Boatswain’s Log September 17^th. Sigh. The boatswain loathes homework.

 

I am tired and cranky and my head hurts and I think I have a mild case of food poisoning. By that last comment I mean that my stomach hurts in a way that may have to be remedied by vomiting later. I have been doing homework since I got home and took a nap at about 3:30. That means I have been doing homework for a frikkin’ obnoxious amount of time. I hate it and I really want to just go to bed, but I still have more to do.

 

Today I went to Spanish class. It was 4 hours this time. My teacher’s name is Gabriella and she is very nice and easy to be around. We played scruples today in class using the hypothetical form of the subjunctive. That was neato.

 

Following that I went to the UCR and interviewed college types about CAFTA. They don’t like it for the same reasons that I don’t. Andres told us his opinion on CAFTA which was essentially that it makes natural resources up for exploitation and makes medicine more expensive for the government to buy for the people. There’s oil in the mangrove swamps hereabouts and Costa Rica don’t have any drilling experience so that means foreign companies that won’t be hiring people here and danger for the environment too…all because of the lovely free trade thing.

 

Really though. This is my whole day has gone by. I had the goal of finishing my Spanish hw today as well as the 4 page paper I wrote, but really I doubt that now. You can probably tell that I am beat. I hope to go to bed soon.

Note: I took peptobismol and went to sleep. I slept quite well. It was a good idea. I woke up and did homework. That wasn’t too fun, but then I watched silly TV with my host brothers. I also bought some chicken and ate it. Good stuff.

Makin a works cited list online, thought I’d update.

Boatswain’s Log. September 16^th. Another day.

 

I struck out for downtown San Jose today and engaged in a series of activities that was mostly me talking with one guy named Juan about poverty in Limon, updating the blog, and then proceeding to spend about an hour trying to find a place to eat lunch with a few friends from the program. I like that they were the ones who want to speak Spanish more. We had nice philosophical dialogue and then found a nice hole-in-the-wall pizza place for lunch. Not Costa Rican food by any means, however it was really tasty and well priced.

 

After this we met our group and traversed to the US Embassy to hear the US perspective on Latin American relations. One guy jawed at us at great length about safety and crap we already knew. The next people were more interesting. The economics guy at the embassy (mind you, the ONLY economics guy at the embassy) talked about CAFTA, a political lady talked about the goals of the embassy, and a PR lady talked about her work making the US look nice in spite of a long history of being a giant superpower that put dictators in place of democratically elected socialist officials…Interesting folks.

 

First of all…they don’t speak Spanish well. When the guy who talked about safety said things in Spanish, his pronunciation made me wince a bit. Furthermore, he’s probably worked here a long time. Moreover, the actual AMBASSADOR to Costa Rica is “learning” Spanish. He’s an appointee rather than a career diplomat, thus he doesn’t actually have to be qualified. Which is odd considering that our government’s representative to Costa Rica doesn’t speak Spanish fluently. It seems like at the rate we’re talking, I could be the ambassador in terms of Spanish fluency. I doubt they’d give me the post though. I am a bit of a disagreeable sort.

 

Secondly, the people in the embassy (especially the boss guy we talked with) are very diplomatic. They know how to answer questions in a very inoffensive and elusive manner that dodges hard answers. It makes sense. They’re technically diplomats. Except for the Economics guy. He got slightly irritable at points. Especially when I asked the people to voice their responses to the criticisms raised at CAFTA by opponents (I was one of the only people to ask questions that made them seem uncomfortable…I think that’s good.) The economics guy got huffy and then made some statement about the theory of comparative advantage being what we’re applying in the Central American context he also said to “do my homework” and look at the economic growth in the nations where CAFTA had been applied. I wanted to talk to him more. Comparative advantage is silly.

 

Here’s my thoughts on the matter. Comparative advantage says that a country should make what they’re good at (or ready to be) making. Thus Costa Rica with a nice tropical economy and a lack of all the natural resources they need should focus on raising crops like bananas that are easily grown here. They should invest in what they’re good at. It makes sense, but when you apply the theory to the United States as it developed it would be like Colonial England telling the US that we should stick to tobacco and lumber because textile factories are really a bit too complex for our economy to handle. The problem is that if we were to have done that our industrial capacity never would have developed. We would not be the nation we are today if we had just stuck to what we were good at.

 

Looking at Costa Rica it is clear that if they invest their land in making bananas because that’s what it is suited for, several things will happen. 1) The land will be poisoned by agro-chemicals. That’s happening now. 2) Lots more land would be used for bananas and not industry. 3) Costa Rica’s development as a nation would be stunted. Especially if the price of bananas dropped or if the bananas got a fungus that killed all the bananas. It makes sense to diversify into many sectors, telling people not to is like telling someone that because they’re good at soccer they should only play soccer. That person will be good at soccer, but will probably suck in many other areas of life at the detriment to society.

 

The guy also mentioned “doing our homework” and checking the growth rates in other countries. CAFTA means that foreign companies want to come into Costa Rica and other countries in Central America and use their land for their business. Thus there are more jobs created, there is more money produced, and the economy does better. But wait, let’s think about that. US companies coming to Latin America. Why would they come? Maybe new markets, maybe cheaper land that is easier to use chemicals banned in the US, and maybe cheap labor. If the third one happens (as it does when companies come to a poorer area in order to make a profit) they jobs created will be jobs, but they won’t be jobs that give workers fulfillment. They will be working their asses off for less money than they can live on. Also, because the company doesn’t come from the nation in which they’re stationed they don’t pay the same taxes to the local government. The nation has less money to share with it’s people (not to mention that because of CAFTA programs like state-sponsored health care will stop existing) and things will go more poorly for the people. It seems that when we peek at what economic development means it becomes clear that it doesn’t mean the puppies and candycanes that we are led to believe by the good ‘ol US Embassy. People disagree with me I am sure, but you tell me what is better for the poor people. Health care that is free, or health care that is “competitive” but costs too much for the poor to use it? Hmmm. Growing disparity between rich and poor you say? Yes. I agree.

 

Anyhow. That was my experience at the embassy. They didn’t even give us snacks. Still, they were nice people, ideologically misled I think, but nice people. But maybe the way their ideology misleads them makes them not so nice people…oh well.

 

After fun embassy time we headed back home. I sat on the bus next to a lovely (yes, she was very attractive) Costa Rican woman named Adrianna and we struck up conversation. She was very kind and complimented my Spanish. She also talked really fast, but she said I could carry a conversation. We also talked about literature. High five to doctor Baah for making us read Gabriel Garcia Marquez. She left eventually, but she lives close to me. Maybe we will talk again on the bus. You never know.

