Sorry to all for not blogging in so long…I’m sure you are all wondering where I am and what I am up to! Living with a family here has been a wonderful rewarding experience but has also been time consuming and difficult. It is a demanding experience to transfer from living on one’s own and providing for oneself to have to find a role in a new family and spend time with that family. I forgot what it was like to live in a family and get my homework done and spend time on myself. It is a great balancing act!
My family is wonderful! My mother Adriana is a wonderful women, she is a stay at home mom and sometimes sells food to the people at the pharmacy or some of the employees at lasp (which is the program I am here through). She is 40 but looks so young. Adriana is very beautiful and very patient with me, especially with the language barrier! Today, when I told her she was beautiful, she responded, “I know!” That was the best response to a complement I had ever heard! I can’t wait to start saying that J She is an incredible cook and I have not been hungry at all since I have been here! I eat so much! I have found that I love beans and rice or here it is called gallo pinto. Her empanadas are so amazing I can’t wait to try and cook them! She is a wonderful lady and I love her very much and hope that she likes me as well!
I also, in addition to having the greatest mother ever, have two siblings!
Priscilla, or as the family calls her Pris, is beautiful and smart and is always wanting to try and speak English with me! But they are only supposed to speak Spanish so that I will learn! Though sometimes they will say things in English that I know in Spanish and I just laugh at them ;) Pris is 10 years old and is in that awkward stage between being a kid and being more grown up! She likes to watch Yo soy Betty, la fea, “Ugly Betty” the original Colombian version. My entire family is addicted to the show! It is so dramatic and hilarious to watch…most times I end up laughing at how dramatic it is rather than because it is funny! It is on every week night around 7 if you are ever wondering what I am doing! I usually sit and do homework or journal at the same time as watching! Pris is also a pretty good drawer and enjoys playing with her little brother fabi!
Fabian, or fabi which sounds like favi, is six years old and my little bro! I love him so much! Every day when I get home from class he runs out to the gate and screams Kris! He gives me a hug and kiss and asks me if I want to watch a movie with him in his room or play toys with him! It is the cutest thing! It is a lot of fun to spend time with him! Usually when I first get home from class I will sit in his room with him and watch some kids movie from the states in Spanish and do my homework at the same time! Fabi’s birthday is the day before mine, the day in between my real brother and sister’s birthday and my birthday! We have the same favorite animal: Elephants! He and I have a lot in common J We also both love to take pictures! I let him use my old camera (just a point and shoot) and told him he could take as many pictures as he wanted! He took pictures of all his toys! It was hilarious! One day when I was going to go to the park with them to play, after I got out of the shower and was ready to go…fabi saw me and was like, “Wow!” and then hid his face in the couch because he was embarrassed! His mom said that she thinks he is going to end up with a gringa (white/United States) wife! He is my little buddy and I enjoy attempting to play with him! It usually looks like this: I have the girl toy (usually a McDonalds happy meal type toy) and scream ayudame (help me) and he beats up whatever is the bad guy that day with his new the mole McDonald’s toy! It is fun, but I usually don’t understand what he is saying! He tells me “Te amo” (I love you) often and I really do feel loved by him!
We all live in a house about 5 minutes away from my lasp classes…which means that I arrive to class right on time every day! Everyone in Costa Rica has a gate in front of their house…robbery and crime is pretty rough in San Jose, but if you take the right precautions you will be fine! The gate in front of our house is salmon colored and past the gate there is a front porch with tile on the ground. Then inside the house you are in the living room, take two steps forward and you are in the kitchen dining room and two steps to the right and you are in front of the stove! There is a wash room/ storage room that is through the wall across from the table, they air dry all their clothes and don’t even own a dryer, which is great because when one air dries their clothes, they last longer! My room is to the left, next to the bathroom and across from my mom’s room. The kid’s room is right to the left when one enters the house; they have bunk beds and their own bathroom! What is crazy to think about is how my house here is about the same size as my apartment in CCU, it is a little bigger but similar in size! I love the simplicity of this house and how my family has everything they need and no more. I realize how I have so much stuff that I don’t need and am thankful for this lesson in simplicity and how it makes life easier.
