"Hola Gringas!"

The term “Gringo” is one that I’ve learned not to perceive as derogatory. Rather, it is simply a title, a fact. I’m a gringa, but I’m not ashamed of this, nor do I attempt to pretend otherwise. Walking down the street in Santa Marta a few Saturdays ago, Katie and I were wearing, for probably the first time, clothing other than ugly mesh shorts and large man t-shirts (our weekday uniform that we deviate from only when gone for the weekends and actually attempting to look like girls). Two men working on a car in the street looked up from beneath the hood and yelled, “Hola gringas!” We smiled and responded with a congenial “Hola!”

At the guarderia last week, Genesis, a girl I’m particularly close with, was telling me about her new baby brother. When her mother came to pick her up, I asked Genesis if her mom had brought the baby with her, and if I could see him. Smiling, she ran outside to where her mom stood waiting, yelling excitedly, “Mama! La gringa quiere ver el bebe!” When Katie and Deanna said they’d also like to see him, she added, “Y las otras gringas tambien!” She knows all of our names. We have come to accept that sometimes we are simply “las gringas.”

After living here in Santa Marta for two months and spending my days in and around San Pedro and San Jose, I have truly begun to feel like this is my home. I wake up each morning first to the sound of my alarm and then to the sound of Katie telling me I’m dumb for waking up so early. Usually she ends up getting up with me, after being mean for about five minutes. Oftentimes I go back to sleep for half an hour, but seeing as she is already awake, Katie proceeds to give herself a manicure or pedicure, and I eventually awake to the smell of nail polish remover. Then we take turns showering and maneuvering around our room, while she opens up her computer and puts on what she likes to refer to as her “sweet jams.” Katie’s sweet jams consist of a lot of utter crap, but also some serious gems, like excellent nineties and early 21st century pop songs that really take me back to the days of old, as well as some of our new discoveries, like the Spanish versions of Sean Paul songs that are really popular here, or other current espanol hits that we’ve grown accustomed to hearing in Costa Rica. We get dressed and head out to breakfast, chat with Maybell over guava jelly, then head off on our trek to the bus.

First we pass the mechanics shop where there are usually already about four or five men working on cars out front. Then we round the corner and pass by a tiny tienda where a nice old man always exchanges a “Buenos dias!” with us. We wait to board the bus for a while, even though it’s usually sitting there empty, ready for business. The bus drivers here like to take their time. They smoke cigarettes, pee behind the bus, chat with the guy who’s always standing on the corner, while all the while passengers are lined up on the street waiting to get on. Katie and I talk and people watch when the bus finally gets underway, and once we get off I buy a coffee at this bakery near our school that always smells really delicious. Then I enjoy my class with Teddy, a two-hour period of time during which the first thirty minutes are always dedicated to my telling him “chismes,” or pieces of juicy gossip. My teacher Teddy is un chismoso grande, and we usually enjoy, for the most part, discussing Katie and the happenings in her life here in Costa Rica. Each time Teddy goes up to Katie in between classes and asks her about something personal, she yells, “UGH, CHRIS! Why do you have to spend your entire class time gossiping about me?” Teddy and I really go for it. Mondays are the absolute best because I can give him all the gossip from the weekend. I find that talking about people is a really great way to learn Spanish. This past week, I was having a particularly hard day, and Teddy let me spend the full class period basically just telling him my life story in Spanish. Obviously, two hours didn’t give me nearly enough time to cover all the necessary points, but God Bless Teddy for listening intently to everything I actually managed to fit into that time slot.

After class and before the project, I usually spend some time with Katie, Adam and Flo, oftentimes outside with Flo and his skateboard. He has attempted to teach me a few tricks, resulting often with my falling off the board (shocking, I know) and hurting myself. Once, a car outside the movie theater almost hit me, so I jumped off the skateboard just in time to not be killed, then proceeded to simply watch the board roll away into the parking lot. “Typical women,” Flo muttered. After skateboard lessons and lunch, we head to the project, following after the project, we usually reconvene at school, wait for Mike to finish his class, and then choose an evening activity. I love my weekly routine because it’s stress-free, fun, but at the same time monotonous in a way that I appreciate, in a way that makes me feel comfortable here.

