Happiness, redefined

I am out! I am free! I have been liberated!

(I would go do cartwheels right now, but I'd probably hurt myself, and that would be majorly counterproductive).

This afternoon, my host mom and dad came to visit. They said that the nurses told them I was there till Monday, which is what mean doctor was saying. And of course, I do not take this news well (I've already spent pretty much the whole day being a sobbing, emotional, completely and hopelessly depressed mess). But when I mentioned that all the doctors were giving me different stories, we made a bunch of calls between host mother, program director, and doctor, and came to the conclusion that I COULD LEAVE. That right there is quite possibly the new winner of the best moment of my life. It took them forever to get their acts together, and I put a ridiculous amount of money on the credit card (although the insurance should pay that back ... "should" ) but here I am, sitting on a bed in a room I never thought I could be so happy to see. I. AM. THANKFUL. After 5 days of going crazy from being alone in that hospital room, I was beginning to think I'd never be happy again. But here I am -- happy once again!! Yay! Happy!

Here's the other good part: I asked nice doctor what he thought about me going to Panama. He didn't have any problems with it (so long as my bloodwork on Monday still looks good and all). So I don't have to cancel the Panama flight and come home early. I think I'm going to skip Nicaragua, though -- 10 hours on a bus is a lot for me to handle. There was a lot of stuff I really wanted to do there, but at least this way I have a lot of time to hang out here and get caught up with my buddies before I head home. I think I kind of like it this way better. Heck, maybe we can even spend a day or two in Manual Antonio -- a beach I've missed going to twice now because I haven't felt good (we were supposed to go this weekend). Did I mention I'm happy?

I can say one thing, though: You don't know just how good you've got it till you don't got it anymore. (Yes, that was horrible grammar on purpose). I've spent a lot of this experience missing home and wondering about all the things I've missed out on: spending time with my family and friends, riding/fixing mopeds, moped rallies, fall, the first snow, Thanksgiving (I pondered that one a LOOONNNGG time), black Friday, the holiday bustle and cheer .... watching U.S. TV in a hospital room for many many hours brings you back to all the things you're missing kind of the same way a slap in the face catches your attention. I'm not ready to come to a final decision on this experience, but I know better now than ever before that I've got it good. And to repeat: I am thankful.

And the new winner for the worst time of my life goes to...

RIGHT NOW.

I know I said at least once during the month of October, "We'll know by the end of this experience if too much work can kill you." Well, this experience is almost done, and here I am, alive. So I guess too much work can't kill you. HOWEVER, too much work can make you very, very sick (I'm blaming this all on too much work, FYI). Being very, very sick leads to hospitals. And in hospitals, they fix bodies and destroy minds. When I left Kansas, I left a little part of my soul there. I would like to say that some part of my soul will probably stay in Costa Rica too, but considering the rate at which this hospital is destroying it, I'm not sure I'll have any left.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to sit in your room, alone on thanksgiving, knowing that everyone you care about is celebrating the holiday together? Your family is together. Your friends are together. And you are alone, in a foreign country, strapped to an IV in a hospital. You can't even forget the fact that it's Thanksgiving, because Thanksgiving and Black Friday ads are all all over the TV and internet. Welcome to the worst Thanksgiving of my life.

And so, here I am. Two days later. Still in the hospital. Going insane. I have 3 doctors. Doctor 1 ... I don't know what he does. But he's medium-nice. Doctor 2 is a surgeon (?) and he's not very nice. Doctor 3 deals with infections, and he's really nice. Doctors 1 and 3 want to let me leave. Doctor 2 thinks this is a bad idea and wants to keep me for two more days. Doctor 2 has also forbidden me from going to Panama. Well, great. If I can't do anything fun here, why even be here? I just want to go home. Like, HOME home. I want them to let me out of this hospital. I will rest and study until my final on Monday. I will take that final and wrap up a few loose ends around the university. I will take my other final Tuesday. Then I will go home and pack and fly home Wednesday. Or at least, that's how it works in my head. I'm not going to trust how things work in my head anymore, though, because this glorious reality of the end of study abroad was not how it worked in my head either.

