For all of you who already got this email sorry.
With the one hour time change and assuming that our plane landed on-time we've clocked it at 27 hours (15 waking) before Beck and I were recruited to a local indoor soccer team. OK I should say 27 hours until Beck was recruited to the local soccer team. Its not that Adrian (futbol recruiter extraordinaire) didn't want me to play it just didn't really occur to him to ask. Apparently women don't really play soccer in Costa Rica. This is the conclusion I drew not only from the fact that I was the only female in the futbol arena for the better part of the evening but also from the laughter/cheers generated from the throng of young male spectators every time I stole/shot/passed the ball/managed to remain erect for more than 30 seconds in a row or did anything remotely productive on the field (this was not often). I must say it was quite exhilarating to have my own personal pep squad although I did start to feel sort of bad for the guy who got laughed at for having the ball stolen from him by "la nina." Luckily for the egos on the other team my unsupervised supporters lost interest in my exploits fairly quickly and decided that their attentions would be better spent by all squeezing into the small public bathroom together, no doubt performing some unholy act involving rapid toilet flushing, and then all stampeding out at once laughing and looking back over their shoulders. (I wish them no ill will, however, for abandoning me in my time of need, pushing the limits of the local sanitation system is an important part of childhood) Actually, for all persons involved over the age of 8, they did not seem fazed by the fact that I was a girl or by Beck and my awesome ability to dribble the ball directly into members of the opposite team nor by Beck's technique of falling over every time the ball came into his possession. Actually they seemed to look at us, good-naturedly as a challenge to be overcome, a handicap if you will. (Honestly though what did they expect putting two Americans on a team with a German a Kenyan and two Ticos (Costa Ricans)?) Eventually it was discovered that the best thing to do with us was to rotate Beck and I off the field for ever increasing amounts of time and to put Beck in goal and off the field whenever possible. This strategy allowed our team to come back from a 7 goal deficit in the first half to tie the game 15-15 overall. Go team gringo! We are so playing again next week.
Well I guess I should backtrack and mention that our journey to Costa Rica went off pretty much without a hitch. (Yea!) The crowds at SFO were non-existent at 11 o'clock at night (lets hear it for traveling in the middle of the night on September 11th). The 40 minutes we had to make our connecting flight at San Salvador international was plenty of time to walk the 7 gates (aka half of the airport) to our departing flight. Once we arrived in San Jose we made it through customs pretty quickly. We did have to hold our breaths, however, while the guy at the customs booth spent about 10 minutes looking at my old-school laminated passport apparently trying to decide if it was a forgery or not. I haden't really noticed before but the lamination around the picture has totally separated from the backing making it look a little sketchy. In the end I think he decided that it was far too early in the morning to be bother dealing with 2 tired gringos and their (shall we say) "broken" Spanish and let us through without a comment. (should be a barrel of laughs trying to get back into the US with that POS). Once we made it through customs our shuttle driver was waiting right outside. We knew he was our driver right away because he had a sign which read in large letters: AME HEIDERSBACH and BEK OLFEN. It's comforting to see that there is some place on the planet, besides Germany, where spelling Heidersbach is not an epic task. From the airport it was an hour and a half ride to Orosi, the small town, where we are going to be taking Spanish classes and volunteering to teach English for a month or so.
Orosi is located south of San Jose and about 40 minutes drive beyond Cartago (aka the closest city anyone has ever heard of). It is located in a valley surrounded on all sides by coffee farms and banana trees (pictures to follow soonish). We have had the good fortune of arriving in Costa Rica in the middle of the September 15th celebration extravaganza. September 15th (just as a reminder because I'm sure we all know this) is the day that Costa Rica (in typical Tican fashion) politely informed Spain that it no longer wished to be a Colony and that they were going to go ahead and not be part of Spain anymore if that was alright with everyone over there. As it turns out it was and apparently the better part of Central America thought that this was such a nifty idea that they wanted to go ahead and be their own countries too.
Everyone was pretty excited about this whole arrangement for about 10 minutes and then all hell broke loose blah blah blah 200 years later enter 150 5-year olds with homemade paper lanterns with real candles inside stumbling around in the dark (yes there were fireballs) amidst a sea of high school drum lines and that is pretty much a Costa Rican 4th of July in a nutshell. (Oh and there has been music playing pretty much straight for the last 3 days. And Tamales (so good) and there is also a torch that is carried all the way from Guatemala (Olympics style) to Cartago and lit at 6pm on the 15th (classic).)
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