 

Then I bought a calling card with 200 minutes instead of 20 and called the folks, ate dinner, and now I am blogging instead of writing the paper I ought to be writing. Well shoot. It’s game time.

Long one

Boatswain’s Log September 15^th. Feriado = Independence Day.

 

Today I slept in. That means 8AM. I woke up and ate a lovely breakfast and then went with my host brothers to enjoy the giant processional in San Jose that marks Feriado or Independence Day here. All of Central America celebrates this day. There’s even a torch (a freedom torch) that runs from Guatemala through Panama. It actually runs. I saw people running with it on the way out of Limon.

 

While it was cool to experience the parade…I decided that I really dislike parades in general. What it became was 3 hours of standing on painfully hard concrete while watching kids from schools around the city march around and blow whistles in a strangely similar fashion to everyone else. For some reason my host brothers were way into it. To me it seemed very boring. After the 3 hours of standing in the heat had ended, one of their friends asked me if I enjoyed the parade. I lied and said yes. He said (mind you all of this in Spanish) that “It’s very pretty.” I realized in that moment that I had failed to look at the parade in the right way. For me, watching the parade was 3 hours of standing uncomfortably and feeling somewhat out of place especially with the fact that I have so much difficulty understanding the young-folk here. For everyone else, the parade was this great thing that marked the independence of Costa Rica and it was something that was very pretty. Well balls. No one passed me that memo until it was over. All that to say, next time I go to a parade in Latin America I am bringing a chair.

 

After parade time we went to my brothers’ friends house. We were all pretty tired, I was bored too. We sat there and it was frustrating because I felt out of the loop and for the life of me I couldn’t seem to grasp all the jokes that were happening. Everyone decided they wanted Chinese food for lunch and I made the call that I really didn’t want to spend the cash and I was also wicked tired. Both were true, but at the same time, I guess I just wanted to be elsewhere.

 

I went to the Cemetery and talked to Jesus. It was really great and helped me to realize just how much I need that sort of thing regularly. Again, the cemetery isn’t creepy. Just very still.

 

I came home then and read a book that made me angry. (My host mom also made me a snack. My brother came back, but left soon afterwards to go hang out with his friends again…but I didn’t go under the excuse that I would read more. I did read more, but really I just didn’t want to hang out with his friends again. They’re very very nice people, but I felt out of place when I didn’t understand much and it never seems like they do anything. I would be fine with having limited understanding if I were actually enjoying myself in the process.)

 

On to the book that made me angry enough to need to write now in place of later tonight. The book is called “Guerrillas of Peace” it’s the 1^st person account of Blasé Bonpane who became a gun-toting revolutionary priest in Guatemala. He makes me mad. At first I liked him, but later he began to make me angry. The man talks about liberation theology a lot. Liberation theology in rough terms is the idea that Christ came to liberate the entire human being. To bring life “to the fullest”. There are things that get in the way of that liberation that need to be done away with. For example, if you cannot get food this is going to hinder your development as a human being and thus your relationship with God. So if your government is spending oodles of $ on guns and not on supporting the people who cannot eat (sounds familiar)…then that needs to change. That was just one example, I could give you more. In essence it came from the 1968 conference of Latin American Bishops in which the Bishops looking at the problems of Latin America decided that the role of the church in Latin America had to be one that sided with the poor and the oppressed following God’s “preferential option for the poor”. It makes sense as you read the bible. God is the most pissed off about oppression and ignoring the poor throughout the entire bible. This is because the fact that this is happening shows that the people are not actually in relationship with God. I guess He’s pissed off most about the lack of relationship, but also the resulting situation in which governments and people pour sin into their relationship with others. Oppression. Poverty. Not paying people what they’re due. Read Isaiah 58. You’ll get it.

 

So. That in a nutshell minus lots of specifics is liberation theology. What happens as a result of this is that it becomes impossible to preach a gospel that is just words. Words need to be backed by action. We say that God loves the poor in spirit, but the way we manifest that love is through action. It’s like the book of James says,

 

 “If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?” (James 2:15-16)

 

 Bam. So more or less liberation theology says, “Do you mean what you say? Then manifest the love of God that dwells in you through action.” In other words “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Not that extreme I would say. I am taking my understanding of it through Oscar Romero, so if you’ve got beef with my interpretation…I’m sorry, but I happen to agree with Oscar Romero.

 

That being said, you might be wondering where I (who happens to be actually quite fond of liberation theology) and Mr.Bonpane have disagreements. Well mostly it comes through Mr.Bonpane’s commitment to using guns to fight for “liberation” and claiming to be able to love one’s neighbor at the same time. As I have just stated in my limited comprehension, liberation theology asks us to back up what we believe/say with what we do. It also does not minimize the importance of a relationship with Christ as I may have made it seem earlier. It just looks at human beings in a more holistic sense (as people who need to eat, but also need a relationship with Christ most). Note that Jesus fed the hungry and healed the sick, but most importantly taught people how to live and died to facilitate man’s restored relationship with God. Interestingly enough, the by-product of Christ’s relationship with the Father was spiritual fulfillment, teaching, healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and dying on a cross for the sins of the world. A very holistic life of faith that managed to do what was important: show the world the Love of God and restore its relationship with God.

 

Anyhow, Mr.Bonpane says He feels that God supports his use of guns to claim “liberation”. But this man who claims to be a liberation theology guy (and a Marxist at the same time I think…dunno how that works.) isn’t backing up his words/beliefs with action. If you shoot someone and kill them, you aren’t loving them. If you think it’s possible to do both, Ricky Ricardo would tell you that “You’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do.” Because really it’s not possible. Mr.Bonpane, whose theological commitments as both CATHOLIC PRIEST and man claiming to be about liberation theology are undermined by his actions that do not in fact line up with what he does.

