Bowl number 54

A lot has happened in the last couple of days but I got behind on my blogging. Last night there was a little fiesta at the eco-lodge for the Literature group(the group I flew in with) because they left this morning. They had all been doing homestays for a few days so all of their home stay families came and there was a piñata and dancing. It was funny knowing several of the families that were there. After the fiesta the group went to a local restaurant/bar/music lounge in town. Alex and two of the naturalists and I went with them and then joined the other naturalists and some people who work at the eco-lodge at Bar Amigos. They have live music on Fridays so there are usually a fair amount of locals there. We all just hung out and danced. I got back home at about 1:30. I took a nap after breakfast before going to clear the debris that we had just chopped down. It was hard work, but the weather was beautiful. After finishing up, I drank a lot of water and headed down to the eco-lodge to catch the daily pick-up game. Turns out they were playing for about and hour and half today instead of a half an hour. By the time we finished, I had been exerting myself for almost five hours with not much of a break in between. I was beat. Luckily Hernán, one of the guys that we play soccer with, was going my direction, so I got a ride home. Nothing like a moto ride through the mountains to cool you off after a sweaty game of soccer. I was ready to collapse when I got home, only to find Eduardito hiding behind the door to my room. I ate a late lunch, took an amazing shower and told Eduardo I couldn’t even play hang man until I got a nap. After an evening of persistence, Eduardo some how had me playing soccer in the front yard with him by 5:00 or so (I am sure the afternoon coffee and tortillas had a little something to do with it). Tomorrow I am going to an all day hangout/ celebration for the San Luis team who recently won the local championship. I am not sure exactly how many people will be there, but I will at least know a bunch of the guys we play soccer with, Alex and surely a few others. All I know is I am meeting the bus in the street tomorrow at 7:30, it is about an hour and a half away, there are soccer fields, a pool, and it will be like a big pot-luck. I am pretty excited about it but I can’t imagine how my body is going to feel in the morning, I have exhausted just about every muscle I have over the last few days not to mention the bruises and blisters…

Bowl number 51

I got my wish. This morning, after rotating some compost, we started clearing a part of the farm that was completely over grown, with vines, shrubs, small trees, etc. The original plan was for me to haul away the chopped debris while Otoniel cleared it with a machete. He knew I really wanted to use the machete though so he finally relented. He reminded me one last time how careful I need to be and picked out one that he thought would be best for me to use. We walked to the field, he gave me a quick demonstration, watched me for a second and we chopped and chopped and chopped, all morning. It was pretty satisfying work. It was hard, but I was perfecting my technique as I worked and rejoiced in my increasing efficiency. As usual, Otoniel was super enthusiastic about my work ethic (even though I end up working like an average of two hours a day). He was very pleased with my novice machete abilities. We walked, sweaty and dirty back to the house to get something to drink before doing any more chores. He asked me if I had any blisters. I showed him my hands and there was a big piece of skin hanging off of my thumb and several other less severe blisters around my other thumb and index fingers. He looked at me, startled but kind of laughing and asked why I didn’t say anything. The truth was I didn’t really notice until they were all formed and popped anyway, so I just kept going. When we got back to the house, as we were pulling off our boots, Otoniel jokingly said how nice a cold beer would be. Lilian, however handed us two cold Imperials from the fridge. We looked at each other, raised our eyebrows and toasted our cold beers. After our break, we climed up on the roof of the storage shed and patched some little holes that we were gonna patch yesterday but couldn’t cuz it was raining. We are going to take a couple days off before finishing up the field. Tomorrow he has to use the machine weed whacker to clear the front yard, so I am going to haul away all of the debris that we chopped today while he is doing that.

Afternoon bread and coffee number who knows what

3:36pm and it is still raining as hard as ever. I spent the morning painting while Lilian was cleaning house. After lunch I laid down in my bed and ended up passing out for about two hours. I didn’t even think I was sleepy but it is amazing what a full stomach, a gloomy day and sound of rain can do. It is not looking like Working or Running s going to happen today so I guess I will just sip my coffee, eat my cake and finish my paining. I wanted to do something but I haven’t really had a day like this in ages.

