Monday – April 13, 2009

My spring break was last week and a bunch of us went to Panama for a few days. It was great. We stayed in Panama City for two days and then spent three days on a somewhat deserted island in the Caribbean. While we were in the city, the police ended up escorting us back to our hostel, three different times, in one day. The first time, we wanted to go see the Old City, so we took a bus. The bus driver told us it was the last stop, but when we got off at the last stop, we were just at a gas station, not at the ruins! The man who had been sitting next to me told me that we had passed it, that it was back where I had taken pictures of the ruins I had seen from the window (I didn’t realize then that the Old City was only ruins… I thought it was more like an older section of the city). So, we only had to walk back down the street a few blocks. Before I had even gotten off the bus, police officers came up to all of us and asked us where we were going. Since I knew exactly where we needed to go, I just pointed in the opposite direction and said, “That way.” Then they wanted to know what we were doing there and where we were trying to go. It turns out that we had arrived at a very dangerous part of the city and that we really shouldn’t have been there, even though it was the middle of the day. There were eight of us surrounded by at least five policemen. They called for a motorcycle escort for us to escort us back to the bus stop, make sure we got on the correct bus, to tell the bus driver where we should get off, to make sure we did get off at the correct stop, and then to make sure that we arrived at the ruins. The police even reported the number of the bus we arrived on and the driver’s name, all because he should have known that he should never have let us off his bus in this neighborhood. The strange thing is though, that I didn’t feel that unsafe. Could I really be that clueless? I’m not usually that oblivious in those kinds of situations… Anyways, we found ourselves in similar situations later that day – once when we were waiting for a cab (this time, a woman leaned out of her car as she was driving by and yelled at us in English, “You shouldn’t be here at night!”) and again when we went to the grocery store (where the storeowner stood in his doorway wearing a bulletproof vest and as we were escorted back by two more officers, a taxi driver drove by and remarked to no one in particular that “it’s very probable that you’re going to be robbed”).
The islands were great. There was no electricity, no water, no bathrooms, no buildings, no beds. And we were there for three days. Food was brought to us twice a day. Our breakfast was given to us by the indigenous family that lived on the island too. This island was less than 100 meters in diameter. You could see the ocean whichever way you looked. It was wonderful. Also, I talked to the 13-year old girl who lived there and she told me that she doesn’t like all the tourists and she would rather just live there with her family. I don’t blame her. Sometimes I wonder though, what people like that family must think of people like me, who spend a decent amount of money to live their lives for a few days. Their lives aren’t easy, and yet we pay so much money to live the way they do for our vacations. What must they think of us? When we go on vacation, I don’t feel as if we think that our lives are that horrible. And yet the fact that we leave our lives behind to live so basically makes me wonder if we actually do like how we live. Why else would we choose such a vacation? Does the family on that island ever want a vacation from their lives? And if they did, what would they choose?

Monday – March 9, 2009

This past weekend was amazing. My program took us to the Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio, which is on the Pacific coast. First of all, it was beautiful. Second, no one was complaining this weekend. Third, we saw so many animals I didn’t even want to turn my camera off in case something else came into view as we walked. We saw at least five sloths within 40 minutes. Some of them were just curled up in the trees, and others were actually moving. They don’t move fast, but it wasn’t that slow either. Apparently the other kinds of sloths (I think the ones we saw were two-toed…) move much, much more slowly. We even saw one on the ground. And monkeys too! At one point, there were so many monkeys that we were just surrounded everywhere we looked. There were signs that said, “Do not feed the monkeys” but it didn’t matter if people paid attention to them or not because if you had food, the monkeys would just come up and steal it from you, regardless of whether or not the food was being offered to them. Our guide told us that sometimes a few monkeys would bang on a trashcan so that people come over and watch the commotion. Meanwhile, other monkeys are busy rummaging through all the unattended items left on the beach. But even more alarming than the monkeys were the iguanas. They were everywhere we went, but the ones I’m talking about are the ones that were at our hotel. They were scary. Our cabin was the very last one at the top of this small mountain, so it was rather isolated. Iguanas were everywhere. Every time we turned around, there were more. The most frightening part was when we were coming back from breakfast one morning. As we got closer to our cabin, we saw a few on the grass and when we got to one that was directly in our path, we squatted down to get a closer look. We had taken some bananas with us to eat later and then all of a sudden, an iguana jumped out of nowhere ONTO a friend of mine and just snatched his banana. We jumped back and looked around and saw that iguanas were emerging from the bushes, jumping off the roofs, crawling out from under the sidewalk, and then that all of them were running at us. And they move fast. It was like a scene from Jurassic Park. And by the way, some of these iguanas were giant-sized. Some were well over 2 feet long, and fat. After you got over the shock that they jump at you, they were interesting to watch. They really are unattractive looking animals when they start to molt. It was kind of cool to see so many animals this weekend, but at the same time it wasn’t. We were at a national park, and the only reason we saw so many animals was because they are used to being fed by all the tourists. What a shame.

