The Costa Rican Version of Survivor

It’s 4:45 and I return to my house, hot, sticky, sweaty and covered in lethal bug juice mixed with sunscreen and salt. I reserve my daily shower for right before I go to bed so I can’t take one right now or I won’t sleep tonight. I flip on the fan and lay down ….

The fan begins whirl and scream in a way that tells me its final days are right around the corner. Nobody from the family comes in to see what’s wrong with my fan so I am sure the death of my fan has been slow, gradual, a noise that seems transparent to them and cannot compete with the screaming football game. I just hope that in another 2 ½ weeks, my fan is still alive….

I try and put this out my mind and just find the humor in my surroundings. I drift off, thinking of my school as something similar to a real live Survivor show, with other people on my island. Other students….

Studying the other students is almost entertaining as studying the bug life. There seems to be several “camps” here in Escual D’Amore.

The first group is the doctors, both the real ones who are practicing and the ones that are getting ready for a residency somewhere. I guess the Latin population in the US is a huge challenge for the medical profession and my school seems to attract doctors. Possibly the nurses all went to Guatamala because I heard it was cheaper, or possibly they spend enough time with their patients to learn it first hand.

The second group is the religious group. So far, they have not seemed to be fanatics and if they head in that direction I will just continuously say, “No comprendo.” Personally, like the rest of us, they are so overwhelmed with trying to remember 8000 verbs in 20 different tenses that they have forgotten to share their wisdom. Or they are too young and I do not come across as a possible victim.

And then there is OTHER. That’s me, the oldest person in the group, by just a few years, and Stephen, a black guy from Chicago who has spent his entire professional career, all 6 years of it, in the Marines. Stephen is on a mission to find beautiful women and eventually one beautiful woman who can learn to salute him when he comes home from work. Stephen is quite entertaining actually, with his long discussions on what exactly he wants in a woman. (Not necessarily well educated like him, Latin, and wanting to raise at least two sons for him.) I have nicknamed him, “Senor Arrogante” and “Hombre Malo” which makes us both laugh for I am sure different reasons.

Now getting back to the Survivor show mentality, which I use quite often when I find another student to be annoying, I think through which students I would vote off the island. The first three are easy.

The first is a medical student named Bob who is always talking, in English or horrible Spanish that even I can’t understand. He’s an absolute total suckup to all the teachers at our school. For example, at a party, Bob quickly switched to Spanish when the teacher walked up to us. Also, he has begged to get into an advanced class, even though he’s a step beyond, “Holla”.

The second is a black lawyer from New York who refuses to speak anything but Spanish. At first I thought it was somewhat cool, but when I had to translate for another student during an entire diner I found it insanely annoying. And today, after 5 hours of learning verbs in 3 different versions, her “no habla ingles” approach to life almost pushed me right over the edge, or should I say, I almost pushed her right off my island. Right off the bus….

The third is a 21-year-old Dutch chick, an incredibly beautiful girl on first glance. I have come to conclude she is on a paid vacation from some very wealthy parents, who feel they are doing some great justice in the world by sending their daughter to Costa Rica. She’s one of 3 people in my class (her and Senor Arrogante) and she shows up on occasion. When the teacher asks us a question, she looks highly annoyed as if she is put out by having to do anything. Really, I would hate to interrupt her ambitious goal of sun tanning by expecting her to finish her homework.

(When she IS in class, Senor Arrogante is very distracted and tries to impress her with his vast Spanish vocabulary. When he tried to quietly ask her out, in his limited Spanish, she said in almost a scream, “Are you trying to ask me out? You mean on a DATE?” When he made the obvious mistake of trying to continue his pursuit, she said, “I don’t have any plans. And I don’t like to have any plans.” Senor Arrogante told me later that “she just takes a bit to warm up.” )

The fourth might be Stacey, not because Stacey is not a good person, but because Stacey is just too insanely beautiful and smart for me to look at every day. She has long blond hair and she’s a doctor from San Diego. She wears incredibly beautiful clothes and she always looks like she is FRESH from the beauty parlor on her way to win Miss America. (Her looks are a serious problem for her here in CR, where men flock up to her every second of the day. When she confided in me, I lied and said, “Yes, I know exactly what you mean. They just won’t leave me alone!”)

For people that I would care to share my island with … well, Amy a “soon to be” ER doc from Chicago would top my list, even though she’s terrified of bugs. She has a super cynical sense of humor and I think I could have her frying up roaches as a daily source of protein in no time.

Probably second would be Marco, a cheery “soon to be” pathologist from Denver. He’s wonderfully funny and will even stop and help the locals. Like I watched Marcos just today stop and help a guy pick up mangos that the guy had dropped all over the ground when he fell off his bike. Of course, at first I think the guy thought Marco was going to steal the mangos, but soon they were chatting and the guy gave Marco a free mango.

And the third would possibly be Senor Arrogante, just because with his intense focus and his amazing experience with crawling through 3rd world jungles, well, I figure we would be off the island in no time. Given that the island would be void of young beautiful Latin girls, his determination to find a wife, not to mention other reasons, would land us transportation back in no time.

There are other students who I haven’t got to know yet so I am not quite ready to send out my verdict. And so I sit and watch and wonder just who will exist on my island by the 4th and final week.

More students arrive on Monday so our game will continue. Only now I will be the one with all the secret information, the essentials of how to survive in Quepos. (Like how to ride the bus, use the ATM machine, and speak with my limited newly learned Spanish. Oh, and which of the other students that you need to pretend have been voted off the island.)