Here I Go Again en Espaãƒâ±ol

By Anna Adami

I wake up from a nap disoriented and sweaty. The ceiling fan beats at the highest level, merely the air information technology moves is hot. My bed is covered in sand. Downstairs voices discuss the television. I roll off my dirty pink floral sheet. I throw my homework in my backpack; shove in a bathing suit between textbooks. I splash some water on my face and work up the backbone to walk downstairs.

"¿Está cansada?" my host mom asks me. Are you tired?

I answer likewise fast. "Yo tambien," I say. Me too. Because that makes sense.

Exterior the lord's day beats strong. Men call to me on the street equally I walked to school. "Que linda," they say. How lovely. "Where are you going?" "Hello?" "Sexy."

What am I doing? I recall.

I am out of my element.

I trip over my flip flop.

And then I laugh. Considering that's the fun of this. The uncomfortable. The unknown. The challenge.

I think back to my bedroom in Texas, in disarray as I prepared for a semester in Republic of costa rica. Nostalgia always seems to linger when I'g leaving. It watched me pack and hummed to my music and reminded me of everything and everyone that makes a place home. It reminded me of wide skies and familiar roads. My little blood brother, sitting in my suitcase, request if he tin can come up with me to higher. My dad bringing home boxes of donuts on Sundays. My mom listening to archetype rock in our twelve-rider van. My high school friends laughing in coffee shops, singing in cars. Information technology reminded me of Dayton, Ohio. The student neighborhood. lx Chambers Street. Hung-over mornings. Dancing for study breaks. Kayaking on the Great Miami. Living with friends that became family.

What are you lot doing? Nostalgia asked me as I packed. Yous are leaving all the people yous honey. You lot make a place your home and then y'all move.

Sometimes I call back Nostalgia's got a point.

But I've learned that anywhere can be home if you permit it.

Currently I live in Puntarenas, Costa rica. We call it the Dingy Punt. The air here sticks to our skin. The smell of fish travels with the humid breeze. Trash litters the embankment and sand muddies the water. I spend gratis days fighting with jellyfish and sunrays. Catcalls poke and prod me, send me walking fast. In that location is an abandoned lot next to my schoolhouse. It'southward inhabited by a homeless human. My get-go week here I went on a run. I nearly tripped over a dead bird rolling with the waves to shore. This place has taken some getting used to. But the sunsets brag that fifty-fifty pollution can exist cute.

Puntarenas is a proficient domicile base of operations. It'due south a small peninsula town, about six blocks broad. I tin can walk to El Centro in ten or fifteen minutes, to school in three, to the embankment in v. The Punt is a launch pad for a slew of other places. Ferries bumble in and out daily. A string of buses send united states away and back over again. The Punt moves slow, equally every beach town should. Bikes are the preferred method of transportation. The hottest hours of the solar day are reserved for siestas. I bungee cord my ten dollar hammock between palm trees and read for form. The shade has never tasted sweeter.

I alive with a host family. I have a Mami Tica and a Papi Tico, an Abuela and two intimidatingly bad donkey sisters. Both of my sisters are married, so the host blood brother-in-laws are always around likewise. On weekdays my host mom babysits a ane-yr-old named Santiago. "Niños traen felíz para la casa," my host dad says. Kids bring happiness to the home. A human with simply i hand lived in our firm for nearly a week. Once I walked downstairs at 7 a.thou. and a woman in spandex cycling gear done her coffee mug in the sink. My host mom's sisters come over for tiffin sometimes. She has eleven sisters. I have grown accustomed to semi-silent meals with strangers.

The language bulwark keeps me guessing. Spanish words swim through the air around me. I effort to catch them. Eat them. Make them mine. Miscommunication laughs at me. A couple weeks in, I came domicile for dinner at 8:15. An unwelcoming glance from my host mom triggered my nervousness. "Practice y'all know what time dinner is?" she asked me in Castilian. I panicked.

"¿Qué?" the give-and-take was a squeak.

"Seis o siete."

"¿Seis o siete?" I repeated.

"Seis o siete."

"Lo siento," I babbled in apology. "Una de mi profesores tiene un…" shit… "Un… No sé la palabra in español." I grabbed my telephone, opened Castilian Dictionary, looked upwards the word for "coming together." "United nations reuniódue north."

I haven't come habitation tardily for dinner since.