Thursday – February 12, 2009

I can’t believe that I’ve been here for five weeks already. Time has just flown by. I’ve clearly been enjoying myself, since I didn’t even realize that I’ve already been in classes for a month. Speaking of which, classes are both laid back and rather intense. I never quite know what to expect when I get to class. Some classes start early, others right on time, and for one in particular, we generally wait about 30 minutes before we (professor included) even wander into our classroom. We usually sit in the lounge and talk beforehand, and my professors never really jump directly into the lesson. They always ask us about our weekends, our homestays, whether or not we saw the rainbow that morning, if we’ve visited a certain beach yet, etc. We almost always have breaks in our classes, even if they only last for an hour and a half. For the three-hour class I have once a week, we have about a 40-minute break. Having all of my classes in Spanish is sometimes exhausting. I have to constantly be paying attention to what people are saying. I never realized before how easy listening was until I discovered that I don’t do it very well when it really matters. Background noise – whether it was a conversation, music, a lecture, television, whatever – never really meant much when I understood it without even trying. But as soon as the background noise becomes important, listening becomes an effort.
(There is a mosquito in my room and it’s really distracting. I’d rather it not bite me, since it’s HUGE and although bites can be lots of fun, I can do without another one. Honest.)
Two weekends ago, a bunch of us went to a beach on the Caribbean coast, very close to Panama called Puerto Viejo. It was a great trip. The beaches were nice and, aside from the one day of rain, the weather was enjoyable. My favorite part about the weekend was the hotel we stayed in. It was called “Rocking J’s” and we slept in hammocks. If you didn’t know this already, hammocks are incredibly comfortable to sleep in. I would definitely recommend staying there if you’re ever in that area of Costa Rica.
Americans are strange. People say so many unflattering things about us, and sometimes I forget that we do have positive aspects to our behavior too. For example, on the bus ride to this beach, some people had to stand in the aisle because there weren’t enough seats and they were given a ticket that informed them they had to stand. One man (an American, who I’m going to call Bob) threw a hissy fit because he didn’t have a seat and he didn’t want to stand when he was supposed to have a seat. Even though he wasn’t the only one in this situation, Bob was the only one who complained about it, while the others who were supposed to have seats but didn’t (who, by the way, were Australian) merely said that they had no problem standing. Because of this one man, everyone on the bus had to play musical chairs until we were all sitting in our assigned seats. Bob was clearly one of the obnoxious American tourists who give all the rest of us such a bad rap... Once we were on our way though, it was heartening to see all of the people on the bus (minus Bob) exchange places with the people who had to stand. Most of the people on the bus didn’t know one another, and still they all offered to take turns standing in the aisle. On the bus ride back, which had more Costa Ricans on it than before, I noticed that none of the Costa Ricans exchanged places with each other. That’s not necessarily saying anything about one culture or the other, just the people that ended up on each bus, but it made me feel happier about being an American “tourist” when I saw that not all of them fit the stereotype I hear so much about.
(The mosquito bit me. Unfortunate.)
I think it’s amusing that the majority of people I’m introduced to, when they hear my name, immediately go “Oh! Like ‘Grey’s Anatomy!’” I suppose they do sound similar but actually, I just realized today that when “Grey’s Anatomy” is announced on TV, the announcer really does say “Grace.” Go figure.
Oh! Oh! Oh! I saw a sloth! It was so strange looking. It looked like a large cat (or a small, hairy child) curled up in a tree and I could have sworn it was grinning while it slept. Must have been a good dream…

