Foco de Dios

  

  “Where’s this bus going?”The young man asked me.

  Startled, and unsure if I heard him correctly with the heavy rain on the roof, I responded: “Excuse me?”

  “Where are we going in this bus?” He repeated.

  “This bus goes to Zapatón.”  I informed him, a little wary and certainly surprised to be asked a question with such an obvious answer.

  “So we already passed Salitrales?”

  “Ooooo – yes, my friend, almost an hour ago.  Remember when the driver got out to drink coffee, the bathroom stop…?”  He gave me a blank stare, as if his eyes wouldn’t focus.

  “So where are we now?” He asked, realizing he was far from his target.

  “Thirty minutes from Zapatón.”

  “I fell asleep,” he said, “and when I woke up I looked out and all I could see was thick forest, and I knew…I had a feeling.  So we’re really far from Salitrales.”

  “Yeah, man.” I insisted.  “And this bus stays in Zapatón until 5am tomorrow morning.  Maybe you could find a place in town, you’ll have to talk to the driver.”

  Just as I was realizing that this guy was on the tail end of a drunken slumber, a familiar thing happened.  The bus stopped, moved forward and back a few times, and as the October rains continued to fall heavily, the tires slid sideways as much as they did forward, and we sunk down just enough to be noticeable.

  “Hasta allí llegamos.”  That’s as far as we’re gettin’, said a grandma from my town.

   I shushed her in an instinctive response to negativity and a few people chuckled.  Then people got to their feet: to help gauge the situation, to give optimistic commentary, or just to watch as we got stuck even more.  Sticking their heads out the window, people realized we were sunk.

  I quickly forgot about the young man lost in the outskirts of our mountain town and grabbed an old man’s flashlight, foco in Spanish, to light up the ground where the back tires were stuck so the driver could see.  Another guy shined a foco on the hole on the left edge of the curve we had to get around.  The rain intensified, and lighting cracked down on the top of the bus.  The seven of us jumped a the sound, some shrieked, and then we giggled.

  “Don’t move the bus any more or we’ll fall in that gulch!”  Said the grandma.

  “Sit down ma’am.”  The driver said curtly.  We all laughed, except for the driver, because he was the only one who knew for sure that we weren’t getting to town that night.

   The next familiar step began after a collective sigh, not a blaming or overly negative sigh, but just a sigh of calm acceptance, a sigh that lets out the last hopes of a normal trip home and that readies the mind for the wetness, the puddles, the mud, the thunder, and the hour-long walk with a group of oddly assembled community members.

  If I were a regular gringo in rural Costa Rica I would have been startled by the rapidity with which people plunged noiselessly out the bus door and into the heavy rain, with and without umbrellas.  But this time I was out just as quickly as the rest.  It’s an activity one comes to expect in October.  I had my backpack on my chest (with computer, camera, and signed documents from the Japanese Embassy inside), my dufflebag strapped on my back, a reusable shopping bag full of six or seven kilos of fruit, veggies, and boxed wine in my left hand, and an umbrella in my right.

  “Ayyyy!”  An older gentleman ahead of me yelped as we assumed our mission with positive spirits.

  “Ahora si…” I said, now we’re getting after it.

  Gamboling about in the rain, the tone of our troop was hilariously jovial and with no flashlight among us we reveled in the brief assurance given by every lightning bolt, and the brief impulse given by every thundering blast.

  CRACK!  Another couple tenths of a second of fleeting light guided us momentarily.

  “And nobody has a foco,” I said, “que tirada…”

  CRACK!  The brightness lasted longer this time.

  “But muchacho…” the old man said, trucking along fearlessly, “we’ve got the foco de Dios.”  God’s flashlight.  

