Mis primeros días en Costa Rica
Three days in…
Well I’m here in Costa Rica, and so far, so good. It has been a long, tiring, but very rewarding week so far. On Monday, I was scared out of my mind at the idea of speaking, reading, and writing in Spanish all the time. Three days later, and I’m still nervous, but my host family has been extremely welcoming and helpful. My host mother, Doña Ana Cristina, greeted me at the airport with a huge hug and a kiss on the cheek. Right away, we drove to pick up my host father, Don Rodrigo, who works as a systems engineer at a larger company in the city. Don Rodrigo, or “Rodri” as the family calls him, speaks a lot of English, which was nice to help me feel more comfortable as I settled into my new home. We drove across the city to the neighborhood I’m staying in, Curridabat, to meet the rest of the family.
I’ve become part of a large and close family overnight. My host mother has three sons and one daugher. Her youngest son and daughter live in the house, and are close in age to me — Andrés is 23 and Karen is 21. Right next to the house, my mamá’s niece lives in an apartment with her husband and three-year old daugher, Mariana (but both buildings are in the same gated property). As I said in my first post, Doña Cris and her niece Laura, run a catering business from their home. I haven’t seen the huge fiestas yet, but every day they prepare sandwiches to deliver to several small businesses around the area. The first night, Karen turned to me and said “¿Quieres ir a la pulperia con nosotros?” speaking so quickly I couldn’t do anything but stare blankly until I realized she was inviting me to deliver food for the business. I decided to go with and it became clear very quickly that my family has lots of friends and relatives in the neighborhood. Everyone I met was super nice and welcoming, and I picked up on some of the quick greetings that everyone exchanges everywhere: “Buenas tardes” “Buenas” “¿Cómo estás?” “’stoy bien, ¿y tú?” “Bien, gracias” “Mucho gusto” all in rapid-fire succession.
Classes themselves are going well. There are only four students in my program, so I’m sure we will all get close very soon.
The ACM building is a simple oasis in the busy San José streets. There’s a kitchen where we can all cook lunch, and where there’s always a cup of Costa Rican coffee that’s pretty amazing. La sala grande, where we have most of our classes has a huge open doorway in back that looks out to the ACM garden complete with a banana tree, and beyond that, the green mountains that border the capital. The second story of the building has a small library and the offices of the program staff. As tranquil as the building may be, this program is intense.
Each day we start classes at 7:30 in the morning. We spend about an hour with a Spanish grammar lesson, and then correct homework from the night before. After that, we learn about Costa Rican culture, and then have a course on conversation. The rest of each day varies, but so far has included orientation courses and meetings with our research advisors. We have a break for lunch, but each afternoon is full as well, and we don’t generally get done with classes until 4:30 in the afternoon. Also, as a rule, you can’t speak any English in the ACM building (which seems to be followed 99% of the time).
Speaking of research advisors, it turns out I will be studying coffee here in Costa Rica. Right now, I’m talking with my advisor a lot about what makes certain coffee farms so much better than most others? Most growers are lucky, apparently, to get $100 for 100 lbs of coffee. But some award-winning fincas can get over $700 for 100 lbs. Over this next week I’ll be doing a lot of reading and preliminary research on the economics of the region and of coffee in general, to narrow down a research proposal to try and answer that question: how are the coffee outliers created?
So far, so good. Even in three short (but oh so long) days, I feel like I’ve grown a lot. For example, the first morning I was here, I couldn’t take a shower because the water felt like it was about 33º — but I was able to communicate with my host mother and so today I got a hot shower! It turns out that with the electrically-heated showers, you can’t turn the water on too high or it can’t be heated. I’m looking forward to the next few days and my first fin de semana here.