 

Furthermore the sort of liberation he is struggling for is liberation outside of Christ. He is placing his emphasis on social, economic, and political realities while seemingly ignoring Christ’s calls for peace and most importantly His death and resurrection that gives us a shot at a relationship with God. I think Blasé forgets that a relationship with Christ SHOULD produce the things he wants in society. The things God calls Christians to do are the things that will change the world. When Jesus didn’t end world hunger and instead chose to die on the cross He placed the focus of God elsewhere. God’s primary concern is with the spiritual liberation of man, with the removal of the chains of sin and death and the restored relationship with the Father. His secondary and almost as important concern is the showing love for those around us, especially in terms of providing for them physically. Mr.Bonpane should read this verse and think about it in context of what I have said,

 

“ ‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ He said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love you neighbor as yourself.’ “

 

Jesus gives us 2 commandments for the greatest commandment. First, love God. Second, love people. In that order. Sometimes the action you do does both. You can’t love your neighbor by killing him, even if he is going to kill you first. That’s the hard part. Mr.Bonpane writes from a perspective in which the Guatemalan government is killing people willy-nilly (via US tax dollars) who don’t support it. Even those who aren’t trying to overthrow the government are being killed. It is easy to see where his position would come from, but I think that if we’re willing to allow ourselves the room mentally to surrender the truth before we get to a hard situation then it will be all that much easier to do. Self-defense is a reasonable perspective. I can understand it. However, I read Oscar Romero and I think about his situation too. This man experienced worse things than Mr.Bonpane and held strong to his stance on calling violence what it is: sin. No matter where it comes from. That’s the challenging modern-day example of living out Christ’s call that we have to hold up as an example. I wish Blasé would too.

 

PS: When I got done writing this I started to do (and later finished) my Spanish homework. My screen saver came on with pictures of lots of you that I put here especially for that reason. I missed you today. I missed home today. It’s odd that finally leaving the states for a bit has helped me to realize how great it is. It’ll be nice to get see you all again eventually, but for now my goal is to live here. I called Andres from the program and he invited me to this thing with a bunch of Christian folk our age. He thinks it will be fun. I think he might be right. Save the good stories to tell me when I get home.

Limon and Stuff

Boatswain’s Log September 12-14^th. Limon in retrospect.

 

I returned from out group’s journey to the province of Limon today at about 5PM. I really would have liked to stay there awhile longer…I’ll tell you about it. Confession: I brought my camera, but it kept trying to be out of batteries. Thus I didn’t get photos of as many things as I would like.

 

The journey started Friday morning with a presentation from a pastor of a church here in San Jose. His name is Alex and he spent 7 years in the US going to school and he is a native of Limon. They guy is pretty cool. He talked about Limon, starting his talk with a comparison. He said that Limon is like his home and he felt somewhat like that person who invites you over, but warns you outside about their crazy uncle who lives with them. He brought up a lot of good points about oppression that is subconsciously accepted in the people that live there as a result of shady politics. It was truly interesting. I thought I had forgot my medicine at home before I left (like I almost did with my wallet), but luckily I put it in a different pocket.

 

FYI, Limon has most of Costa Rica’s black population and almost all of it’s indigenous population.

 

After Alex’s presentation we struck out in 3 vans for Limon. It takes a long time to get there. About 3 hours. However, our first stop was at a coffee plantation. Imagine a huge expanse of green bushes. We learned a lot about coffee and a variety of people’s attempts to stop it. I’ll give you an overview:

 

-the best coffee in the world comes from Costa Rica. It was the first country to export it. All the other countries got their coffee plants or coffee beans from Costa Rica.

 

-Coffee is always handpicked. When stores say “handpicked” and try to sell it to you at a more expensive price they’re just using clever marketing. When coffee is ready it comes in these little red seed guys that are then picked, peeled, sun-dried, and then roasted. A machine isn’t good enough to tell which is ripe and which is not, plus you’ve gotta be able to reuse the plants. Humans can be delicate.

 

-Picking coffee is a family sport. The schools in Costa Rica stop and begin in relation to the coffee harvest. Families go pick coffee together. A row of coffee bushes is called a “calle” (street) and you only get one calle until you’re all the way done with it.

 

-Coffee in Costa Rica encouraged the development of infrastructure. The roads were built to take coffee to the coasts. Now they’re paved.

 

After the coffee plantation we kept driving. Disney songs and good conversations happened in the back of the van where I was. Driving on the highway in Costa Rica is interesting. The drivers constantly traverse into the oncoming lane to pass slow cars and machinery. It made me nervous, but we never died. And honestly, everyone here does it that way. It’s just how it’s done on 2 lane highways. One of our drivers has been at it for over 20 years now. Franklin. Nice man. All of our drivers were nice guys.

 

Our next stop was a pineapple plantation. You know how the tops of pineapples are hard and pointy? They grow out of a bush that is made out of the same sorts of pointy bits. A big bush. They grow an enormous amount of these bushes. Information about pineapples is as follows.

 

-It takes 18 months for a pineapple to grow.

-They used to be pollinated by hummingbirds (colibrís), but now they’re genetically engineered to be pollinated by chemicals.

-The chemicals hurt the land and poison the water…and the workers who spread them.

-In the US we like to have the pointy leaf tops, but shipping them that way costs more in terms of gas…and doesn’t matter for the taste.

-Pineapple is way tasty still.

 

Our next stop after pineapple was a banana plantation. Bananas here are called “bananos”. When there is more than one kind of banana, it becomes necessary to differentiate. I thought people were making the word “banano” up. They’re not. We got to see the entire process of the banana plant at work. Information:

 

-Bananas grow in a plant. Not a tree. Don’t say banana tree. People mock you here for that. The plant produces one bunch of bananas. When the bananas are ripe you chop the plant and take its bananas by force. Luckily it left behind the next generation of plant, which uses its dead mom plant to grow better. Thus bananas drift over time on the plantation and they grow in squads.

 

-The bunch of bananas ripens in a blue plastic sack with holes in it. The inside of the sack is coated with pesticides and chemicals that help the bananas ripen faster without bugs getting ‘em. The pesticides…yep, you guessed it: hurt the land and the water.

 

-We went to the Del Monte Banana farm. The old United Fruit Company broke into 3 companies that still own most (if not all) of the bananas in CR. Del Monte, Dole, and Chiquita. That’s got to be great for everyone else…

 

-Ripe bananas are attached to a conveyor belt thing that takes them to the place where they’re cut apart, sorted by quality (A bananas go to stores, B bananas make baby food and are sold in CR), washed to leach out sap and chemicals, boxed and shipped.

 

-a box of bananas contains 10, 4 pound bunches that are carefully sorted.

 

-Workers at the plant (who might live there too, they have homes, a doctor of sorts, a store, and a futbol field on site) get paid about 300$ (about 8000 colones or 18$ a day) a month to work at least 10 hour days. A living wage for a Costa Rican is 400$ a month for one person. So if daddy works at the banana plantation and has more than just him…odds are that mommy is working too to make ends meet. In case you’re wondering, living wage for a family of 4 here is 1000$ a month.

 

-I think I might have to start buying fair-trade bananas (when I start buying bananas). People get the shaft otherwise.

 

-Workers at Del Monte have it better than other plantations. They have a union of sorts that can do stuff with grievances. However, they can’t really push for better wages, because other people would do their jobs for less money in a heartbeat. Especially in Limon.

