Classroom Costa Rica

    Ugh! Be QUIET! I pulled the heavy wool blanket down over my head and tried to block out the sounds of the WAY-too-early life at my Costa Rica home stay. I tossed onto my side and felt my wrist up and down until I found my watch and pressed the glow button. 4:47 am. I sighed and sat up, looking across the cozy shack to see if Liz, Charlotte, or Rachel had been woken by the monstrous moos and cock-a-doodle-doo’s. Nope. Liz and Charlotte were dead to the world, and Rachel had already gotten up. My bare-feet hit the cold cement floor and the cold-shock sent a rush of chills to the top of my head. I tip toed over to the small window and stuck my head outside. No more than two feet away was the huge pink snout of possibly the biggest cow I had ever seen. Why the rooster was giving its wake-up call before the sun rose, I don’t know. Why had the cow had been sticking its head through the window and unleashing its ENOURMOUS “roar”? I have no idea. But I know I had never been this close to this big an animal at this early in the morning, nor had I heard a more annoying rooster in my life- and I live in Vermont! Well hey, if there’s a place for new experiences, Costa Rica is the place to go.

I crawled back into the comfortable bed I had slept so peacefully in the night before, and realized I shouldn’t even try to fall back asleep, so I did a quick run through of what I had experienced the night before, my first night ever in a Spanish-Speaking only home stay:

    Walking into the cozy home was like walking into a plume of constrained silence. I had kissed Blanca (my home stay mother) on both cheeks as I entered her home, and my first impression of her from the looks of her house was definitely religious. I had stood gawking at the gigantic holographic picture of Jesus, hanging just above the TV. Rachel, Liz, and Charlotte entered with Blanca trailing behind, and we all sat down on the couch, staring at each other and chuckling nervously when no one could think of what to do or say. I must say I felt a little bit out of place, and couldn’t help but think of what Blanca thought of the tourist girl in her house with crazy hair, wearing ripped shorts with striped leggings underneath and bright green shoes! The Tico’s style and our style were pretty much the same. Blanca wore a flower printed dress and white apron and her granddaughter who stayed the night wore jean shorts and a pink top. Compared to my clothing they weren’t quite as crazy as my clothes, but the resemblance was quite similar to what you might witness in the US.
Some of the silences we sat through hung so heavy over our heads that I felt like I was being pushed down by a force. I had succeeded at getting out some easy sentences that had been drilled into my head since day-one, but when I was actually in a situation where they were my last strands of hope before actually committing language suicide, I only had one thought: “Darn! I should have paid more attention in Spanish Class!”
The TV was on the majority of the time, more often than my own home, and we watched a soccer match and the movie “Spanglish”. (I thought this was quite the coincidence.) It was even on through most of dinner, which Charlotte, Liz, and Rachel and I ate alone because Blanca had already eaten. But Blanca cooked us a great meal of (you guessed it) rice, beans, as well as cheesy noodles and vegetables. Since I didn’t eat with my home stay family, so I asked Starcie how the dinner at her home stay went: “Dinner was interesting. We were having a staring contest and the boy was just looking at us and laughing, cause he didn’t know what was going on. We had chicken rice and beans… it was ok. The TV was on constantly, and we watched their home videos!” After dinner we tried to “break down” the language barrier again, but didn’t have much luck. I showed them pictures of my family, we gave them our gifts, and then we played Pick-Up-Sticks for about an hour with the grandson and granddaughter. Throughout all of this we figured out that Blanca was the grandmother of twenty kids, and had ten kids (all grown up) of her own, who all lived on the same road as she did…

Rachel walked into the shack, putting my thoughts on hold. The sun was catching up with the rooster, and within the next half hour or so we were all awake and sitting in the yard munching on toast with jam and sipping coffee. As Liz noted in her journal: “There were seven dogs that followed us around along with chickens and a cat. We ended up feeding the dogs most of our toast, but the coffee was good.” I walked into the kitchen to refill my cup, and walked into five older Costa Rican men, Blanca’s sons, watching soccer and all eating together. When they all finished eating they put on their work boots and went out to the animals and worked on Blanca’s farm. I found it really interesting that even though the sons had their own farms to manage, they would still all work for their mother. The level of respect between family members in Costa Rica was outstanding, and seeing all these men still come back to work on their mother’s farm was a really great thing to witness.
If I had to take something away from this home stay experience, I would have studied a lot harder before I came. I fell into many situations talking to Blanca where I felt almost depressed because I couldn’t figure out a sentence with words I had definitely heard before. Others (like Ashleigh) had language frustration as well: “We were playing UNO with the boy from our home stay and we got to a skip card and ended up floundering for about fifteen minutes because we didn’t know the word for skip.” I feel like I had one chance to connect with this person who, despite our different ways of life, had so kindly let us stay in her home when she knew nothing about us. I had been so determined to do it. I would break down this ever-so-looming “language barrier” and actually interact with someone in Costa Rica. This was an amazing learning experience. But, I took way more away from it than just an “experience”. I took away the knowledge that next time I would be in this situation, I would do something about it. I would know next time that I would want to stay up late talking in a foreign language with foreign people and actually get to know them, instead of crashing after about our fiftieth game of Pick-Up-Sticks. I myself tried to claw through this language barrier, tried to jump over, tried to dig underneath it. I tried desperately to get to the other side… yet looking back I hadn’t really said anything. Next time I face a language barrier, I will knock it down with the power of my words.

-Audrey

Comments RSS