A Brief History of Life Post CrossFit

To my CrossFit Family:

  After two years with the Peace Corps in Africa and Costa Rica, CrossFit Flagstaff (and Hoboken) is something of a mythical place for me.  I mean honestly, did I really throw loaded barbells backwards over my head outside of the old gym under Steve’s supervision?  Could my 4:29 Karen time in 2010 be accurate?  Did I actually do Eva, albeit scaled?  Did I really do Badger prescribed next to Jaffe?  More importantly, did he really beat me? Damn, he really did.  Schmuck.

  Some of you might be thinking, “Africa, that sounds primal.”  It was in many ways.  I squatted to shit every day.  I ran with the rising sun through fields of sand, chased by flies as big as my thumb.  I ate sheep heart, goat liver, and cow testicles.  And I picked mangoes from trees with black vipers living in them.  I installed a pull-up bar and made some make-shift KBs. 

  I wrestled in the traditional Nigerien fashion surrounded by hundreds of my villagers, and beat a strong young guy, and gained a measure of respect.  Then I got the smackdown laid upon me by a high-schooler.  I crashed a motorcycle, distracted by a giraffe.  I turned a corner in a market town one morning to find a man with a 250lb hyena on a leash, yes.  I smoked a pipe of rattlesnake skin, don’t ask.  I fasted some of Ramadan and, of course, slit a sheep’s throat on Tabaski, and I couldn’t help feel my own power and a simultaneous obedience to God.  I prayed with the thousands of others that day and lost myself in the chants.  I let myself be liberated in that oldest of human rituals. 

  I often joined women as they pulled water from the wells every morning, afternoon, evening, and night, and walked the 3k back with 50L in two jugs.  They were vehement about not letting me help, but I insisted – until their husbands scolded me fiercely.  I’m glad I didn’t have the language skills necessary to say what I was thinking.

  But other aspects weren’t what I expected.  Most days, all three meals were millet and rice ground into a paste, then doused with a canned tomato paste-based sauce.  Some days we had rice and beans with fried onions.  Only one type of oil, peanut.  A few of the miracles that Niger offers its humans are year round onions, garlic, and peanuts.

  I went from 188 to 172 over the first four months.  I got malaria.  The cold shivers wouldn’t let my fingers get the key in the door to my house, so I threw up outside on a chair.  I got E. Coli, and stomach amoebas enough times that I laugh about it now.  I spent hours in metaphysical crisis squatting over a pit latrine hoping the previous night’s monsoon rains didn’t sully the foundation enough to make it collapse while I was on it – something that happened to a friend of mine.  She laughs too.

  But remarkably, when I was healthy, I destroyed my bodyweight workout PR times.  And I was running longer distances than I ever had before.  I’m sure I wouldn’t have slammed Linda or Fran, but escape from a hyena?  Well, probably not that either.

  Then, what I never expected.  Just as I started to adapt to the illnesses, diet, and heat there was a kidnapping in the capitol, Niamey, of two Frenchmen, and their subsequent murder in the desert.  They were taken from the go-to Peace Corps restaurant.  There followed my rapid and dizzying evacuation from Niger, along with all the other Peace Corps volunteers in the country.  My time in Africa was over before I had even settled in.

  Long story short: I was given my options, made some choices, fluttered around the night markets of Marrakesh in Morocco, ate clams, got swindled at a shell game, hiked the mountains of Chefchaoen with a chocolatero, hashish producer, saw rainbows in the countryside, danced into the early morning in Málaga, glided through forests in Portugal, and gazed upon Guernica in Madrid.  From the time I flew out of Amsterdam for the U.S. I had been out of Niger for two weeks.  Two weeks after that, I was already in Costa Rica, starting my twenty-seven month service all over again.

  Now I’ve been here for fifteen months.  Time flies.

  Costa Rica has been much more the primal paradise that we all desire.  Ten or fifteen types of trees have edible fruit at any given time.  The indigenous territory that I live on has hundreds of edible plants that are like spinach.  We often cut down Royal Palm trees and eat the heart, a two foot long cylinder as thick as my thigh.  Pork and chicken are the meats of choice, and avocados are around all year.

