Fast transitions, mi familia, y el mar

This first week has been very impressive. It’s amazing how quickly I start to feel at home somewhere. Of course, it’s a very different place, but that is sort of the point—new situations don’t seem uncomfortable when you’re expecting everything to be unusual. It also helps that we’ve jumped right into all our schoolwork. We’ve been working especially hard at Spanish, and I realized that usually when I work on my blog, I’ve been thinking about what I want to write, even phrasing sometimes, before I ever sit down at my computer. Now, however, I have to spend so much time thinking about how to communicate in Spanish, that it takes up a lot of otherwise idle thinking time. This is not a bad thing if I want to learn a language, but it doesn’t necessarily help me write about what’s going on in my life.

The process of trying to become fluent in another language is very confusing. I keep almost typing words in Spanish when I’m writing in English (for instance, when I went to look over this paragraph, many of my connecting words were still in Spanish), but I’m still having a hard time speaking correctly. I think I understand what people mean when they say that there’s a certain period where you’re just bad at both languages (although I don’t think I’ve reached that point yet). That being said, I’ve never felt so comfortable speaking Spanish before. I guess it turns out that when I’m living with people who understand I’m going to make a lot of mistakes, I’m much less afraid of trying to talk a lot. However, I’ve started speaking more rapidly, without really thinking about what I’m saying, and I keep making lots of stupid conjugation mistakes. The other day, my host dad started to teach me the past tense (preterito) conjugations, and I had to tell him, with much embarrassment, that I really did know it already, I just kept getting it mixed up.

The staff, students, advisors, and families are all wonderful people. It’s impressive, since there are always so many variables and cultural difficulties, that they are able to put together a program with so many nice, interesting, intelligent, comfortable people. This is especially important with advisors. My advisor, Bernal Rodriguez-Herrera, is an expert on tent making bats, and it’s clear he has a wealth of knowledge to help me with my project, with hopes of publishing the results with me. He’s a very cool guy, with a sporty-looking backpack, a canvas-sided research jeep, and one earring. Definitely very different from most of the people you meet in San José. The only tricky part is he doesn’t speak much English, which shockingly doesn’t seem to be a problem like I thought it might. It seems like the more scientific and complex the topic gets, the more overlap there is with English. I now have a pretty good outline of what I will be doing for my research project with tent-making bats and I am very excited to get started on it.

The wall in the staircase of ACM

ACM courtyard viewed from above

Students sitting at a table at ACM

***

There is not an overabundance of wildlife in the city like I sort of hoped there might be, but the city is often much prettier than most U.S. cities, with lots of parks and interesting shops. And ever once in a while, I see something special. The first day coming home from the ACM building, we found loros (little green parrots) hanging out on the telephone wires, chatting extremely noisily above city houses. They also hang around the small “outlet mall” near the school, although they’re more often heard than seen. It seems so funny to have them right in the city.

The real treat, however, happened the other day right as I was eating breakfast. I was chatting with my madre when I looked out the window and saw a magnificent bird sitting on the wall beside the garage where pigeons usually hang out. It had a long beautiful tail, a beautiful green and orange body, and vibrant electric blue band on its forehead: a motmot (or bobo in Spanish). My host family has a carving of one in the entryway, and my madre told me how one time Esteban (my hermano) held the carving outside the door, and a motmot came up to it thinking it was real.

The view of San Pedro from ACM

***

I think I need to spend more time with my sobrino (literally translated to nephew, although in this case the son of my madre’s brother) David. He is an extremely precious (and precocious) eight-year-old, and, I discovered, very eager to help me learn Spanish. One night he was over to see Esteban, his favorite playmate, but Esteban was sick with what is either food poisoning/contamination or a stomach virus that’s been making the rounds through the family. I was in the kitchen working on my homework, so I asked him if he wanted to help me. He was clearly very excited to play the role of teacher, and he went over each question, making little X’s or checkmarks on the page with a mini laser pointer he’d found and explaining each one slowly and clearly (although occasionally he would forget and start talking so fast I couldn’t understand, and then he would slow down and speak in a tone I can only imagine is that of his teacher). He seems like the type of kid who gets really intent on some things, and I think he enjoyed being able to teach someone else something for a change. Much of the extended family lives in a sort of compound on the same property, and David is the youngest of them all, so I’m sure he gets things explained to him more often than he gets to teach someone else.

It was really interesting to see what sorts of things he thought I would or wouldn’t know. For instance, with grammar, he would often gloss over concepts that I might be less clear on and explain it on a more practical level with which I was more familiar. Or he would explain basic things like what are video games or the internet, but then try to tell me a very complicated joke. We spent a long time watching youtube videos together, with him explaining everything while he sort of danced to whatever we were watching. It was all my madre and I could do not to laugh sometimes at how serious and yet ridiculous he was at explaining things. My hermano Alejandro taught David how to make this kind of braided bracelet, and then of course David taught my madre, her sister, and me how to do it, slowly and methodically moving each strand, with a surprising amount of patience and focus for an eight-year-old.

***

For our first weekend in Costa Rica, we decided to visit Manuel Antonio, which is a national park on the pacific coast, about three hours away from San José. I was really impressed at how quickly a couple of the students were able to plan it out for us all, and very grateful for them as well, because I wasn’t settled enough in San José yet to plan a trip anywhere else. It was well worth the effort, however.

The bus ride over reminded me of why I really wanted to study in Costa Rica. As we drove, the view outside the window kept getting greener, lusher, and more breathtaking with every minute. It’s not that I don’t like San José, it just can’t compete with tropical rainforests and a view of the sea.