More thoughts n' stuff

Well, when you're lying around in bed all day, you have a lot of spare time to think.

So, news... I do not have to take my World Geography test next Wednesday. BUT that's not because I'm sick. It's because I was doing well in the class, and I guess he excused everyone who was doing well. This makes me very happy, because now my Environmental Management test will be last, unless I end up taking tests (say, for Cartography or CR geography) next week on Tuesday or Wednesday (which are distinct possibilities).

I've gotten real (well, real by hospital food standards) food for two whole meals now! Wohoo! For breakfast, I got ... I think it was an egg... papaya juice, bread, and fruit. The egg was not very tasty, the papaya juice tasted like feet (I think papaya always tastes like feet), but the bread was good. Then for lunch, I got like this chicken pastry thing, which, despite having vegetables hidden inside of it, was rather tasty. I also got piña juice, which is loads better than the papaya juice.

They took blood again this morning (new needle total: 8, new right elbow total: 4), and once that's done being analyzed or whatever it is that they do to blood, they'll get back to me with the results. One of the doctors just came in, and I don't know what he said. Or well, I kind of know what he said, but I don't know what it means in terms of "when do I get outta here?" (Funny how that trait carries over between languages). I guess I'm just stuck here until they tell me something more definitive one way or another.

So in the meantime, I've been spending a lot of time on my computer (which is nothing new), watching a bit of TV here and there (which is new, since I never really watch TV anymore), and just chillin. I feel like I ought to go study for the two tests I know I have left, but I just haven't gotten around to it yet. Ah well, maybe later. The test I was most worried about (besides the Periferica thing) was World Geography, mostly because I still had a lot of reading to do. But now since I don't have to take that one, I feel a little better. Cartography still needs much studying, though, and I've got some reading wikipedia-ing to do for Environmental Management.

What have you taken for granted today?

I'm going to be honest and say I've been compiling the thoughts in this post for a long time. However, recent events have conspired, and this now goes much deeper than it once did. So I apologize in advance, because this could very well be my longest entry yet... and this is coming from someone who doesn't write short blog entries.

PART 1:
So it's just about Thanksgiving time, and I have some reflections and thoughts to share with you.

I'll start with things I'm thankful for:
1) I'm thankful for all my amazing grupo buddies. They've been my best friends for the last 139 days, and this experience would have been so much harder and so much less fun without them.

2) I'm thankful for gallo pinto on Sunday mornings and for all my host mom's amazing desserts.

3) I'm thankful that classes are almost over (and that traveling time is almost here, and that coming home time is almost here).

4) I am thankful for everything I had at home that I don't have here -- be they tangible or intangible. (More on this later).

5) I am thankful for Coke made with sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup (especially when it comes in glass bottles!), Monster Pizza, the casado place, World Cafe, Cyro's, Buffalo's, ice cream from McDonald's (although why it would kill them to give me a McFlurry with chocolate ice cream I still haven't figured out), Pague Menos, Hipermas, and the corner store.

6) I am thankful for my family and their support, because there are a lot of people who aren't as fortunate as I am in the support department.

Now I've got some questions for you.... Namely, what have you taken for granted today? Here's a list of things that I don't think I will ever take for granted again.

1) My bed, with my mattress, my sheets, and my pillow, in my room, with my furniture, my closets, "my" bathroom (even when I have to share it with sister and brother dearest) and decorated/cleaned as I please.

2) My house, with my kitchen, my fridge, my pantry, my dishes, my pots and pans, my kitchen table, and all for me to use as I please.

3) My car/moped, so that I can go anywhere I want, when I want, at my convenience, without waiting for 20 minutes (in the rain/snow) for a bus.

4) As an extension of the car/kitchen: grocery stores -- the ability to go to a grocery store and buy whatever food I feel like cooking, then go home and cook it, whenever I want. Also, choosing what food goes on my plate, how much, and when.

5) 95% of the foreigners I come across in the U.S. speak really good English. Do you have any idea how amazing that is? Don't take it for granted that foreigners in the U.S. should speak good English, because a) living in a foreign country is NOT EASY, and b) there are people (raises hand) in foreign countries who don't speak the native language as well as a lot of the foreigners in the U.S.

