Heredia and Tico Randomness

On Friday night I went to Heredia with a few other volunteers. There is a national park nearby that I wanted to see, so we all thought it would be fun to go together; it would be a short trip because Heredia is less than an hour from Atenas. Heredia is a big university town and we were going to be meeting up with Melissa (she works for my program, she's 24 and super cool) and all of her friends at a bar nearby; her boyfriend is studying at the UNA. We arrived late, and had a little bit of trouble finding a hotel that didn't charge by the hour. (Don't stay at Hotel Central). But we met up with all of Melissa's friends, and we had a blast! I had met a few of her friends beforehand, because two of them are the Tico brother and sister of another volunteer, and one of them is a classmate of Melissa's, who I had already met when I went with her to her universidad last Monday. Everyone was really nice, and it was so fun to sit around at a chill bar, sipping Imperial and talking in Spanish. Marcela (Melissa's best friend who lives down the street from me) and I have grand plans of cooking lots of Tico food together, I'm really excited. And her brother, Alonzo, is going to teach me to dance! We moved on to a bigger club-type bar in San Jose, which was also a lot of fun. There was no room in the place itself, but we hung around outside where there were tables and tons of people and had more Imperial and danced and sang along to the regaton and crazy Latin music.
It was well after three by the time we got home, and the next morning was rainy and we decided that we really didn't have enough time before the park closed to go all the way there, and besides, there was a crafts art festival in Heredia itself. We wandered around the city for awhile, ate in a little soda, and then walked around the Universidad National. Their marine bio department has an exhibit of all of their specimens, but it was closed, grr!!
It was just a nice, fun day. We came home last night, and today I went up to the pool in a hotel overlooking Atenas with my roommate Noelle, and now it's pouring a nice tropical rain. I love it here--it is so nice and hot and beautiful in the mornings and then the rain cools everything off before it becomes unbearable in the afternoon. Costa Rica is seriously really good for me, I am so happy all the time and everyone I meet is the nicest person I have ever met. Everyone has opened up their homes to me, even the woman who cut my hair and didn't get it exactly right, and instead gave me a mullet (yes, and now I wear it pinned up every day). All the little details of daily life are so cool and so many of them are cute, and many others very random and odd, so I will try to include a few little vignettes when I think of them.

One time when I was walking down through the center of Atenas, there was this huge flock of more than 30 birds, all green parakeets. So pretty! And the next day there were two men standing on the side of the street, holding onto a leash and watching what I thought must have been a dog. Turns out, it was two cows, grazing on the side of the road. Very cool.

On Tuesday, when I got off the bus to go to the orchids, one of the women called me into her house and introduced me to her husband and gave me some snacks (twinkies, the first time I've ever had them, and I'm not a fan). She asked if I had my camera, which I did, and so we went outside into the backyard and she had me take photos of her husband and his chicken. I kid you not. The chicken wasn't even that good looking and it was shackled to a little peg in the middle of the yard. She said not to tell anyone, and I thought that it was because the other women would be jealous that I had gone to her house and not theirs. I found out the following Thursday that, no, that wasn't the reason she wanted me to keep it quiet. It turns out that the chicken is not a chicken and really a rooster, and that it is the big winner of the recent cock fight, hence why it was missing so many feathers and why she didn't want me to tell anybody about it. Craziness. Now I've got to develope blowups of these pictures for her, because I told her I would, but, cockfighting? I don't like that.

I am understanding and speaking a lot of Spanish, but I obviously have troubles when people talk quickly, especially amongst themselves. And very few people correct me as I speak, recklessly making things singular and masculine when they should be plural and feminine, changing the gender of things midsentence, and making up verbs and then putting them in the wrong tense. And I found out that I have been oblivously swearing as I describe things, since "stupid" does not translate well here.
There have of course been misunderstandings because I have the very bad habit of faking to understand instead of admitting that I have no idea what people are talking about. Many times I ask them to repeat, and they do, but they just say the same thing just as quickly, only sometimes louder. Because they aren't finding another of saying to me what they want, and I didn't understand the vocabulary in the first place, I still have no idea, but they want me to understand so badly that I don't want to let them down, copy whatever their expressions are, and nod or laugh, or grimly shake my head no. This has undoubtedly made me blindly agree to things I do not understand, like when they asked if the dog bit me because I was bothering it and throwing stones at it. Si, that was it, I said. It is also a problem when people are talking about me and I'm just there, smiling and nodding. What are they saying about esta muchacha? No idea, but I just nod and go along with it.

ALSO---7 of my little hijos (the women at the orchids call the baby crocodiles my children) are still alive. When I went in to check on them on Wednesday one of them opened its mouth as wide as possible, growled (sort of, in a crocodile way), and was lunging at me, trying to eat me with its little baby gums. I'm so sad! My own little baby crocs are trying to attack and eat me, !que triste!