Swimming In The Rain

I have been thinking of how life is different here than in the US (not better or worse but different except for the school hours). There are so many differences and it is late and has been a long day so I am sure I won't get to all of them but I also know that we have seven more months to think of them and experience even more.

Today Laurie woke up sick with a fever and soreness in her joints so my mom and I walked down the hill at 6:15 to Karoy and Isues house, a seven kilometer jaunt. The temperature at 5-5:30 is the best but by 6:30-7:00 it gets a bit muggy. More than half of the way there are sidewalks so it is pretty safe going. Karoy took us down to Barranca to the farmer's market. We spent about $30 and got a bag of limes, three papaya, four pinapples, two watermelons, all kinds of bananas (finger regular and ripe platains), four mangos, one large guanabana (doo doo do do do) a bag of potatoes, three tomatoes, three onions, a head of lettuce, a head of bok choy, a bag of carrots, three avocados and a loaf of homemade Quaker bread.

When we got home I spent an hour and a half cutting and freezing fruit for the week's juices and to make room in the cooler for everything. The guanabana (doo doo do do do) itself took almost an hour cutting the seeds from the very large sweet, slimey guava/anone tasting fruit. I should have taken a picture but that is what google is for.

At one-thirty I walked down the street to meet with neighbor Carlos to ride the four blocks to our game together but he wasn't there so I just walked on over. There was no one there so I just walked back got some water, my swimsuit my mom and my son and walked back over with the plan that if no one was there I would swim with Leif and my mom. Sure enough I got a two hour swim in as my team never showed. It was a good time especially watching Leif improving by leaps and bounds his swimming and his diving. It was also refreshing that it started to rain because although the pool is just solar heated, it is solar heated and is a bit too warm for my taste.

After the swim I sat on the pool's edge in the nice cool rain while Leif swam a bit more. I was the only one sitting in the rain but it did feel very nice. I very rarely feel anything akin to cold except our now broken shower. We got home to find out my mom left her glasses at the pool so we walked back over then up to the store for some yeast to make some more pizzas (more on that in a bit).

When we got back I cut up some watermelon for Sidne and a papaya for Laurie. Caught a few innings of the Dodger game; can't remember who they were playing except I know it wasn't the White Sox. I missed the World Cup qualifying games as I was playing a game with Leif and Carolyn and Sidne were watching the Parent Trap in Spanish. Just as I started typing this entry my mom awoke from a nap and so we played a few games of bridge.

Ok here are a few differences with no judgement attached as although I may find them peculiar there may be some logic that I am not privy to. Some of the differences are between life in the US and in Costa Rica in general and some are differences between how I live in the US versus how I live here.

The concept of time could take up three or four entries on its own. Even if you could find a schedule for something it means very little here. The owner of the English school was telling us the same thing but in her school she demands that classes start on time but every class we have visited started fifteen minutes late and with less than half the class. Stragglers would wander in up to forty minutes late. I will get messages from my neighbor that there is a soccer game on a certain day at a certain time but then the next time I see him it has been changed.
The same thing happens with Natan's little league games. Karoy will tell us that he is coming at 5:00 en punto which I translated incorrectly to mean 5:00 on the hour but I have since learned from experience that 5:00 en punto really means 5:30 even if it is stressed that he means 5:00. If you can unburden yourself from the idea of being on time, much stress is lost.

In the opposite direction, people here stand in line for everything. They will stand 20 deep to use the ATM machine, they will wait an hour early waiting for the bank to open, they have to wait outside the clinic starting around 4:30 a.m. if they want to get an appointment that day (the clinic opens at 7:00 or 7:30. In grocery stores there are more than enough workers wandering around but unfortunately there is usually only one lane open for about every 6-8 customers waiting. No one seems to mind so I am trying not to mind. What the hell else do I have to do anyway?

Laurie and her mom were taking a taxi from Puntarenas and the driver asked them if it would be alright if he picked up his wife on the way. Can't believe that would happen in the US.

The idea of laws also has us a bit complexed. We know that there are laws because some of them are posted (stop signs, speed limits, littering is prohibited, turtle eggs are protected). However since we have yet seen a police officer do anything we think that these are actually suggestions and not laws. A guy is at the farmer's market every Saturday in the middle of everything yelling that he has turtle eggs for sale. A guy was in the middle of the road near the toll booths where traffic stops selling counterfeit auto registration stickers and the police station was less than 50 meters away. Stop signs mean that if you don't stop you will be at fault if there is an accident because no one stops unless they will cause an accident and even then they will try to find some room to maneuver without stopping. Double yellow lines (even around curves) must mean something completely different because it is possible to see any type of vehicle, even the old greyhound type buses, flying down the center lane passing whatever may be going three khp slower.

There are many more examples I want to chronicle and I will in the future but it is almost 1:00 and I wanted to share one other blog item. Every so often I hear a Spanish word that just makes me smile or has a nice ring to it; so every so often I am going to share my new words or phrases. The first one was liga de goma which is a cute sounding word meaning rubber band. Then I spent a day or two trying to use enhorabuena which means congratulations but no one uses it much so it fell out of favor. I then found the phrase tomar el sol which literally means to take the sun but is translated as sunbathing. I now think about taking as little sun as I can but I am starting to darken up a little bit even on my white belly. Leif and Laurie on the other hand are hogging up all the sun they can get their hands on. Both started out fitting in as a Tico but now both are darker than most and are probably considered to be Nicaraguans (another topic for another blog)

I forgot about the pizza stories. Oh well, Karoy and his family are coming tomorrow night(now tonight) for pizza and cake to celebrate Karoy's birthday, but that is only a small bit of the story. Maybe I will remember to write about it if and when I recount our celebration.