6) Sleeping in past 8 (and not feeling guilty about it).

7) Silence.

8) Cheese pizza, grilled food, and my recipes.

9) Paying for something with a $20 bill (and not feeling guilty about it).

10) Time spent with my family and friends.

11) Fall, and the seasons in general.

12) Being able to express myself fully, and not just taking a backseat on everything because I don't know how to say what I want.

So perhaps you got up this morning. You slept in your own bed last night. You decided you wanted cereal for breakfast, but then you changed your mind and decide to go to McDonald's for food. You pay with a $20 bill, and you don't get asked, "Do you have anything smaller?" Instead of waiting on public transportation to arrive (and possibly being jammed on the bus like a sardine in a tin), you get in your own car and drive to wherever you're going. At lunch time, you are faced with the same wonderful series of choices: What do I want to eat? When? Where? If you decide on pizza, you have the option to get just plain ol' cheese. Even if it's bitterly cold out and you hate winter, at least you got to experience the beauty of fall, and at least you will appreciate spring that much more when it gets here. And finally, if someone cuts you off on the road, or your boss makes you mad, or anything like that, you can let loose and tell them exactly what you want. I currently have none of these things, and I will never take them for granted again.

(In case it wasn't clear enough, I've decided that the thing I miss the most in this experience is my independence.)

PART 2
So, here's a new addition to that list. Never take for granted your good health. Any day you don't feel horrible, be glad. I should already have learned this 5 times over by now, but apparently not.

Here's the story, more or less.
On Monday during my last (wohoo! -- except for the final) Evironmental Management class, my stomach was really hurting. That's not something particularly new for me, so I just ignored it. But then I went home after class, and it got worse. I couldn't sleep because of it, and that WAS new for me. But on Tudesday morning, I didn't want to miss my the Cartography lab because I figured I'd have to make it up sometime -- time which I don't really have or feel like making. So, feeling horrible and not having slept, I dragged my sorry self out of bed, into clothes, and caught a taxi to class. I sat through all two hours of class and got the last lab assignment done. I SOOO wanted to go home and sleep (sleep has cured me every other time I've felt bad down here), but I needed to meet with my group for my Periferica bus project. As always, it is possible that I misunderstood their directions, but I am almost certain that they said, "We're going to meet at 9am in the classroom" -- you know, to meet and work at the time of the class in the same place as class because class was cancelled and that was easier. I said I had class until 10, and they said I should just come when I got done. Well, we got done early in my first class. I was outside that room at 9. I was still outside that room at 10. All I wanted was for one of them to show up so that I could hand them a piece of paper with my e-mail on it and go home. But of course, I did not see any of them.

Right around 10, a girl who is in my class came to wait -- I guess she just wanted to make sure that class was actually cancelled. I told her it was, but that I was waiting for my group. She went upstairs to ask at the geography office, and came back down a few minutes later to tell me she'd talked with the professor and we indeed did not have class. I was like, "Okay, but I'm waiting for my group." Well, not five minutes later, my professor comes down to ask me what's up. I told her I was waiting for my group. Then I asked if she had their e-mails (then I could leave and e-mail them when I got home and felt better). She did, up in her office. So I slowly shuffled my way up to her office. I was waiting out in the hallway leaned up against the wall, and some of the other women in the geography department came out and were like, "Are you sick? What do you have? You don't look good." I told them that I was just really tired and my stomach hurt. They took me back to the little eating area in the geography department and gave me hot sugar water (if you think that sounds like a weird remedy, I should tell you about some of the stuff that other people's families have given them when they're sick). At that point, my geography teacher comes back, and my cartography teacher is also there. Now I've got 4 people standing over me, trying to feed me hot sugar-water and figure out what's wrong with me. My geography teacher lives in Zapote, which is right next to Curridabat, so she said she'd take me home. I get in her car (my cartography teacher comes too), but we stop by the on-campus medical facility first to see if they can make room for me. Apparently they can, so I go in there.