I finished the paining right as Otoniel was getting back. I never get to just sit down and finish paintings any more. It was a lot of fun. When Otoniel got back, I was still a little anxious from sitting inside all day. I didn’t work at all, I didn’t end up going running with Eduardo aaand I took a long nap. In an attempt to be somewhat useful, I helped Otoniel bag the one eighth of a cow that he had just spent all day butchering. It was cool seeing all of the cuts of meat and realizing that they had been a cow that morning. You might think that would be gross, but it is so much more natural that way, knowing exactly where it came from, that those four men had labored all day to prepare it and that none of it was wasted. In fact, we got the tongue. Lilian looked up a recipe for tongue and salsa that we are going to make tomorrow and we had liver and onions in a tortilla last night and this morning in our rice and beans. mmmmm

Bowl number 45

The idea was that I was gonna make up for sitting around all day yesterday, by being really active today. I was going to make a point to working for a long time this morning even if it just meant weeding and stuff while Otoniel continued working on the fence. It has been raining all morning though. It is only 8:30 but I am not sure when Otoniel will be back. He usually is home by about 8:00 or 8:30 but he had to go kill a cow this morning at Alicia’s brothers’ farm. If it clears up, I may still just go out and find something useful to do. I may just spend the morning reading or maybe I will start paining something. It is weird because I both have lots of free time and also don’t have a lot of free time. I spend the day running, working on the farm, hanging out with Eduardito, playing soccer etc… there is a lot of “dead” time spent at the house where I am just sitting around. It seems like a waste of time to just sit around the living room while the T.V is on, the radio is on, and everyone is talking, but that is life. I could easily “accomplish” a lot more if I used all of this time that I spend sitting around the house “doing” something but I wouldn’t really be living here. I sit around with them, watching goofy Spanish T.V., talking with them about the day’s events and joking with them about who knows what. Costa Rican have the funniest sense of humor, or at least the people in San Luis do. Everyone, whether it is the kitchen ladies, Geovanny and Liliam, or my sixty-something year-old parents, everybody gets a kick out of dirty humor. I am not really sure how they do it, but some how it is such a joke that it isn’t even vulgar. I mean we talk about things at the dinner table that would make you blush and we all die laughing. Usually one person says something kind of inappropriate then someone else makes and even bigger joke out of it, then someone else takes it a little further until no one can say anything else because we are all laughing so hard. It is especially funny because I used to not understand most of it but now there is not much that I miss and of course every time I chime in it is that much funnier. They always joke about how much I am learning here. The truth is learning to understand humor has sharpened my Spanish skills a great deal. You have to understand the different meanings of things, you have to apply what you know about the context of the conversation and you have to be quick. When Alex and I were at Lelo’s last week for instance, we were all joking around at dinner (surprise) and Lelo and his wife commented on how surprised they were that I understood them when they were talking so fast because even Lindsay a lot of the time doesn’t catch everything when they are speaking that quickly. I am not nearly as good at Spanish as Lindsay but I spend my days with a family that is constantly chatting away and making jokes all day long. When they are talking only to me they usually slow things down, but amongst themselves they are a mile a minute so it is either get used to it, or not be a part of daily conversation.

Bowl number 39

So Alex, Scott, Kate and I decided we were going to try and get in shape for la Carrera Reserva Monteverde, a 12 kilometer trail/road race through Santa Elena and the Monteverde reserve. I highly doubt that it I will be able to run it even if we do train everyday for a month, which is the plan. It will still be nice to try and push myself to get in shape for something and if we do it that would be awesome. I watched a video of a 10k that Eduardito did here in February and it looked absolutely brutal. The hills are insane and practically the whole thing is hills, not to mention the fact that I couldn’t even do a flat 12k right now. Today was only the second day of “training” it wears me out but I like it so far. I think I will start to enjoy it more once I get used to running here.
Today has been pretty lazy, besides waking up and running, I have just hung out with Eduardito doing random things around the house. Otoniel is building a fence, which I helped with yesterday by helping haul the posts out of the woods as he cut them and I helped him dig some of them in. There wasn’t much for me to do today though, so Eduardo and I just walked around playing with the camera.