 

-Wild bananas have a salmon aftertaste. Hmmm. I mean it.

 

After plantation tours we got lunch. Lunch was a buffet of food that I mostly didn’t recognize. I drank some coca-cola afterwards and talked with the program director about the changes in the schedule for Spanish class. We now only have Spanish class MWF for 4 hours each with an extra week instead of 5 days a week for 3 hours. I think it will give us more time to go speak Spanish with people in the afternoon. I certainly plan on going to the U. Costa Rica and chatting with students. Maybe even go on a date for research purposes…I recall Andres saying he would try and set me up if I wanted.

 

I like that we can talk to the director of our program directly about what we’re doing. He’s not in an ivory tower by any means. He told me that Coca-Cola is sometimes called “el agua negra de la imperialista” or “the black water of the imperialist”. I don’t know whether I agree or not…mostly I think it’s funny. But Coke definitely has a strangle-hold on this country’s beverages. Despite the wonderful local options.

 

One thing that you notice the moment you come down the mountains into Limon is that Costa Rica is beautiful. Huge green hill covered in trees that defy the imagination. Glorious greenery that stretches like a never-ending dreamland of jungle into the horizon. I thought about Robb Watson and knew that if he ever came here, there would be lots of detours into the jungle.

 

The next thing you notice is that Limon is overly hot. Balls hot I would say. I was sweaty the entire weekend. Not just damp, I mean sweat dripping from my face while I stood in a muggy 85 degrees plus by the carribean sea. Oh, yes. That’s right. LIMON IS ON THE CARRIBEAN!!! So good. Seeing Ocean again made me so excited. Especially knowing that I would be getting to swim in it later.

 

We got into our hotel and proceeded to walk around (safely at night…Limon feels safer than San Jose. Strange.) and interview people for a paper about poverty in Limon and whether it was a racist sort of poverty. Most people cited structural causes like lack of jobs and things, not the race card. One guy said people are only poor because they’re not working. I disagreed with him, but didn’t say so. We almost went dancing, but I caught myself part-way and realized the reasons I would be dancing wouldn’t be really edifying ones. So I went to a strange calypso show instead. People in Limon like to sing Claypso songs with the words “Aqui en Limon” in the song. I dunno why…

 

We got back to the hotel and slept in an air-conditioned room. So nice. I was cold for the first time ever in this country. My roommates were Craig Miller from Wheaton College and Matt Crowson from a school in Tenessee that I have forgotten. Oh well. It was nice to be roomies with those guys. They’re cool.

 

In the morning we woke to breakfast of rice, beans, eggs, and white bread. Always the white bread. The jelly was good though. Guyava makes good jelly.

 

Then we drove to a native reservation where we met with a native woman (of the BriBri tribe. Doña Gloria Mayorga) who told us about the manner in which the government promises them land, doesn’t help them get the land they “own”, and claims mineral rights to whatever is under the land. People live on the land that the government gave the Indians, these people make the Indians pay to get this land back. It’s a long process.

 

They have an iguana farm because it’s what they traditionally eat. They have a matriarchal society, and the young people are increasingly not interested in things of their own culture. Their culture is about living as one with the mother-earth.

 

We learned about their beliefs about the creation of the world (Sibo their god, killed a fat little girl god and used her flesh to make the earth fertile for sowing corn, which apparently became people at some point). Dona Gloria then proceeded to make a statement about how all religions worship the same god in a different form. I didn’t agree, but based on her situation it was challenging to say “she’s wrong.” She’s been through a lot. The catholic church didn’t do a great job of showing Christ in the process of evangelization. At the end of the day though I have to either say that I know the truth or I don’t. I can’t be a pluralist. I can’t reconcile that to my experience of the world, nor the manner in which I understand things to be. At the end of the day I have to decide whether or not what I believe is the truth. I believe it is. Not just because I believe it to be true, but moreover because it would be true without my belief. I think we have to be able to take a stand as Christians on what is truth. It is so very easy to make our truth relative. Unfortunately, that’s not doing a good job of holding on to the truth.

 

I think we have to be able to be accused of being obtuse and hardheaded because we know the truth, not in a way that is angry or offensive, but in a way that humbly says “What I hold to be true is in fact true. Please accept the love of Christ.” A pastor at church this morning who (in the process of being vaguely offensive at other points that I didn’t catch for some reason) made a good point. He said in Spanish that “Those who are preaching a lie preach it as the great truth and those that have the great truth preach it as though it were a lie.” I guess that if Jesus is some kind of pluralistic part of a universal truth then there would be easier ways of going about finding it, right? Couldn’t I just be a Buddhist and seek “enlightenment”? I think that the fact that follwing Christ is hard and different from other religions in the context of our very particular emphasis on a dynamic relationship with God shows that pluralism is a nice thought, but really serves to generalize all faiths to a level that I think that Jews, Muslims, and Christians (to name a few) would protest.

 

So I thought a bit about that afterwards. We got a tour of the reservation and after our time it was clear that we had been in a hot little hut in the jungle for about 1.5 hours.

 

Then we went to the beach. Highlight of my trip. I love the Ocean. As you may have noticed. We got to the beach at the Cahuita National park and walked until we found a green flag (meaning there aren’t any death-dealing rip tides) and a table to put food on. I was the first one in the water because I carried a huge jug of water from the van, and I was the last one out of the water. The Carribean sea stretched as far as I could see. The white beach was great and lacked sharp rocks. The water was very warm and salty. We played in the water for 3.5 hours. An entire group of about 50 gringos. Such a lovely gong show. Guess who the Hispanic kid was who didn’t get a sunburn and didn’t put on sunblock….

 

I body surfed for the first time. It was really fun! I got to ride some sweet waves using my body as a board for a long time. Note: Waves come in groups. The best wave is usually last. We also did “chicken fights” in the water.  A chicken fight is when someone gets on your shoulders and tries to push someone off another person’s shoulders. When you’re as big as I am, people get up on your shoulders a lot. I learned that I can do a standing flip. I can’t exactly land it, but sometimes it’s way more fun to do a flip over waves than jumping or just taking it. I tried a backflip…I won’t do that again. I almost landed on my neck.

 

The waves in the ocean are a powerful force. They never stop. It’s When you body-surf a wave in, you get halfway up and get owned by the next wave. Sometimes you eat a mouthful of sand. Sometimes you hit other people who are body-surfing. Sometimes you watch out for the tree branch that threatens to impale someone. Sometimes you realize that there are lots of cute girls in your program…

 

We ate lunch at the beach too. Fresh watermelon, pineapple, and empanadas with Pati. Pati is a strange sort of meat stuff. It is tasty. There were also desert empanadas with some sort of red goo inside.