I get asked the usual round of doctor questions and do the usual doctor exam stuff. The doctor doesn't know what's wrong with me, but they decide to give me some pain medicine. So I go to the back, and they take a blood sample. (First needle doesn't hit, so they move on to the second elbow). Then the pain medicine is an IV, so that's two more needles -- one for each hand (apparently my veins were "hiding"). Then I kind of go to sleep back there for a while. Get this, though: my cartography teacher stayed with me this whole time. That is SO above and beyond the call of duty, and she is SOO nice. After maybe 2 or 3 hours, I feel a little better but not much, and the doctor at the clinic doesn't know what else to do. So he recommends that I go to the hospital. We call the program directors, and they come to the clinic. Then my cartography teacher leaves.

(Oh, it gets better)

So then, they decide to use an ambulance to take me to the hospital, just because they wanted to have somewhere to hang the IV bag. I usually would have argued against that, so it's not a good sign that I didn't even have the energy to tell them no. Once I get to the hospital, I am subjected to two more needles (they have to re-do the IV in the other hand because the one I already had "wasn't big enough", and one for more blood testing), ultrasound, X-rays, and some sort of MRI scan or something. They determined that my intestines are inflamed and infected, but THANKFULLY not ruptured. So now I'm being pumped full of antibioitics, pain killers, and anti-inflammatories. I also get periodic does of oral antibioitics. The last dose the brought me was accompanied by a straw, just in case I wanted to savor its flavor I guess. (I don't.) I'm going to pretend that this is good practice for taking shots. I'm also on a liquid diet. Last night I got some nasty chicken broth an apple juice. Today I've had tea, and another helping of nasty chicken broth and apple juice. I'm going to pretend that this is good because when I go to Panama, at least I'm going to look skinnier in my bathing suit. I've also gotten needle #7, since they had to take blood again this morning. So that brings the total to: Left elbow 1, right elbow 3 right hand 1, left hand 2. Usually needles don't bother me, but 7? 7 bothers me.

I don't know when I get out of here. I would LOVE to be out in time to go the Thanksgiving dinner we're having, but I'm not hopeful. So, whatever you're thankful for this Thanksgiving, be thankful that you're not in a hospital enjoying a liquid diet of bad chicken broth and apple juice, periodically interspersed with doses of very nasty liquid antibiotics.

I know this isn't going to get me out of my cartography test (I'll just take it later) but I'm holding out hope for either an easier assignment than the Periferica one, or just getting out of it all together. Although I do kind of need something to help my grade in that class. Well, we'll see.

Does it better

There are some things that we Gringos do better. There are some things that the Ticos do better. Here's a break-down.

Ticos do it better:
1) All fruit (Except apples and grapes)
2) Rice and beans (That's really not a fair contest)
3) Conserving energy and gasoline
4) Coke and all other products that are sweetened with high fructose corn syrup in the U.S.
5) Tortilla chips. There's this kind that comes in a purple bag, and those plus some guacamole... SO delicious. Tostitos just can't compete.
6) Not having an overpopulation of gigantic ugly motorcycles
7) Use of public transportation
8) Textbooks and copyright policy (we just get copies of readings for like, $1, instead of buying textbooks for $100)
9) Fried chicken
10) Cheap food
11) Peace
12) Corner stores and quick-shops
13) Family closeness and get-togethers
14) Dressing in nice clothing for classes
15) Earrings

Gringos do it better:
1) Apples and grapes
2) Peanut butter
3) Roads/sidewalks
4) Driving (we actually stop for stop lights and yield to pedestrians ..... these things are in short supply down here)
5) Grilled food (That's not really a fair contest either)
6) Candy (I might be biased)
7) Efficiency in shopping (and efficiency in general)
8) Abundance of restaurants and places to eat out
9) War
10) Organization and naming of streets, and keeping the roads in good condition (you think your roads are bad? Trust me, it could be much, much worse).
11) Hot water
12) Laundry (their laundry system is okay, but let's face it, dryers are sooo much faster than hang drying)
13) Dressing in clothing that fits (aka not glued to body) for classes
14) Hats
15) Being on time

There are probably some other things I'm forgetting right now, but I'm going to blame that on my need to rant. You see, there is one thing that I have discovered that Ticos -- or at least the Ticos in my world geography class, and especially the Ticos in my world geography class with whom I am working -- are bad at: Power point presentations.