  My first six months were a physical rebound from the famished Mason that I knew in Africa.  My weight was up, but my emotions were down.  I was in a sort of shock after having the carpet pulled out from beneath me.  But, I used exercise as my medicine.  I had two friends who wanted to learn about my exercise mentality, so I taught them everything I knew.  (They both have gymnastic rings in their houses now.)  We ran hills that made me cry faster than running Humphreys ever had.  I threw up brilliantly.  Eventually, I was in my site, out in the middle of the rainforest, training for my first marathon.  I ran the Panama City International Marathon in December of last year.  But, there was a slight issue – my back.

  It started for the first time after a 150 burpee workout with some friends.  The next day I had a weird looseness in my lower back on the left side.  The next day, it was worse, and the third day, it was unbearable.  I got a wonderful shot in the buttock from the ER and some muscle relaxants.  That was two weeks before the marathon.  I rested and assumed it was a pulled muscle, nothing serious.  Up until the day of the race I didn’t know if I was going to be able to run.  And it had since entered my mind that something in my lower back was threatening not only this race, but my future as a CrossFitter, my future as being the most ferocious person in the room.  I got down on myself.  I realized that I had jumped back into things after Africa really fast and really hard.  It was my own fault.

  In the end I ran the race.  It was miserable.  There’s a bridge that still appears in bad dreams, the longest bridge in history – not really.

  What I really learned, after two months of physical therapy, MRIs, x-rays, consults, second opinions, chiropractors, etc., is that every person has her own pace, and limits.  In this case, I thought a homemade 80lb kettle bell was a good idea.  I thought a muscle-up ladder and 150-burpees twice a week was a good idea.  They may have been, in that mythical land where I built up to my hard workouts, had people around to tell me to scale something, and when I was 20 years old.  Slowly I’m building back my strength.  But there’s no doctor or chiropractor who has been able to tell me definitively what is wrong.  I’ve had to take a huge step back, and accept a life where I don’t do burpees.  And…surprisingly…it’s still a wonderful life.  Children still laugh.  Roosters still wake me up in the morning.

  Here, I don’t have Steve to tell me to scale this particular workout.  No Lisa to switch out my kettle bell to a lighter weight.  No Matty to use as an example, and scale my own workout because he didn’t let his pride keep him from scaling his.  No Ben to skip a tough workout with and go play Ultimate Frisbee.  And no group of close friends, nearly family, to keep me from doing any other array of stupid things.  CF Flagstaff:  it’s been almost three years since I left, but the things you all have taught me, and the memories we shared have been with me the whole time.

  Now, come visit me y’all!

Copa Indigena: Maleku Tournament and Cultural Activity

Letter to the donors of my PCPP project:

I'm sure you're all anxious for an update on the activities which you helped fund for the Second Annual Copa Indigena de Costa Rica!  Well, wait no longer!

Friday morning, May 11th, thirty indigenous boys and girls ages 12-17 boarded the bus that my community counterpart, Fernando Sanchez, and I contracted for the eight hour trip to the Maleku Indigenous Reserve near San Rafael de Guatuso in the northern part of the country.  All the kids and the few parents that were going on the trip were rather anxious, some had bags that were obviously packed too ful, and others had forgotten some absolute essentials...like soccer cleats!  After waiting for a few stragglers and taking a pre-departure picture in front of our antiquated bus (below), we left Zapaton at 11am.

The first two hours were full of excited shrieks and screams from the back of the bus where the more gregarious youth always tend to congregate.  In a strange role-reversal from my summer camp days I was in charge of making sure the girls stayed on one side of the bus and the boys on the other!  Luckily the kids were very respectful and we didn't have any problems.  Two hours in we stopped for a bathroom break.  Once back on the bus all the kids were pretty tired and things quieted down.

