La comida

Every time I come home from a camp my Dad always asks "How was the food?" so I thought I'd answer that question a few months early.

Rice,beans and bananas are staples here. I eat rice and beans for breakfast, it's actually quite good. Actually, I like it so much that one of the worst thing about having no power in the morning is that I have to have bread for breakfast! They call it "gallo pinto" and add coriander, red capsicum and onion. Often it is served with scrambled eggs, and sometimes fruit or fried green bananas.

The other two meals are generally rice and vegetable mixes, sometimes with beans on the side. Sometimes the beans are blended and cooked with onion and some spices. With evening meals meat is often added to the rice and vegetable mix or served as a side dish. But eating a whole steak like I would in Australia is unheard of. "Arroz con pollo" is a typical dish for birthday parties, it's basically rice, vegetable and chicken. Tortillas are regular, eaten most meals. Green salads aren't an everyday affair, but several times a week. Locals eat lettuce with mayonnaise and tomatoe sauce, but I prefer Lizano a salad dressing used to flavour rice. Costa Ricans love Carbohydrates, so along with the rice is potatoes, bread, or spaghetti.

Beverages are great because the fruit is so plentiful (thought they don't seem to eat it too regularly). People regularly blend pineapple, watermelon, bananas, black berries, strawberries and something called 'cas' with either milk or water. When Costa Rican's aren't drinking juice, they drink coffee, which is grown in town. Needless to say my constant water drinking is surprising everyone.

Dairy is expensive here and not very common, my family typically drink milk 2-3 times a week. Cheese is this white stuff which is pretty awful. Ice cream is a once a month special thing.

I miss Vegemite, but apart from that, I've managed to adapt quite easily to this new diet.

The walk to work

Here is my walk to work. It generally takes me about 30 minutes. I leave this lovely street, which is part of the "Royal Mountain" neighbourhood and my host family at about 7am (my host brothers are in the photos running up the street). Generally there dog follows me for the first 10 minutes or so, meaning all the stray dogs in the street, come and hello.

I pass the sugar farm after about 5 minutes. At the moment they are burning cane, which means everything is filled with ash.

Then I go through a less developed area, which is beauitful. The grass is getting yellow (like Australia) because the raining season is just about to come.

Next comes this small set of shops. It's offically part of a new neighbourhood.

There are often people selling bananas and watermelon out the front.

People are always sitting out the front of these shops talking to each other. As I walk by I am greeted by many people.

Not long after the shops is the very steep hill shown, with the very big drains, which I'm sure will seem appropriate when the raining season arrives, rightnow I just use them as a footpath though.

A little while later I get close to the centre of town. This intersection is the only one with traffic lights, in the town. But no one really obeys them anyway so they are quite useless. It's normally very busy and I'll spend up to 5 minutes trying to cross.

Just before I get to work I pass through the central park, the best thing about this town. Right opposite is the Catholic Church. It's a typical design for almost every town to have the church and the park next to each other. The park is full of couples, high school friends, mothers talking, old men chatting together, or interns reading the bible. It's my favourite part of town.

El fines de semana; extented family, Catholicism and haircuts

Well even though it will be Wednesday by the time most of you get this, I thought I'd fill you in on my weekend, it's a fairly typical one in ways and represents alot about culture here.

I left the office a bit later than usual on the Friday night. As I walked home I saw some groups of people gathered outside their homes having mass. Some houses had finished and just a few statues and candles were left outside. I knew that the Catholic church was strong here, there are 40 churches in this village of 10 000, yet every third of fourth house having this construction outside made it even more obvious.

Saturday we left to go to the next big town, which is home to all my extended host family. We dropped the kids off at Grandma's and went to the market. It was fairly similar to the Vic-Market in Melbourne, except there were beggars and guys selling things like lottery tickets and pens wandering around. I tried some green mango with salsa, which was quite good, sort of like an apple with a hint of mango.

