Guava Jelly y El Dia De Suerte.

I think I need to begin this entry with a discussion of guava jelly. It seems ridiculous that I have yet to mention guava jelly, as it’s the most crucial of Katie and my four main food groups, along with rice and beans, smoothies, and unknown Costa Rican snack items that we buy at rest stops and our local grocery store ‘Mas Por Menos.’ Guava jelly is absolutely delicious. In the mornings Maybell puts out an assortment of jellies for our toast, usually including guayaba (guava), pina (pineapple), and mora (blackberry). Guava by far takes the prize. Katie and I will put it on anything we can find. This past week we went as far as to buy our own guava jelly and three boxes of whole wheat crackers, which we just carry around with us in a plastic bag everywhere we go. The other day we went to the movies and Katie asked, “Chris, can we fit the guava in LPJ (L-Pack Jr.)?” “No, there’s no room,” I said. “Ugh fine,” she answered, “I’ll just go for carrying it.” I think we are now known at Maximo as the weird girls with all the crackers, because we are constantly offering an individual pack to everyone who walks by us, opening the guava jelly and saying, “Here, go for dipping.” Anyway, guava jelly is a revelation. We have already discovered our favorite brand and have grand plans to send cases upon cases home to New York before we return, in the interest of never having to go a day without eating it.

So after returning from Dominical, life in San Pedro continued as it does. John went home to the States, which was a little sad, but Katie and Beth started coming to my project for the week, so the long bus rides to and from became very entertaining. I have really started to be comfortable at the Guarderia, as I now have a great rapport with the women who run it, and am able to communicate with them much more easily than I could when I first began volunteering. Additionally, the kids know me well and expect to see me every afternoon. When we get off the bus each day and walk to the gated front of the building, the kids are normally “afuera” (outside) in the back, and we wait for Leticia, the old lady who runs the place, to unlock the front door and let us in. As we wait, I call past the building to the kids on the swing, “Hola ninos!” When one of them notices me, they all run over in droves to the other gate, and I start saying hi to each of them individually. “Hola Azael! Hola Genesis! Hola Emily! Hola Jon Carlos! Como estan? Como fue su dia?” They get very excited and usually begin chanting, “Cristina! Cristina! Cristina! Cristina!” until the door is unlocked, I enter, and am attacked with about fifteen hugs from fifteen little kids, very deserving of my love and attention. I’d be lying if I said this doesn’t serve as a nice daily ego boost.

Thursday was El Dia De Suerte (The Day of Luck), though it didn’t seem so in the morning when the day began. Katie and I had planned for that weekend to go back to Samara, the first beach I visited, and to leave on the Thursday night bus. On Thursday morning we arrived at Maximo to find that the bus to Samara was full. Naturally I let my irritation get the better of me, huffed and puffed, then chose to act completely irrational by stating that I didn’t care to try and figure something different out, but would rather just stay in San Jose. Katie, knowing me well, said she would plan something, and went to researching other beach towns we could get to by the following morning. She finally made the decision that we would go to Nosara, a spot close to Samara but with bus service very early on Friday morning. Each weekend Katie and I make a plan for the two of us, yet we maintain an open door policy. If anyone wants to join us, they are more than welcome, and if they don’t, the two of us will go and have a great time together. But the thing is, we’re really fun. And people usually end up tagging along, even if they don’t make the decision to do so until the very last minute. So Katie decided to get a room for six, saying that if worse came to worse, we would pay for it ourselves, but that chances were pretty good that people would join us in the end. “Chris, people go for us,” she explained. I agreed that indeed, people do tend to go for us, and we booked the room, crossing our fingers that there would be tickets left at the bus station.

Katie and Adam and I then went on a trek downtown to the bus station. We made the mistake of following Adam, who thought it would be a funny chiste to lead us astray. He decided to cut through the San Jose market, which is really, really cool. It’s a roofless indoor space with tons of different tiny shops, each one very close to the next. You can buy spices, fruit, rice, meat, shoes, clothing, sandwiches, jewelry, anything you can think of. It’s very fun to walk through and look at everything, unless Adam is leading you in circles through it and you can’t find your way out. Finally he let us escape and we got to the bus station. There were plenty of tickets left for the bus to Nosara (where Adam had decided to go beforehand), so Katie and I came to the conclusion, then and there, that we hadn’t been meant to go to Samara that weekend, and that it was better to try a new place anyway. Our spirits high, we then went on a mission to buy me a rash guard, because of my aforementioned surf clothing dilemma. I planned on surfing that weekend, so I wanted to be prepared. Rash guards are those really tight wetsuit looking shirts. So the three of us went to a surf shop where Katie insisted I try on and buy a bright pink rash guard, and Adam went for picking up a bunch of them, then forcing me to try them on in the dressing room. Finally, after the two of them had opened the door numerous times to hand me things while I was half naked, including when Katie threw me a skimpy white see-through tanktop accented with gold buckles, and said, “Adam says this is the best thing for you to wear surfing. Listen to him Chris, he knows things,” I found a rash guard that I could handle wearing, and we skidaddled.