Today we began our presentations in world geography. The first group went, and their powerpoint was lackluster. Some of the slides were good, but like 75% of them were graphs which took up maybe 25% of the area of the slide. They picked ugly colors (I am a horrible person for saying that after I complained about my cartography teacher being so picky) and didn't center or label them properly. They also used line graphs for things that should have been bar graphs and pie charts for things that DEFINITELY did not belong in the pie-chart family of graphical representation. Another group went, and their presentation was about water. They used the water background from the old version of power point. This is the dumbest background in the history of forever. First of all, it's overused. Second, it's eerily and unnaturally blue. Third, you can't really use white OR black font on it -- both colors blend into the background a bit in different parts of the image. I bet there are thousands of better pictures they could have used for their background on that presentation besides the ugly one that Microsoft put in the program. One group did a presentation about the Arab-Israeli conflict. The actual slides themselves were okay, but they had about 6 maps on different slides, and the guy had to keep flipping through them to show us stuff. It was like a map flip book, and that was unnecessarily confusing. I don't remember my specific critiques of the other groups, but none of the presentations I saw today was particularly well-designed or good-looking.

All the other groups took so long that my group didn't have to go today (gracias a dios!) This is very good, because the ugliness of everyone else's presentations would have had nothing on the hideousness of my group's disjointed and half-ugly presentation. I say "half ugly" because only half of it would have been ugly. The part I did is quite pretty. I tried to find a happy medium between putting too much information on a slide and not putting enough information on a slide (another thing the Ticos seem to have trouble with). I found out what the other half looked like -- the half the guy in my group did -- when I went to the lab with him after class. He wanted to pull my part off my USB drive (this device will henceforth be referred to as a "llave"), then save it to his llave and combine it. Well, he pulled his up, and it's ugly. Or well, if you were just looking at his background as a picture, it would be fine. However, it's too busy and has too much variation in color to serve well as a background. He also put nowhere near enough information on his slides, and his animations were kind of dumb. Now, perhaps I'm just biased that I think mine looks better. But then again, perhaps the part of my brain that says "this is ugly, fix it" has more than one brain cell to rub together.

THANKFULLY, I had saved my part as a .pptx file (the new power point) instead of a .ppt (old power point) because the graphs I used wouldn't have transferred. The computers in the lab were not able to open my .pptx file. So then the guy in my group did this whole "download a thing to make it work" .... I did not want him opening my power point and ugly-fying it, so I suggested that he save his to my llave and I would combine them. Ahh, yes, how logical! Except there are several dilemmas. First, from what I understood, the girl in our group has not fixed her part of the paper (which was due today), nor did she really do any slides. I asked the guy if he could get her to e-mail me her slides so I could add them to ours, but some part of that was lost in translation and/or not going to happen because she's being a slacker. Second, the guy wants to add more to his slides. Why even bother giving me the half-done stuff then? Why not just e-mail me your part when you finish, and I'll put it together? If I do it now, I'm just going to have to do it twice, which is a waste of time. It made me very sad that I was not able to express this sentiment properly in Spanish. Third, I face a moral dilemma. Whose background do I use? His is ugly, but I wouldn't want people changing my stuff around. I'm tempted to just leave the parts with different backgrounds (although make the text the same and stuff) ... you know, to better "divide the sections" or something.

So now I have to add his 4 really lousy slides to my 11 very pretty ones. Then I have to find a way to save it in the old format but while keeping my graphs. Then I have to e-mail it to him so he can add more to his parts, at which point I would hope he would e-mail it back to me so I could un-uglyfy anything he did to it. This is riduculous. I think I'm just going to e-mail him and say that I combined them and I can send it as a .pptx, but I can't save it as a .ppt file because I get an error message about my graphs (which is true.) Then I'll tell him just to finish his slides and send them to me, then I'll add his to mine and we'll be good.

I feel kind of hypocritical for typing all this since when it comes to actually presenting the information, all of the Ticos are 20x better than I am (even if the language barrier were removed). However, ugly, unreadable power points kind of detract from what they're saying, so I still feel somewhat justified.

