Contact Info

Several of you have asked me about my mailing address, so here it is:

Hotel AmaTierra
2 KM este de San Pablo
Turrubares,
Costa Rica C.A.

You may notice that there is no street address. Why? The streets here do not have names. We give directions by landmark. That's right. Cue U2 song...

If you mail me something, there are two rules: 1)it must be under 4lbs in weight and 2)it must not be anything that cannot be lost. If I never get it, you have to be ok with that. Mail is tough.

Also, I have a skype name: Rachel_Shopper if you want to skype with me. Email me and make a date!

Jaco

I just came back from a weekend in Costa Rica's most profligate beach town. Know for its generous serf, drugs, prostitutes, and cosmopolitan restaurants, Jaco is about an hour and a half from where I live. Kenny warned me about Jaco. He said, be careful. He said, people will take advantage of you. He said, be safe and cover your drink.

Jill and Bob gave me a lift when they went down for the day. They also introduced me to Gustavo, a friend of Tara's when she lived there. Tara is their 25 year old daughter, who studied abroad in CR, lived with them at the hotel for a while, and got her masters' at University of Peace in San Jose. Sometimes I feel like the new wife in Hitchcock's/DeMaurier's "Rebecca", because Jill and Bob always tell me what Tara used to do, what Tara liked, etc. She's also seemingly accomplished, beautiful, and talented. She's coming in January and I can't wait to meet her- I'm sick of hanging out with old people! And I expect that the two of us will have a lot in common, the least of which will be that I have been exploring in her footsteps now and again based on Bob and Jill's recommendations.

Gustavo was Costa Rica's star surfer back in the 90's, and now he runs the Jaco surf school on the beach. He's traveled all over the world surfing, and also was a big deal of a soccer player in his time. His English is fluent. We talk and agree to hang out, he can show me the nightlife. He also agreed to give me a discounted surfing lesson.

Surfing is all that people do in Jaco.

Surfing is ALL that people do in Jaco. When I woke up on Friday morning, surfing wasn't even on my list of things to do ever in my life. By Friday afternoon, it became clear to me that it was normative.

When I check into my hostel, I meet a Norwegian dude who asks me if I would like some of his joint. Later that night, I meet some really interesting people, one of whom is biking down Central America. It was *wonderful* to be with people my own age. I felt so alive. We went out on the town, a little group of us, and went bar hopping. The highlight of which was when some gross old dude copped a feel, and I slapped him across the face. It felt like I was taking out all of my aggression on every tico guy who has ever catcalled me. And I hope it fucking stung.

But seriously, I always felt safe in Jaco. It never ever seemed dangerous. I never felt like I was in danger.

The next day I napped, drank expensive smoothies, and hung out with my new friends. And then, when I was least expecting it, when my guard was the most down, something bad happened to me.

The bank machine ate my card.

I didn't take it out quickly enough, so it sucked it back in, into the bowels of bureaucracy. And the bank was closed. Tomorrow I have to go BACK and get the bank to give it back. You know how these things go. Not well.

Later I went to watch a surfing contest with Gustavo, then he showed me a really great restaurant that his friend owns, with Caribbean food. The next day he let me have a free surfing lesson. Because nothing in life is free, my nose stud fell out and I had to buy another one. Then I was foolish about suntan lotion and I got burnt to a crisp. Luckily, Jill has aloe plants growing here.

I had a good time in Jaco, but it was sort of like NYC in a crummy beach town. I spent almost $200 in three days, which is NOT OK. I'm going to have to go live on beans and rice in Nicaragua after this yoga gig gets out. Ooof. Although I have three rules to make Jaco cheaper next time: no booze, no surf lessons, no hotels. I'll stay with Gustavo or Luke. Luke just got a job as an ATV instructor, he's from Alabama, and is absolutely lovely. And, unlike everybody else, he won't hit on me. Not once. Thank god.

I am a little homesick; I just feel like there are so many unknowns all the time, like I can't tell who is honest, or what I should say or do. There was a time when I was just honest all the time. Now I'm trying to fit in. It feels like middle school. And my heart, my heart hates it. But it's internal. I need to just adjust, and find my home in my heart. I feel the past fading out of me, like before my internal world was saturated with all the things that were part of my life before I came here. But now I'm starting to realize that they are no longer part of my reality in the same way. And I'm not settled enough yet to re-fill my world with intention.

