Hola! Buenas! Pura vida! This is Cana writing (finally :-P)!
This was quite the packed week for Rachel and I in Costa Rica! We are still trekking along with classes, discussing things from history of the region, to poverty, to theology. All en español, so both of us feel our skills improving.
Some things you know ahead of time and look forward to with joyful anticipation. Others simply happen and bring a different type of pleasure. This week was full of both. As far as the unexpected, Zumba has become a weekly or bi-weekly occurrence for us and our host moms. The gym is a short walk away and we do a mix of salsa, cumbia, and merengue dances, which is surprisingly quite the cardio work out! I’ve loved the class not at all because I am good at it, but because it feels like a way to participate in day to day life, learning more than what a short trip to a tourist spot could teach me. Also unexpected, or should I say mildly expected, the host family I am staying with has a cat that was pregnant and on Wednesday morning I walked out the door to go to class and the cat was giving birth on the front step! Seeing minute old “gatitos” was not something I had put on my Costa Rica bucket list, but they are quite cute.
Coming here, we did know that we would be taking a three day trip to a province and city called Limón, and we had that trip this weekend. Limón is the province that covers the entire east coast of the country and it is a place of a lot of diversity of all forms. On the way, we say banana, pineapple, and coffee farms, all owned by American businesses, but mostly worked by Nicaraguan or Chinese immigrants. Limón the city is home to a large Afro-Caribbean population, so the food and music of the area has an almost Jamaican feel to it, yet Spanish is still the predominant language. We enjoyed going to a local outdoor market and eating pati (the Limón version of empanadas which are a bit spicy). It was a pleasure to learn about a subset of Costa Rican culture that I didn’t know existed.
On the second day of our trip, we went and visited a family from the local indigenous tribe called Bri Bri. A strong and caring woman named Gloria told us her story- the history of her people, her land, and the struggles the Bri Bri have had with the Costa Rican government over representation and land usage. Talking to someone with such a different outlook on life and nature was a good challenge and left me with a lot of questions about what it means to respect people like Gloria despite the different values and dreams we have for the world. With these questions fresh in our minds, we got to have a tour through the jungle on their land which is almost untouched. This rain forest was truly breath taking, pictures don’t do it justice. We got to finish the day with a trip to the beach! Rachel and I, along with most of our fellow students, spent an entire 2 hours in the ocean, letting ourselves get demolished by the waves, taking in way too much salt water, but laughing and getting back up for the next one with just as much joy.
I think our hours at the beach sum up these past weeks well. Wave after wave of new information, new people, new words, new norms keep on hitting us, knocking us back a bit. But we get up and prepare for the next one with a smile because the experience is worth it. I love being challenged and taught. I especially love that I get to go through it with such a great friend and an amazing group of students who, day by day, are feeling more and more like family.
If you are the praying type, we would appreciate prayers for continued stamina through the next 4 weeks of classes (we are earning 9 credits in 6 weeks, so it is hard to keep up). We would also appreciate prayer for continued growth with our host families, that we can start to feel more at home and know how to love them well.
Pura Vida!