In other news, it's now officially "cold" here. Winter (which they seem to call summer, even though we're still in the northern hemisphere) has arrived. In general, this time of year is nicer than the rest of the year, especially later on, like in Jan-March. It's a little bit colder, but there's less rain and more sun. Well, anyway, today I guess there's a cold front hanging over the area, and it was pretty windy. I'd guess the temperature was about 65, although maybe with the wind it felt like 55 or 60. If I had a nickel for every time I heard "Ay, que frio!" today, I would be very rich. Come on, really? It's like, 60 degrees outside. That's NOT COLD. You guys do not know what cold is. You would die if you came to my state, and my state isn't even that cold. A guy in my geography class was literally wearing gloves and a scarf DURING CLASS, surrounded by 4 nice wind-blocking walls. It was probably 70 in that classroom, and he's sitting there in a scarf and gloves. I repeat: come on, really?

Karma strikes again!

Am I good or what? Just as I predicted, Karma paid me a visit for round two of "this is why you shouldn't gloat." I got my test from Geography of Costa Rica back today, and I got a whopping 73 on it. Oh yes, another juicy delicious C. I also had to give my presentation today. Thankfully I went first, because I would have not wanted to follow anyone who went after me. I just fail at presentations. It doesn't matter what language I use, I am just bad at giving presentations. Period. You know what, though? I don't really care. It's over. It's done. My paper is turned in. Hopefully I'll get at least a C on the paper, and then I can be well on my way to not failing the class. Yay not failing!! It's strange how I used to care so much about my grades... okay, well, I still care a lot. Just not right this instant, not in this class. It's really hard to care right now for several reasons.

(1) That paper/presentation are done. That feels soooooo good. This good feeling goes a long way towards blocking the bad feelings.
(2) This class does not count for any requirements, either Gen-Ed or major/minor. Basically the only reason to try is so it doesn't mess up my GPA.
(3) There is no point in learning about the Geography of Costa Rica. I leave this country in less than a month. I'm sure I'll be back someday, but I don't need to know this stuff for my career or for any future visits. It's pointless knowledge.

Even though I got a C on this test and I don't think my paper is going to bring my grade up at all, I'm still in a good mood. Why, you ask? Well, I can no officially count all remaining assignments and tests on one hand. (You have no idea how good it feels to type that.) This is due to a combination of an assignment and test into one project, and the fact that my Environmental Management teacher decided that we don't actually have to give presentations. (I'm almost sad about that... I was kind of looking forward to explaining two stroke engines to my class...)

I have remaining:
Tomorrow: 1 presentation about Petroleum. The guy from my group did finally e-mail me last night, but I got the impression that he had forgotten all about the presentation. I bet he's going to have an unhappy moment when he opens my e-mail and is reminded about this. I haven't worked on this presentation (my part) at all yet, but I have the rest of today. This is much better than the presentation I made last night after I got home from class at 8:00

Tomorrow/Friday/whenever: 1 homework assignment. This is the assignment from Geography of Costa Rica about taking the Periferica bus. My teacher decided that this assignment would be our final. This means I have one less test, and this is the one test I was looking forward to the least anyhow. Better yet, when I went up to ask the teacher about it at the end of class, I mentioned that I didn't have a partner. There was a group of 3 girls who were going to do it together, and they offered to let me work with them (we're going to turn in 2 versions between the 4 of us, I guess). I was soooooo relieved when I had people to work with. This goes back to what I've said about being nice to foreign people -- those girls made my day.

Next Tuesday, the Monday and Wednesday after that: Finals. I need to do well on my cartography test since I did not-so-hot on the last one. This is going to require some serious studying since a lot of it is going to be over the presentations that some guest speakers gave -- presentations which I did NOT pay attention to. I do need to study a little bit for my Evrn Management test. There's apparently a paper he wrote that he wants us to read (always a good idea to be familiar with things the professor wrote), and some other stuff that I need to go over. We still haven't gotten back any of our assignments, so I can't say for sure that I'm doing well in that class. Finally, I have my world geography test. This is open book, which is good -- if I manage to finish my backlog of reading between now and then. I'm feeling REALLY smart for having meticulously utilized the highlighter and looked up unknown words while I was reading the readings.