I would like to meditate more often. Also, I would like to start writing every day. "After sex and metaphysics, what? What you have made" -Frank Bidart

Thanksgiving

It was a good day. I taught a really nice yoga class in the morning, then went to a party at the high school. This party had nothing to do with Thanksgiving, obviously, because the Costa Ricans don't honor the genocide of their aborigines on the same day as we do. The high school just opened a resteraunt that they will use to generate revenue in order to continue improving the school. Our hotel is going to start sending tourists there, and then they can go on a tour of the high school, which has a really great agricultural program. They fed us at the new restaurant, after a longwinded presentation of speeches, dances, singing, and traditional dances.

Later that afternoon, we had a gratitude ceremony in the studio, with Kenny translating everything into Spanish. Then our guests came, other expat friends of Jill and Bob. Really nice aging hippies, every last one. Dinner was very delicious, my favorite thing being the green bean casserole. The one dissapointment was the stuffing- not even close to as good as my grandmother's. Pamela played her Lakota love flute, which was very nice.

I keep thinking about Home Alone, and how the kid doesn't want to go south for the holidays because you can't have a palm Christmas tree. It feels a little like that. But I'm heading to the beach now. Which a story for another day.

Politics

It's my first day off, and I'm trying to catch up on blogging. Here is a bit about the local politics of Turrubares.

When I first came to the country, there were unusually heavy rains that caused some major landslides outside of San Jose. On the main road between San Pablo de Turrubares and Orotina, a bridge collapsed. It was a provisional bridge, anyway, constructed when the original bridge collapsed. The town just hadn't been putting the new bridge on their priority. After all, if it hadn't collapsed, why allocate funds?

Now there is no bridge. This is a huge problem, because it isolates Tu Ru Bari park from San Jose. Tu Ru Bari park is an eco-adventure park with ziplining, rockclimbing, hiking, horseback riding, a butterfly garden, etc. It employs over 100 people, and is pretty much the only tourist attraction around her, all the way to Jaco Beach. And because there is no way to get to it anymore, it has closed for the time being, and layed off all its workers.

The Turrubares County council could potentially build a new bridge, but the local government is frozen. This is because the Mayor is of a different political party than the council and won't let the council do ANYTHING. He's sitting on top of 2 million dollars that he will not allow the council to spend. He also just got out of the hospital, where he landed after a drunk driving accident. Also, he throws garbage in the river, which makes Jill angry.

And the national government won't prioritize the bridge because it's the local government's job, and this is an exceptionally poor county that the country doesn't want to invest in. They would rather rebuild Escazu county.

There have been a lot of emergency meetings about the bridge. Jill got invited to one, and she brought me and Kenny with her. The streets don't have names here, so directions are a little sketch. But it was supposed to be at some Soda (Restaurant) in a town call Mud (Barro) and we drove off into the sunset. And drove around Mud's unpaved roads, through the cattle, past the dogs napping in the road, for a good hour. Asking everyone about a meeting. No, no one knows where it is. Finally, we find out, it's been cancelled. So we go home.

And now the owner of Tu Ru Bari is threatening to permanently shut down the park. He threatened to do it "tomorrow" if no conclusion is reached, but "tomorrow" was about a week ago. Then the leader of the San Pablo council threatened to go on strike against...wait for it...the San Pablo local government. Essentially, he is going to go on strike against himself, although really, it's against the mayor. It's in a stalemate now. Stay posted.

Nice Things

I LOVE NICE THINGS. For example, gourmet food stores, like Cardullo's in Harvard Square. Or everything they sell in Anthropologie. Or Macintosh product designs. Or rare premium teas. Nice things are nice. Sometimes I feel guilty about how much money or happiness I spend/get from objects. One thing that is nice about being here is how removed I am from that, from all I own, from accumulating stuff.

My family also likes nice things. That being said, we also have an indefatigable Do-It-Yourself ethic, whether it be yardwork, landscaping, clothing alterations, cooking, or decorating.