 

Like I said I was the last to leave the water. It was a shame to leave. My goal is to hit another beach before I leave this country. It is a glorious thing that the Lord has created. I am all about it. My friend Casey invited me to come to his house in San Diego and rock big waves in California with him at some point. I will take that offer in due time.

 

We left the beach (on the way back I watched leaf-cutter ants and monkeys. Sigh. I miss the beach right now.) and ate dinner and danced with a calypso band. Youth from the Baptist church where we attended service this morning came and danced with us, they were nice. Apparently people in Limon speak Jamaican English and Spanish. They like to talk to us in English. We hung about there and danced for awhile. Some people’s schools don’t allow dancing, but it was a cultural activity. Ha. In your face silly legalism. Tell king David not to dance before the Lord with all his might. I dare you.

 

After a walk about the city in about 4 degrees cooler weather than in the small dancing chamber. It was bed time again. This morning I watched CNN in Spanish (grossly exaggerating the good things about Ecuador while leaving out any unpleasant parts…like the poor people who live there) and went to 2.5 hours of Baptist church. Long service, contemporary praise music, choir that hurt to listen to. Preacher that called the people in the church to stand up for what we believed in and speak out against violence and used the parable of the good Samaritan to call us to love our neighbors before changing his thrust to a highly focused call to evangelize. I like evangelization, but in the context of relationship and showing God’s love through action. I don’t see how just throwing a pamphlet at someone achieves the goal we want. Nor do I ever plan on going door to door as though I am selling the word of God. I will talk about the reasons I do what I do, about why I love people, but not for a moment do I think that this is enough to show people Jesus. Words+action=evangelization. Saying Jesus loves you to a starving person isn’t enough. Nor is it enough to just feed that person. You gotta have both.

 

Okay, we then drove back. I did homework. And now we’re here. Independence day tomorrow. Parades. Super fun. Go team. Goodnight. I hope you enjoyed my story.

 

PS: It was fun to play with people from my program. I am really opinionated in class, it’s nice for people to know that I’m not just an opinionated jerk who isn’t fun to be around. I can be fun too. Wink.

Mo´posts

Boatswain’s Log September 11^th.

 

Well. Today has been a quality day by all accounts. Let me tell you about it. By the way I just counted all the change in my drawer here, it comes out to 1065 colones. Including all the 5 colones pieces that are literally worth 1/10 of a cent or thereabouts.

 

It started off a bit rough, at 3AM a dog barked nextdoor for half an hour and then at 5:30AM some jackass revved the engine of his car for an unnecessary amount of time. So when I woke up, it was not overly fun to be awake. My host mom had made me lovely little bread things which I ate with gusto.

 

Off to class. Again, Johnny is still pretty tight. I wish that we had the option of meeting with him every week, but sadly today was our last day with him. We talked about the role of women in the church today my friend Kayla used our exercises in the subjective to say that it makes her really mad when people say that women cannot be pastors. I was happy to hear her say that. I said something similar. Johnny brought up the good point that he doesn’t understand how catholic priests can advise married people if they’ve never been married themselves. I was in agreement with that statement. We did a quiz of sorts that wasn’t too hard.

 

Then I came home for lunch. I have decided that I really enjoy the walk to and from Sabanilla to class. I get fitter, I talk to people, or I talk to Jesus. Sometimes I sing to myself also. (today I sang and talked to Jesus) Anyhow, it was a pleasant walk in the sunshine (it didn’t rain until about 2) and when I got home I had a super tasty lunch. The standard rice and beans and a tad bit of sausage (salchicon) BUT I also had the biggest avocado I have ever seen. Imagine a small pumpkin and you’ve got an idea of how big this avocado was, I got a fourth of it and a tomato for a salad and frick…it was delicious. I had no idea such things existed in the world. Now I do. I want my own avocado plant. Stupid temperate zones won’t let that happen though will they?

 

Then I went to class again. Class was the highlight of my day. We got to hear from a man named Elmer Rodriguez Campos who lived in El Salvador during the war in the 80’s. Minus my notes I will have to summarize. He lived right next to the trash dump as a child in a tin shack. His family earned money by sorting through the trash, lots of times they found food there too. He met Oscar Romero once when he was a kid (we found that out at my asking). Oscar was in his neighborhood and he got blessed by the archbishop and got to touch his robe. Think about what it must have looked like to have the archbishop of the country in a village bordering a trash dump. Oscar Romero was a serious man of God and his robes probably got dirty that day. Elmer saw his friends (as a child mind you, this means kids dying) die in peaceful demonstrations and as the US funded Salvadorian army would bomb the poor parts of the cities to try and “stop communists”. He said following the death of Oscar Romero the people had a march to protest US involvement in El Salvador. Half of the people never made it back because the army had put snipers on rooftops that fired into the crowd. They killed women, children, and old people. In cold blood. With US taxpayer dollars supporting them, way to go Ronald Reagan, way to be that great president that the republicans say you were. Maybe not. Obviously Elmer had to leave the country especially since his dad was a union activist. His family left to Costa Rica. He returned to El Salvador and participated in the resistance himself as a soldier, but then came back to Costa Rica as the US funding of the war picked up. He said he could only make it for a year.

 

Elmer now works as a security guard and gets paid about 24 dollars for every 2 days to watch rich people’s homes. Homes that in total are worth 1.5 million dollars. He is poor, but he doesn’t see self-actualization in terms of things. He is the most eloquent security guard I have ever heard speak. The assistant director of the program interpreted for him, but to be honest I pity the people who had to listen to the interpretation. Trevor did a good job, but the man is incredibly eloquent in Spanish. You miss out if you can’t understand him. I missed some, but I caught about 90%. That was enough to know that the man has a way with words. He’s actually a poet and a painter in his free time.

 

He talks really clearly about the effect that globalization has had on Latin America and the manner in which the poor here buy the American Dream that people have to be successful and have stuff in the US to be people. A friend of his went to the US and sent him a photo in which his friend was next to goofy at Disney world. On the back of the photo it said (translated for your convenience) “See? I am a person now.” He said that his dream was the Central American Dream. His dream is living life here in Central America so that he would be able to experience life that was real and be able to experience an exchange of cultures in place of an assimilation of his culture into US culture. He said that he wasn’t sure if it was in the constitution, but every person “had the right to dream”. Man. I know that I have talked about this guy for a long time, but his story was really impactful. I dunno that you’ll actually be able to understand what it is like to sit in front of a man who experienced as much hardship as him and hear him talk from this. I did my best to write about it, but the man has a way with words. I hope you get the chance to hear from someone with his perspective. It really puts the effects of US proxy war policy in human terms that make it ugly. As it already is, but this way you can’t deny it. Elmer welcomed us to come to his part of town and meet the group of developing artists that he is coaching. We’re gonna go.