So there you go. 1 presentation. 1 homework assignment (that counts as a test). 3 finals. Panama. Nicaragua. Home. Popsicle. (Because I'm going to be a giant popsicle when I get home). I am beginning to feel the warm rays of the light at the end of the tunnel, and it feels good. VERY GOOD.

And finally, my observation of the day: Ticos are not very good at recognizing things that should be obvious. Example 1: I walk to the corner store to buy a coke. Two women in an SUV pull up. ¿Muchacha, sabe donde está el Hipermás? (Do you know where Hipermas is?) Um...do I LOOK like I know where Hipermas is? 95% of the people in this country who look like gringos are, in fact, gringos. Probability therefore says that I am gringa. Why would you ask a foreigner where something is? That's just a bad plan. As it turns out, I do actually know where Hipermas is, although my explanation of its location was pretty weak. I think they figured it out, though. Exmaple 2: The girls who let me in on their group for the Geog. of CR class project asked if I spoke English and what country I'm from. I suppose I can't expect them to be able to differentiate accents, even between French, German, and English, but really? All the French and German students I've run in to have spoken almost perfect Spanish. These girls just sat through a class and listened to me butcher their language. I think that should say perfectly well what language I speak, and for that matter, what country I'm from. (Sad but true statement. Note to all future parents: find a way to teach your children other languages when they're young, because the U.S. education system isn't going to.)

Footnotes and such

Today my cartography class went on a field trip, and I have some footnotes and/or insights to share, even though I desperately need to be working on my paper that's due Tuesday. (I have a fairly well-fleshed out outline, but that isn't consoling me much right now since I only have the rest of tonight and tomorrow to finish it.)

Our field trip was mainly to Parque Nacional Volcan Poas, (Poas Volcano, for anyone who needed that hint), although we also stopped at the La Paz waterfall and a few random places on the side of the road. This field trip was kind of surreal for me for a few reasons.

First, I've already been to La Paz and Poas. La Paz especially was trippy because that was one of our first trips way back when. As of today, I have exactly one month left in Costa Rica. As much as I think symbolism is a bunch of nonsense, returning still kind of felt symbolic of how far I've come and how long it's been.

Second, although all the Ticos know the country and cities much better than I do, it would appear from the small sample size that my class represents that I am better-traveled that most Ticos. Of the 6 of us on the field trip (the class only has like, 8 people), I think only one other person had been to Poas, and I was the only one who had been to La Paz. I'm sure the Ticos have been plenty of places I haven't, but it surprised me that they hadn't been to see all these cool things a million times before on field trips or with their families.

Third -- perhaps this is redundant, but -- we went on a field trip. To a volcano. A VOLCANO. When was the last time you went on a field trip to a volcano? That field trip would be the height of cool back in the states. And although we didn't go on field trips to the Caribbean or Pacific, those were options for other classes. How cool is that? There's no way I'd be going on a field trip to any ocean back in the states, much less having a choice of two. This is one of the really cool things about Costa Rica. It's such a tiny tiny country (about the size of West Virginia), so all of the wonderful things they have to see are condensed and easily accessible from almost anywhere in the country. ("Easily" is relative). You can see cities, mountains, beaches, rain forest, and coffee and banana plantations all in the same day. I repeat: How cool is that?

Fourth, I have an inkling that I'm not the only one who did not-so-hot on the test. My professor was telling us something about the next test, and all the other students were making comments that, assuming I understood correctly, were complaining about how hard/long the last test was. Better yet, I am nearly positive that they all missed points on the same blowing-up-the-map question, because it was specifically pointed out and requested that for the next test, she NOT enlarge the map. This makes me feel better about myself.

I think I'll end there, since I REALLY need to get to work on the destroyer-of-my-soul also known as my paper that's due Tuesday. I have a month left here, and just about half a month left of classes. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but I can't get there because of the cave-in (made of homework, presentations, papers, and tests) that's in front of me. I know being home will heal my soul, but I'm not sure I'll have any left to heal by the time I finish all this work. (Sorry, I guess I'm in a symbolic and philosophical mood today. I blame school.)