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A Day in the Life

March 24, 2012

Costa Rica


Today was the "A Day in the Life" day. This tour company supports a foundation which, in the countries the tour company operates, helps local communities with funds for schools, and other needs to help the communities prosper. Since the tour company is really supporting a foundation, they're keen to get the tourists to see the good works of the foundation, because, who knows, you might become a contributor. To that end, there's always one day where we visit a school. But for some reason, this always ends up on a Saturday and kids have to come in on their day off.

But before the school, we stopped at the house of one of the waitresses of the restaurant at the resort. She and her daughters entertained us in their outdoor kitchen. Each of us made an empanada. Mine looked like hell hit it, but after letting it cool, it tasted far better than it looked.

Now I knew why we had the Spanish lesson the night before. The school was in the nearby town of San Francisco. The principal spoke English, but very few of the children spoke anything but Spanish. The flags of Costa Rica and America were brought out. The children sang their national anthem, and then we tourists sang ours. Then there was a moment where both groups could participate in international goodwill. Both Costa Rican school children and American tourists danced the Hokey Pokey together. Being an immigrant, I believe this was My Lovely Wife's first Hokey Pokey.

Then the children dragged us by the hand through the school. The brief Spanish lesson of the night before proved worthless for me. I remembered almost nothing. Two girls, probably in the second grade, dragged me all over campus, and showed me the on-sight farm where the school grew food to supplement their lunch program.

Getting dragged all over the school does help one raise an appetite. We were divided into three groups. Our bus drove us to three houses, and each group disembarked when told to. We were to each lunch in a local family's home. This was still connected to the school in that the family was that of one of the school children. Not the second graders, these were older children who were far better at English than we were in Spanish. We had a very nice meal with a lot of conversation about the family's life versus our own. Next door, the family was building a house for their eldest son. We also saw where the family grew some of their own food, and raised chickens. They were cordial, and generous.

Truth is, this is not why I came. I came for a wilderness experience. But, as designed, these days do teach us to open one's mind to other ways of living. And since I do encourage Americans to take vacations outside of North America, I think this would be a great eye-opener for many. The truth is, the rest of the world lives at a lower standard of living. Being exposed to the rest of the world, can make one question all of the whining Americans do over the most insignificant trifles.

The evening meal was to cook the food we had bought at the grocery yesterday. This was a departure from what happened on The Jambo Tour. In Tanzania, we stopped at an orphanage and donated the food. But here in Chachagua, we were going to cook Bocas and have a little party. The problem was there was too much food this day, at least for me. I participated in the food prep by chopping the vegetables, but I only tasted a little of each of the foods, and otherwise just mingled with the group.

While walking back to the bungalow, we saw a column of Leaf Cutter Ants, and I found a bug with two green bio-luminescent dots on its back. Costa Rica crawls at night. Luckily, we've found some bug spray that works and doesn't make you smell like Union Carbide's Bhopal factory. So far, I only have three bites.