My housemate Kenny likes nice things. But he likes nice things in a way that offends me because of its patronizing commodification. He has a gorgeous Samoyed puppy, but Casper lives in the kennel in Puriscal most of the time because Kenny doesn't have time to take care of him. Which is undoubtedly the right thing to do. But it seems crass to me to buy a stunning purebred Alaskan dog, take him to live in the tropics, pay someone to bath it, care for it, and house it because he doesn't have time. He says he wants to adopt a baby and hire a Nicaraguan nanny to take care of it. So it would essentially be a trophy baby. At the same time, Kenny truly loves taking care of others. He takes very good care of me, treats me like his baby sister. He buys furniture, a TV, food, etc, for our house. When he comes home from the store, he always has a sweet for me, like an ice cream bar or a chocolate. He tells me, "eat the fruit; I buy it for you. I buy it because it looks nice, to have a bowl of fruit on the table." Pounds and pounds of ornamental fruit that he doesn't eat. He pretty much only eats at restaurants. He paid someone to clean our yard and trim the bushes. Told me, don't worry, I paid for it.

It makes me uncomfortable when he buys things for me, brings the dog home for me, does things to make me happy without investing himself in our friendship. I feel so strangely beholden to him. Not only an I on a shoestring, but I also am small, young, and in a foreign country. When he doesn't want me to hear what he's saying to another Tico (that's what Costa Ricans call themselves), he uses slang and I don't know a word of it. There's this weird power balance that I never expected, me with my white guilt which has nothing to do with any of this...

Until I oppressed him. I said, I noticed your dirty dishes (including our one frying pan) have been in the sink for 2 days. Could we please do our dishes right away so that we don't get bugs? (The inside of our house is, ecologically speaking, inseparable from the outside of our house). And so that we can all use the electric frying pan when we need it?

No Rachel, I don't do my dishes. That's just the way I am. I am going to pay someone to clean our house; she's coming this afternoon. So she can do it, or you can do it. I just don't have time and I don't like it. I'm sorry, I'll do my dishes when I can, but I usually can't.

Dumbfounded.

Listen, I said, unless you're going to hire a live-in servant who does your dishes right after you eat, that's not going to work. What do you mean you can't do your dishes? That's not fair to us, because we also need to use those things, and I'm not going to do your dishes.

Well, maybe I'll just buy you your own frying pan.

For real.

To his credit, he apologized half an hour later, and said he will do his dishes, and he has. And I don't mean to be painting a bad picture of him. He's easy-going, generous, funny, and nice. And his feeding me when I'm not at the hotel makes a big difference. He gets along with everybody, and we have a really good time together. It's just that the two of us are experiencing a form of culture shock neither of us expected. And I need to figure out a way of reciprocating/thanking him for his generosity in a way that doesn't feel extortioned. I try to keep the house nice. But really, I'm just going to let him be himself, and me be myself, and maybe it's not even. Nothing ever is.

The Reiki Retreat

Amatierra is a new-age haven: we offer yoga, massage, aromatherapy, Chi Nei Tsang (what's that?), organic food, nutritional counseling in both Western and Chinese herbalism, and, or course, mani-pedis by the pool. Oh, and we're in the tropics.

This past week, the entire resort (10 double rooms) has been rented out by a reiki group from Chicago. We at Amatierra were all very exited to have so many people interested in such a beautiful and healing practice come and share what is really not only our workplace, but also our home. I often spend more than 12 hours a day on the property, taking breaks between work tasks to walk down to the creek, eat, read Howard Zinn, and do yoga in the open-air studio, where the fog comes in over the distant mountains and the hawks are always soaring. But I digress. We were exited to have them come.

And what did we learn, so that we might grow and be wiser of the world? This, though it is nothing new: the new-age community contains some of the most neurotic, difficult, egotistic people I have known. Sometimes this is a product of the most miserable people being the only ones who have to "wake up" and make a change. God knows I found my spiritual path because I had no other choice but to have faith or be torn apart by fear. Sometimes the quest for self-improvement entails an intolerance for imperfection, whether it be yours, others', or the way things turn out. Or sometimes it is the fact that many of the people with the time and luxury for new-age treatments have a lot of money, and with money can come a sense of entitlement and inflexibility. Or the fact that the ego is tenacious, and spiritual bypass and premature enlightenment is common. These terms mean that we use our spiritual practices as an escape, or as blinders, from real, tangible problems. If I get in a fight, and storm off and sit in my room saying"om om, I'm so at peace", when in reality I am furious, I am hurting myself. We all have a responsibility to show up to our uncomfortable, ugly feelings and actions. All too often the more we pride ourselves on our spiritual wisdom, the more likely we are to be ignoring our spiritual-or worldly!- childishness.