Our evening activity, after much deliberation, usually ends up being a trip to Ciros Jr., our go-to bar where everyone who works there recognizes our faces and knows each of our individual preferred type of cerveza. However, Flo and I did recently find another excellent bar, with pool, ping-pong and foosball tables. This discovery thrilled me because, for all of you reading this right now, it may come as a real shock to acquire this information, but I’m a very competitive person. I enjoy playing games. I enjoy winning games. Flo also enjoys winning however, and sadly, he tends to be better than me at most things. But with a little more practice at pool, I feel confident that I can surpass him any day now. Flo and I also like to make stupid bets, like the “brown arm contest” we recently agreed upon this past weekend. The parameters of this contest are quite simple. On Sunday upon returning back from our separate weekends, we will hold our arms up next to one another’s and Adam will judge who is tanner. I also somehow managed to bet Flo, at some point or another during a particular stroke of lady-like behavior, that I could beat him in an arm-wrestling competition before I leave Costa Rica.

This started when we were all together in Nosara one day. Matt walked up to where I was lounging by the pool and said, “Wow, Chris, you’re really jacked.” Yup. Jacked. Just what every girl likes to hear. “JACKED?” I responded. I immediately panicked. I thought to myself that perhaps I was right all along in thinking that I should be covering up my linebacker shoulders at all times, even when wearing a bikini. Later when Flo and Adam joined me at the pool, I said to them: “You guys, Matt just told me I was ‘jacked’. Do I look ‘jacked’ to you? Do I come across as some sort of body builder? What the hell?” Flo looked over at me contemplatively, then replied, “I am thinking it is because you are having big arms, no?”

So long after I recovered from being called a man, a process that spanned a few days, and during which I wore a sweater despite the 90 degree weather, I was in the backseat of a cab with the boys and I ended up physically fending Adam off from doing something dumb and childish, what specifically I can’t recall. After I easily prevented him from touching me and shoved him against the window, he exclaimed “Wow, Chris, you really ARE jacked!” At that point, I decided to embrace it. My mom was jacked, I’m jacked, my little sisters are jacked, it’s just the way it is. So I conceded that indeed I am jacked, showcased my bicep, and ended up betting Flo something like 10,000 colones that I can beat him in an arm wrestling match one day down the line. I will keep you all informed on the outcome of this. I’m sure you’re extremely interested in understanding the full extent of my jacked-ness.

So after our weekend in Nosara with the crew, Katie and I decided we needed to spend a weekend at home, because we were exhausted, and had also gone a little overboard with the money spending. Additionally, Yari, our house sister, was having her 15th birthday party that weekend, which in Costa Rica is a very big deal, sort of like a “sweet 16” back at home. The week turned out to be all about being with our “familia.” On Thursday night Mike and I were making our way to Ciros Jr. to meet up with Adam and Flo when his house parents pulled up next to us on the street in their car and offered us a ride to the bar. Mike’s house mom is our house dad’s sister, and her name is Ivania. Katie and I really go for Ivania. She likes to chat. A lot. Her husband is Diego, a very successful lawyer with an affinity for neck tattoos and motorcycles. The two of them seem pretty sublimely happy together. Mike and I seemed to have stumbled upon one of their date nights, but we happily ruined it by taking their offer to ride to the bar together and getting a table for all of us. Soon enough Adam and Flo had arrived, as had Katie, with a newly pierced nose. For many weeks after this life development of hers, Katie would stop our conversation every once and a while and say, “Guys, I don’t know if you know this, but I have a nose ring.”

So Katie and Ivania and I girl-talked while Diego and the boys man-talked. We chatted about the nature of relationships, and about marriage and how to make it work. We learned about her large family, and about her opinion on any person in her life who we also happened to know. Ivania is very funny and she apparently loves the chismes almost as much as Teddy.

