Happy Birthday Mom! I love and miss you so much! I thought about you lots today. My Tican family wanted me to tell you “Feliz Cumpleaños!” Today we watched a powerful film about conflict and corruption in El Salvador in my Spanish class. After lunch we made the daily 1 hour trek from ICADS to LASP. Luckily, no rain today! We had a guest speaker come to our afternoon class who discussed poverty in Latin America. He was truly amazing. He ironically happened to be from El Salvador and talked about his experience of living in poverty both in El Salvador and here in Costa Rica. Although he continues to live in poverty, he was the most poetic well-spoken man I have ever heard. He absolutely shocked my professors (as they underestimated how powerful his presentation would be). His message was powerful as he opened our eyes and hearts to the corruption with government and humanity of the poor. It was truly a heart-warming, tear-jerking, eye-opening, once in a lifetime experience. When a guest speaker comes to class, like today, we are required to dress up. So, if you think I stand out with my blonde-hair and blue eyes on any day, imagine how much more I stand out when I’m all dressed up. I have to walk through San Jose to switch buses around 5:30 right as everyone is getting off work. I’ve never heard more whistling and “hey baby’s” in my life. Although this kind of flirting (known here as “piropos”) is much more common and accepted here in Costa Rica, it is also luckily pretty harmless. I must admit, although I’ve been taught to just ignore the comments and keep walking; it’s hard not to laugh sometimes, especially when the comments are simply strange. For example the man who said “Hey doctor. Let me accompany you today”. Doctor! What’s that supposed to mean? Men are so weird (especially the one that calls me his baby cockroach). Don’t worry, they truly are harmless and in their culture seen as appropriate. When I finally made it home I packed my bags because tomorrow we are leaving for Limon. It should be interesting since Limon is highly populated with Jamaican immigrants and the majority of the population speaks Creole English. After packing Mami, Pamela and I went to grandma’s house for who knows what (I don’t think their was a point to our visit other than for some lady time) On the way home since I was still dressed up, Mami and Pamela witnessed the flirtatious men constantly yelling “Hey Macha!” (word for blondie) At one point, Mami yelled back to a group of men “Quiet down boys! Haven’t you ever seen a good lookin’ blondie”. It just embarrassed me all the more. We witnessed a huge protest. Hundreds of people had parked their cars to block off a main street in Tibas to protest about the poor roads and sidewalks (kind of the like the Rocky Lane pothole, Mom and Dad). After stopping at Papi’s work, we headed home, danced around the house to our favorite radio station, ate family dinner and headed off to bed.
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