So I had a rash guard and we had tickets for the bus for the following morning. Then Katie found two pairs of sunglasses she liked, after having been looking for a week for cheap non-ugly shades. We then made our way to the project and for the first time since I’ve been in Costa Rica, the bus was at the stop when we got there, and it left immediately after we got on. The project was a ton of fun that day. We ran around and got really sweaty with the kids, then it rained, cooling us off, and we spent the rest of the time chilling, drawing and chatting with them inside. When Katie and I left the project, we thought we were witnessing a miracle because the bus was AGAIN pulling up to the stop across the street just as we walked outside. We hopped on and started chatting. I then felt my phone vibrate, and looked down to see that I had an email from Columbia University letting me know whether or not I’d gotten into the School of Social Work. I couldn’t check it on my phone, so I had to wait until getting back to Maximo, a trip that involves switching to yet another bus, and normally standing the whole time in a sweaty rush hour crowded bus. Needless to say, I was anxious. We hopped off the bus past the large angel statue that serves as our landmark, and walked across the street to wait for the Pereferica, the last bus in the journey. To our utter shock, the Pereferica came around the corner just as we reached the stop! And it wasn’t crowded! And it only took ten minutes to get back when it normally takes thirty! “I think you’re gonna get into Columbia, because today is the day of luck,” Katie told me. I forced her to sprint back to Maximo with me after getting off the bus, and I ran past Adam and Flo, who were confused as to why I was acting so manic. In the computer lab, the internet was down. “UGGGHHHH!” I screamed. Luckily, Katie was on the case in the front of the school. Nate, who pretty much runs the place, was on his special-person computer behind the desk, assumedly working. “Nate, does your computer have internet?” Katie demanded.

“Yes,” he replied.”
“I’ll be needing it,” she said. “CHRISSY!”

I ran out from the computer lab, leaned over his desk, and typed in the annoying code thing, which took about ten minutes, especially considering the fact that the keys on computers in Costa Rica are completely different than those in the United States, and finding the correct way to punch a symbol is quite the task. As the page loaded, many of my friends gathered around to wait for the verdict. Finally I saw the words, “Welcome to the Fall 2010…” I proceeded to jump up and down and do what I can only imagine was a really embarrassing ugly dance, while Katie flailed about with me, laughing her head off, and Nate and Mario (another guy who works at Maximo) looked on, extremely amused and possibly a little frightened. I received congratulatory hugs and then Flo said, “So, we go and have a beer, no?”

So we went and had a beer. There is a sushi place around the corner from school, where we all gathered and I received many cheers. It was an outing during which I have never before felt so happy and content. An extremely heavy weight had been lifted from my shoulders, I was being rewarded for all of my previous hard work, and I had new good friends to share the moment with. I missed my family a little though, and, as I do each time I miss my family, I took out the wallet-sized school pictures of my little siblings and showed them to everyone at the table. When Flo got a hold of them, he smiled and said, “They are looking like rabbits, no?” Everyone at the table burst out laughing, and I explained that yes, they have very large teeth, like my mother and even more so, like my grandfather, ‘Smilin’ Bob.’ Flo explained that calling children bunny rabbits is like a term of endearment in Austria, but it has not stopped all of us over the past couple of weeks from every once in a while doing our Flo voice and saying, “They are looking like rabbits, no?” The night ended with Katie and I on the street in front of our house with Matt and Mike, being told by them as they left to go out that they had changed their minds about their previous weekend plans, and would be coming with us at 5:30 in the morning. Flo had also come to this conclusion. Katie and I, having learned from the mistake of our previous Thursday night, bid them goodnight and went to sleep at a human hour, fully packed, clothes laid out, not allowing ourselves the opportunity to be sloppy and smelly on the bus the following morning. I fell off into dreamland excited for the weekend’s adventure, and very very thankful for La Dia De Suerte.