The group has been here about 6 days, and we're all totally burnt out and tense. I haven't had a full day off work since I arrived. They have been difficult, tense, disappointed, accusatory, and negative. Whenever I walk into a room of these people- and Jill has said this is her experience too- my stomach tightens and my breath shortens. These are symptoms of a nervous system fight-or-flight response, that when stimulated undermines the digestive and immune systems, stressing out your adrenal glands. Not what I would expect form a roomful of reiki masters!

My New Housemates

I have the best housemates in Costa Rica. I am so lucky.

Kenny and Pablo are both in their 30's and I'm like their little sister. Kenny has told me to decorate my house anyway I choose. You wanna paint the walls, go ahead. You wanna hang things up, go ahead. Whatever you want. Last night he brought me home some chocolates because he knows I like them. Pablo brought me home leftovers from a delicious dinner he made, because he knew I wasn't at the hotel for dinner. Earlier, he played some Jack Johnson songs for me on guitar, smiling at me with his big buddha smile. I generally hate Jack Johnson, but Pablo makes me like him. He's that kind of guy. He shows me pictures of his 5-month-old daughter. She looks exactly like him.

This morning, we had to bring the bike back to the hotel, and it wouldn't fit in the trunk. So Pablo stuck his arm out the window, and held the bike up along the side of the car. We hooked it to the roof with one bungee cord, and away we drove. Kenny bought us empanadas for breakfast on the way.

How's things?

I'm settling in, and flipping in and out of the honeymoon feeling of being here. Generally when people around me are stressed, I feel unhappy; when people are relaxed, I feel happy. Not news, but: I need to learn how to be more unaffected by peoples' moods.

One thing that's funny is how similar, in some ways, the work here is to Vidalias. We have customers. We need to make them happy. They use things up (towels, clean glasses) and we restock them. We answer the telephone. We smile at people. We need to order supplies and put them away.

However, when I'm not Jill's personal secretary, I teach yoga! I've taught two classes and helped assist one; next week I'm even going to be teaching some private lessons. The first class was awkward and I was nervous and convinced that I would get fired. I spent the first two days living in mortal fear of being fired, constantly. This is no longer a concern of mine, thank goodness. They like me and they've told me so. And my second yoga class was much much better than the first. The yoga shala is a beautiful open-air octagonal studio overlooking the jungle. Really serene.

I've been doing some errand-running around the hotel, some flower arranging, databasing, and menu-layout and design. Little things. I work between 4 and 9 hours a day, so far, and I theoretically get one day off a week, but it's not going to happen this week. We have 18 reiki people here on a big retreat. Next week, if I'm lucky, Kenny's going to take me with him to Manuel Antonio, to the beach, for a couple of days.

My new house is a shithole. It's the kind of place where I walk in and don't even have any idea what a person could do to it to make it better. It's just the way houses are in Latin America. Everything is made by the aesthetically blind, and decorated by the aesthetically destitute. I think the problem is that everything feels very dirty even when it's clean. I can't explain it. But I have a big bed! And it's comfy, too. Last night I cooked in my little kitchen for the first time. It was fun- I made rice and lentils in the electric frying pan. We have really comfy couches, and a tv and dvd player. Our shower theoretically has hot water, but technically speaking, it has no hot water. Showering is very invigorating. And fast.

Despite how ugly and seemingly gross my house it, I'm getting really comfortable in it. My bed is so big and nice, and the couch is super comfy, and here's my favorite part: we just leave the door and windows open. It's always warm and breezy. Some bugs get in, but seeing as there are so many cracks and holes, they would get in anyway. Last night there were geckos all over the wall. Ok, 2 gecko sightings. But still. I can't really curb my enthusiasm about "wildlife". Every time I see a lizard, or a toucan, or a moth the size of my hand, I feel like I've just discovered a dinosaur. It's so exiting.