 

After we listened to Elmer talk we broke into our process groups and chatted about the Kingdom of God. A complex subject. I am glad that the people in my group are comfortable enough to cut me off now. I can take it and I need to learn to hear other people’s perspectives better. The bible belt sounds like a strange land. People in my group are from there…I dunno if I’d make it there. I might be lynched. In the group I try to make people say what they mean. I think that sometimes it makes me into an ass, but if we are having a clear dialogue I don’t want to operate on guesswork. So I try and get people to express themselves clearly. They’re tough people. Apparently they put us all together because they thought we could handle it. We can. We all laughed at the idea of me being put in a group with a bunch of shy folks…

 

Then I stuck it out afterwards for Thursday praise and worship time. Which was lovely. Afterwards, my friend Nikki (who is on my soccer team and is skillful) said she felt like she was surrounded with knowledge when my other friend Nicole and I hugged her. Nicole and I talk about intellectual things a lot. Nicole said she felt surrounded with love. I prefer the latter. I hope that in the process of interacting intellectually with people in class I don’t fail to show them love. It seems to be a bit of a fine line. I want to challenge people and silly ideas, but I don’t want them to fail to see Christ in me because of it.

 

Oh. In between class and PWThursday we went to Fredo’s Panaderia (bakery) and my friend Andrew Hayes gave me the hookup with this piece of chocolate cake for about a dollar. It was wicked tasty. Hats off to Fredo’s.

 

I read this article on the Emerging Church today. I may unintentionally be a part of it. It sounded like lots of good stuff that I say, but at the same time there are things that the article said the Emerging Church represents that I don’t like. I am not a relativist. End of story. I think there was something else too, but I’ve forgotten.

 

I am reading this book called “Guerillas of Peace”. It’s about revolutionary priests (from what I understand, that means priests who get guns to defend the oppressed.) It’s really a fascinating book. The list of authors I have to read is impressive. If I get to read it all by the time my paper is due, I will have sifted quite a bit of new perspective.

 

We head out for Limon tomorrow. Apparently we have a billion hours to spend in vans chatting away. The view is supposed to be bomb. New part of the land, here I come. I will have to call my folks when I get back. They’re probably wondering if I am still alive.

 

PS: Watching Channel 7 in Costa Rica is like watching entertainment tonight mixed with American News. It’s all the sad and depressing bits of news like the US news minus the stuff on the economy, but they interrupt the story about the man almost committing suicide to cover the development in Latin American Idol. They also shamelessly plug things like CAFTA in obvious propaganda form, and put a tiny screen on every program telling you to vote for the Costa Rican woman in Latin American Idol. They also talk about her all the time. On every single show. People watch this channel all the time. Every day. They watch mind-numbing propaganda. But at least there are foxy women on the telenovelas. Well. That’ll do.

 

This is Chauncey, alive in Costa Rica. Signing off. Happy birthday wishes go out to Matt Read. I don’t remember anyone else’s birthday off the top of my head for today.

More stuff

Boatswain’s Log September 10^th.

 

A few interesting things to note that happened before Spanish class this morning.

A) I did not sleep well.

B) The guy that dresses like an old west Indian is back again. He had his family this time. It seems like his son is a chief in training. He had the chief hat too.

C) I got sweaty…again. Like everyday.

 

Spanish class was interesting. I made either the good choice or bad choice of giving this blog address to my Spanish teacher, I like the guy and I don’t say bad things about him so I am not too worried. We had another history lesson about the Afro-Costa Rican population in Limon. Apparently they aren’t huge fans of Costa Ricans because until 1948 (the end of the civil war) they weren’t allowed to go to the central Valley (San Jose) at all because they were black. They were originally brought in from Jamaica as paid laborers to build the railroad here because the Chinese and the Italians that were hired at first died of things like malaria or yellow fever. They were promised a boat to go back to Jamaica…but no boat came. The RR company gave them the shaft. Then they got to work on the “super fun” United Fruit Company plantations for 50 years in virtual slavery until 1948…Shoot.

 

We also learned about the subjunctive today in a manner that actually makes me happy. It’s week 2 and we’re jumping into the subjunctive. I am pumped. 3 more weeks of learning and speaking Spanish in class, the hard thing is that it is still to easy to speak English. I almost had a breakthrough in making it in Spanish this morning all the way to class, but then Matt and I started having a deep conversation about economic systems, poverty, the poor, and Jesus…and I dropped the ball for convenience sake. It was a worthwhile conversation to have.

 

After Spanish class I got to go to a medical clinic. Hurray! My right ear whole hurts sometimes and feels like it is getting smaller also my eyes itch a whole lot here and I thought my right eye might have pink eye. So I went to the clinic. Very convenient. I got in and out with prescription medicine for about 50$. I kept the receipts. The nurse told me that my eyes and ears were all inflamed in varying degrees, but I didn’t have any infections…yet. That’s good.

 

Then I came back home and took a nap, then jumped into writing my first biblical reflection. It was dull for the most part and felt like I was pulling things out of my rear throughout the whole thing. That and I wrote it in Spanish so it took extra time. I wasn’t finished by the time I left to go play soccer tonight. I just finished it about 10 minutes ago. It is currently 10:31PM or 9:31PM if you live in Washington.

 

Soccer. We played a better team, in an outdoor arena, in the rain, and for a large portion of my playing time the lights went out because of the thunder/lightning. Oh yeah it rained today. It rained like the sky was throwing a party where the main game was to dump water on the planet. Also there was lightning and thunder that shook the house. Crazy cool. I was awed by how loud the thunder was.

 

Back to the game. It was a rough game. I scraped my arm up pretty good on the goal post, the opposing team made goals like it was their job, and to make matters worse I felt like I was in middle school again and sucked at sports. I guess I just wanted to play well, but our team has played together twice, I haven’t been a serious keeper since I was 9, and we were playing against people who have played soccer since they were able to stand up. I am pretty sure my crappiness is justified, and really…I guess I did stop a few shots. It’s hard to be good when the opposing team can aim for and hit your leg and use it as another post to put the ball in the goal…They did it multiple times. It made me feel really really silly.

 

After getting covered in black rubber specks I returned home to eat dinner. I walked Rachel back to her house so she didn’t get shanked. Thus far walking around at night after soccer hasn’t been hazardous. I don’t have much for people to steal on me, I am really large, and I frown when I am thinking. Which is what I do when I walk by myself.