The next night was Friday, and for some reason Katie and I were sitting on the street in front of our house after a long day at school/the project, having a very serious and sad conversation about life and death while drinking Imperial Lights. Maybell came home at around seven, looked at us sympathetically, and then basically told us we were going out with her to a bar, whether we wanted to or not. So we quickly changed clothes and attempted to look nice, then hopped in a cab with her and headed to Acapulco, a bar with a very different feel than Ciros Jr. Though Ciros Jr. is populated with pretty much only locals (besides us, of course), I had never felt as much a Gringa as I did stepping into that bar. It was dark and smoky, and packed with people. A real dive. As we walked through the door with Maybell, all eyes turned to Katie and I. There’s something I really like about Acapulco though, even though it’s kind of dirty, and even though initially I felt like I was some sort of alien with the way everyone was looking at me. There’s something sincere about it. Plus, I really speak a lot of Spanish when I’m there.

So the three of us had a very long talk, and I think something changed between us that night. A closeness was established that hadn’t been there before. She told us much about the trials and tribulations of her life, and about how important it is for her to maintain a happy marriage and to raise her children; to be the head of her family, because to her, family comes first. Katie and I told her about some of our hardships in life, some of our difficulties with family members and such, and she expressed to us that no matter what, she will always be our Tica Mom, and that we can come to her for anything. Maybell was very protective of us at the bar. When a sleazy man wouldn’t stop staring at Katie, Maybell quickly put him in his place. Later on in the night, I was chatting with an older man about what I am doing here in Costa Rica, and Maybell told me in Spanish, “He’s married, stop talking to him.” I assured her I wasn’t interested in him that way, and that I was just practicing my Spanish. She must have known something I didn’t, however, because he ended up slipping me his business card before he left the bar. Maybell and I had a good laugh about that the next day.

Eventually, a large crew of our family and friends came to join us at Acapulco. First, Giovanni, Diego and Ivania showed up. Everyone was really in rare form that night, and there was lots of laughter and joking around. Then Mike and Flo, along with Gaby, my old Spanish teacher, her husband, and Mario and Hazel, two people who work at Maximo, came to hang as well. I LOVE Gaby and I really love her husband Rodrigo as well. It was fun just hanging out with people who we see every day at school in a different and more fun environment. It was nice being home on a weekend night for a change, and breaking out of our regular routine.

The next day was my first Saturday home in Santa Marta. Katie and I woke up pretty late, starving and tired, so we made ourselves a big breakfast and laughed over the events of the previous evening. This is one of my absolute favorite things about living with Katie. We think the same things are hilarious, and we can talk for hours about stuff that happened only one day before, remaining completely entertained and cracking each other up for hours. That Saturday Maybell and the rest of the family were out of the house, preparing for Yari’s birthday bash at Maybell’s uncle’s house. We were told that the theme of her party was “country,” but we weren’t exactly sure what that meant. We were given our first clue when Maybell returned to the house and put on cowboy boots, tight jeans, a plaid tee shirt that she tied in a knot in front of her stomach, and a Stetson. ‘Mierda,’ I thought. Neither Katie nor I happened to have packed Stetsons or cowboy boots or plaid shirts (well, at least plaid shirts that aren’t the kind men wear in the wintertime when they’re working at a construction site…because I have on of those) in our suitcases when we came to Costa Rica. Nor did we want to go to the mall and buy such things. We are on a strict weekly budget that allots specific amounts of funding to the following imperative items: our personal stash of peanut butter and guava jelly, movie tickets at least once a week, trips to Ciros Jr., and the occasional six pack of Imperial Light for our afuera de casa street drinking. So we put our brains together and tried to figure out how to look as “country” as possible with the clothing items we’d actually brought with us. Eventually we decided that floral dresses and pigtails would have to do. Somehow, we just always end up wearing floral dresses and looking like a set of floral dress-wearing twins/a same-sex couple.

