.  I left the day after Christmas. I'm not sure if it was becasue of Jerry or if Jerry was just my excuse.

Arrington also had a crush on me I think.  But he was older and I tried to be cold and distant as I could be.  One night he offered to walk with me to Gandoca (which I had wanted to do for a while), but I did not want to go alone with him.  I asked Kate along and she accepted.  So around sunset, the three of us set off through the woods to Gandoca on a little trail.  None of us had a flashlight.  Gandoca, for your geographical and historical information, is the last village on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica before you arrive at the border with Panama.  Actually, the Panamanian border is only 15k along the beach from Punta Mona, very, very close.  Gandoca is about an hour's walk south.  There are no roads.  Gandoca is also a place made famous by the book "La Loca de Gandoca" about the illegal activities within the Gandoca-Manzanillo wildlife refuge within which Gandoca (and Punta Mona) lay.  (It is not illegal for these villages to be there because they were there before the establishment of the refuge... and in any manner, they are hardly large enough to be called villages.)  Anyway, soon after it gets too dark in the woods, we take to the beach and walk in the deep deep sand.  The going was not easy.  We cross a few rivers coming out of the jungle toward the ocean.  Arrington says I remind him of his ex fiance.  Finally, after forever we get to Gandoca, which is about one tenth the size of Manzanillo (which as you recall barely qualifies as a village).  Basically it consists of a bon fire, a bar that is really just someone's front porch, a few houses and the sorriest looking pulperia in existance.  It didn't even sell chocolate or water.  Anyway, in Manzanillo, Arrington begins to chug down the Imperials and Kate orders one too, although I simply order a Tropical not wanting to give Arrington a single advantage over me (I've learned the hard way to be the most cautious, uptight bitch alive when I travel).  The dueno of the 'bar' blares some music for us although we are alone and not dancing.  We talk a bit in Spanish (at my insistence, because I can't understand Arrington's Creole English), Arrington smokes like 500 cigarettes and we leave for the pulperia.  Kate bought some cookies and I bought a dulce de leche confite that was chewy and gross it was so old.  Then we began the walk back, this time completely on the beach.  This time, Arrington wasn't in such a hurry and he permitted the pace to be a bit slower.  When we reached the biggest river to cross the beach, Arrington called us over to a drift wood log and lit a joint, which I insulted him by not smoking.  He kept saying:  "I don't believe it," in his funkey creole dialect and I hid a smile.  After that, he ignored me and focused his attention on Kate who had eagerly accepted his weed.  I was saved.  Nevertheless Kate was not.  Later that night he asked her to sleep with him. (God, hadn't I already explained to her that damn unspoken Rasta rule about accepting marijuana???!!!!)

One weekend, Steve and the rest set up a little organic market a few miles north in the pueblo of Puerto Viejo, which I had first come into a few weeks back.  Puerto Viejo is so different from Manzanillo or Gandoca.  It is actually a real village complete with places to stay, restaurants and decent pulperias.  Kate and I decided to go in with the rest of them to help with the market on Saturday, and to go to Reggae night at Bamboo, a Reggae bar and club on Friday night.  The two of us had decided to walk on the long 5k jungle trail that connects Punta Mona to Manzanillo, first of all so we wouldn't have to pay the extra money for the boat ride out, and secondly because we didn't want to work that morning.  Anyway, I'd heard the trail was rather beautiful.  So I packed just enough to stuff my little backpack purse, and we started out, me wearing my athletic sandals and Kate in gym shoes.  Well the trail was tiny and poorly marked.  Needless to say we soon lost it.  We hardly had gotten to the other side of Monkey Island.  We backtracked and tried another path that had split off.  It led down, down into this marsh.  The mud was so thick and awful although it had not rained in a long time.  With every step, our shoes sunk and the mud went up to our calves.  Kate's shoes were absolutely ruined and the mud really fucked up my sandals.  It got in the Velcro, which then refused to hold together.  My sandals would not stay on.  About 2 hours into a horrible jungle trail in which we were lost, I was forced to go bare foot.  Walking through the mud, and over things.  We turned around and tried again a different way, but we ran into a banana plantation.  Finally, we decided to back track.  It was already noonish, the time the rest were supposed to be leaving on the boat.  We had probably missed them.  So the only thing to do was back track until we found a more promising trail.  So we did, slowly so that I could be careful where I stepped.  The trail pretty much follows the sea (duh), so as soon as we saw it again, I broke for the beach to wash my sandals off in the ocean.  As we sat there contemplating what to do, we saw a boat take off from Punta Mona.  Damn.  We wouldn't have been too late if we had hurried.  I began waving my arms anyway just to see if they saw us.  They did, and came in to pick us up.  It ended not being the Punta Mona people, but rather a private gringo tour group from some ritzy hotel up in Punta Uva.  We happily accepted the free ride, although we had to tag along to see a few other destinations before heading finally for Manzanillo.  In Manzanillo, we met the others who had not yet hitched a ride to Puerto Viejo.  Kate and I had planned to hitch hike but Steve found us a ride.  We rode in with Jessica and Steven and this Rasta dude and his kids.  And then finally, we were back in civilization. 

The first thing Kate and I did was find a room.  We went back to the Jacaranda so that I could pay my previous debt.  The woman ripped me off.  But oh well.  Kate and I got a small double room for $8 a piece. Apparently I had not known that the Jacaranda was like the Punta Mona inn.  The south Carribbean is so small everyone knows everyone else.  I quickly discovered three other Punta Monites there including this girl I had seen at the hotel on my first visit.  Her name was Megan and she was actually living in one of the rooms, working at Johnny's Place (which is a bar).  She was a very sweet girl but with no great like for clothes herself.  When it was just Kate, Vera (the Trinidadian owner) and I, she would andar in the nude.  I was stunned at first (although I had seen nudists running around at the farm), but easily snapped out of it when I realized she only though our discomfort was funny.  The only time I relapsed into stunned shock was when she changed tampons quite publicly in front of three of us.  But it was short lived.  I was also not too surprised when she offered us a hit of LSD.  Only Vera took her up on it.  The rest of the weekend probably is too boring to even note.

Anyway, I actually could tell lots more Punta Mona stories, at least one of which is a little too raunchy to put up here.  If you really feel the need for more, I'll tell you in person.  I won't be forgetting them any time soon.  But anyway, I left December 26, the day after Christmas, with Kate.  Neither of us left behind good feelings at our departure, due to a little situation having to do with Ana, Steven and Alita.  Both Kate and I had planned on staying a month but had changed our mind.  Kate left for home January 1.  She staid a night with me in Heredia, though, before leaving.  After she left, I rested a day before heading off for Chirripo.  And here, my regular entries pick up.       

December 28, 2002

San Jose, Costa Rica

MUSOC station

Yeah!  I get to wait for his dumb bus to San Isidro de General.  I'm in this building called MUSOC somewhere way far away listening to Shakira on the radio as I wait.  I'm not going to make it to San Gerardo de Rivas today.  I'll have to leave for San Gerardo really early tomorrow morning and just start climbing as soon as I get there.  OR maybe I'll wait.  I'll see once I get to the ranger station tomorrow to ask.  Supposedly this climb of Chirripo will take 7-17 hours depending on the hiker.  I'm guessing for me, since I'm not in shape, it will take more than seven. So I'll probably need to start around 5:30am to get there before it gets dark.  But I'll probably have to climb some in the dark anyway.  So who knows?  The food smells good so maybe I'll get some.  And I'm bored.  Didn't bring a book.  Packing light.  But that was a dumb call.  Sumamente dumb.