you all know i can be slightly overexcited about my little thingies, be it food, restaurants, shops, words, books, etc. i can proudly announce i have another item to be added to my long lists: ¡pura vida! this costa rican expression totally rocks. awesome doesn´t quite catch its brilliance, since it´s awesome, lovely, rockstar, amazing, sweet, thank you AND pure life ALL IN ONE!!!
ok...so that´s keeping me busy, but also the fact that from sunday onwards i´m travelling to tortuguero up north. not sure what to expect of the area, but it is supposedly amazingly beautiful and home to the most diverse population of turtles. can´t wait to get there, even tho my time in heredia was lovely! will def miss my new friends from school here now i graduated (yes, we had a lil ceremony), plus these restaurants called fresas, mambo and vishnu. plus i feel (like everyone else prob does when visiting an area) that i haven´t seen enough by far!
my host family still keeps feeding me as if i am underfed, but i´ve been much more able to have proper conversations with them. the latter adds to my experience in costa rica than i first anticipated. it is such a beautiful and peaceful country, but it obviously still has a lot of things to improve on. my host mum, for example, has a somewhat darker skin than what is apparently approved of (i honestly don´t see as much of a difference, but i know that tiny color differences are defined pretty strictly here and in other latin american countries). she apparently is black in costa rica and is therefore not as beautiful (and less worthy? appears to feel like that) than her family with a brighter skin color. her granddaughter has african features, making her (and i cannot interpret the host mum any differently unfortunately) and her hair and character much different and not as nice as that of ´normal costa ricans´, whatever that may be...
i would love to know much more about their ideas of what kind of country costa rica is supposed to be and what costa ricans are supposed to look like. it says so much about the social structure of a society, how it draws its social and cultural lines and how it discriminates between its people. how does this affect the chances people get (my costa rican sisters are all of lighter skin tone and really succesful, but that could be because of government policy wanting to develop through education and economic sustainable development). i am happy to have had a chance to get to know a costa rican family and would very much go back here or to a less developed country in latin america to experience more the peoples of a country. i sincerely hope that during my travels i will not only see the amazing sightings of this country, but will encounter more costa ricans off the tourist path. let´s wait and see...
