Week 9

This is my rural host family: from the left, Clever, Marcos (host dad), Maria (host mom), Sammi (host nephew), Me, and Mariano (host brother)

            I feel that maybe I should describe the actual living in Tarcoles part of my life. I was in San Jose Monday and Tuesday which made coming back to Tarcoles after a week away more describable. First off I'm not sure if I have reported on this yet but it is obscenely hot here. Not like yay vacation hot, like I can't move but I have to because I am so sweaty I frequently slip off furniture hot. In addition there is no air conditioning anywhere period there just is none of that. Also it was low tide at night this week which means no ocean bathing. So because it is frequently super duper hot I try to stay in the shade most of the time for safetys sake. Costa Ricans are not big water drinkers so I often ask my host mom for access to the kitchen to fill up my water bottle and she comes back with a cup of coffee and tries to convince me that its the same. So thats where I am at on the temperature front but usually it cools off a bit at night or at least the sun is gone so I can play about outside. Which leads me to the second thing about this week, I got quite a lot of bug bites last week. This has put me at somewhat of a circus freak status and everyone who sees my legs feels the need to say something usually it is useful like "dear god what happened to you" or "thats a lot of bug bites" so I have a set response to all of these comments of how grand that you noticed I have so many bug bites I had forgotten!

So this is what the discovery channel decided mermaids
look like

              The most exciting thing about this week was that I finally have found the key conversation starter for Tarcoles. Before we entered the field our program directors informed us that if you want people to talk to you talk about something they like to talk about and that it will usually be futbol. Which makes sense because there is a big rivalry in the country between La Liga and Saprissa. I am proud to say that I have been assigned a Saprissa fan so Go Purple Monsters!!! but overall futbol doesn't really get people talking here so I was very excited  that I stumbled into the real topic. Its Mermaids!!! Which is awesome, people here can talk about mermaids for hours and they have done their research which is fun. I've talked to a couple fishermen who keep earplugs in their boats at all times in case they come across Sirens (greek myth style). But most people believe that a mermaid skeleton washed up on shore a couple years ago and that the government (were blaming NASA here for some reason) took it away so the public wouldn't get scared. But essentially the theory is that mermaids are an ancestor of humans that moved into the ocean around the time that the giant wolves that are whales now moved back into the ocean and that over millions of years these creatures turned into half human half dolphin sorta things that we call mermaids. I find this endlessly entertaining because everyone has a slightly different take on it and can contribute my knowledge of NASA to the conversation, because I'm just not sure NASA cares about mermaids so much but they are a widely known government organization here probably due to US television channels so I'm probably not going to win this one. But hey why not mermaids would be cool I am totally on board with them and there is a much anticipated discovery channel documentary on tonight about them so were all going to stay up late and watch it.

             So  I mentioned at the beginning of my post that I need to ask permission to access the kitchen, this needs to be explained in my house here the kitchen is a very narrow room that really only one person can fit in at a time so I am not allowed in there all that often so if I'm feeling bold and want to fill up my water bottle by myself or something else equally crazy, I have to wait for my host mom to be off somewhere else then dart into the kitchen and dart back out just to be ratted out by one of my host brothers. So the kitchen is off limits, other rules are that I, as a guest, must always have a seat during tv time, this gets funny when everyone wants to watch what is on because there are simply not enough spots on the couches and I feel bad when I would be happy to sit on the floor but thats just how hospitality works here. Overall I am starting to feel more like a part of the family tho which is nice, they are starting to make fun of me, give me tasks, and I get in trouble for doing "cosas malas" mostly I am not allowed to scratch my bug bites