My Family (by Kristin)

I liked Kate’s description of her host family and their lives, so I’m going to steal her idea and describe mine, since they’re pretty different.

    My family is very traditional, but they do not push their traditional views on me, which is good for everyone. My host sister has a strict curfew, but I’m allowed to stay out as late as I want to, etc.

    Here’s a brief version of their history, as I understand it: My mother was about 27 years old, working as a teacher (I think), and still lived with her parents in Puntarenas when she met my father. This was normal at the time, and still is for many: women do not move out of their parents’ homes until they’re married. My father is from Cobano, which is a little town on the Nicoya Peninsula. To get there from here, one must take a one hour-long ferry ride across the gulf, then a 2.5 hour-long bus ride to the town. My host parents dated for about two years before my dad proposed, and they somehow managed to buy a home literally three houses down the street from my mother’s parents’ home. My mother is 48 years old now, and my host sister is going to be 18 in June. My mom told me that she and my dad had trouble conceiving my sister, and they’d almost given up when my dad’s father died. Then, like it was a gift from her father in-law’s grave, she says, she discovered she was pregnant. My host sister had a rough start: she had some kind of appendicitis or something, then developed an awful infection at the site of the surgery, one that required three more surgeries to repair. She was in the hospital for about 2 months, and doctors told my mom that a person going through what my sister went through normally would not have survived. So, my host mom calls my host sister a “milagro,” just like my real family in the United States calls my little sister a miracle. :)

   We live in a small, but very nicely furnished home on the safer side of town, only three blocks from my school building. The tiled floor in our home is honestly the nicest floor I think I have ever walked on. It appears to actually have real wood in it, and my mom told me that it was super expensive. It’s allegedly 4 years old, but I almost don’t believe that, because it looks brand new and doesn’t have a scratch on it anywhere in the house. Like I mentioned in a previous post, my mom spends lots of time cleaning, and about half that time is spent cleaning the floor alone. Each room except the bathroom has a really gorgeous, solid oak door. They’re heavy and very beautifully crafted. We have fruit trees and many other plants (some flowering, some not) in our yard. We have every appliance I know to be in existence (even a Panini maker and a blender), except for a toaster. So, although my family lives modestly day-to-day, I gather that they save up to afford very nice investments.

    My dad, Velli (pronounced like "Belly"), reminds me a lot of my dad in the United States, actually. He is patient, hard-working, and loves being a family man. He’s also really funny, and likes to joke around. He wakes up at 5:00am and goes to work on every day except Thursdays. He works as a security guard on the pier where cruise ships come in. He’s paid by the town, and his shifts end at 1:30 every day. The family typically eats lunch when he gets home, but since I’m usually in class or doing something away from home at that time, they let me eat when I want to.

My mother, Albany, is very, very maternal. She is sweet and understanding, and very traditional. My family is religious, but they don’t go to church. My mother is very thankful to God for all that she has and loves in the world, so she wakes up at 6:00am to pray/do the rosary thing in her bedroom each morning. I get up at 7:00am on the days I have class, and she used to pour my cereal with bananas and make my tea for me, but now we sort of switch off, because I don’t mind doing it myself most days. My mom spends lots of time sweeping inside and outside, and mopping, washing laundry and hanging it outside to dry, ironing my dad’s work uniforms, and most of all, COOKING. She is an awesome cook, and I eat everything she makes. We eat lots of rice, red beans, chicken, other meat, plantains, and fruit. For snacks, my family only eats watermelon, mango, ice cream, or delicious homemade breads that my dad’s mom sends to us. My dad makes breakfast and dinner on Thursdays, when he doesn’t work, and he’s also an excellent cook. He makes awesome cheese burritos and some kind of pasta dish that involves chopped up hot dogs. However, my mom is definitely not a slave to her housework. She enjoys some downtime each day. Although she’s lived here her whole life, the heat is really hard on her, and she complains of it every day. She sweats all day, and take naps in the afternoon. The heat really can be so incredibly draining sometimes, especially since we don’t have air conditioning. Luckily, since our house is little, when there’s wind, it blows right through the house and is very refreshing. My mom embroiders colorful edges onto face cloths, and sells them. I gather that she’s actually very crafty, and sews a lot. She makes some of her own clothes.

    My host sister, Maria, has been on the Costa Rican version of summer vacation from her private high school since I’ve been here, so she wakes up around 9:00am or 10:00am most days, and spends lots of time in the house with her mom, or down the street with her cousins. She is very helpful, and patient, and funny. She’s also sort of doting, like her mom. At night, she takes walks on the beach with her new boyfriend, Luis Miguel, who is such a sweetheart. She is super fashionable, and has a collection of trendy sandals that I envy! Her classes actually start up again tomorrow.

    In the evenings, after dinner, my whole family spends time down the street at my mom’s mom’s house, chatting with all of her siblings and their children and spouses, etc. The “primos” (cousins) I’ve met range in age from 14 years old to 2 and a half years old, and they’re all really good kids. I’ve already convinced two of them to make me paintings before I leave Costa Rica. The youngest one, Brittany, is a very beautiful girl who was adopted by relatives of my mother…I’m not 100% sure if I understand the story, but I believe that her mother was a prostitute, and she gifted the baby to some relatives of my mother, who already have a ton of children and don’t really do a great job raising her. My parents used to babysit her all day long, but one day, she called my dad “Papa” in front of her adoptive father, and when he corrected her, saying, “No, that’s Velli. I’m your Papa,” and she answered, “No, you’re Miguel. He’s my Papa,” the guy flipped out and wouldn’t let her come here anymore. My mom told me that the baby lost a lot of weight after that because her parents don’t feed her as much as mine did when she was at our house during the day. It’s a sad story, but we still see her a lot, and she’s a really happy, affectionate, busy, curious little girl. 

    Anyway, like I said, my family is traditional and a bit religious. They hate the annual “carnaval” that comes to Puntarenas because people go wild and, in the words of my mother, “drink a lot, and have sex on the beaches…very ugly things.” She told me that in Costa Rica, if a woman wants to have sex, she has to get married to the guy first. She said that men can do whatever they want, until they’re married, at which point they’re expected to be faithful. This is a very traditional viewpoint, since many Costa Rican women actually do not wait until they’re married (my mom calls them “chicas malas”), and many married men cheat on their wives. It’s just like the United States, in that regard.

    While male students report never even having the option to do their own laundry, and being scolded for bringing their used dishes to the sink after eating, most of the female students are either expected to or permitted to clean up after themselves. My host parents tried to do everything for me at first, but I’ve slowly convinced them to allow me to wash my own dishes and prepare my own breakfast. They let me do my own laundry, but almost every week, my mom beats me to taking my dried clothes off the line, and I find them folded in my bedroom. Anyway, I adore my family, and I feel so fortunate to live with them. They’re really good to me, and they help to make my life in Costa Rica muy tranquila.