We passed through the capitol, San Jose, and the airport.  The kids were super excited about seeing planes on the ground, and one taking off seeing as most of them had never seen a plane that didn't look like a fly in the big blue sky.  We passed Taco Bell, McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Outback Steakhouse, KFC...etc.  They all said: "Oooh, que rico!"  How delicious!  And I got excited for an opportunity to express to them my intense disgust toward most of those locales.  We had a fun argument and I tried to dumb down the science enough to get a visceral reaction out of them.  Only one kid said he wouldn't eat french fries if he knew it would shorten his life!!  Behavior change is a process, that's for sure.

We passed through the metropolitan area and entered the mountains north of the city, through Alajuela and past Volcan Poas, up through San Ramon and out towards La Fortuna and into a cloud forest type climate.  The region was very dry and hadn't yet received its first rain of the year following dry season.  La Fortuna is home to Volcan Arenal, one of the largest and most iconic volcanoes in the area, again something the kids had only ever seen on television. I can't underestimate how much these kids were impressed by seeing these parts of the country, parts that they had heard stories about, which their parents had visited on horseback 35 years ago, where their grandparents had gone to pick coffee 60 years ago.  They will be taking stories and an expanded awareness of their country back to their families and their community.  All thanks to you folks.

As the sun started setting our bus driver turned on the stereo and a Mix-CD titled "Party Time", yes, in English.  Songs like "Jack and Diane", "Hurts so Good", "Jungle of Love", some ACDC tunes and Aerosmith got everybody singing and dancing on the bus. It was a riot, spirits were really high. The parents and I made the executive decision to not force them to sit in their seats.  After all they may never get the chance to dance shamelessly while propelling 45 miles per hour around dangerous curves and over precarious bridges again in their lives.  But the drive proved to be longer than we had planned and after asking countless people on the road-side we finally got there at about 7pm.

Driving into the Reserve we saw ranch houses made of palm trees and some great big wooden sculpted pillars.  We were welcomed into a huge ranch with drums and rain-sticks inside, and given a quick lesson in the indigenous language of Maleku.  There were some amazing carved masks.  The man who greeted us, also known as Jaguar, immediately informed my 30 adopted children that there were 80-90 SINGLE YOUNG PEOPLE in the reserve, and he encouraged them to get to know eachother!  I was a little thrown off.  Here's me, separating girls and boys on two sides of the bus, and here's him, promoting the romantic mingling of my youth with his!  In the end I realized how funny it really was.  And of course, the young guys were hooting and hollering about how many girlfriends they'd have by the end of the weekend. 

The next morning we had the day-long soccer tournament.  Amazingly, it started raining!  We liked the idea that we brought the first rains, rejuvenating the soil and filling the rivers.  Each of the territories shares the belief in the importance of protecting nature and river systems especially.

Zapaton, our team, played really hard but they were just outplayed all day.  In fact, we didn't score ANY goals!  I felt pretty bad for the team, but I enjoyed it as a learning experience for them.  Now they realize why I have been trying to put pressure on them to train with concentration and intensity.  Hopefully they take to training with a new passion now that they see how much more fun it would be to be winning!  By the end of the day our four games were all losses, but we made so many friends.  Almost all the kids made at least 5 or 10 different friends from reserves as far south as the border with panama and as far east as Limon and the Caribbean coast.

That night we did some presentations.  Each territory gave a presentation about the specifics of their culture and their traditions.  Everyone learned a lot and had fun.  We talked about the importance of indigenous solidarity and political involvement from the youth, the future leaders of each territory.  And I turned a blind eye to a boy from my town having some "close-quarters" conversations with some Maleku girls - however, his Mom didn't have the same reaction!

The next morning we were out of there and got back on the bus after a dip in the local river.  We got back to Zapaton at about 4pm and had some more fun on the bus.

Overall, I can't begin to express the totality of emotions, knowledge-transfer, and individual growth that I noted amongst my kids and the other groups.  For all of their lives they've felt isolated when they leave the reserve.  They are surrounded by a sea of lighter-skinned, curly-haired Costa Ricans.  But this weekend, for the first time, they were able to feel A PART of something bigger.  They had never had the experience of being surrounded by young, indigenous youth.  They didn't notice until afterward how comfortable they had been in that milieu.

