Gin and Soda

It’s amazing how much a CLEAN HOUSE can change your whole outlook on life. My new house freaking rocks, and it’s clean and more “upper class” for Costa Rica. Now, you have to understand, housing to Costa Ricans is solely a necessity to stay out of the rain, to have a place to keep your stuff and eat and sleep. And along that idea, Costa Ricans don’t care much about wealth or having a bunch of stuff or anything like us. They pretty much just live in the now, and work only enough to make sure they eat and have a “house.” Now, houses, 90% of them, are what we would consider shacks, really. They are all crude buildings made of simple plywood walls on the inside of most of them, and stucco on the outside while they paint very bright colors. And all of them, ALL of them, have bars on every window, every door, around every yard, and some with that curled up “do not enter” wiring stuff that we put around prisons and shit. They are not very large, and the ones that are truly “rich” houses are few and far between compared to the rest of this city. I will be sure to take some pictures soon of the neighborhood and post them so you can see how the places are made. All roofs are made with tin for some reason, I guess because it’s so cheap. Remember, houses are purely for necessity. Three of us went walking today and saw two very rich houses in one neighborhood and one of them was very Spanish-looking with the red roof tiles. We figured an American lived there. The house actually had a yard. Which is another point. Yards are not that big of a deal here. Most people, and again I’m meaning 90%, only have the small enclosed yards in the front and one inside. Houses with yards by our standards are maybe one in every 200 or so houses. They really just wouldn’t believe how we live.

So, my new house is much nicer in construction, though still a fire trap, as they all are, and is in a much nicer area. When we walked today we learned of the much nicer area around us than most, and found some great restaurants, an internet café, and several shopping centers that were nice. I’m only about eight blocks away from my old place, but it’s just a different world over here. My new family consists of Laura, a 36 year old accountant, her 18 year old son with some name that starts with a “D” (I only met him once), her mother. No men, and I didn’t ask why. There is another homestay person here, a Spanish teacher from Boston, but I haven’t met her yet. She’s visiting friends in the northern part of the country. I’ve got the freaking biggest room in the house in the back, with my own private bath. Outside my window is the inner patio, and outside my door is a room with a sunroof and some nice furniture. This must be the grandmother’s room when they are not renting to homestay people. It’s super clean and they are very nice. When I came back this evening, they had already emptied my trash in the bathroom, apparently clean my toilet, and done my laundry! It was all hanging outside on the indoor patio! Oh, that’s another thing, Costa Ricans rarely ever have dryers. Don’t know why. Well, maybe because they think electricity is expensive, though they pay way less for it than we do. Amarante’s rented, four bedroom house which IS on the very nice side (it actually has sheetrocked walls) had an electric bill of only $35.

So, things are looking up. I feel so much better about everything now that I’m out of that first place. I went to two other houses today where Barbara and Scott are living and I’ve definitely got the best deal now with this huge room and private bath. They were jealous. And there are four of us now that live within blocks of each other. We’ll be walking each other home now all the time.

Time for bed. Class manana.

V