ad astra

Well, it was a good run, but like I predicted in August, I fear that my dedication to writing has faltered over the past month.  And due to the fact that my mother seems to have blessed me with her talent of forgetting things rapidly, who knows if I’ll even be able to remember enough of what this past month has involved to write more than an introductory paragraph.

Basically for the last two weeks I spent a lot of time travelling around Costa Rica with Javier, one of the LASP professors.  At this point in the semester all (or most…) of the students are outside of San José doing some type of “community project.”  When I was a student, this was the time when I worked on a farm with the incomparable Roderick and spent my days planting, harvesting, and hiding from the mule.  This experience is, in many ways, one of the most valuable parts of the semester.  First of all, everyone is, for the most part, isolated and away from the swarm of gringos that they were with for the first half of the semester.  This allows them to not only immerse themselves more completely in Costa Rican culture, but also allows most students to really make strides in their Spanish learning, as they often don’t have the option of speaking English.  Secondly, it’s really great that students get to see life outside of San José.  The blessed capital city is probably the furthest thing possible from any preconceptions you might have about “Beautiful, Green, Costa Rica,” and it also has a culture all its own; one that doesn’t necessarily represent Costa Rican culture as a whole.  So as great as the city is, it can be nice, and even necessary (for the sake of one’s sanity), to escape it for a while.

Most students are either working on farms or in schools, the few exceptions working in orphanages or state run daycares.  As I said, they are all outside of San José, but it’s funny when you think about what “outside of San José” actually means.  Costa Rica is about the size of West Virginia, which means that even at its extremities you’re really not too far from the capital.  However, what’s crazy about the country is how little you need to travel to feel like you’re in a completely different world.  San José is located in the Central Valley and is completely surrounded by two or three mountain ranges.  Almost as soon as you begin to get out of the valley, everything changes, and you begin to see why Costa Rica is supposedly the “Greenest Country on Earth.”  Some of the places I visited literally seemed like settings out of a fairy tale or something, and I’m frightened of what my Dad is going to say when I admit that I did not take a camera to even one of the places we visited (maybe next year).  The other crazy thing is how diverse the country is.  One day we were shivering in the cloud forest, and the next baking on the Caribbean coast, both places not separated by more than a hundred miles.  If I wasn’t convinced before, these last two weeks have convinced me that in terms of natural beauty Costa Rica is without a doubt the most beautiful place I’ve ever been.

So this weekend is the last one I’ll have free until the semester ends.  The students return on Tuesday and we’ll have a few days of orientation before leave for Cuba early next Sunday morning.  Obviously, I can’t wait for that trip, and I hope that the students enjoy it and as much as I did.  We’ll be there for ten days and return to Costa Rica on the 14^th, when I’ll have to say a tearful goodbye to all the LASPers I’ve gotten to know this semester.  And after that it will just be a week until the Dearstyne Family Costa Rican Christmas Extravaganza begins.  I hope the country is prepared.