Observations, by Kristin

• I have learned that a plátano is a vegetable that looks exactly like a short, fat banana, but tastes exactly like a potato. It’s delicious.
• In the newspapers here in Costa Rica, nothing is sugar-coated. Nearly every page has photos of bloody corpses at the scene of an accident, or dead bodies covered by sheets. The articles also include details that I think would typically be omitted in American newspapers. It’s sort of nice to feel like they’re not keeping secrets because it makes me feel like I’m being treated like an adult, capable of handling harsh or upsetting news. Our news in the U.S. can be very biased, or aim to persuade or fool us. That could be true here, too, but I’m saying that it doesn’t feel that way here.
• There is a different standard of cleanliness here. So that people can survive the heat, most of the houses are very open-concept, and because of this, it is impossible to keep ants outside. Dirt, too. It just blows right in with the breeze. I am fortunate to live with a mother who cleans the house pretty much all day, every day. I have to sweep my room every couple of days, and each night before I get into bed, I need to shake the dust/dirt from my fitted bottom sheet. Each morning, we fold up our blankets and place them beneath our pillows for the day.
• I like the houses here. There doesn’t seem to be any pressure on people to decorate inside their homes, or coordinate their bath towels, or paint the rooms in any sort of theme. My host mom has lots of little decorations and trinkets, but none are related to one another, and she puts them wherever she wants to. The exteriors of many homes are painted really bright and fun colors, which I’m also a fan of.
• Menus in Costa Rica are amusing to me because they are very vague. “Queso” is all-encompassing, whereas in the United States, a menu will list cheddar, mozzarella, american cheese, etc. Also, menu items will merely list “carne” as an ingredient in a dish; carne translates to “meat” in English. They do not tell you which animal you can expect to be eating!
• Costa Ricans are incredibly patient. When our bus was involved in a very minor accident with another bus on our way to Puntarenas last month, the accident stopped traffic in both directions on the winding mountain path. Instead of being upset and furious as they would be in the United States, the Costa Ricans on the road put their cars in park and walked up the hill to check out the (nonexistent) damage and socialize with one another during the nearly two hours it took for the police to arrive. All of them were smiling and joking, and nobody seemed even slightly inconvenienced. It was bizarre to me! I think it has to do with the fact that Costa Ricans, when traveling within their country, plan for delays. Which brings me to my next point:
• Time is a completely different concept here in Costa Rica. When agreeing upon a time for a meeting, one must understand that that time can vary by 30 minutes to an hour. And if we’re talking about a journey by bus or by car, the set time is give or take anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours. Costa Ricans refer to this as Tico Time. Tico/Tica is the nickname of Costa Ricans in Latin America. Anyway, it seems that Ticos expect the unexpected, and therefore don’t take delays as seriously as we do in the U.S.
• Today, for lunch, my host mom gave me a cold sandwich…it was on (delicious) submarine-style bread, and consisted of blocks of mystery cheese and at least a pound of butter.  You can bet I ate it. Most of it, anyway.
• Also today, for roughly 9 hours, all of Puntarenas is/will be without water and electricity, intermittently and in periodically-changing sections of the city, while workers repair some water tanks or something. Only the American students seem at all inconvenienced by this. The locals, not so much. Some host families didn’t even deem it important enough to warn the students about. (Mine warned me.)
• PEOPLE ARE INSANE DRIVERS in Costa Rica! Taxis literally go 50mph in the crowded, poorly-paved city streets, and actually, everyone speeds. A lot. They also tend to drive on the wrong side of the road, fast, around corners. The combination of narrow, poorly-paved/dirt roads, old, beat-up cars without seatbelts, and fearless drivers here makes me wonder how there could ever possibly be a fatal accident in the United States, where people have safer cars, and drive them more carefully on better roads.
• Life is much simpler here, and more economic, too. About 20 times a day, I hear “tranquilo!” which means, “calm down,” “don’t worry about it,” “tranquil/calm,” etc. It’s used as an adjective, and as a general expression. Es verdad: la vida costaricense es muy tranquila.  We hang our laundry outside to dry, and still actually wash many clothing items by hand. I have not seen one dishwashing machine in the country. But, because of the ants everywhere, we can’t let dirty dishes pile up, anyway. So we wash each dish as we finish using it, and there’s really no need for a machine. I like it!
• In spite of all of these differences, the United States influences Costa Rica greatly, and there are tons of American products here: clothing, toiletries, foods, electronics, etc. I have a professor here who claims that Costa Ricans admire people from the U.S., and that the Costa Rican people and government tries to do everything that we do in the States. I have seen TONS of American clothing for sale here, and locals dressed as though they are straight out of the United States. They have most of the same electronics we do (cell phones, laptops, hair straighteners, blenders, toasters, microwaves, etc), and for cheaper prices. American music is played everywhere, constantly. My host sister’s iTunes library is filled with Lady GaGa and Katy Perry songs. My host family certainly has endless questions about my country and my life back home. But they definitely have their own culture preserved here.
• Living in a city is new to me. Puntarenas is a pretty small city, but it lacks none of the typical city-like qualities. I like the fact that most any place I want to go is only a walk (or a short taxi ride) away. Puntarenas is a great location in general, because lots of other cities (including the capital city, San Jose) and beaches are merely a bus or ferry ride away.
• I LOVE THE HEAT. The climate here is ideal. I mean, sure, I sweat more on a daily basis than I ever could have imagined in my wildest dreams, but I love being able to sleep with my windows open, never needing a sweatshirt to leave the house (not even at 7am!), and I love the fact that EVERY DAY is a beach-appropriate day.
• Speaking of which, Wednesday is Beach Day for me because I don‘t have any classes. Every week. Jealous? J
• The cat-calling…..Kate tolerates it much better than I do. I think she finds humor in it. But it drives me insane most of the time. I can’t walk anywhere at any time of day or night without hearing tons and tons of guys, sometimes young, sometimes old, sometimes very young, and sometimes VERY old, calling to me in Spanish or in English, or making creepy cat/bird-like sounds, or making sexual sounds. We’re told that in this culture, they honestly believe that they’re being flattering…sometimes I don’t fully believe that, but I certainly don’t feel like I can respond rudely, or flip them off. So I just completely ignore them. Sometimes, a man will make a sound that legitimately catches my attention, because I don’t realize it’s a human making that sound until I’ve already looked. And he feels that, by getting me to look at him, he’s won something. Well, sir…you’ve won this battle, but you will never win the war! I don’t find it flattering, and I’m already really tired of feeling like I can’t make eye contact with anyone when I’m outdoors. If any guy in this city thinks that he’s making me realize for the first time that I’m pretty, he’s wrong. They’re not helping me or flattering me in any way. I hope to get used to it soon, and it’s pretty much the only thing I’m looking forward to leaving behind when I go home to the U.S. But, to lighten the mood, Kate, Danger, and I are working on writing a song, mocking cat-calling. Hehe 
• Animals play a very different role here in Costa Rica than they do in New Hampshire. Since it’s always warm, and since most houses have a gated-in, secured outdoor/front lawn sort of area, it’s safe and acceptable (and common) for dogs to live mostly outdoors. Many families have dogs as pets. I haven’t met a family with a pet cat yet, though I’ve encountered hundreds of stray cats, and even some stray tiny kittens. The animals seem to survive well here, and none are emaciated. I quickly grew accustomed to seeing stray animals on the streets.