Friday October 10th and Thursday October 9th.

Boatswain’s Log  

Okay here’s the past couple days. You will find out why I failed to do this last night for yesterday in the process.

 

Yesterday was Thursday and as such we had our final presentation in Base Seminar. My group had the lovely task of talking about missions in Latin America. An area which Trevor (the assistant director) correctly asserted as being one that everyone feels they have a corner in. It was true. My group busted our asses discussing our topic. We sat in the library and discussed our perspectives until it became clear that we had to agree to disagree. I feel like the scriptural examples in the NT give a lot of credence to the old fashioned idea of “preaching” the gospel, while others were trying to rule it out as “imposing” “our truth”, I feel like this was already talked about recently by me…Whatever. Anyhow, let’s just say my friend Kasey and I were and still are at differing places on the matter that aren’t really reconciled although in principle we agree on a few things.

 

Sigh. To make a long story short, we got to LASP at 9AM, and we left at about 5PM. We prepared our presentation for about 3 hours, which I feel was one of the strongest in our actually taking a real stand on something. We ended up saying, rather correctly, what the core message of the gospel is. In an audience of staff that is overwhelmingly leaning toward a pluralistic perspective we used the Apostle’s Creed to state what we felt the gospel was, and at the same time what had to be believed to be a Christian. I strongly doubt that everyone was pleased with that. We only got a “good effort” off of the staff. Well balls. So much for post-modernists accepting everyone’s definition of truth (assuming I understand the phrase post-modern). It seems like there’s a bit of a disconnect there. We fielded some hard questions, which were A)hard because of their vagueness and B) hard because they asked challenging sorts of questions. In any case we went first at 1PM. Four hours later we finally left the building. That means there were 4 hours of more presentations. Too long. Too long.

 

Some were good, some were not so good. In general I wanted to go sleep. We stuck it out though, and at the end we were congratulated by the staff for completing the rigorous academic part of our thing and now we are ramping up to go to Nicaragua. Javier gave a talk that almost made me cry. That guy is pretty awesome. I realized that I am going to miss all these lovely post-modernist folks here. They are some of the most wonderful people I have met in a long time. That doesn’t mean that I agree with their perspectives though, it just means that I appreciate them very much. My advisor for my paper is really wonderful, it was her last official day at LASP the other day. Kasey and I snuck out of the presentations to giver her a hug goodbye. I hear she liked my 19 page giant of a research paper.

 

After way too long of a time spent sitting we finally left, after Trevor told my 4 person group about our trip to Nicaragua. Let’s say we get a different and new experience from everyone else. No more details than that. I will tell you about it when I get back. We leave Monday at 5AM to get to the bus that takes us in an 11 hour journey to Nicaragua.

 

I came home and played Uno with my brothers. Uno in Spanish is surprisingly appropriate and fun. Then we watched the shitty finale of Latin American Idol. I think I have mentioned how much I hate the program, well we watched it and I watched it to hang out with my family. Frick. I could care less who wins, the only reason I wanted Maria Jose to win is because she is the contestant from Costa Rica and that is where I am. I think the excitement has to do with nationalistic pride here in CR, the only things I enjoy about the show are 1) the Cuban judge who shouts and is funny “BIEN CANTADO MARIA JOSE!!” 2) the girls are cute. In general there’s not enough of the Cuban judge and the girls cuteness really doesn’t change the fact that I still hate the show.

 

Luckily I got to go to a Jazz show last night to escape. Well, mostly R&B…but I saw Sasha Cohen sing. She is a very attractive black woman who sings very well. It was fun spending time with people from the program, hearing her sing, and eating nachos. PS: Nachos here involve the Costa Rican version of cheese. Not good cheese. The nachos take on a sweet taste that just rubbed me the wrong way. Really I didn’t escape Latin American Idol (and I sort of wanted to see who won. It has been on the TV for about 400 years…or something like that), when we got to the venue they were watching it. Maria Jose lost, to which the Tico “news” replied this morning that “she was already a champion” otherwise known as “we are saving face for making you think she was going to win for every hour of every day until now.”

 

After Maria Jose lost and before Sasha sang we watched the Saprissa game against DC United. I was a Saprissa fan for this game, rooting for a Costa Rican team against an American team. It was more fun that way, and to be honest the DC goalie seemed a bit like a pompous chump.