I like being at Amatierra, the grounds and hammock are really nice, I can go tan by the pool, walk down to the creek with the waterfall, use the studio. But unfortunately there are guests, and I keep getting drawn into talking to them but they only talk about themselves and I'm not supposed to be too chummy with them. So sometimes it's hard to find space. My house is about a mile away from the hotel, and so far I've just been taking taxis at times when they're picking other employees up. I like to stay here because they feed me for free. But that means if I'm here for all three meals, I'm here for 14 hours a day. That's a lot. So I'm going to have to start biking or walking home in the middle of the day for a break, and/or cooking my own dinner and not coming back later. We'll see. Apparently the walk is uphill and difficult. I haven't tried yet.

My New Job

I love my new job. I am so happy. Hot damn did I luck out.

Getting there was a bummer, though. I left Monteverde at 6am. The night before had been the Spanish club potluck, which was excruciating for two opposite reasons. Reason one was that everyone spoke broken Spanish which made it all harder. Reason two was that we spoke Spanish for hours which was exhausting. Also there was a reason three, which was that it was hard to not constantly correct everyone all the time. That day I also went to... the bat museum! It was very cool, with real live bats, bat skeletons (which are very similar to human skeletons actually) and scales that you could step on that were rigged to tell you how much you would eat if you were a bat. Banana scale: step on, that's how many bananas you would eat every night if you were a fruit bat. Bug scale: I would eat 52 gallons of bugs if I was a bug bat. Also there was a nectar scale. Very cool.

So I took a bus to San Jose, then a taxi to the Comtrasuli bus terminal. The Comtrasuli bus goes to Puriscal, from where I had to take a taxi to Amatierra. I had all of my stuff with me, and I got on the Puriscal bus without really thinking about putting my huge 50lb backpack underneath. There had been no opportunity to do so. And so I sat with it on my lap. These are very small seats, so I basically had my backpack pressed between the seat in front of me and my face. It was so tight it must have violated some human rights law. Seriously, making love has brought me less close to other physical entities. Luckily, this only lasted for half an hour before an empty seat freed up, and the 50lb backpack got its own special seat, all to itself.

I love Amatierra. It's a beautiful property with a pool, nature trails, a FANTASTIC cook, and a gorgeous open air yoga studio. The owners, Bob and Jill, are Chicago Jews who are absolutely lovely. My first day there I went to a singing bowl ceremony where we attuned our chakras to the vibrational frequency of the planet. I'm so into this shit.

I am going to be moving in with Kenny, Pablo, and Casper in a couple of days. We have a rustic house in town that is badly in need of furniture and decoration, but that will come in time. Right now the Winnie the Pooh wainscotting in my room will have to do. Pablo is a very sweet, rotund chef. He smiles a lot and his English is ok. Kenny is the hotel manager, 32, super fluent in English, and frickin' awesome. We are going to bro out really hard, I can just tell. The downside is that we mostly speak English, but I'm working on him. I really can't overemphasize how nice, fun, and relaxed eveyone is.

I haven't really started working yet; I'm going to basically be Jill's assistant and also, of course, teach classes. I get the feeling that I'll just be there to do anything extra that needs to be done, but since I don't know the lay of the land yet, I haven't done too much. Except take care of Casper.

Casper is 8 weeks old. Casper is a small white fluffy dog. Generally I hate small dogs, but there is one kind that I love, and Casper is the best kind: a Samoyed puppy! We are going to be best friends, I can just tell.

Monteverde

The story begins in the mid-20th century when some Quakers refused to join the army during Vietnam. In protest, they moved en mass to Monteverde. In order to preserve the watershed that was so essential to their livelihoods, they chose to protect large portions of the cloud forest. Monteverde has since become famous for its ecotourism industry, with three cloudforest reserves, some of which contain rare premontane forest: regenerated growth in land that was once stripped for agriculture. You can zipline through the canopy (one could; I would not), ride to waterfalls on horseback, sample lots of local coffee, and go shopping for lots of local arts and crafts.