Monday – January 19, 2009

After my first week here, I’m beginning to think that I’ve forgotten what is “normal” to me. I hear the other students talking about the things that have shocked them and what they think is just “so weird” and I realize that I expected these shocking things to happen. And then I realized that when these shocking things happened, I didn’t even give them a moment’s thought. For example, we saw a woman being harassed the other day while we were in San José. She had been sitting alone and three men approached her and I can only assume that they treated her as if she were a prostitute. But she didn’t say anything to them and at one point when one man reached out to touch her knee, she merely moved her leg out of his reach and then all three men left. I could sympathize with her, but I didn’t think anything more of it. Later on, I heard one of the girls who had witnessed this describing it to her boyfriend and she used the words “it was so intense.” After being followed to and from school at least twice a week last semester and being hesitant to even look people in the eye, I felt that this was a low-key harassment. I would have much preferred to go through what this Costa Rican woman had gone through than to how I was treated in Morocco. Here, once it was made clear that the woman was not a prostitute, the men just left her alone. In Morocco, whether you were treated as a prostitute or not, you were not left alone until the men tired of following you, talking to you, yelling at you, etc. (which could be anywhere from 30 seconds to 45 minutes).
I also haven’t been shocked by things like the traffic, which seems tame even though we have almost been in accidents at least 5 times and we drove for 32 minutes on a slashed tire. Having less personal space hasn’t bothered me at all either. I am so used to eating dinner with my host family members almost sitting on my lap and having their plates of food overlapping mine so that more than once the backs of our hands would brush against the food on someone else’s plate. When our professor here stands only 16 inches away from us while giving us a tour, I look around and realize that I’m the only one who isn’t backing away. Other students were bothered by their host mother coming in to clean their rooms and make their beds, and even to rearrange their clothes. Granted, my host mother has only entered my room to sweep it, but I would hardly be bothered if she did more. Last semester, my host sister would usually help herself to whatever was in my closet that she felt like playing with, including clothes, medicine, pens, textbooks, and my laptop.
I am not sure how I feel about not being shocked by these things and more. On one hand, I feel like it’s no big deal. I have traveled before and I have no doubt that these experiences once did shock me and that I did think certain things were weird. On the other, it makes me feel a bit worried. I like traveling. I like experiencing new cultures and new perspectives. But I also like returning home. I like my American culture and I like identifying myself as an American. So when other students here are shocked and I am not, what does that mean for me when I do return home? Will I not be shocked by things that should be shocking back home? Or, what if I am the one shocking people back home with my behavior? When I returned home last semester, I repeatedly sat down next to my mom on the couch and more than once she asked me to move over a little because I was too close to her. I hadn’t felt too close to her at all! This goes both ways too – I’ve also been shocked by things that other students felt were normal, like the tight clothes women wear here and men and women holding hands and making out in public. I was startled when my host mother asked me if I would be going to the bar last night. When I said no, she was the shocked one. When my host family assumed that I would be showering every day, I was also shocked. Last semester, it wasn’t strange if you and your host family only showered once a week. A shower everyday now seems like a lot, when last year it wasn’t strange if I showered twice a day. I don’t mind understanding more about another culture, but I wish it were easier to still understand my own.

Thursday January 15, 2009

I realized the other day that I forgot to include the rest of my goals for the semester. Besides the obvious one of wanting to improve my Spanish, I would also like to work on the following:
1. Learn how to cook at least one Costa Rican meal
2. Meet Costa Ricans – this doesn’t necessarily have to mean becoming friends, but rather just conversing with people who I don’t already know
3. Don’t be dependent on the Internet. This isn’t really up to me, since I’ll only have 5 hours of Internet a week (more if I’d like to pay…but I’m poor…and cheap), so instead I’m going to try not to whine about it. Hopefully, I’ll realize that the world continues to revolve whether or not I have access to Facebook and email.
4. Stay relaxed – not stressing out about classes, missing home, homework, boredom, etc. In hindsight, everything always appears so much more trivial and the worrying that went into each situation was just wasted energy.
5. Keep track of the money I spend. After last semester’s fiasco, I definitely need to keep better track of where and how often I spend money. Even though things here are cheaper, and the cost of living is lower, keeping track would be a wise idea. Perhaps no one will be getting gifts from me this semester. :-P

Sunday – January 11, 2009

I am sitting in the airport ready to board my flight to San Jose, Costa Rica. I can’t decide whether I’m really excited, nervous, anxious, or just plain old bored. I am looking forward to being in Costa Rica, but on the other hand, I also miss being on campus in Marietta. After last semester in Morocco, I’m really just hoping to understand the language more and to have much nicer weather (it was unbelievable how stressful it was not being able to understand whether the conversations around me were angry, loud, annoyed, etc. – so I’m anticipating Spanish being a little easier than Arabic). I’m a little nervous that my Spanish isn’t quite up to par, since I haven’t even used it in about 7 months now… Well, that’s certainly a goal of mine – to be able to speak Spanish more fluently. Ok, time to board.