bowl number 37

Sundays we don’t have to work so after breakfast, Otoniel and I were even less in a hurry than usual to finish our coffee. We somehow got started talking about politics. It was awesome. I got such a great perspective from him. We talked all about agriculture and land ownership and government regulation and his childhood and the differences between how things were then and how they are now. We had both very similar opinions and also very different perspectives. When you are studying all of these things from a book, everything seems pretty straight-forward. I go the opportunity to here complaints and questions from the actual people that are living these lives and depending on these resources and being affected by these policies. I got to ask genuine questions, bring up points that countered his points and also got a lot of really good answers to some of the objections that I raised. We both have respect for the other person. Neither one of us viewed it as an argument because neither one of us was out to “win.” We were just having a good time venting our own frustrations about a common problem and enjoying bouncing our ideas off of each other to see what the other had to say.
I spent most of the morning killing time down at the eco-lodge. Alex and all of the naturalists and I just sat around and hung out, played Frisbee for a little while. It is fun getting to know al of them. Alex and Scott and I decided to go on a short run, so I went back to the house to change clothes. Marlen (Otoniel and Alicia’s oldest daughter) and her daughter Catalina were at the house when I arrived. I was excited to see them but they thought they would be leaving by about three which was right around when I would be getting back fro my run. I had lunch with them and got to visit for a little while before leaving. Our run was pretty short but really hilly and it was raining the whole time, which actually felt really nice. I did all right considering I was running with two guys that were in good shape but I had to stop at the lodge when we turned around and they kept going for a little longer. By the time I got back to the lodge, Geovanny was getting off of work and asked me if I wanted a ride back. I told him Marlen and Catalina had been there and might still be there when we got back. When we pulled up to the house it was fuuuull of people. Celimo (Marlen’s husband) and the rest of their children were there, plus Otoniel, Alicia, Lilian, and Julio. Including Geovanny and me, there were 13 people at the little house. It was a lot of fun to get to see all of them. I wasn’t sure when I was going to make it up to their house. I am never really sure if I will have anything to do on Sundays, but I got to talk politics, get to know the naturalists better, go on a run and visit with “family.”

Bowl number 31

The rains came. It has been cloudy and thundering off and on for the lat few days and it has even rained a little but yesterday the sky finally opened up. It had started raining while I was at the eco-lodge. When it calmed down a little bit, I decided I should head back since I didn’t have a rain jacket or anything with me. I my computer and camera in a trash bag that I got from the kitchen ladies. Seconds after I started up the trail I heard a roar. I practically ran un the hill, knowing that it didn’t matter anyway, I was gonna get soaked and I was. I walked up to the house, pulled off my sopping tennis shoes and socks tried to ring out my hair and clothes as much as possible before entering the house. Geovanny had just gotten back and both laughed when I came in dripping and panting. I changed out of my clothes and changed into a sweatshirt and shorts (nothing feels better than changing out of wet clothes into soft dry ones, and joined them in the living room. We all had our afternoon snack and coffee. After a short while Eduardito walked up with his rain jacket and umbrella. I hadn’t seen Eduardo since last year but had talked to him on Geovanny’s skype a couple of times. Eduardito is a 14-year-old neighbor that is always ready to go have fun doing random things with me. Last year, we built pools in the river, threw rocks at guavas, played soccer with his cousins, had a guayaba war, etc.. He is in classes right now but his vacation starts in a couple of weeks. It rained pretty hard for a lot of the afternoon so we all(Lilian, Eduardito, Geovanny and I) just messed around the house. We had pillow fights, watched a little T.V. danced a little. After Geovanny left to work Lilian, Eduardito and I played Frisbee for a little while. We played in the front yard and we were literally inside of the clouds. Everywhere you looked was white. You could only see vague outlines of the mountains and the trees. After dinner, Eduardo and I played hang man, and drew pictures but eventually ran out of things to do. He said we should go hike around in the dark. I said ok and he said no really and I said ok and he said no really I’m serious and I said ok let’s go and he said let’s go, so I got up and we went. We didn’t really know where to go so we hiked down the trail to the eco-lodge. It was really cool looking at night. It was pitch black except for the distant lightning that you could see through the trees. At one point an owl flew right over our heads. It landed on a low branch right above us and stayed there for a while, while we looked at it before flying away. A few moments after we got back home it started POURING down rain again. Pretty good timing. The rest of the night consisted of hanging out with Geovanny and Eduardito. Edurdito even gave me a brief History lesson about a famous Costa Rican battle that he had studied in school.