Part II of July 28th, 2013

A summary of last week's events.
This gorgeous flower to the right, an iris, a lily?   I am not sure, but I have never seen one in this brilliant shade of orange.   Nicely offset by my turquoise toes!   There are several of these growing in the little park (parque chiquitico!) between home and the school.

I walked to and from school several times last week, braving the big roundabout fearlessly!   The trick is to cross with total bravura while giving a hard sideways stare at oncoming traffic, preferably with a Tico pout on my mouth.   It's worked so far anyway!   However, I was going to start off this bit of the blog with a quote from T.S. Eliot (The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock):

"I grow old, I grow old.   I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled"...The reason for this somber thought is that TWICE last week a very handsome young Tico man gave me his seat on the bus!!   Talk about a moment of truth!

My demeanor is that of a very chaste Muslim woman:  I walk the streets with my eyes glued to the ground, and I wash my feet at any chance I get.   It is too dangerous to lift your eyes from the street.

I had noticed on various occasions a group of men laughing raucously outside this building boasting the sign above, but never stopped to look.   When I passed one day and there was no one there, I stopped to read the sign:
"Welcome men and women, to the Institute of Masculinity and Sexuality".   I was so mesmerized reading the sign and wondering what on earth went on in there that I inadvertently stepped into the following sidewalk hazard...

I didn't come to any harm, because I am light on my feet, but it proved my point that distractions are dangerous.   I mean, this is a land of male chauvinists!   Are they going to this institute to learn how NOT to be so chauvinistic?   Mamma Rita is telling me all the time what chauvinists the Tico men are.

In fact it seems that men here love babies, and procreating them, but are not too keen to marry.   The grand-daughter in this house has a 3-month old baby by a young student and he comes by to visit his child once a week, but there is no talk of marriage.   And Mamma Rita's niece, who lives in the duplex part of the house, has an 8-year old son by a man who never married her.   This leads me to believe that there must be a lot of illegitimate children in Costa Rica.

There is a supermarket relatively close to our house, on the main street where I catch the bus, here below

 You'll notice that its name is MAS POR MENOS, which translates to "More For Less".   I thought that sounded familiar, and one time when I was inside with mamma Rita I saw a policeman there, fully armed, and with a US flag on his arm.   I enquired about this and was told that the store belongs to US citizens.   Then the penny dropped:  this is WALMART in Latin America.   They just changed the name of the store to the slogan that they use in the USA.   I wondered why everything was so cheap and unhealthy in the store...We bought some bread there that looked like regular French bread, but when I ate a piece of it toasted for breakfast the other day, the whole thing crumbled to dust in my mouth.   It's as though the bread had been made with air and very little else.   There is a nice little supermarket near to the school though that I go to and usually they are playing classical music, which I love.   They also have good quality goods for sale.   There was a man there on Friday with a display of wines, doing a tasting, so I got chatting to him (in Spanish, of course!) and it turns out he was from Georgia (the country), and the wines on display were all from Georgia, being touted as the oldest wines in the world.   I tried the white and it had a very strong, full-bodied taste which took me aback at first, but then I really liked it.   All the bottles cost over $20 though, so I didn't buy any, and I wished him luck because that is expensive in this country.   Unfortunately, there are no vineyards at all in Costa Rica, but plenty of wines in the store from Chile and Argentina.

 Another sidewalk hazard

      ...and another

and they're all on my daily commute.   I explored a few other places too on my walk home, just malls and shops, all filled with plentiful cheap goods, many of which are made in China, and the sort of things one would find in any developing, rather poor country.   

I have settled into the routine at my house, and the sleeping situation is improving, mostly thanks to the ear-plugs I brought with me.   Last night I had a real gift though:  everyone was out of the house for the night except Mamma Rita and me!   Usually the room above me sounds as though the disbanded Costa Rican army is up there, but last night there was perfect silence and peace.   What a difference a good night's sleep can make.

And here's Mamma Rita decorating a cake she had made to take to a big birthday party.   I won't comment on the ingredients...

Here's a picture of the plumbing in my bathroom.   I'm getting the hang of it finally.   It's the kind of set up whereby you turn on a shower normally as we would back in the US, and the water gushes out plentifully, but very cold, so then you have to crank it back and back until it warms up, so by the time it is nice and toasty, basically there is just a trickle coming out of the shower head.   It makes hair-washing a lengthy procedure.

NB only cold water at the sink, and the bin for tp, and the cocacola bottle for washing.   I sure don't intend being the person who blocks up the drains here...Who needs  anything more anyway...!   My bedroom is so small I can't really photograph it so you'll have to just imagine an 8ft square room painted bright blue with a 3ft bed in it and there you have it!

And here I am in the classroom with Eduardo having another fabulous lesson.   We have now moved on to the advanced grammar book.   After this its literature and articles.   I am enjoying my lessons so very much, and learning an awful lot.   I must confess to being pretty exhausted though after a minimum of 6 hours of classes a day, and often 7 when there is an additional conversation class.  Rolando has moved on from our class, which is just as well, and now we have Alex, (same as the previous week), and Jessie, a great young woman from Bahamas.   She fits into the class very well and teaches Spanish back home.  She is very lively, and we have "bonded".

I went to just one of the dance classes last week, and it was great fun and EXTREMELY vigorous!   I kept up though, but a few of the young kids didn't.   The local CR dance is very fast and very athletic, and a lot of fun to watch.   Yes, I said "watch"...!

So this week we'll be wandering the maze of the subjunctive verb form and its more complex uses, always a challenge in any language.   But to my delight I learned that there is a rule for learning the past and present subjunctive, and that makes things a lot less haphazard.   So, "ojala" this week will bring new challenges and new achievements.   "Ojala" is a fascinating linguistic term.   It means "God willing", and comes DIRECTLY from the Arabic "Insha'allah".   Now THAT is a really close connection between the two languages.   I think that is one of the reasons I am enjoying these classes so much, because I am recognizing the influence of Arabic on Spanish, and Eduardo, being a philologist, knows and loves words too.

I close this episode with a quote which I find peculiarly appropriate to my present situation:

INSIGHT

from the

Dalai Lama

“The development of a kind heart (a feeling of closeness for all human beings) does not involve the religiosity we normally associate with conventional religious practice.   It is not only for people who believe in religion, but is for everyone regardless of race, religion, or political affiliation.   It is for anyone who considers him or herself, above all, a member of the human family and who sees things from this larger and longer perspective.”