Viva la Vida

I would dare to say that in terms of grammar, I learned essentially nothing new. I didn't learn how to conjugate some new tense, I didn't learn a general rule for how to format a sentence accurately, I just didn't really learn a new part of Spanish grammar. Even more, I would claim that though I did learn a good amount of new words, for the most part, I was very comfortable with the words I heard said around me, and so my learning wasn't really focused on the vocabulary.

But in all honesty, I can do those in class. Yes, its not optimal to do so, and its much easier in a Spanish-speaking environment, but if a Spanish class teaches you something, its the formal grammar and vocabulary of Spanish. So, judging by the fact that these areas weren't where my learning was focused, I would say that my past Spanish classrooms have been pretty successful. The Spanish classroom that is Costa Rica, however, functions a little differently.

So I arrived, and my family would speak to me relatively slowly. When they finished asking me a question and had to talk to each other however, it was more or less gibberish. Their words flew out of their mouths as water flows out of a wide-open faucet, or so it seemed. And I started with my speech being relatively slow as well. We were more or less testing each other. I was asking my family if my English accent wasn't so bad that they couldn't understand me and whether my sentences were actually comprehensible. My family was asking me how fast they could speak before they lost me in their verb conjugations and “ñ's.” The answer that we seemed to get was that my Spanish was definitely one that could be understood, and that my family can speak at a medium pace for my understanding.

For me, that meant that it was time to speed up. So slowly over the next few weeks, I began to try to just spit out what I wanted to say as fast as I could before I lost too much accuracy. And it worked. Little by little, I could feel my Spanish speeding up, and the fact that my family understood me only helped me build confidence to keep trying. At this point, I am pretty happy with how I speak Spanish. No, its definitely not perfectly fluent. No, my words don't flow like the water of a faucet, but that faucet is definitely opened wider than it was before I came to Costa Rica, and its opened wider than I expected it would be.

But a conversation in Spanish is two parts: speaking and listening for the response. So in order for my speaking to improve, I must've been doing an equal amount of listening, and in the middle of the program, I had this strange moment. My host sister and mother had begun their own conversation while Julia and I sat at the dinner table, and though I always tried to keep an ear open, usually my ear didn't catch much. Somehow, though, I had followed their whole conversation. And as the next couple weeks went by, I realized it wasn't an accident. Though I couldn't speak as fast as they could, my mind had learned to keep up with their conversations. Yes, there were points I missed, but the main concepts were definitely there. I also recognize that I was very used to their voices and their rhythm of speech by this point, so it in general is easier for me to follow what they are saying than someone I just met and heard their voice for the first time, but regardless, it's definitely been a noteworthy milestone.

Even more invaluable, with the knowledge that my Spanish was understood, I could begin to express myself. I could begin to put sarcastic, sad, whiny, complainy, whatever tone I wanted on what I said. In Mexico, when I tried, these tones were often lost in translation as a result of my less developed Spanish. Here, with the confidence that I was understood, I could begin to change up the way I used the language to match more who I was. In other words, this years trip allowed me to develop my Spanish “voice,” something quite invaluable.

The extent to which I love a good bus ride here is ridiculous. When we get on, and everyone is groaning about the fact that we will be immobilized in a chair for the next four hours, I am smiling with anticipation to relax and just spend endless hours with my eyes on the scenery and my ears towards my friends, or the movies playing in the background, or an album on my ipod. I can take in Costa Rica, and considering at this point we have driven all over, I would dare to claim that I have at least laid my eyes on a great portion of Costa Rica. These drives are honestly magical. My view will be obscured by bushes and trees and all of a sudden they'll open up to some spectacular landscape of rolling mountains filled with endless greenery and the occasional quaint home. Otherwise, if we're simply in the middle of the city, mountains are visible on all sides of us as a general rule, mountains caressed by clouds and a gradient of green.

And then there's Heredia, our humble home away from home. In Heredia, you can be taught about Costa Rica in general. Like how cars have the right of way here instead of pedestrians, and that these drivers are maniacs, but there's not a crash or accident to be seen. They are safe in their danger. You are taught about the general Costa Rican way of life, of “Pura vida!”, or “Pure life!” It means, it's all okay, life is good. It's used to accept an apology, as a goodbye, as a hello, as a reminder, that indeed, life is good if you let it be. And this is indeed the personality of the locals here. Its not exactly like Mexico, where everything is relaxed and laid back, its more of an environment where everything is happy, and everything is and always will be okay.