Next update for the week of June 1st after the Final Tournament which will take place in the ESTADIO NACIONAL!!!

Here's where you can see more photos.

Much love from the youth of Zapaton, and gratitude from me, and from the Peace Corps as a whole.  You've really made a difference in these kids lives.

Nature In My Heart

It's concern. It's a deep and heartfelt concern for the entire planet, all of nature, the living earth. It's the fiery blossom of ire that explodes within me when I witness ignorant injustice toward nature. It's what drives me to lose friends because I tell them instinctively that I'm disgusted that they burn plastic and old computers. It's what makes me jump out of my seat and reprimand a 60-year-old woman when she throws her Tetra-Pak juice box out the bus window. It's my explosive, protective, instinctive rage when I see littering in a place as naturally beautiful and diverse as Zapaton. But, when the rage is quelled by the innocent and apologetic smiles, I realize that my concern is not natural, but learned. It was taught to me, or learned by me. And I could have just as easily been one these of the children who never knew a better way to take care of old tires, plastic bags, and three layer juice boxes. I realize that now that I have entered "The Understanding," it is my duty to bring in others as well. They will feel its depth, its heart, its importance, and they will find the same passion that I have to protect our Mother, Nature, that from which we mysteriously blossomed.

Developing a conscience is a life-long activity. I learned from my family and my friends, through stories and books, through movies and hikes through the woods. Now my goal is to infect these children with the deep concern that I possess. Starting with concepts like synergy (in nature and among humans), symbiosis, mutualism, codependence, coevolution, and COMPASSION. To me, true compassion is the same is being completely present and perceptive. Being completely aware leads to complete respect and compassion. Try it.

I am beginning to realize that they see it within me, they don't know what it is, but they see it, they're curious. They ask themselves why is it that his eyes gloss over when he talks about the mystery of creation, of evolution, of species growing together and relying on each other. Their jaws drop slightly and their brains relax, looking for connections, allowing for new modes of understanding. They see value in my perspective without knowing what it is.

The moment only lasts for as long as I can keep my (Spanish) sentences flowing and coherent. The flow eventually ebbs and I know I've lost all but a few of them. I search for eyes and find one young girl and one young man. They're still captivated. They want in.... The lesson has ended on a highly emotional note, and it is my DUTY to bring them the same intensity next lesson, if indeed I truly believe in my own perspective. And I do. I really do.

A day in the life...

This post is more like a journal entry, to give you a sense of my day-to-day life here.

"Oh wow, that was a hilarious day. I knew it was hilarious while it was happening but it is equally funny now, in retrospect.

It started with a nice breakfast after an even nicer evening with my friend and fellow volunteer Lily Alcock, as well as some other friends. We chose to dine (in San Jose) at the famous (at least among Peace Corps volunteers) restaurant, Train Tracks Pizza, near the San Pedro mall. It is a hidden gem of a place, reachable only by following some dark train tracks about one hundred meters into a lonely alleyway. One would never suspect the quiet neighborhood to contain a house converted into a pizza mecca with the best music in town. A few of us arrived early and then we realized it would be chivalrous to go meet the ladies who were to be joining us at the tracks' edge, so two of my gentlemanly friends did so - and I, in my infinite sympathy, finished their beers for them and chitchatted with the waiter and the owner. While they were gone (longer than I expected) I was invited to choose and album from the restaurant owner's extensive compact disc collection. After much deliberation, oohing and aahing, I chose a Joe Cocker's Greatest Hits. Forty minutes and seven Joe Cocker songs later my friends still hadn't arrived, but more casual conversation and domestic beer filled the gap until they did. Dinner was great, two pizzas, four glasses of wine, and three beers for 30,000 colones, 60 dollars, between

six people. A good deal. Afterwards we tried to go out for some nargile at the Lebanese place but apparently 9:45pm on a Monday was too late for such indulgences. We headed back to the hostel and chatted until tiredness eased us toward our beds for the night.