 

Lately I’ve been thinking about you guys. Who will you all be when I get back? Will some of you be married? Will some of you have great stories to tell? Another question. I think I am changing while I am here. Maybe you can already tell from the blog. How different will I seem to all of you? I know that my firwood hoodie will be beating Robb Watson’s because it will have gone to 3 different countries by the time I get back, but other than that…I wonder who I will become.

 

That’s about it. This is Chauncey, Alive in Costa Rica. Signing off.

The Past is now what you read.

Boatswain’s Log September 9^th.

 

I am really really tired. I played some soccer last night and I think that through a combination of eating dinner too late and not drinking enough water during the day I am a bit dehydrated still. Nonetheless let me break the game down for y’all.

 

We showed up to the cancha (indoor soccer place) at about 7. We played 15 minute or three goal games. I was the keeper.

 

It was really fun. My team lost more than we won, we only ended up winning once. The Costa Ricans won overall, and the other team from our program was next. I can’t help but feel like I was a definitive part of the reason we lost. Being keeper, there’s a lot of responsibility and in general I don’t know that I am agile enough to get all the balls that are thrown at me. I made some good saves, but shucks. Those Costa Ricans are tricky.

 

This one ball came straight at my face, faster than anything has come at my face in a long time. I had to dodge it or risk semi-consciousness. The Costa Rican folks play soccer better than any people I have actually watched playing soccer. This one guy did that thing where you jump in the air and kick the ball behind you…Y’know? It looked really cool, but he missed. Wow.

 

We played for about 2 hours and it was fun. I was entirely sweaty, smelly, and covered in tiny bits of Astroturf afterwards. Then I came home, ate dinner, and went to bed.

 

This morning I went to Spanish and had my first class with our new teacher for the week. His name is Johnny. He’s a really cool guy. It’s easy to talk to him, he wants to talk about interesting things (like the role of the church in Costa Rican sex-ed programs…or lack thereof. Seriously. Apparently there’s really not much to speak of in the sex-ed department in this country because of the catholic church.) and in general I really enjoy class with him. The other students and myself are getting to know each other better in Spanish and I find myself able to talk easier with them. Good stuff.

 

I came home after lunch and changed my clothes because I thought we had some fancy guest speaker, when really it was just people from the program talking. Sigh. My host mom thought something was wrong with me because I just came into the house and changed right away. I was in a businessy mood. She thought I was sickly or in emotional distress. Yesterday, sure. Today nope. It was nice to know that she looks out for me.

 

Class was interesting today. We talked about economic systems. I am finding that I am probably going to offend lots of people in class because I don’t really back down and have a pretty firm place to stand with regards to most issues. I think I could learn to speak with a bit more grace, but that’s a bit of a challenge when people assert incorrect or sloppily-made opinions. I am not saying that I am right all the time, but rather that I can tell when other people aren’t…or at the very least when I strongly disagree. Apparently some girl cried today because her bubble of believing only good things about capitalism popped or something along those lines. Oh no. What a shame.

What I am finding in the process of learning here is that we do  (as Americans) do a really good job of looking at things from a political/social/economic perspective. But really we do seem to approach things from almost a situational atheist perspective. Everyone in the program believes in Jesus (I think), but it is interesting that we talk about Him so very little. It’s almost like people thing that God lacks an opinion on the matters that we discuss. It feels sometimes like we have made the truth so relative that we can allow people to justify the suffering of human beings from a capitalist perspective because we don’t want to offend anyone. Or maybe it’s because we don’t think we know enough to state the truth.

 

Here’s the thing: God hates it when poor people are oppressed. Read the bible. The poor, the orphan, the widow, the alien…these are the people on the fringes of society that God expects us to be looking after. If we’re not and we fail to speak out on their behalf it’s likely that we are silently assenting to what they’re going through. The prophets spoke time and time again about how God feels about the nation of Israel’s disregard for the poor. How can we assume that God signs on to the idea of free-market capitalism if it does the same thing that the prophets spoke on God’s behalf against?

 

I think reading that Oscar Romero book did quite a bit for my perspective. I really don’t see how we can continue to look at problems without including God in our process. Even in our process of discussion. What does He think? Does He agree with our emphasis on economic development at the expense of the poor? This is something we leave out. Why? I don’t know.

 

In any case. Class was interesting. I have strong opinions. People hear them. I don’t think I’m likely to make a very good business man.

 

Before class I talked with Trevor (the assistant director of our program). He has had some interesting experiences. It was cool to chat with him about his life. He lived in Cuba, Colombia, Costa Rica, and some other place also. Shoot dang. That’s crazy cool.

 

After class I went over to Andrew Ryan’s host family’s house and hung out for a bit and had what I think was chocolate milk and some cake (queque…hmmm. Let’s say pastel.). I met his host grandparents and his little host brother Carlos. Carlos’ dad’s name is Carlos. So is his grandpa. That’s a tad confusing. Little Carlos just celebrated International day of the child today and so he got to go to school and play in place of having to have class. Young Carlos was really cool. He wanted to have me see his cool cars and let me listen to his Jaunes CD. Juanes is this Colombian singer who writes some pretty frikkin’ tight music. Fo’ real. Old Carlos and his wife talked about the beaches in guanacaste and said they’re great.

 

Then I came home and spent some time chatting with my host brother and his friend Daniel. I like Daniel. He’s funny. Then I did homework, took a nap, ate dinner and here we are. I am going to start on a paper after this.

 

This weekend we are going to the province of Limon where we get to spend time at the beach. Also we get to tour plantations and meet some Costa Rican indigenous folks. Sounds like fun.

Something that I am getting frustrated with is the way in which in our group we have almost forgone the attempt to speak Spanish with each other. I really like spending time with my friend Jasmin because her family is from Mexico and she is more comfortable speaking Spanish…plus she’s really nice. Don’t get any ideas. I want to be able to be here in Costa Rica where they speak Spanish most of the time. But it seems like when I spend time with some people in my program it’s like we create our own little US that we get to take around with us. I like it sometimes, because sometimes I miss home. But more and more I don’t want to be held back here because I am constantly trying to make here someplace it’s not. It’s okay that Costa Rica isn’t the US, we’ll be back sooner than we know. It’ll be a challenge to interact with people because lots of them aren’t as comfortable with the language…but I think it’s time for me to draw the line. Spanish as much as is possible. Go team. We’ve got another soccer match tomorrow. I hope we do better. By that I mean I hope I get the hang of anticipating the ball better. Ok. It’s paper time.

BTW

New photos on Flickr. The sun was gorgeous this morning. In case you wanted to know.