On my walk to school, I follow along a railroad track, often being forced to walk on it since there isn't always a place to walk next to it. There's no bar that comes down when the train comes. There's a couple red lights that might light up if you catch them at the right time if a train is coming, but they're awkwardly placed, and the people who need to see them in the moment and do is few. What alerts you to the train is the honking. When approaching an intersection, the train will endlessly blow its horn to tell cars to either cross the tracks or finally hit reverse. But if they don't do so in time, it's not a big deal. The train slows down, and I've even seen the train stop as it waited for a car to move.

Walking the streets, little things even like the pedestrian walk signals are interesting. Instead of a simple hand for stop and a person for walk, the person actually walks. The pedestrian lights here are animated of a person walking or jogging. And the street performers. They perform in the streets. Literally. They will walk out on to the road where the cars are stopped in front of a spotlight and perform while they wait for the light to turn green. Timing their performance so they have enough time to collect money just before the stoplight turns green. I've seen it all, unicycles, tricks with sticks of fire, it's like a circus on a quaint little intersection.

Walking to school at a certain time of day, the aroma of that which is Costa Rica is so sweet. Walking along the railroad tracks, tracks that criss-cross Costa Rica and link it together, the landscape opens up before you, mountains and valleys are spread out before you, beckoning you to explore, beckoning you to stay a while and enjoy it.

“President!” Emily exclaimed, soon followed by “Vice prez!” from Greg's side of the bed. We were settled on my bed in the hotel room again for a few rounds of cards, no surprise since it had turned into tradition over the past few weeks. What was unusual, however, was Brandon's voice after a round of President to ask if we could learn how to Salsa after the next round. A sort of random request, that I assume had something to do with the combination of our stories from Friday night and knowing about all the salsa classes I took last year in Guanajuato.

Julia found some random Latin music on her ipod, which we proceeded to not really use since its difficult to start learning Salsa to music, as the beat doesn't have any flexibility and when you're learning something like a turn, its good to slow it down for a minute so that you are really able to grasp how to do it.

We began in a straight line, learning how to do the basic step, Emily sitting out because she hates dancing. Moving our feet in the standard fashion, we all counted eights to dance to, creating our own rhythm and our own sort of music, if you could call it that, our feet forming the beat. Brandon, focusing on the counts, struggled to keep still on four and eight, wanting to keep on moving, but before long he got it, just in time for us to try it with each other, which just made it more confusing. Greg paired with Julia while I paired with Brandon as I gave tips to my friends as I remembered little things that would help them in their quest for the knowledge of salsa.

As the comfort level increased we moved onto turns, and by now Emily decided it was time for her to join, Maybe salsa dancing isn't so awful. And so Julia took a break and we got Emily comfortable with the step. What followed was the attempts of everyone to learn the basic turn in Salsa, but before long, while everyone was practicing it without partners, we finally got the hang of it, and then we tried to put it together with partners. Julia took up practicing with Brandon and I let them try it out for a little bit before complicating it farther. The hardest part seemed to be for the guy to keep up the basic step as the girl stopped to do the turn.

I couldn't grab onto anything. I was just falling and falling. Granted, there was some resistance, but not enough to give me any sort of security. It didn't matter how much I squeezed my hand around the rope, it just burned my hand through the glove, and there was still at least 100 feet of the 160 foot drop left to go and I had no control. So I twisted and turned myself down the cliff wall in front of me to the yelled explanation of the guides above and below me of what I should be doing, though to my knowledge, I was already doing it... I guess I wasn't...

Today in Arenal, we awoke early to go either canyoning, that is repelling down waterfalls and canyons, or horseback riding around the volcano next to our hotel. I opted to go canyoning and after a bus ride and a hike up some mountains, we began to descend, vertically. Our first drop was the biggest and was next to a huge waterfall. A 160-foot-drop, it obviously wasn't flawless, but still was extremely fun. We were instructed to put our left hand on the part of the rope above us, and the right hand was what stopped our fall and was to go on the rope next to our hip, releasing and gripping to adjust our rate of fall. For some reason, I just couldn't pull the rope tight enough to stop or slow down and soon enough, I think the guides began to stop and start me in rhythm with my attempts to push off the cliff wall.