 

Sasha was lovely in multiple senses, and then she finished. I was pleased that I went and then mancub (Andrew Ryan’s new nickname. I decided that is what I would call him and I hope other people catch on. It’s from the jungle book, sometimes I would say “lay it on me mancub” when I wanted him to tell me his opinion. Then I decided that he should be mancub.”, Kayla, and I taxied home. I was up until 12:30 on a school night…ooooooh. Someone’s in trouble. Oh wait, nope. Just kidding.

 

 Random fact from yesterday, I got a haircut. My friend Chelsea cut my hair for free. Score. She did a good job too. I got compliments, especially awkward ones when I took my shirt off to keep the hair out of it. People kept coming out of doors and being surprised by a shirtless me getting my hair cut.

 

This morning began at 6:30, which makes my sleep time insufficient. I rolled to Spanish class and had my last day. We had a test, a graduation, and Xinia (our teacher) gave us her first impressions and parting advice. Her impression of our group was that we were going to be a hard group…for the first 5 minutes of class. Then she changed her mind. She was our favorite, even though for the first 5 minutes I thought she was going to be a bit of a hard-nosed teacher. I was wrong too after 5 minutes.

 

At graduation there were “diplomas” given, three speakers, and music provided by Kasey via guitar. That kid. He’s a good one. Strangely enough there were chips and HUGE BOWLS OF TUNA to eat afterwards. Why anyone would ever need so much tuna, I have no idea. But nonetheless, my buddy Joel and I took a corner of the table that was hard to get to and ate tuna for a long time. There was also cake, we ate that too. The tuna, (while strange) was nice because I don’t get enough protein here. I ate too much tuna and thus I had to give my lunch away so as not to waste it.

 

Graduation was a bitter-sweet experience as they always seem to be. We were done with 6 obnoxious weeks of Spanish, but at the same time we didn’t get to hang out with Xinia anymore or everyone else. The group is splitting up for the most part starting on Monday, after Nicaragua I am going to the middle of the foresty mountains and some people are staying here, others are going other places. We get to see each other after this for about a week after this and then we go home.

 

In the process of ending things I realized

 

Then after tuna-ing I went to the internet café with Craig and Andrew Brauer before our last soccer game. I checked emails. Got one from mo-eesha Seebeck, that girl is really cool. Those chumpy freshman girls don’t even know how cool their PA is…or maybe some do. She brought me from Costa Rica into remembering this last year. Facebook messages did too. Gosh. So many good times you guys. Thanks. It’s nice to know that I am missed. You are all missed as well. As much as I love it here, I am excited to see you when I get home.

 

I also watched the presidential debates. Sigh. I wish politicians could A) answer questions thoroughly…especially John McCain and B) not sling mud. At the same time I was not impressed with McCain’s approach to the financial crisis “cleaning up Washington” is not the same as doing what is necessary to make sure giant corporations don’t manage to almost send the world into a depression…again. I think that despite Mr. McCain’s idea of not taxing anyone…we may just have to make sure businesses pay taxes, because with CEOs making more money than some small countries I think trickle down economics has gotten out of hand.

 

Then I went and played soccer. It was raining. I got wet for 2 hours. I also played goalie better. I am starting to learn how to do it through trial and error and am getting better at getting scored on (in the goal. Get your mind out of the gutter.). In the sense of I am not beating myself up as much anymore. It is a good exercise in humility being the keeper. Sometimes you just get scored on. There’s not much one can do about it. It’s important to learn not to attach your value to success, that’s why I think failure is a good learning experience. Also, those few times that you get really good saves are super fun.

 

After this I went back to the medical clinic to check out my ear again, which hasn’t quite gotten better. The doctor gave me medicines to use in case the pain appears while I am in Nicaragua. The goal was to make sure I don’t get to Nicaragua, get an ear infection, and experience lots of discomfort. The girl who works in the pharmacy is pretty foxy.

 

I have to admit that when I came home I was not expecting dinner the way it was. I will try to explain my dislike of it while expressing thankfulness for the fact that it existed. Whitebread sandwiches and coca-cola. Ehhh…that’ll do. It was the first time it had been like this and I sincerely hope it is the last.

 

That being said tomorrow is “buy the items necessary for Nicaragua” day. Adventure in San Jose starts at 10AM.