Today. The funny things that I remember that I forget to tell you.

I keep seeing all these hilarious things that I forget to write down. Or at least they’re funny. Anyway, I figured that after this morning I could use something funny to think about. We did this assignment in class that was talking about death. Death is hard for me to talk about. Especially with the death of a very great friend of our family being so close. I miss Malcolm Dyer a lot. I knew him for 20 years of my life. When we started to talk about death I started to think about him. The result was that I had to hold back tears for the better part of a half-hour. Even after I took a break in the bathroom to let myself shed tears, I still was borderline the guy crying in public. It’s so very hard to do, to be that guy. Jesus was that guy, but my ridiculous culture renders it very very hard to follow in his footsteps. I didn’t cry as much as I could have, I made a definitive effort to hold back. Maybe that was bad. Maybe I should have let everyone deal with it. What’s the worst that could have happened? Anyhow. That’s that. Now for funny things:

There was a sign for taco bell on the highway that translated from Spanish read “man does not live on bread alone”. Enough said.

A sign at the fair in Cartago said “Usted no puede leer? Puede aprender!” Or something along those lines. What was goofy about that was that the people who cannot read are not likely to be helped by a written sign.

Last one. I saw a guy dressed as an Indian Chief in a parque on the way to class. He had the feathered head-dress on and said “how” as we walked by. Dunno why he was getting ready to eat breakfast in the middle of a park, dressed as a Native American in the old west style…but oh well.

That’s all I could think of. I am going to do some homework and mail letters later today, followed by the most epic futbal game of all time. Or maybe not. Hopefully we can win.

Yesterday

Boatswain’s Log September 7^th.

 

I went to a new city here in Costa Rica today. It’s called Cartago. I went to see “La Posada” de la Virgen de Las Angeles.

 

Let me break it down as best I can. The lady I asked about it talked like she was a tiny old Costa Rican woman…in other words very softly. I didn’t hear much, but I nodded to be respectful. The Virgen or (La virgen in Spanish) was a representation of Mary that apparently appeared in doll form to this little girl gathering wood. It appeared several times, even after she took it home, it would get out. So somehow a priest signed on to it also…and they built a church there.

 

To celebrate, an icon of the Virgen travels between 2 churches in Cartago. It lives in one for half the year and then goes to the other for the rest of the year. It was changing places…that’s what the festival is all about. I got photos.

 

Here’s the story: After breakfast I struck out to downtown to meet with folks from the program to head to Cartago with Andres. The bus I rode was interesting in 2 respects:

 

 1) I had the most room for my legs I have ever had in a Costa Rican bus. I sat down and suddenly found that I had space. I looked around and hoped that maybe they had made a bus just for people my size. Then I looked to my right and came back to reality…I was in disabled seating. Sigh. You win some, you lose some.

 

2) The music that the bus driver was playing loudly was pretty awesome. Songs like “free falling” and “Return of the mack”. I really enjoyed hearing return of the mack. It made me think of stacking benches on tables at camp and sketching out Jared Johnson. Good times.

 

In order to get to Cartago I had to wait for the other 30 white people to come to the Teatro Nacional then we could leave. It’s always a bit odd when you’re in a group of foreigners here in Costa Rica. People give you weird looks. I don’t get many weird looks most of the time. Andres said it was because I look Hispanic. 5 points to Chauncey because of his Hispanic genes.

 

We took the bus to Cartago, which only took about a half hour. The bus ride was one of the most beautiful views I have seen in a long time. Seriously though. It was like we were driving in a highway through a tropical version of the Shire from Lord of the Rings. There were huge Green rolling hills that were dotted with trees and sometimes forests. There were no ugly buildings. There were no barred houses (because here all the windows and doors and everything have bars on them). It was the Costa Rica I have been wanting to see since I got here. The frustrating thing is that driving through God’s glory manifested in countryside only made the city uglier and the smog more obvious as I returned later in the afternoon.

 

When we got to Cartago it was like we were actually in a serious Latin American city. Nothing had English on it like it does in San Jose. The people gave us more weird looks because it is not a tourist city by any means. We saw the first high school in Costa Rica and the place where the civil war ended. We also saw the ruins of a catholic church (it was ruined because of an earthquake…or terremoto. Whichever you prefer.) that had been turned into a wicked classy garden. Remember those rolling hills I told you about? Well, Cartago is surrounded by them and has a classy park with a plaza.

 

The Virgen statue thing travels along this pathway that is marked by carpets made of colored sawdust and flowers. Apparently it takes some time to get ready. A month or so. When the Virgen goes along the path all the pretty flower walkways are messed up. Impressive sacrifice.

 

Interesting note: my 5 member team of exploration got stuck inside the parade for a bit. They put the rope up with us inside the zone. We were about 5 feet away from the bishop (I got a killer photo of him adjusting his hat. Okay, so not so much a hat as a purplish headcovering that doesn’t seem to hold up in the wind.) and we stood right behind the firefighters (bomberos) and the seminary students. We ended up walking with them for a bit until this lady shooed us on to the other side of the rope. She had a laminated badge and a clipboard. Leave it to the Sunday school teacher to ruin everyone’s time. The other people seemed okay with it.

 

We found food after this. Food was fruit (mamochinos=better the second time. Guyava = not good.) and an entire roast chicken that we split 3 ways. 2 girls and I devoured this chicken. It was tasty.

 

After lunch our group headed back to the bus line. Oh yes. Big line of people waiting for bus. It didn’t rain today so we were wet with sweat instead of rain. I think I like rain better. We got back and I did homework (reading that did not better my opinion of US foreign policy. I grow more and more skeptical as I learn more.), ate dinner, rocked out to Pearl Jam’s “Last Kiss” and Snow Patrol’s “Chasing Cars”, chatted with my host mom about Nicaragua and Prostitution in Costa Rica (for class), and watched some of Madagascar in Spanish with my brother Juan Carlos.

 

Highlights:

 

-Bishop fixing his hat while I sang “head, shoulders, knees, and toes” to myself

 

-Finding time to talk to Jesus by myself. The best place to do that happens to be in the Cemetary near my house. It’s not creepy. Kids were riding their bikes around and everything.

 

-Watching one of the LASP interns flirt with a girl on the program. I don’t blame him and he’s totally got a shot, but it’s still funny.

 

-Great conversation on the bus ride to Cartago with Craig from Wheaton College and Andrew Hayes from SPU. Good guys.

 

-Getting ramped up for first futbol-cinco game against Costa Ricans…Tomorrow Night. Go team!

 

It’s time for bed now, especially if I want those 8 hours. I really like getting enough sleep here. I get way tired too fast.