San Jose, are you there? Do you swear you won’t forget me?

Abridged:

• I’m in Costa Rica.
• I’m here because I want to study Spanish and have adventures.
• My Spanish isn’t great. I need some time to practice and take a class or two with a tutor.
• I don’t have a tutor yet.
• I have some friends here.
• Costa Rican style is… interesting.
• I found a family to stay with… I’m meeting them tonight!

Unabridged:

In my first couple days here, I spent some time wandering around San Jose. I walked around a lot, trying to remember and re-familiarize myself with the city. I visited some old haunts from my LASP days, including my favorite coffee shop “Picho Pan”. I ordered café con leche (coffee with milk) and pineapple empanadas. Yum. While I should have been studying, I did a suduko and people-watched instead. People-watching is one of my most favorite pastimes. Here are some observations…

You know what I love about Costa Rica (CR)? I blend in exponentially more than I do in China. Costa Ricans (which henceforth will be referred to as “Ticos” or “Ticas”) are extremely diverse. Tall, short, thin, round… and there’s quite the spectrum of hair, eye and skin color. Even when I’m not wearing sunglasses, the average person on the street might never know I’m not a local. Although there is something that gives away my gringa-ness… my clothes aren’t excessively tight. Call me crazy, but I rather enjoy being able to breathe in my jeans. When I said I would need to buy tighter jeans to fit in, my friend Kristen said I could also just fill out my current jeans by getting really fat. So that’s an option.

Which brings me to my commercial for CR: Worried about that stubborn belly fat? Can’t seem to lose those pounds around the middle? Well just move to Costa Rica, buy yourself a tube top and let that spare tire hang out sister! Sexy… apparently.

Other fashion remarks:

1. The goth/punk look is still rocking down here. Black is the new black.
2. It’s such a shock after living in China to see girls who like to match everything. I’m talking shoes, jewelry, shirt, hair accessories and the best part... Whether her shirt is orange, hot pink, turquoise or purple, you bet your sweet biscuits that a fashionable Tica is going to have matching eye shadow. Yes, eye shadow.

My Tica friend Mari (who only speaks Spanish) is studying to be an “estilista”. I’m a lucky girl because this week she needs models for her classes. First – hair. Then – nails. As Kristen says I’m going to make a transformation. It’ll be a Costa Rican make-over!

First, I got my hair did. Yesterday I met Mari in Cartago and went with her to the salon. She needed to do fantasy highlights (I don’t know how to translate that really). Entonces, the tips of my hair are purple. Yep. I have purple hair (well just the ends). So that’s awesome. I’ll try to get a good picture, but it’s hard to take a picture of the back of your head by yourself.

Tomorrow I’ll get acrylic nails. OMG I’m so excited. Ok, not really but it’ll help Mari. I will probably only leave them on for a couple days… if that. Who knows what else. She also has to do what I’m guessing is a perm, but after getting the highlights, she said my hair would fall out or something because of all the chemicals. So no perm for me. One Chinese perm and purple tips are probably all I can handle this year anyway.

I’ve been staying at a hostel in San Jose. I have a private room and bathroom and the owner and workers are really great. There’s a wonderful covered “courtyard” in the middle with lots of plants and a hammock (which I’m in right now). However, it is not ideal to live in a hostel… especially when my Argentinean neighbor wants to chat all the time.

I just took an afternoon stroll to acquire some lunch and a belt. I found both. Lunch was at a little “Soda” (basically your Tica mom’s cooking served in the corner of her house) which consisted of a cheese empanada, vegetables and platanos (fried bananas). The belt was found at a hodgepodge store which resembled a store I might visit in XinZheng. The reason is that the owner “David” is Chinese and many of the goods there are also Chinese. I spent a good 45 minutes talking with him and an older Tico gentleman about visas, Chinese vs. Spanish vs. English, the seasons in the United States and the Terracotta warriors in Xi’an. So there’s that. It was so strange to talk to a Chinese guy in Spanish (he didn’t speak much Mandarin, nor do I). I could barely understand the Tico because his words kept getting lost in his enormous mustache.

So the big news of the day is that I found a family to live with, which is awesome, because I was beginning to wonder if I needed to move to the beach and live in a tent. One of the LASP staff put me in contact with an American girl who married a Tico. They live in the same city as Kristen and Mari. I’m going to stay with the husband’s family. I’m meeting them tonight in front of KFC. I’m excited and nervous as is the family, according to Lindsey (the daughter-in-law). We’ll see how it goes…

Pura vida.