1. We had some great friends, Brett and Maura, come visit us for one night a few weeks ago. They shared with us that there seemed to be some crazy foot race or large event happening the day they tried to drive through our area. We realized that they picked the ONE day to drive in this area when TWO MILLION people were on foot to make a pilgrimage to a special church in Cartago. It is so many people and such an important religious event that it is a national holiday called "Dia de La Virgin". Hopefully I won't mess up the reason of this pilgrimage too much. The story goes that a servant girl found a statue of the Virgin Mary in the hole of a rock in a stream one day. She took the statue back to her house but it was gone the next day. So, she went back to the stream, found the statue in the rock again, and took it back home once more. Again, it disappeared. So, she tried a third time to bring it home and again it disappeared and reappeared in the stream on the rock. So, they built a big, beautiful church at the site where the rock was and now every year Costa Ricans make pilgrimages to the church on foot. They pray to the Virgin all year and they feel that if she listened they will definitely make the trip. Anyway, Brett and Maura were trying to drive through this area during the pilgrimage and I can't imagine how hard that would have been! They thought it was some sort of foot race and were so impressed that people of all ages and shape were competing in it.
2. Andrea's workout routine is a little crazy and even surrounded by crazies. I love to walk to and from school for my workout. The hills are amazingly steep. It's only a 3 km walk, but the inclines are so steep that our car usually stays in 1st or 2nd gear to get up them. It's a great way to work out once I ignore the issues about walking. One, there are no sidewalks or side areas to walk. The side areas are gutters for the massive water runoff we get when it rains, not to mention it is also filled with runoff from people's homes that dirty water just drains straight from sinks, showers, and washers into the gutter. I have to stick to the opposite side of the street and change sides when cars are coming or throw myself into the ditch. Really fun stuff. Also, there is mental asylum about half way between our school and house and people are always escaping and walking this road. I have had two encounters, both with the same man, so I figure he is a bit of a Houdini at getting out of the asylum. The first time I thought I was in a living nightmare when I saw him up ahead of me on the road. He was walking out into the middle of the road and twitching and throwing his arms and legs strangely as he walked. That was my first clue he was out of it. I thought he was going to get run over by the traffic because nobody drives very defensively here and he seemed to pay the cars no mind. My first instinct was to be worried for him, but then he started gaining on me after I passed him and no matter how fast I tried to stay ahead of him, he was keeping up and catching me! I was on the last of the steep inclines before the rest is downhill and I truly could not go any faster even though I was trying! It felt like those dreams where you are being chased and can't seem to move. I finally made it to the top and started to run and he just stood at the top and watched me go. Two days later I saw him inside the asylum fence with my friend Leydi when we were walking and he was trying to get out again. We both yelled, "Buena Suerte!" to him and he gave us the thumbs up. Later that same week a group of horses were free on the road and were galloping up and back. I had to keep trying to anticipate where they were headed, plus one male was very frisky and started to mate with one of the mares. As I was on the other side of the street passing them, again on an incline, the male horse mounted the mare and she started coming right for me with the male on her back. Again I thought, this is going to be a weird story about how I came to ruin because of frisky horses while I was trying to work out. I barely made it away from her and when I got to school Mike said he had some explaining to do with Bec about what those horses were doing because they were still up to it when Mike and Bec passed them in the car and were blocking traffic putting on this show.
3. Two weeks ago I told our maid, Marjorie, that she could come next "Muertes" and "Viernes" instead of "Martes" and "Viernes". Muertes means death or dead. Now she always says to me, hasta muertes, which means something like "see you next dead" or "until dead", and then she releases peels of laughter! There is a joke here that goes something like "Es o si que es", which means "That's the way it is!". But, if you take "es o si que es" and change it into English letters it spells SOCKS. So, when I mess up with my Spanish, I just yell out SOCKS because "That's the way it is!"
4) Making coffee! I took a picture of our coffee maker this morning. I think it looks like a bull's testicle sac (hopefully you can keep your coffee down after that statement, ha ha). It's a simple drip system and it makes simply amazing coffee. Even Brett Wamsley, who really doesn't drink coffee liked it. Check out my photo! Coffee anyone?
5) We have had several talks about death with Rebecca because the cemeteries are very prominent features here. Everyone is buried above ground since the ground gets too much rain. Most people seem to choose large white concrete blocks to be buried in and they are adorned with sculptures and flowers galore. Rebecca always remarks how pretty it all looks. The cemetery was especially decorated for mother's day and Rebecca noticed and wanted to know why all the people were there and why it was so pretty. We told her that people were visiting their mothers that were buried in the boxes. A few minutes passed and she announced to Mike that she wanted to buy me a box too. She definitely doesn't get it.
1 comment:
It looks like a cow tongue..or a ball! =)
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