A few things that have been interesting to figure out about the house: the shower, toilet paper, washing clothes, the trashcan, the dishes, and I’m sure a lot more that I don’t even know yet! The shower is electrical and when you turn it on you don’t turn it more for hot, you turn it a tiny bit, wait until you hear it start to spurt and then it is warm. The water is never hot; it is lukewarm but not hot. Besides my family, boyfriend, and friends the thing I miss most about the United States is taking long hot showers! I take about 5-10 minute showers and probably take up a lot of the hot water! It took me a while to figure out the shower, thus I took some pretty cold showers the first few days! Like I am standing there shivering to death trying to go as fast as possible! LOL! In most places here, there are signs and it is just known to put ones toilet paper in the trashcan. However, in my house there is no trash can in the bathroom, which is a little tricky when one uses feminine products! Anyway, I had just been flushing my toilet paper for the first week until I finally asked my mom what I was supposed to do. She affirmed my knowledge. The weird thing is that when one uses a feminine product they have to throw it out in the laundry room. So I have just been using a bag and will throw it all out when it gets full. I’m sure that is more information than anyone wanted to know…but I just want to express how awkward things get in a different culture! The trashcan is a sack on the wash sink that sometimes isn’t there and the trash barrels are like a metal structure that consists of a stick with a box on top to put ones trash in! But there is trash in all the streets and everywhere. From everyone I heard that I was supposed to wash my own underwear, but after talking with my mom she said that she would just throw them in with all my other clothes if that was okay with me! Which is nice, everyone else has to hand wash their own underwear.
I made lunch for them my first Sunday here, we didn’t end up going to church because my mom wasn’t feeling good. I made homemade macaroni and cheese with hot dogs in it. While acting out what kind of bowls and pans I needed was interesting enough, it is also different that they wash their dishes to put them away and before they use them because it is a tropical place and they have a lot of bugs (cockroaches). La cucaracha, La cucaracha, ah, yayayayayai! That song comes in handy here! I haven’t seen a cockroach yet, but I know I will eventually!
Every time one leaves the bathroom the door must be shut when no one is in there. The bathroom door is always to be shut, which is very different than what I am used to in the United States. I often forget to shut the door and my mom has one of my siblings do so. I haven’t walked in on anyone yet, but I have a feeling one day I will! Also, when one is not using the electricity…or not using what is plugged in, then one unplugs it. So when I am not using my computer or my lamp, I am supposed to have those things unplugged because they use up energy just by being plugged in even if they are not on. That has been another thing to get used to!
My aunt Janet lives with us and sleeps in the same room as my mom. She is 36 and a masseuse. She makes me food at times and I feel like is constantly serving me. I love the dynamic between her and my mom because they make fun of each other often. She is nice but not very patient with me. When she asks me a question, it is super-fast and then when I understand what she asked me it takes me a while to formulate a response, but she thinks I don’t understand the question, so she re-asks me the question in like 5 different ways as I try to formulate a response! It is frustrating sometimes! But I am learning and understand more every day!
My grandmother lives a few streets away and comes over often. She is 80 and really cute but really impatient with my language barrier. She just asks me the question again louder and slower, but when I don’t understand the words it doesn’t make a difference. She is divorced as well as my mom.
My grandfather is 76 and is from Guanacaste Costa Rica. He stayed with us for a few days but rarely came out of my mom’s room and only did so to eat. I didn’t get to talk to him much.
My mom has 4 brothers and 4 sisters. Janet lives with us, but I have also met two other sisters and a brother. One sister lives a few blocks away and I only got to see her house and say hi, I don’t even know her name. The other sister is Yadi (I really like her name) and she is 46. She lives in Guanacaste with her South Carolinian Husband. I didn’t get to meet him because he is currently in the states visiting his sick mother. Yadi had cancer but has been without for two years now, praise be to God! She was in town visiting us to get tests to see if she still had cancer, but she is clean and good to go!
We went this last weekend to visit her, but I will write more about that in another entry. She is very beautiful and strong and caring. She lives 20 minutes from the beach, which is really nice!
Last but not least, my Uncle Jose owns a sushi restaurant and when we were driving around the other day with Janet’s amigivo (boy that is a friend but not her boyfriend even though they have been close friends for 10 years) we went to my uncles sushi restaurant and he gave me some sushi and it was pretty good…I am not sure I would pay for it, but it was fun to have the experience tasting sushi! He has a daughter that is a year older than me and a son who is a couple years older than me but I have only met them both once and very briefly.
So that is a brief overview of my tica familia and mi casa and mi vida here in Costa Rica!
Hola Kristine!
ReplyDeleteTu familia te extrana aca en Columbus, OH. Jessica esta progresando en su Espanol, pues pronto debe regresar a la escuela. Tu madre- Julie- es muy simpatica y quiere escribirle una nota de gratitud a tu familia en Costa Rica.
Your comments of simplicity and telling another woman - you are beautiful- reminded me of home, Colombia. Life can be so much simpler and many times, much happier, if we focus on necessities and simple ways of loving and caring for one another!
Se fuerte!/Be strong! El tiempo pasa rapido.
Your experience in Costa Rica will make you a much better person and more wordly.
Con carino,
Olga