Well as long as I have the pleasure of making you all jealous with my warm weathered-adventures, it`s only fair to let you know about the times when Ann Arbor doesn`t seem so bad. The rain is relentless. Nobody ever mentions the weather can make or break your day. ...Or week. Even when I can point to nothing wrong here, the constant smatter of la lluvia on the metal roofs displaces something in me. It doesn`t bother the AFSer from Boston here... I should really just woman up, it makes the flowers thrive.
The other reason for my glumness is my long-planned trip to Playa Hermosa fell through on account of the dangerous driving conditions. I have slowly begun to understand that nothing is certain in Costa Rica. I guess you could call it the downside of Pura Vida. Our uptight, bustling nature in the States leads to efficiency and dependability that is lacking in this country. I can`t decide which I prefer. A useful defense mechanism to develop here is the ability to see positive and negative aspects of any possible outcome. For example, my healthy personal monologue to medicate this particular upset is: Good thing this trip didn`t come through! We would have all been eaten by sharks if we had been able to go! ...Obviously half hearted, but as Derian wrote me, there is no time for you to waste being upset. Make everything great. She`s right, of course and I will kickbox out any remaining frustration I have tonight in aerobics class.
My sister`s graduation dinner was this last Saturday night. Everyone got dressed up as if for prom and drove out to a Roman-themed party venue. The golden decor, which I helped to make, glittered against the purple, cavernous night. We toasted the 20-odd seniors and danced the sticky night away. My parents were a little too shy to venture onto the dance floor in front of all the other families, but after everyone else had left and the wait staff were breaking down the tables, the DJs blasted on, and the four of us boogied to tacky eighties music in the aisles. It was like what would roll during the ending credits of my Costa Rican movie, and it felt wonderful.
Today was the first day of La Semana Ambiental-or Environmental Week at the school. My job was to present a long interactive power point about environmental awareness and recycling. It wasn`t quite as enthusiastically received as the one about my life in the US, but I think I at least got the message across. After my presentation, the 7th grade class filed onto the presenting area to put on an environmental-themed theatrical production. Now, I have seen three of these works and the students are always mumbling their lines which are already in Spanish and thus, difficult to understand, but I have detected general common plot line. One girl is always dressed as a homeless beggar, two boys are always gun-carrying Italian mobsters and they usually shoot the beggar. Eventually, a protagonist comes, sometimes dressed as the patron saint of the school, to save the day. Today`s was only different because when the beggar dramatically fell to her knees- mid swan croak, she slung a real garbage bag, full of yesterday`s lunch waste across the floor. Its contents filled the auditorium with an awful smell, and when St. Francis descended to absolve the situation and the play ended, they exited without cleaning their mess. Then the kindergarten class shuffled onstage, dressed as various flower fairies, trees, and forest animals. They started singing a song about environmentalism and on the last note, a boy dressed as a lumberjack sliced them all with a cardboard chainsaw and they dropped dead on their backs. The assembly ended with an image of dead fairy carcasses amongst a pile of rotting trash.
Hopefully the sum of these demonstrations somehow inspire students to stop throwing their garbage all over the garden. Time will tell.
This Sunday I was munching on a cheeseburger getting some letter writing done at Hotel Andrea, when my ears perked up at the sound of my native tongue. I looked up to see two soaking Brits. I joined them for a beer and learned that they were on a grand motorcycling adventure. The motorists, Steve and Deb, had spent five and a half months biking from the tip of Alaska to Montreal, down to Texas and California, and in the last few weeks had meandered their way down through Central America. I hope I still have the energy for crazy adventures when I`m 60 like them. Very cool.
Pura Vida (The good and the bad!)
Elaine
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