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Published: July 11th 2005
Buenos Dias! Commence Laczak´s whirlwind trip in Costa Rica. I´m here at school before classes begin at 2... It´s 1 now, but 3 o´clock in the USA. The first weekend has already come and gone. I´m going to start this first entry off with a bang. This goes out to Luke Barklow because I know he´ll take great pleasure in this only because it was a key ingredient to ¨the weather machine.¨I drank milk straight from a cows udder! Yup. Thats right. Around 5 am on Sunday morning, me, oscar (the host father), Kattia (the host mother), Juan Pablo (their son), Andres and Juan Carlos (Kattia´s other 2 sons) and a bunch more of their relatives that I can´t remember went to this... I´m not even sure what you´d call it, but lets just say a sloppy looking fenced in area containing 10 cows, and we drank milk. I must say it didn´t taste all that bad, kinda like warm and foamy half and half cream. However, I only had a little bit because i wasn´t sure how well my stomach would handle it and it didn´t appear to be the most sanitary thing to do, but the others were drinking it by the liters.
ALright, now that we got that taken care off we can go back to the beginning and I can give you a run down on whats happened so far. The flights, all 3 of them, were delayed due to the hurricane and I arrived 3 hours late in san jose, midnight USA time or 10 pm costa rican. My family was not exactly pleased about this but they understood. Other than that, and the fact that I had to sit next to the bathroom on all three flights it all went smoothly, even my luggage made it.
I live in Oscars house, but only Vilma (the grandmother, oscars mom) and i live there. Oscar, Juan pablo, and kattia all stay at her house which is about a 1 minute walk away donw the street. I wouldn´t so much call them houses as much as concrete blocks with corrugated metal roofs. They are much smaller than the houses in the US, with only 1 small bathroom, a small kitchen/dining area, a small living living area, and three small bedrooms. They are all single story too. I think i just made it sound a lot worse than it really is, but its really nice. Every house has tile floors throughout the house and a rather robust looking fence/gate in front of the house. They´ve told me 3 times already to be careful inthe streets because they´re slightly dangerous; theives and such.
It´s quite apparent Costa Rica is not even closely developed as the U.S. In our eyes we´d consider them very poor, but so far everyone has been extremely friendly and very helpful. Atleast once every hour someone asks me "tiene hambre?" which roughly translates to "do you have hunger?" So i´ve been eating extremely well. Costa Rican men, ticos, eat a ton of food! it seems like 5 meals a day. Saturday morning, their son out ate me, and he´s only 3. At every meal thus far I´ve had rice, including breakfast. Only 1 meal I haven´t had black beans and that was last night for dinner.
Saturday morning Kattia took me to see where the school was, which is only about a 5 minute walk. After that we went to the bank so I could get some colones. On the way back this old lady was trying to mooch money off me like you wouldn´t believe. She easily put Farneti´s mooching skills to shame. SHe kept saying "I need money to feed my baby, only 1000 colones!" and she was crying. It wasn´t pretty at all, she was all over me for 4 blocks like hair on Farneti´s ass. Haha okay, thats enough farneti jokes for one day.
One thing thats been kicking my rear end is the Jet leg. It´s only 2 hours difference but man, I´ve been so tired these first few days. I was surprsied how much it has affected me. Another thing i´ve been definitely struggling with is understanding what they are saying. Only when someone uses short sentences or speaks slowly do I comprehend. I usually just sahke my head profusely and say Si, Si, Si and act like i understand when i really don´t.
For instance, after the bank, Kattia asked if I wanted to go to the beach with thema nd thats all that i understood. Evidently I missed out on something because what i thought was only a few hours turned out to be a couple days. We spent the night in puntarenas, at Kattia´s sisters house, so i wore the same shirt and shorts for 2 days and the same underwear for 3. Luckily, I had packed my contact case!
Saturday night we went to Juanitas, a restuarant, down the road and I had shrimp and rice with a pepsi. Soda comes in glass bottles down here, which I find kinda intersting. After the first day I was questioning my decision to come down here. No one speaks English and I felt extremly out of place beacuse I can only understand parts of what they are saying because they speak so fast. Sometimes they´ll say three or four words and it´ll sound like only 1 to me. but, I´ve got to say, in the first weekend I was here I already learned as much, if not more, than what I learned in an entire semester at school. I can already notice a change.
Spanish verb of the week= Picar, which means to itch. I got bit by exactly 893 mosquitos this weekend. I´ve got the red bumps all over my legs to prove it. Never will I forget to travel anywhere without bug spray again.
Back home, I never drink coffee, simply beacuse I hate it. Well guess what, I drink it here everyday sometimes twice. By far my favorite drink is something they call cas. It´s a sweet, very delicious, and refreshing juice. It´s not like anything I´ve ever had before.
Sunday, after the milk episode and beans and rice for breakfast, Andres, Juan Carlos and I walked across the street to the ocean and swam for a few hours and played soccer on the beach. The water was so warm. That was easily my favorite thing I´ve done so far. However, I forgot my camera so i didn´t get any pictures of this week.
Andres and Juan carlos are Kattia´s other sons. Andres is only 13 but he´s close to 6 foot tall and is my favorite person so far. He came back to San Jose with Oscar, Vilma and I to spend the week. This morning he and i went to go look for postcards to buy, but evidently they are hard to find and we came up empty. Kattia are staying in Punarenas for the week with Juan Pablo.
The ride back to San Jose was rather long and arduous. San Jose is in a valley surrounded by mountains and volcanoes. The roads through the mountains are newly paved but they are windy and dangerous and they have to be navigated slowly. It took about four hours to drive back, but we rocked out to classic hits by kelly clarkson, the culture club and mariah carey. Ohh does anyone know who sings the song ¨thats the power of love?" It´s been killing me for the last 12 hours. Someone drop me a note on who sings it. For some reason, the ticos down here love american music.
Oscar, behind the wheel is a madman. Not that the rest of the drivers in costa rica aren´t a bunch of chuckle heads, but you know how when you get in a traffic jam and there´s always that jerk who drives on the shoulder to try and pass everyone who is waiting.... thats Oscar. But, not to worry, I feel very safe in his mitsubishi from abotu 1989, I mean it only has 257 thousand miles on it. Ohh and if you´re not rolling in a Hyundi accent or a nissan pickup truck from 1985, you ain´t happening.
Well today I have my first classes, I´ll finally get to speak English again. I´m looking forward to meeting some new peple. I guess I´m the only one from brockport who arrived this weekend, but theres 4 kids from geneseo.
Alright, thats all for now. I´ll be reporting back tomorrow with much more hopefully. Take it easy everyone. Mom, dad, and lindsay miss you and love you guys.
pura vida,
Luke
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Ben Piorkowski
non-member comment
hey hey
Well, it sounds like a great adventure. Enjoy all of that rice, and have a great time. I'll talk to you soon enough. Peace!