Then my host mother and I went to the hairdresser. I had a section in my lonely planet phrase book with phases like "the water is too hot" or "I would like a trim". The salon was a small room off what looked like a large wood shed. Costa Rican women are generally well presented so I was quite confident. As this is a relationship orientated culture, rather than time orientated one, we waited for about 2 hours for our turn. Apparently giving specific times can seem rude. The hairdresser kept saying "Que color!" (what a color!) as she cut my hair.

We left the hairdresser for my and it turned out it wasn't only her who thought my hair was something special. The plan was to walk but we got a taxi because my host mother decided it "wasn't safe for two women alone with my hair to be walking on the street"!

At my host mothers house we had lunch, along with the rest of the extended family. Given the effort in the food and the presence of everyone I thought that it must be some special occasion and it was...family together! After finsihing up there a few hours later, we set off to my host father's parents place for a similiar function. Then we headed home for dinner and some friends came around. The next day after church, some more extended family came to visit. I knew to expect a culture where family was important before I came here, but I never expected to see them every weekend or to be accepted into there family with such warmth. My host grandfather told me that his house was mine also!

Hot climates

When I got accepted into this program, I was sent a few books, a T-shirt, and a whole lot of information. One of the books talked about "hot" and "cold" climate people. Hot climate people value (among other things) relationships and being with people. Cold climate value efficency. While it reached 48 degrees (that is 118 for all the imperial lovers out there) in Melbourne a few weeks ago, I'm a cold climate person. In fact I'm practically frezzing. Costa Ricans are hot climate people. As fellow intern Marcos says, there is no such thing as introverted Hispanics. I was reminded of this a few days ago. I decided a walk would be a good idea. The temperature had dropped a bit and I felt like some exercise, so I told my host mother I was going for a walk. (note the I, e.g. first person singular). She quickly changed her shoes, and we set off, along with 3 kids, 2 bicycles and a dog. Where we walked to normally takes me about 5 minutes, but it took us about 30, because as we walked we stopped and spoke to the neighbours. Anyone we saw we had a conversation with and made sure their children were ok and that they were enjoying the weather.
I had invisioned exercise, and some time alone. But the idea of being alone for pleasure is unheard of in this culture, everything is about relationship. So I am learning and by the end of this 6 months I may have moved from freezing to just cold!

Slideshow

Fellow intern James made this slideshow of his experiences so far., which are fairly similar to mine except our host families are different. He spelt my name wrong though. You can view it here.

Star gazing

I had a lovely evening last night. Venus, Mars and some other planet whose name I could work out in Spanish were aligned or visible or something. So my host family and I spent about 45 minutes laying down in the backyard star gazing. It was beauitful. The weather was pleasantly cool, which is rare in this climate. It was nice to look at a whole knew sky, though occasionally I tried to look for the Southern cross, hoping it would appear. I learnt some new vocab listening to my host family chat and when I didn't I rembered this song. It is a favourite in Australia, and felt very fitting.

Lord of all creation
Of water earth and sky
The heavens are your tabernacle
Glory to the Lord on high

God of wonders beyond our galaxy
You are holy, holy

Early in the morning
I will celebrate the light
And when I stumble in the darkness
I will call your name by night

(by Chris Tomlin)

Speaking spanish without even realising

My cultured North American friends and I were out at tis place which advertises itself as "Tex-Mex". I see this item on the menu which says "Chilli", that's it, just "Chilli". Bemused that someone might just order a spicy vegetqable for lunch I ask if anyone had any idea what this might be or if anyone can come up with a translation. This is when they look at me and ask "don't you have that in Australia?". So they explain it is made of tomatoes, beans, mince meat, onion, chilli powder all cooked together. It's at this point I explain that we do eat that in Australia, in fact my Dad cooks it amost every week, with Kangaroo meat. Then they ask what I call it, then it dawn on me, I've been speaking Spanish without even realising it! For years! And my Dad is actually more cultured than I even gave him credit for.
Sarah ordered Chilli/Chilli con carne/Chilli with meat and it was cheese sauce. Interesting....