There are a TON of hotels in the area, all of which fill up in the high season, our winter. Our summer is the rainy season in the area. The dry season is by no means dry, but the rain becomes unconventional, by which I mean, it's more like the clouds come and get you; the drops are very fine. Everything here is always a little damp.

The Quaker community is still alive and well here, and many other gringos have come to join them. There are two private schools K-11 that are English immersion, so lots of people, my aunt and uncle included, come here for a year or a semester for a change of pace, and send their kids to school. There's a yoga studio down the street where I went for an Ashtanga class and some insight meditation, and there's a cheese factory that makes its own cheese (very expensive). Bob and Susan own a chocolate shop above the bat museum; they are learning to make their own chocolate. Tomorrow night is a Spanish club potluck, where all the gringos will only speak in their broken Spanish, because the first rule of Spanish club is that you do not speak English in Spanish club. One huge frustration of mine is that I have discovered that my Spanish is not nearly as good as I remember it being. I trip over my words, I stall out, I miss-conjugate or opt for more simple sentences. I always "used to know the word for that" but forget. Hopefully next week, when I move in with some ticos, the problem will quickly remedy itself. I've been flipping through the flashcards I made in Ecuador, and I'm picking up some of the words. Evan and Debbie study Spanish with a tenacity and dedication that is truly admirable. They've only been at it for two months, but it puts my comparative ten years to shame.

Evan and Debbie live in a delightful little house with wooden walls and floors and enourmous windows everywhere. From the porch we get visits from agutis, mot-mots, iguanas, hummingbirds, and tucanets, not to mention everyone's hundreds of pet dogs. There are butterflies galore, among which stand out the Blue Morphos. I have seen more wildlife from the house than I saw in my walk through the Monteverde Cloudforest Reserve. Foods that are fun to eat here are avocados, papayas (which taste like a hundred flowers), fried plantain, mangos and mini-mangos, guayaba (a spicy and pretty yucky little fruit with a hard chewy outside and a pink seedy inside)(the plus side, we can pick them ourselves in the horse pasture), pineapple, local dairy, and coffee. Right now we are in the windy season, so it's much less rainy and at night, the wind gusts sound like waves, and I think I am near the ocean.

Today was the first day here that I really did anything besides tut around, read, eat as much food as a hungry bear, and flip through my flashcards. I went to the Cloudforest reserve and walked the trails for some four hours. They were really well labeled and well-maintained, with cement grids for footing ("galletas de cemento", "cement cookies"). What is the cloud forest like? It's like Fern Gully. It's like nothing ever dies, it just keeps proliferating. The foliage is exuberant; the trees are encase in strangler figs and Tarzan vines, which in turn are encased in moss, lichen, epiphyitic plants, orchids, and ferns. There were waterfalls, white faced coatis with their young, hummingbirds, sparrow-like birds, and... no other wildlife to speak of. The guidebook will warn you about that. Even so, the forest was ecstatically alive in every way. Throughout my walk everything was wet with the rain-spray of the clouds. I walked up to the lookout at the continental divide, and the visibility was low low low. On a day that is like the opposite of today, you can see all the way over the Nicoya Peninsula to the Pacific Ocean. But days like today are special, too, because you can look out over the slopes of the cloud forest believing that nothing else exists. The white-grey mist obliterates everything about 10 meters out, muffles sound and light, and the wind blows the mist into your face like you've reached the end of the world and it's just you and whiteness and the tops of trees blotting the sliver of mountainside you can see. I also crossed a hanging bridge, which some of you may know is a huge accomplishment for me. It was very beautiful, and I could see the orchids growing in the tops of the trees, but it was also terrifying. I did not die.

Because the hanging bridge was not enough of an adrenaline rush, I then went back into town and had a cup of coffee at the bookstore. Then I went to Cafe Monteverde and tried three cups of coffee of different roasts and learned some more about the different processes. I'm still shaking.

Tomorrow I have plans to go to the bat museum (!!!) and to hike to the waterfall in San Luis. Friday morning I leave for Turrubarres to begin my yoga job.

Arriving

I almost didn't come.

Not because of any emotional stuff, not because I had too many doubts, or too many things keeping me in the states.

