The Costa Rican Version of "Where the Boys Are"

The movie theme has continued, changing overnight from “Survivor” to a remake of “Where the Boys Are” with lots of potential leading actors trying out for the part. There are so many stories that I feel a big need to wear my wedding ring around my neck like a high school class ring. I cannot write about these stories, because to tell them would be breaking the fundamental laws of Costa Rica, possibly I would be arrested for such an unethical task What happens in Costa Rica, stays in Costa Rica. But I am happy to say that the few of us who have arrived married will be returning guilt-free. Or at least, to my knowledge and absolutely in my case, which I am sure my husband will be happy to hear. However, I do capitalize on this situation because there are simply too many Tico (local) boys with not enough Gringo girls to go around. The Tico boys flock to the beach and this gives me a great opportunity to corner them and torture them with my newly acquired Spanish. They are nice to me because they think that when the new students show up on Monday, that I will introduce them immediately and it will increase their chances to find a Gringo girl that they can drag off to the beach for some Latin dancing. Or possibly they think my young beautiful daughter will show up any minute, a perfect “blond and beautiful” 16-year old. (They tell me that my Spanish is very good which makes laugh and blush. And then I stop and think about their motives. Hmmm.) My Spanish has progressed in a painful speed, which should not imply slowly but rather simply that I have worked hard to make it happen and have suffered from daily headaches which I hope is not the beginning of Dengi Fever, a very serious problem here in Queps. For the most part, I am fine with ordering food, getting easy directions, and giving out my name. I have even moved on to having real conversations that as long as I start, I might have a chance of finishing. (If they start them, I have no idea what we are talking about and so it takes a while for me to access the right rolodex of Spanish words in my brain. Are we talking sports or the laws of physics? And if we are talking the laws of physics, I might have a rolodex that is altogether blank!) The hard part is not so much SPEAKING Spanish, but UNDERSTANDING it. It’s like I wish I could give them MY LIMITED version of the Spanish dictionary, all the words that I have painfully managed to memorize, and then they could use them and only them. Like for example, my tico mother would only be able to call all the kitchen appliances, “cosas” or “things” because then I would perfectly understand. Like for example she might say: I take the chicken out of the thing, and I prepare it, and I put it in the other thing. (She would just point while she was using the word THING.) Why yes, I could understand that sentence, probably in FULL SPEED Spanish with her only repeating maybe once. But instead I imagine, you know because I am not exactly sure, that she says, “I took (notice the change to past tense verbs here) the chicken out of the oven, I cleaned out all the internals of the chicken, deboned it, put herbs and garlic on it, and then put it in the oven for 30 minutes. I had to check it constantly because the oven temperature is not very predictable. You know, the electricity here is a bit unpredictable!” I just don’t stand a chance…. When she is done, I think we are either talking about chicken farming in Costa Rica, and maybe she has just asked me how much an uncooked chicken costs in the US or maybe that she thinks the power is going to go out and I better dash off and take a shower right now. Both produce a reaction that tells her loud and clear that I am AGAIN clueless! This is week 2 of 4 for me and I am hoping that by week 4 we might have a full speed conversation. That she won’t have time to go to the bathroom while I try to remember how to conjugate a verb for anything in past tense. I still have high hopes to progress well beyond where I am at. And who knows, maybe one day I won’t have a splitting headache