Maybe I should write the script sounding not nearly as dramatic and mind-boggling and a little bit more tropical. Also, I should caution my liberal arts degreed self before I start throwing in words like quantum physics. But the point I am trying to get across is that my mind keeps tripping in amazement over how little time seems to have changed things here in the last ten years. Then I of course contradict myself and make observations on the subtle things that have in fact changed. Nevertheless, people, relationships, sights, tastes, smells, sounds, feelings, and emotions that I have not experienced in such a decade have come rushing back to me in familiar waves. I also simply can not believe that it has actually been ten years since I stepped foot on this soil! I hate to use a cliché but time really does fly. And it is frightening how quickly.
If you read the post below, you know how nervous I was on Monday. I was flying into a foreign country all by my lonesome with no plans at all except to trust the hunch that I would be taken care of by a certain Costa Rican family I met ten years ago and had kept in mediocre touch with since. I also had a Lonely Planet guidebook in my backpack and plans of heading to the beach just in case they forgot about me.
How crazy I was for thinking they would forget about me! I so easily found their faces in the crowd waiting for arrivals outside of the airport on Monday morning that I could not help but squeel with delight and excitement as I skipped over to them. With the exception of my host sister Daniela´s longer and blonder hair, Daniela, Irma (my host mother) and Alvarito (my host brother) all looked the same. The custom of greeting them all with kisses on their right cheeks came surprisingly natural to me. Daniela handed me a bunch of flowers with tiny lavendar buds on them and started chattering away in her high-pitched voice, asking me if all the yoga I´ve been doing lately was why I was so much more flaca (slender) than when she last saw me.
Alvarito drove the same car I had ridden in ten years ago to a house that he and Daniela shared with their cousin and another roommate in San Jose since they both moved down here to attend the University of Costa Rica. Upon our arrival, Irma immediately went to work in the kitchen and I quickly realized that no, it was not the yoga that had made me much more slender since they had last saw me. It was being far far away from Irma´s home-style typical cooking. Before I knew it I had a massive plate of gallo pinto smeared with natilla, platano maduro and a massive chunk of queso fresco right in front of me. The best part? The rich cup of Costa Rican coffee that had no need for sugar.
How many feelings and memories can somehow exist in certain foods eaten in the right time and places! As soon as I took a bite of the black beans and rice breakfast, I was filled with a strange sense of nostalgia. Similar emotions presented themselves when I ate the first box of Mac and Cheese sent to me in Zambia, the first bite of nshima I made with my American friends upon returning to the U.S.
At this point, the exhaustion of the red eye flight began to take its toll on me and I started to become humbled at my Spanish speaking abilities. Nevertheless, I finally figured out what Irma was telling me and am so glad I did as it brought a smile to my heart. She shared with me how she still owns a party supply store in San Carlos and tapes local cooking shows a few times a week. She asked me if I remembered the time that I cooked their entire family french toast and joked around with me that I should be a guest on her cooking show during my time here and teach her audience how to cook french toast like we do in the U.S.
After breakfast, the entire day was filled with reminiscing as we strolled around San Jose. We laughed about the time I confused the words maquillaje with mantequilla and asked my host sister if she was going to put butter on her face. We bragged about the time my host sister and I walked to La Fortuna from Ciudad Quesada to participate in a Costa Rican pilgramige (a distance of around 40 kilometers). We recalled the time I came back to Costa Rica on a senior high school trip with three of my best friends and attended her quinciñera.
It has been fun to remember. Irma left on Monday back to the house that I lived with them in San Carlos and it really has been just Daniela and I spending some quality time together in San Jose these last few days. I have to remind myself to be patient and know that in the week to come I will be enjoying some more of Costa Rica´s natural beauty as well as meeting once again many other members of her family I became close with a decade ago. For now I am just enjoyng the unlikely friendship I speak so highly of.
I am proud and surprised to acknowledge that time has not seemed to have any real effects on the close relationship Daniela and I formed when we once shared a room together. I have no qualms with rummaging through her closet to try to find clothes I can borrow in order to not feel so incredibly gringa. Daniela broke up with her boyfriend of three years last week and she keeps bringing up the subject of boyfriends, husbands, children, life and we can not stop laughing about it all. I still get annoyed with her at how long it takes her to get ready to go anywhere. Staying with her has been much like visiting my American sister Emily in the U.S. We´ve gone shopping, cooked, watched movies, gone jogging, gone to a yoga class, laughed at her purse-sized tan mut of a dog named Loey.
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Something that is much more Costa Rican, however, is the night life. Twice we have gone out to bars to dance the night away to live music. The nightlife down here is like some sort of drug for me- the latin music pulses through my veins and makes me feel a keen, simple and content aliveness. I am awkward at both dancing and flirting with boys when I go out back in the U.S. but down here I seem to take on somewhat of a different personality. It is fun to pretend that I am someone else for a little while. Costa Rican guys are excellent at twirling me around and making me pretend that I actually know how to dance salsa, kumbia, merengue. Perhaps it is the romantic aspects of the Spanish language, perhaps it is the confidence of knowing I possess the unique quality of being a foreigner, but it is incredibly easier for me to forget my shyness around males here. Friends, this is an entirely different story I´ll tell you about on a different occasion.Though dancing and music were some of the qualities that began my love affair with Costa Rica so long ago, as we were out last night, I suddenly glanced around the room and realized I was the only gringa in the place packed full of Ticos. And suddenly I had the thought, ¨What in the world am I doing here? This is crazy. I should at least have one other American friend at my side.¨ A sense of loneliness creeped into me and I again thought about my sixteen-year-old self and wished I could go back in time to give her a hug. How did I have that much courage, that much strength, that much uniqueness as such a baby to have successfully immersed myself in this culture a decade ago?
Following these thoughts I was suddenly hit over the head with a brick of homesickness. This both surprised and confused me. For one, this trip is as short as the blink of an eye in comparison to ones I have embarked on in the past. I had only been here for three days (moments have creeped by but days have passed in a flash). Furthermore, my wandering spirit had recently been taunting me with thoughts of moving abroad again and continuing to live a life less ordinary. How in the world could I become homesick now ? It seemed utterly ridiculous and I wanted to dismiss the feeling immediately. Instead, I prayed that I would be able to embrace the feeling and be able to remember it in a few weeks´ time when I find myself back in Colorado life trying to figure out ways to make the normalcy of it all not feel too monotonous.
This is one of the reasons traveling has struck a chord with me- it never fails to remind you of all of the things that you love about home. Other reasons I am such an addict? That the balance between feeling incredibly uncomfortable but having an incredible amount of fun is something that makes me feel incredibly alive. Traveling has also been one of the easiest and most profound ways that I have learned lessons about myself. As the days progress here, I can´t help but wonder if this trip, one of the shortest, will be one of the most meaningful for me in regards to learning lessons about myself. I´ll save the details of this for another time.
Previews of other stories to be written about in the week to come? Tales of the Irazu volcano, heading back to San Carlos. a surprise birthday party full of extended family (another opportunity for me to wonder how in the world I got here), and an attempt for me to convince my host family that I would like to travel to the beach by myself and that this is normal for gringos and I will meet plenty of gringos there to keep me company and for them to not worry about me. We´ll see how that goes.
So much love to all. Pura Vida!
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