This morning I woke up and caught an 8:30am bus to Puriscal from San Jose. Once I arrived I waited for a 10am bus to Cerbatana, where my friend Allen lives. The bus was very, very late. Old men were coming up with all sorts of solutions to the bus problems in their exchanges of grumblings and growls.

Once united with my friend and closest PCV neighbor, Allen, we resolved to do a sprint workout to try to loosen up our stiff legs. Two days ago, we decided rather whimsically to run a 10k adventure race that was being held a few kilometers from his town. We both went into it thinking that it wouldn't be too hard, and we came out with the smiles wiped clear off our faces. The route was through very steep hill climbs and descents, rough, rocky cow pasture traverses, through riverbeds and along creeks, a 1200 meter descent and 1200 meters gained again on the way back up, and all of it in the sizzling January summer sun. But of course we will do it again next year!

The sprint workout we did today was called Snertz. it's named after a particular Ultimate Frisbee player with a knack for applied masochism. And now his "Snertz" workout has quite a cult following. Allen and I put ourselves through the nausea, aching lungs, and heavy breathing

with hopes for an easier tomorrow. After the workout we walked up the road back towards his house. While passing a fruit stand our collective spirit led us both to decide that a nice cold pipa (coconut full of water) would be a delightful prize for our efforts. These pipas were so damn delicious that we were both giggly with satisfaction after drinking them. It's a beautiful thing when your body and mind both crave the same thing, and that thing is delivered.

We then cruised back over to Allen's house where his host mother, Dona Ana Grace, had acquired two kilograms of the freshest, finest, purest organically grown coffee for me. Across the street from Allen's house lives a man who grows the coffee and produces small quantities for his neighbors and family. My excitement over the coffee and my exhaustion following the workout were forgotten when I realized that I had only fifteen minutes to shower and be ready to catch the next bus to the center of town!

Sweating (again!) after taking a shower, I scooted down the street to the bus stop. Allen's dogs followed me there. The bus stop is next to a dangerous road and for all I did, they wouldn't stay behind, especially Lola, the newest addition to Allen's family, a big German Sheperd mix that they recently rescued. I was convinced I had missed the bus (for the millionth time) when

another kid showed up at the bus stop. The bus came and we hopped on board.

Once I got to the center of town I headed to the supermarket to stock up for the new house I am moving into. My first hold up was in the toothpaste aisle - there were just too many options...I was overwhelmed. I grabbed one without reading the label to escape the pressure of the overload, it was probably the most colorful one, who knows.

Uncharacteristically, I bought everything I needed before the bus driver started the engine to signal his giddiness to get out of town right at three o'clock. There were no seats left on the bus and I started to regret the last stop I had made in the running of my errands, blaming it for my seatlessness. The I ran into a friend from my town, an older shop owner, and of course, he had an extra seat for me. We chatted and joked about Ticos and their propensity for giving people nicknames. I told him that I was a little shocked that I hadn't acquired one yet, so he started trying to pick one for me - Jason, was his choice. Not the most creative man in the world.

The next few hours were rather uneventful as we cruised through the mountains and cloud-filled valleys. When we reached the last big hill about 10km from my house, some mechanical funny business started going down and the bus puttered to a stop. Long story short - I found myself at 6pm, sun already having set, lying on my back underneath the hundred-pound alternator of the bus, shining a flashlight with my mouth, using a bike cable to connect the current between two other wires, cringing as another guy (not a bus driver) turned the ignition while the bus driver and I lay underneath, hoping the safety break was set properly. The bus never got started. There were sparks, smears of grease and oil, the sound of the motor wanting to succeed in it's effort, but no luck in the end.