At our next attempt, we were to face an 80 foot repel. The first 40 feet were to be free fall, and then you had to repel of the wall behind a waterfall. “I'm going to be able to hold on this time!” I told myself. And I was right. As I turned around to plunge backwards off the ledge, I sturdied my hands on the roads and pushed off, released my hands a little bit and begin to swing back... right to the ledge. I hadn't dropped a foot. So I tried again and just landed right back on the ledge, again, even after making an effort to almost completely release my hands. Finally, on the next try, I combined releasing my hands with wiggling my body to coax the rope into slipping through my harness. I dropped right below the ledge and then got caught again. “Show me your hands!” the guide said, asking me to completely remove my hands from the ropes, but I hadn't heard him, for I finally had gotten the hang of it and was busy getting ready to start repelling off the waterfall as my sneakers flooded and water splashed everywhere.

We had a few more canyons to repel down, one of which was the the plain old dry cliff, with no waterfalls to be seen, but a good one to make sure you've really figured out this whole deal with the ropes. The last one went down another waterfall, but the second to last one was definitely the most challenging. The whole time we had been following a single river that cascaded over various cliffs. On the last repel, we were repelling off the wall behind the waterfall the whole time. This part of the waterfall began with a 45 degree angle, so this time, instead of hopping off a ledge as usual, you essentially just walked backwards until you were being completely held up by your harness and then repelled from there. The water was particularly strong here and there were also walls on either side of you, meaning you were either in the waterfall or repelling ungracefully from side-to-side.

I would say this topped the charts of the best activity we did in Costa Rica. I got to learn something completely new while exploring Costa Rica in a new and challenging way.

There were murmurs, murmurs between my host father and the woman organizing karaoke. Something about “El Primer Millón,” the song I jokingly said I would sing. I didn't pay much attention to it through, our family was going crazy with the karaoke, almost monopolizing the microphone as all of our cousins, parents, brothers, and sisters took their turn. Suddenly, however, the microphone was passed to me as I was introduced as singing “El Primer Millón” to the surrounding observers at the club we were at. As I pulled Mariela towards me to help me out, the song begun and we fought our way through the rest of the song, trying to push the microphone towards each other instead of ourselves, laughing into the microphone as we saw the ridiculousness of the situation. It was like the blind leading the blind, I'm not perfectly fluent with Spanish, and this was a relatively fast song, and Mariela didn't know how the song went. Somehow, it worked out though.

At the beginning of our stay in Heredia, our family had played with the idea of taking Julia and me out dancing with the family. As our stay began to draw to a close, I brought it up again with my family. We hadn't been able to go before because we were always gone for the weekends, but having this past Friday free, we decided it was the perfect opportunity to go. So we gathered together our family for the night and asked Olivia for permission, who, knowing she really shouldn't, told us we could go as long as we got back by eleven (which of course we wouldn't) and as long as she could come along as well to supervise (and dance).

We drove far into the mountains to reach our destination, and when we finally got to the club, we could see the city of Heredia and San José glittering behind us. Somewhere on a mountain in what seemed like the middle of nowhere, we found ourselves at our final stop. Magali and Jamie joined our family for the fun, as well as Grace and her roommate: girls I'm not really familiar with.

“No, no, no, no, no. The foot first goes back!” “Bien, bien!” our dance teacher instructed us as we experienced our first dance class in Costa Rica. We began with the simple one, two, cha, cha, cha step, a dance similar to the basic salsa step, but with an added pep in the step in the middle. Our method was to first learn the step individually, and then combine into partners to try and put the male and female parts together.

Before long, we moved on to what I believe was called the Rumba, and later the Meringue. During the Meringue dance, we all got to feel a little bit like ducks as we essentially waddled around the dance floor in order to swing our hips the right way. Regardless, this seemed to be a favorite among us. All of us picked it up pretty quickly and had fun practicing it. Once we got the hang of it, our teacher even showed us some new moves to add on the dance we learned.

Even once we got to school, my classmates seemed to still have their heads in the dance class, as they took time out to demonstrate for the teacher what they learned. Though we didn't spend a lot of time in the class, I'm sure we'll remember some dance steps to bring back to the United States with us.