The group split up into two hostels, and I was with the smaller group that stayed in a backpackers hostel in Manuel Antonio. It was impressively cheap, and the guy at the front desk seemed a little dishonest and creepy, but the rest of the place had a good vibe, it was actually very clean, and the guests were all friendly. It also turned out to be a good place to see reptiles. There were geckos all over the ceilings of the open air hallways and dining deck area, and this morning when we left, there were three or four large iguanas chilling on the trees near the deck.

We decided to get a guide Saturday morning when we got to the park. At first I was a little unsure, since he approached us when we were still a fair ways away from the park entrance, and he began by talking to us in English. However, we started talking in Spanish while we were waiting, and I was comforted at how respectful and knowledgeable he was at answering all my questions, even before we really committed to hiring him. His name was Marvin, and I think he appreciated that we were students that he could speak Spanish with and that we also really wanted to hear what he could teach us about the park. He explained that in Costa Rica, it takes two years or more of schooling to become a certified guide, and you have to learn a lot about ecology. He mentioned some information that sounded like he read about in his spare time as well, so it was fun to have a very knowledgeable guide that was truly interested in ecology and fun to talk to. We would never have found so many animals without him and it ended up also being really good Spanish practice since we spent three hours talking about animals, ecology, and school while we walked. I think we were all fairly impressed, both with the experience and with our own Spanish abilities, by the end.

I’m not sure others on the trip are as big animal nerds as I am (I have an inordinate amount of patient to search for them even when I can’t find anything, and to watch them even when they’re not doing anything), but with the sort of animals we found with the guide, everyone was into it. Right away on the entrance path, we started seeing iguanas and anoles. Marvin even found a tiny Rainbow Grasshopper with his spotting scope for us to look at. Then we started finding the really big stuff. We saw two three-toed-sloths fighting in a tree. One was definitely a male, with its strange dark marking on its back that almost looks like a giant gash. As we walked, we could hear the high pitched calls of the sloths around us. They seemed a lot more active than I had expected, although Marvin explained that they spend about 20 hours sleeping each day. We later saw a two-toed sloth on the beach. I don’t know how Marvin found it, it was so well hidden and you couldn’t even really see it from the path.

We also saw my first Common Tent-Making Bats, which I was very excited for. It was amazing how our guide could find them where it seemed like nothing was there, but he tried to show us how you could spot the tents by their different shape. By the end of my project, hopefully I’ll be able to do the same, but I think I’ll need a lot of practice to find them as well as Marvin.

Marvin said at the beginning that if we didn’t see any animals we didn’t have to pay him. At the end, we gave him a pretty big tip instead.

Passion Flower in Manuel Antonio National Park

Anole lizard on a leaf in Manuel Antonio National Park

Boat-billed Heron in Manuel Antonio National Park

***

We hiked around for a while after we parted ways with Marvin, though not for as long as I probably would’ve liked, tired as I was. I think most people were more interested in the beach, although aside from the occasional iguana and impressive view of the sea, I was much more interested in the jungle. Though truth be told, it would’ve been hard to top what we saw on our first hike on our own. We hiked up a twisty, less well maintained cement block trail that some of the other students said had a nice view of the beach. At the top, however, there was a rope tied across the trail. We might have considered ducking it, but it turns out it was guarded. I was in the back of the group, so I didn’t see exactly what happened, but we somehow managed to stumble upon a family of capuchin monkeys and surprised a mother with her baby. She sort of jumped at David in the front, and was acting very aggressive, so we started backing up slowly and quietly to where we could observe them from a bit of a safer distance. We watched the family regroup, while the mother and a larger male kept their eyes fixed on us, even while some of the others seemed to be relaxing again. They have such an intense, humanlike stare, it’s a bit unnerving. The baby was tiny, clinging to the mom’s back, and seemingly much less worried about the people. We stayed for as long as we could without feeling too disrespectful, since they didn’t seem to like us being there, and then went back down the path to the beach.

White-throated capuchin monkey baby on its mom's back

White-throated capuchin monkey hanging out

White-throated capuchin monkeys grinning

***

This morning we went to the public beach, which I liked better than the ones in the park, because we found a shady spot that was very comfortable with pretty rocks and pelicans, which was perfect to me since I wasn’t actually swimming in the ocean anyways. All in all it was a wonderful trip, and I feel like I got to know a few of the students on the program much better. They all seem very active and adventurous, and a lot of fun to be around.

A Black Ctenosaur Iguana

Lauren at the public beach at Manuel Antonio

***

While I was writing this post, my familia returned from their own Sunday fishing trip. They came back with coolers and tons of fish that the hermanos had caught, as well as some shrimp they bought while there. We watched the super bowl half time show, and then I went back to work, going in and out of the kitchen chatting with my madre. Everyone has been very curious to hear me talk about the super bowl, since it’s such an American phenomenon. One of the relatives on the very first day told me how strange it was that it seems like every single American watches the super bowl, yet every single American he’s met in Costa Rica doesn’t really. Also, tonight, my madre had me try guanabana (soursop in English), a large prickly green fruit with large seeds and fleshy white insides. It was very interesting, but it was a bit acidic and I wasn’t sure I liked it, although no one else seemed to either since it wasn’t fully ripe.

I love it when the house fills up with people and the hustle and bustle of family, even if it can be harder to get stuff done. In some ways, I get along better with my madre than anyone else here. I think having a familia makes the transition much easier and much more enjoyable.