So, slowly but surely all seven people that were left in the bus were picked up by familiar motorcycles, leaving me behind with a cheery bus driver, four bags full of fruit and kitchen supplies, and my recently falsified hopes of my first success as a rural bus mechanic. Luckily, I had bought a broom that I was taking to my new house! Why so happy about a broom? You ask. No, not to fly. I strapped two bags on each side of the broom, vegetables and fruit to one side, kitchen supplies to the other, threw on my backpack, and loaded the broom on my shoulders. You can't imagine how thrilled I was for my 10k hike home, I actually live for moments like that one. I often say, "I train not to suck at life." But in all honesty...after 3k uphill I was wishing I had trained harder.

I sang songs and took a break to eat a mango and squeeze out the contents of an avocado into my parched mouth. The mango was all the water I had to get me home. Then, feeling slightly lacking in spirit, realizing that dinner was still an hour away -- Providence materialized in the form of a motorcycle headlight coming from behind. It was my friend, Erick, coming back from visiting a girl in Parrita, a coastal town a few hours away. I loaded up, feeling like I had a stick with buckets of water sloshing around on each side. The trip was going well when - SNAP! The broom broke in half and I barely spared my mangoes undue physical abuse and my computer from falling. I laughed crazily, yelling suave! suave! - realizing the preposterous circumstances that constituted my life at that moment, and loving it, as always, as I got back on the motorcycle. The trip went smoothly after that and I arrived home, forearms burning and the plastic bags virtually fused to my hands. I thanked Erick and gave him as sincere a smile as I could muster, completely please by the goodness of the people around me, doing favors when no favors were due. I offered to pay him for gas but, of course, he would hear nothing of it.

My day was great, my life is great. When people are good to each other there's no need to look for meaning outside of your friends, family, and neighborhood. The meaning of life is to be good to each other even when it doesn't make sense to do so.

New Years Eve

So I found myself sitting on an uncomfortable wooden bench, but as comfortable as could be. It is New Year’s Eve, but only 8pm. Was it the homemade corn beer? Or was it the dubbed episode of Fear Factor that I was watching with my Costa Rican grandfather and grandmother? (Two people who have never seen a beach, a train, a cruise ship, or an iPhone) I’ll give more weight to Fear Factor because it inspired all the entertainment that I withdrew from the commentary my grandparents were making about the contestants. One group of contestants were covered in tattoos and seemed like they were on some speed-based drug, but as we all know, that’s how you get on a game show to begin with. If you’re not on drugs, you just act like you are. That group was called the “apestosos”, which means smelly. Another group consisted of a powerful, assertive woman and a less-than-powerful man. The woman was described as the one that “lleva los pantalones” in the relationship. Luckily for all of us, that is an expression that translates directly in almost all the languages I’ve ever learned. To help you imagine my grandfather’s personality, he’s kind of like a toned down Mohamed Ali interspersed with Ghandi and Al Roker. “A CARAMBAAAA!” is his favorite expression. My grandmother is a bit reserved but she’s got everything working for her. She’s miniature, has a mousy voice and a brilliantly tiny laugh, and usually just giggles at everything. So after eating chalupas and drinking chicha I found myself answering questions about whether or not the Fear Factor contestants were a representative sample of the United States population. I said yes, of course.

New Years Eve is not quite over, it’s just that when you’re buzzing on chicha, from corn which, ten days ago, you plucked from the stalk, stripped from the cob, soaked then wrapped in banana leaves, then ground and boiled yourself, you start to appreciate just about everything more than you normally would. So with three full hours of hilarious exchanges left to go, I find myself at my computer with a desperate desire to catch all the things I’m feeling right now. This short entry might not reflect a certain reality which is important to me right now, that is, that I have overcome a hump that I thought insuperable only a few days ago. With the help of my father and mother, and a few good friends, all the highlights of the many possible perspectives regarding my stay here in Costa Rica became clear to me. I have decided that I am exactly where I need to be right now, that all is right in the world, and that it could never be any different.