I almost didn't come because Costa Rica declared a state of emergency due to catastrophic and deadly landslides in the Escazu suburb of San Jose. Read the histrionic article here.

My plan on Thursday night was to take a little nap, wake up at 1:45 in the morning, and leave for the airport. At 2 AM Alley called me to tell me about the news. I spent the entire ride to the airport on my dad's iphone trying to find news to figure out if going is safe. Keep in mind, I am thinking about hurricane Katrina the whole time. Not because the situation in San Jose is comparable, but because I have very few mental references for natural disasters and displaced persons. I want to go, but I don't want to die. I want drinking water. I don't want to be stuck in Fort Lauderdale. I really really don't want to be stuck in Fort Lauderdale.

So I'm at the curbside checkin dropoff for Spirit airlines, after having talked to some poor Indian customer service rep on the phone who had no idea about anything and could only tell me that the flight had not been cancelled. I couldn't decide whether to get out of the car or go back home, unpack, and wait a few days. And honestly, I just couldn't imagine repacking that bag, re-saying goodbye, losing my momentum. So I decided to come, and once I had made the decision I was no longer afraid and all the anxiety of the situation totally dissapated. Because airports never have the feeling of emergency to me. There is Dunkin Donuts. There are poor white trash Americans going to Florida in line ahead of me wearing this shirt. There is waiting, so much waiting that in any even tiny little emergency, we would all be dead of waiting. And so I went.

When I arrive, San Jose shows no signs of a national red alert. I get in my taxi and go to the hostel and everything is totally fine. At the front desk they give me a card pass for a free drink at the bar; I crawl into my bed and sleep. After I wake up and take a (hot!) shower, the German woman in the bunk below me and I go to have dinner in the hostel restaurant. Little by little, the other girls in our dorm come and join us, and we swap stories and itineraries. Lily, who is from D.C, and I make plans to go exploring in the morning, and we go to bed early while the Europeans go out for a night on the town. (How was it, I ask in the morning. Meh. They don't know how to party like they do in England).

Friday. Glorious day, it is not raining! Glorious day, it is at least 60 degrees! Lily and I first go to get her camera fixed. We play the directions game, where we ask someone, follow his directions, get to the place we were theoretically supposed to find the shop, don't find the shop, ask for directions again, rinse, repeat. Finally we find the shop, it's just some bad batteries, she doesn't have to replace her camera. Glorious day! We go for victory coffee. Then to explore the central market with all the strange vegetables, fruits, nuts, spices, butcheries, little diners, hammocks, dried herbs, birds, sandals, religious figurines, and fudge that is way better than American fudge. We also make it to the Contemporary art museum (which has grotesque fragmented body art, right up my alley), stumble upon a children's marching band, and have a very nice lunch.

Ask all the guidebooks, and they'll tell you San Jose is an ugly and dangerous city you don't want to stay in. But I liked it. It was packed with little shops with the sauciest clothing, and little bakeries that you could smell wafting down the block. There were beautiful parks every few blocks with lush trees and landscaped walkways. And I never felt unsafe.

Later, I took a bus to Monteverde to visit Evan, Debbie, Sasha, and Nomi, my aunt, uncle, and cousins who are living there for the year. I rode up with Robert, from Australia, and Antony, from England, and for almost 5 hours we reveled in the culturally specific words the others didn't know. Joggy b's? Sweatpants. Digestives? Cookies. Thanksgiving? Thanksgiving. Do you like parsnips? Oh, I love them. Posh? We don't have a word for that. Rich? Sort of, but more specific.

And now I am in Monteverde, which is like heaven. But that is a story for another time.

Job Perks

I said goodbye to Alex last night. We made dinner after flipping, bewildered, through 4 cookbooks, strung out between our laziness, our vegetarianism, and our personal preferences. Dinner also involved a 45-minute visit to Shaws that quickly degenerated into us sitting on the ledge of the ravioli cooler, with Alex enumerating our dinner choices for about the 5th time. He is cripplingly indecisive about choices, and I am cripplingly neurotic about food (what I like, what is healthy, what food combinations are good, making a complete protein, being in charge of the recipe). Finally we decided to make a veggie curry with fresh raspberries on top. No they didn't go. But we loved their invasion into the dish just the same.