The Gringa affect was in full-force when we walked into Maybell’s uncle’s backyard, Yari’s party already underway. Not only did we stand out like a sore thumb being that we were neither young friends nor family members of Yari, but rather two white American girls. But we were out of place even more so because we were the only two people at the party not wearing Stetsons and jeans. ‘Mierda,’ I thought to myself for the second time that day. Immediately I removed my pigtails. They weren’t making me look more country, just more ugly. We breathed a sigh of relief when we spotted Maybell and Ivania, who ran over and embraced us. Katie and I walked around briefly, meeting family members, all of whom were extremely friendly and welcoming, then stationed ourselves at the end of a long table to watch the teenagers dance to reggaeton music provided by a DJ at the other side of the lawn. Eventually Mike showed up and the three of us enjoyed ourselves by joking around, helping Maybell with preparations, and drinking some sort of special family concoction that Giovanni’s dad passed around to everyone after having poured the mystery liquid into small plastic cups out of a large Coca-Cola bottle. Evidently the drink is a sort of family tradition, as he makes and brings a batch of it to all special gatherings. I don’t know what was in it. All I know is that I was not asked if I wanted some, but rather just handed it, that it tasted like a delicate balance of coconut and fire, that it most definitely had at least three different types of liquor in it, and finally that I was on the verge of full drunkenness after slowly consuming just that one mini plastic cupful.

Maybell’s uncle had put together a beautiful video slideshow of pictures of Yari throughout her life. After dinner, everyone gathered on the lawn to watch it. There erupted plenty of clapping and awing from the crowd, and at one point when I looked over at Maybell, I saw that she was crying while watching the pictures of her daughter flash across the screen. It was so cute, and I couldn’t have felt happier for her that the party was a success, because she’d been planning it for weeks. Katie and I hugged her when the slideshow was over, and told her how much fun everyone was having.

After saying goodbyes and thank yous to everyone we’d met, Katie and Mike and I went to our first-ever monthly Maximo Nivel party. Well no, actually, before doing that we needed to make a pit stop at home to remedy the whole matching floral dresses situation. Then we took the bus to school, which felt like a strange thing to be doing on a Saturday night. Because Maximo also has a TEFL Program (A month-long course that certifies students to teach English all over the world), every Saturday it holds a party to celebrate the TEFL graduation, open to all Maximo students and employees. The party is always complete with a DJ, food, and an open bar, all of which is set up where I normally sit at a table and go on Facebook while watching CNN En Espanol before and after Spanish class each day. I could barely recognize Maximo, and I truly couldn’t recognize many of the people there, because they were TEFL students who I’d never met. After walking around a bit we located Flo, who sat chatting with some people at the outside table we often occupy in the afternoons to study and hang out. Mike arrived shortly thereafter, and Adam came about an hour later than he’d said he would, explaining that he’d bought some sort of spinney-top earlier that day, and that a couple of security guards outside the McDonald’s en route to Maximo had spent a lot of time showing him how to use it in the parking lot. Adam always has weird stories like this, and weird items like handcrafted wooden Costa Rican toys sticking out of his pockets. We spent the night trying to master the art of Adam’s spinney top and hanging out with some new people as well as Mario, Hazel, Gaby, Leo and other friends who work at Maximo. I had a really, really good time, and before I knew it, the bar was being closed down, the music and lights were being shut off, and people were making their way in droves to their night’s next destination.

