(Oh ps I have finally gotten sick. After three golden months, my immune system is pooping out. Booo.)
Dear blog followers:
Today, the fall 2009 School for Field Studies abroad program in Costa Rica ends. Right now, I am sitting in the George Bush International Airport in Houston, counting down the last hour of my six hour layover. My dear compadre, Thomas Whitney, sits by my side playing an emulation of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on his computer. Thomas lives in Corvallis. We have the same travel itinerary; a very long day of travel.
This last week has been… confusing. Last Friday, we had one final “farm party” hurrah. This farm is not actually a farm. I don’t know why we called it a farm in the first place. Actually, it is called “Apanco” and it’s just a recreational area with a pool and a bar and dance floor and soccer field that people can rent out. For the longest time, I thought it was called ‘Banco’ and I didn’t understand why we were going partying at a bank. Anyway, the local tico crew and most of the crew from the center rented out Apanco and raged one last time. This was a great night. However, the results of it ended with waking up naked with a massive injury on my shin and Allie, Nellie and I unable to make the trek to Hermosa due to our lagging physical states. So we lazed the day away and nursed ourselves back to health with gallo pinto and a nice Italian dinner. Went to bed early that night, and went to Jaco the next morning.
It was a long bus ride, but we made it and ate a delicious lunch at the FISH TACO BAR. The most amazing restaurant in Costa Rica, maybe. Besides Tin Jo. Then we attempted to tan on the beach, but it was hot and also cloudy and the water was so salty and… well, it made me really happy that I went to Santa Teresa for midsemester break because the beach there is perfect. It is a perfect tropical beach, and that is the kind of place you need to go when you’re in a tropical place like Costa Rica. Anyway, it was good to go to the beach one last time regardless. Allie got her rook pierced, which has been killing her ever since and we drank bebidos.
Monday morning presented us with our presentations. This was a pretty boring three hours, and then another two in the afternoon. But we all dressed up and looked nice, and it was cool that we all had very solid evidence of our work on research.
So then that was over…. And then it was all over. It was all over! We are done with SFS! And then it became kind of ridiculous to try and figure out what to do with all of our time. Because we basically had three more days to do absolutely anything or nothing. A little bit of packing, a lot of watching movies, a lot of laying by the pool, and a lot of sleeping. Once all the stress was gone, it was much less unpleasant to be there. But it was weird. I can’t really recap or even remember the way I felt the last few days. Part of me really wanted to absorb my last bit of time there, but I had been so consumed with being excited to go home that I didn’t really know how to overcome that.
Monday night we had a campfire in the orchard and roasted marshmallows and talked about “reverse culture shock” and all that. If our goals were fulfilled, and our memories. Honestly, it was nice. And it was one of the only nights I’ve seen the stars in Costa Rica.
Tuesday we did evaluations of the program and a house cleaning, which really just meant packing. Wednesday, yesterday, our last day at the center, was basically a free day. I went to Atenas for one last time to spend the rest of my colones, and say goodbye to the city that had been my home for the last three months. It is strange to call some place home that is so far from home and that I will probably never see again, at least not for many, many years. Atenas did me well.
That afternoon, the center rented out Apanco for a little going away party. A nice gesture, but to quote a guy on my program, Tom, it was a fitting conclusion to the jankiness of SFS. They told us we were going to have a party and a nice dinner and games and swim in the pool and it was going to be a nice going away thing. In reality, it was just a disorganized mush of people doing their own thing (I taught Nellie, Courtney, and Sheila how to play bridge, which felt like a good use of our time) and being hungry. The snacks were two bags of tortilla chips for 40 some people, which were obviously already gone by the time I even got there. There was no cohesiveness and a lot of complaining. When it was time for our nice dinner, it was one of our less-impressive barbeques, with soggy soy patties for vegetarians and uncooked cauliflaur and broccoli smothered in lizano. The slideshow was disappointingly in low-resolution so the pictures were barely recognizable and the music was an awkward fade of meaningless and some minorly significant pictures from the semester. And to conclude the night, our professors gave speeches. My favorite was Sergio’s, who said that yes, indeed, they will all forget us. Edgardo proceeded to say nothing, and Achim’s speech was a pretty cliché 30 seconds long. Ah well, in conclusion, it was what it was.
Now I am home, in Portland, Oregon. Would you like to know all the differences between being here and there? Because I am about to tell you anyway.
First off, it’s cold. I don’t sweat every time I move. I feel clean for the first time in three months. Because I took a HOT SHOWER! My first one since I’ve been in Costa Rica! And I have smooth legs for the first time since my last hot shower as well. My hair isn’t an enormous frizz ball. And the landscape is no longer filled with bright greens and trees aren’t glooping with fruit. It is shockingly winter. I am sitting at my kitchen table looking out a blindingly white Mt. Hood, with evergreens and barren trees in the foreground. Barren trees! I almost forgot that trees lose all their leaves. When I was sitting and eating lunch in this very spot today, I looked out the window and saw two of my mom’s scrub jays (who have weird philosophical names like Mestopholes) and the entire image just took form. The pacific northwest. My home. The destination of some pretty treacherous passages back in the day (I’m alluding to the Oregon Trail, if you catch my drift). And no wonder, because this is an amazing land.
It is a similar feeling as when I first entered Costa Rica. My jaw dropped at the tropical colors and the shapes of the houses and the winding roads and the differentness of everything. And seeing this Portland winter landscape is like seeing it for the first time. And yet, it feels like I never left. Like I haven’t been waiting and wishing for this day to come for so many weeks. Was that really 95 days ago? Have I really been living life in Costa Rica the last three months?
The grocery store is amazing. Going out for Thai food is amazing. Being in a doctor’s office is amazing. Everything just shines a little bit brighter than before. But I guess that’s the point, isn’t it?