After dinner Alex walked me back to Jays' house, and we decided to bring him a present. See, Alex works at J.P. Lick's, which for those of you who don't know, is a pretty great ice cream company in the Boston area. J.P. Lick's has flavors of the month, and they're usually original and experimental. Over the summer, I tried their cucumber ice cream, which actually tasted exactly like cucumbers, in ice cream form. I was impressed. One of the perks of working at J.P. Lick's is that you can have as many free 2.5 gallon containers of leftover flavors-of-last-month as you can eat. They can't sell it anymore, and nobody wants to waste food. Alex has 2.5 gallons of apple cider ice cream in his fridge. It was good, but had the realistic bite that cider has, which to me doesn't go well with the creamy flavor of ice cream. While we were talking about the cider ice cream, Alex mentioned that the store still had two tubs of last month's Noodle Kugel ice cream. What? Noodle Kugel ice cream. Although it was apparently very good, they just couldn't find a home for it. And I said, I want to give that to Jay! Because it's like a practical joke where everyone wins.

On the walk over, Alex says to me, "I don't think Jay will find this as funny as we do." I know he can't possibly find it as funny as I do (because I think it's hysterical), but how can it be bad? Well, here's why: 1) Today was trash day 2) Worst. Flavor. Ever 3) And he's not even a Jew 4) He can't possibly have room in the freezer 5) Most Inconvenient Portion Size. Ever 6) It's not even ice cream season.

I gave it to him anyway. And he was delighted (I mean, I don't think I've ever seen this guy have a negative attitude about anything) and we opened it up. He grabbed a pile of spoons and we dug in. The verdict? White, creamy ice cream, with some nutmeg, cinnamon, and vanilla flavor. And noodles IN the ice cream. Sort of chewy-like. It tasted...like noodle kugel, in ice cream form. J.P. Lick's does it again.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow I am moving to Costa Rica. Teaching yoga here. I am freaking out.

I wrote this a little while ago, but I think it still applies:

This apprehension toward leaving, the gloom and tear of it, it isn't about my fear of flying. It isn't about my arguments with embassies, about my brazen lack of cash or my forgotten vocabulary. This isn't about how I almost fell in love, in Boston, and with Boston, and what it means to be 20-something on your own and suspended in the net of an American city. This isn't about my lack of imagination toward the future- I know it will be glorious, overflowing with large birds and ripe fruit and salt in my hair, seeds between my teeth.

It's about the calendared leaves. The hollow, living oak tree with an ecosystem of mycellium expressing its fecundity in wild and grotesque profusions. About the groundhog in all his rodent dignity galumphing across the lawn. The trees I sang songs to, made promises with, the grape vines of concord grapes and how I mixed them with mud to plaster the walls of a home I built with sticks. It's about the river dried to fox prints in the mud, among the glass and dead people's trash grown valuable with rust and mystery. The prey of my extreme imagination as a child. It's about how I belong to this land and it's a part of me and I am leaving, and it is for sale.

My bedroom is still the belonging of a 16-year-old. And maybe someone new will be living there by the time I will return, maybe tomorrow is the last day I set foot in the house I grew up in but I already don't belong here anymore. It's just a museum of who I used to be, someone I'm so far away from now that I miss her. But leaving my home is hard. And leaving everyone I know, also difficult. Which is funny, because I remember high school. I remember walking in through the big doors in the morning and being totally stifled by the drudge and crushing boredom of my daily life. Trying to perk myself up, I reminded myself that spectacular and out-of-the-ordinary things can happen all the time. And maybe this day one of them would. And HWRHS always disappointed. But I'm about to launch myself (albeit kicking and screaming) into the spectacular dream life that drops jaws every time I tell someone my plan, and so I hope if nothing else, that 16-year-old is grateful for all the excitement so long overdue.

****

I keep feeling like I didn't have enough time here, which is funny because I had always meant to leave in September. There was so much I meant to do, places I meant to go, food I meant to cook, art I meant to make. Here's the thing: I didn't live these last 5 months of my life with the sad seriousness of leaving. I lived them as carelessly as I always live, which is to say, I did my best.