Somehow we ended up back at Acapulco again, the dark bar from the previous night. Then before I knew it, Katie, Flo, Mario and I were in a cab on the way to Pueblo. I had heard much about this infamous place known as “El Pueblo,” a tiny village of about ten bars, with its own courtyard and pizza joints. I don’t think we got there until two in the morning, yet there was a line down the block of people waiting to be allowed through the gates, and the old woman with a food cart outside, who Mario knew by name, seemed extremely busy selling greasy hamburgers to drunk people, and in no rush to pack it up and call it a night any time soon. “We will stay here until six, no?” Flo asked me. I laughed at him, thinking we’d hang out for about an hour. Yet much later, when I looked at the clock in the cab we took home, it was indeed six A.M. Man, did we have fun. I danced and danced and danced with Katie, and when I wasn’t dancing I was looking around at all the people and the lights, just fascinated. The main bar that we went to in Pueblo had a huge stage in the middle of it, where a physically fit and shirtless man danced around with a microphone, essentially singing along to whatever pop or reggaeton song was being played, flanked by two women doing synchronized dance moves in their lycra bras and booty shorts. “This is so weird!” I screamed to Katie. “What?” she yelled back. It’s basically impossible to have a conversation at Pueblo. Katie makes fun of me each morning after we’ve gone out to a loud bar or show, because I never have a voice. This is because I insist on talking (or more fittingly, screaming at the top of my lungs) just as often when I’m somewhere very loud as I do in regular daytime environments. This does a number to my vocal chords. Evidently other people take it down a notch in the talking department when they’re in these types of situations. Minimal talking, however, has never been my strong suit. “Chris just ALWAYS needs to be chatting up,” Katie explains when someone asks me why I don’t have a voice. El Pueblo, Katie and I decided, was an experience, but one that should not be overdone, kind of like eating McDonald’s french fries, or watching three straight seasons of a TV show on DVD in just one day. These things are fun in moderation, but also potentially hazardous, and therefore should only be practiced, at most, once a month.

So that Sunday morning I fell into bed as the sun rose steadily higher into the sky, and thought to myself, “so much for taking it easy this weekend.” But I’ve decided it was worth it. I spent some real quality time with mis familias: mi familia Tica, my familia de amigos, and mi familia de Maximo. We both woke up in the early afternoon and immediately started giggling. “That place was just insane,” Katie said to me. “Oh my God, do you remember what we talked about in the cab?” I asked her. She lay on her bed in her nightgown, I lay on my bed in mine, and we proceeded to continue in this fashion, laughing with one another about the events of the night before, until we became hungry for cereal and decided to venture outside of our room.

Eventually we met up for brunch with Adam and Flo, and then checked out an outdoor concert in a park in San Jose. Matt cooked dinner for our family that night because he was leaving on Tuesday and wanted to do something nice for everyone. After dinner, we all hung out in the yard next to our house: Matt, Katie, Adam, Mike, Flo and I, as well as Mike’s roommate Theresa, who was returning home to Austria the following day. Though we were a small group, somehow we managed to be told by Maybell to quiet down, because we were laughing and carrying on a bit too loudly. I remember on that night feeling as though I couldn’t possibly think of anywhere I’d rather be than lying on the grass in front of my host family’s broken jeep, leaning on Mike’s legs and trying so hard not to laugh too loudly that I was making ugly snorting noises which are louder and more disturbing than my actual laugh could ever be.

On Monday night our crew of six went to a bar called The Jazz Café to celebrate Matt’s final evening. We watched an amazing dance crew perform traditional Mexican and African dance, accompanied by some truly phenomenal live percussion, while we enjoyed french fries and cocktails. Unfortunately we hadn’t learned our lesson from the night before, because when having a powwow outside the bar to decide where we should go next, everyone seemed to agree that the best place would be the yard next to our house.

“No, guys, we got in trouble last night for being loud, and it’s pretty late…on a Monday,” I said.
“Whatever, I’m cold and I wish to pee,” Katie said. “Let’s go to our house.”
“Yeah, let’s just go to our house,” Matt said. He was leaving so early the following morning that to him upsetting Maybell and Giovanni wasn’t really a concern.

Of course, I gave in. And sure enough, we got in trouble with Maybell. The lesson I’ve taken away from this is realizing that no matter how hard we may try, and no matter how genuine our intentions, the six of us just aren’t capable of being quiet. So the following morning Maybell chastised Katie and me about the inappropriate hour and placement choice of our late-night Matt send-off. We apologized profusely, blamed Matt ☺, and had a long discussion with her about how important it is that we communicate with each other clearly about what is expected of us, and how much we appreciate being told if we are doing something she doesn’t like. In the end, everything was great. I walked away from having “gotten in trouble” for the first time since middle school, and all I could think was, “Wow. My Spanish has gotten so good!”