My host fam and I watch a lot of Spanish tv together. We drink café con leche in the mornings. They keep me updated on the soccer games. They giggle when I doze off watching the news or when Becky the chihuahua jumps onto my lap. My Papi has a collection of baseball hats in a drinking glass chiffonier. He'll take out a chapeau, look at it with admiration, show information technology to me with pride. The windows are curtained to keep the living room absurd, just a welcome mat of sunlight sits with Abuela between the open door and the gate. Abuela and I communicate purely in smiles. My host parents call each other "mi amor." People are e'er in and out of the firm. They are embraced with hugs, cheek kisses and smiles. They are showered with food and conversation. My host dad once brought a homeless man a common cold canteen of coke at the door. This family unit is rich in dearest.

On the weekends I pack a bag and I go. My host mom tells me "Ten cuidado." Be safe. I trade the confusion of living with a host family unit for the confusion of unreliable buses, new places and haphazard plans. I slumber on cheap hostel bunks or rocky tent floors. I am attacked by mosquitoes, cut by rocks and bruised by waterfall jumps. The wind carries my dirt covered anxiety from one shore to another. Home becomes the earth itself.

My first weekend in Costa Rica, two friends and I made a five-60 minutes expedition to Tamarindo. We constitute a hostel with half-dozen open bunk beds. We claimed 3. We went out that nighttime, drank cacique and chased the sound of reggae music. It was the kind of music I want to melt into. When we came home to the hostel, we saw surfboards propped confronting the wall in our room. Bunk mates. Nosotros woke upwardly Sabbatum to strangers in the beds around u.s..

Nosotros got in a car with these Tico strangers, collection an hour back woods and passed the solar day at two tourist-less-traveled beaches. The showtime beach: Marbella. Nosotros practically had the place to ourselves. The sand was bright white and hotter than coals. The surf was perfect; the water clear and the waves big. Luis and Carlos surfed and Jose read The Hunger Games under palm trees. I walked along the beach with Morgan and Theresa, swapping stories and gathering shells. When the sun got too hot, we swam. The cool h2o fueled our laughter. There was one bar-restaurant on the beach. We sat on wooden stools under an awning of shade. The bartenders were kind to us gringos. I got a piña colada for free.

Luis and Jose told the states we'd go to a second beach for sunset. "More beautiful than here," they said. We weren't certain how that could be. "We have to await for Carlos," they told us. We passed time under palm trees with gaps of silence betwixt stumbled Spanish words on our function, English words on theirs. Carlos emerged from amid the trees with his surfboard tucked under his arm. His eyes shined similar he institute Nirvana in the waves.

2d beach: San Juanio. I strung my camera effectually my cervix and accepted a canned Purple Light from Jose. I couldn't terminate smiling. We were chasing the dusk. I've e'er been in honey with the sky. Information technology blinks at me. It knows. It remembers me from rooftops and driveways, truck beds and gravel roads. Information technology remembers how I used to lay down, wherever I was, only to scout it. I offered the sky my agitated soul and it taught me how to breathe. When I saw my kickoff shooting star I thought the heaven was giving me a special cardinal to some hugger-mugger agreement of the universe. I've struggled to understand the universe since.

At San Juanio beach fishing boats speckled the gulf on the left. Steep hills sunbathed on the right. Silverish-black rocks jutted out from the embankment and into the h2o. Light pooled between the rocks. Information technology sparkled in the foam of crashing waves. I sat in the middle of a rock a little means out from shore. I sat engulfed in the sunset. My heart was warm, total, at home within the heaven.

"Have yous seen a shooting star?" Jose asked.

"No," I said, "Not in Costa Rica." Merely there would be fourth dimension.

Living away is taxing. People forget to tell you that. Nowhere is entirely comfortable and everything is a question. Lost is a method of navigation. I am reminded I am far from the U.Due south. when Castilian words wing over my head, fleeting every bit firecrackers. When I am told I've been eating horse meat for breakfast or I squash a scorpion with my textbook before I go to sleep. When I hitchhike in the machine of a man named Jorge who keeps machete nether the passenger seat. There is a quote from a Cuban flick that goes something forth the lines of "Los caracoles son casi perfectos." Snails are well-nigh perfect. "Porque solos único que puede vivir en extranjero, sin sentir nostalgia por su casa." Because only they alone tin can live abroad without nostalgia for their home. Snails carry domicile on their backs.

My friend Theresa traveled with me hither from Dayton. She's my become-to Partner in Crime. Absurdity follows us wherever we go. One weekend, by a fluke we concluded up in Samara. We'd hiked to the caverns in Parque Nacional Barra Honda that morning time. We'd sat in the caves and turned our headlamps off. Blackness darkness wrapped effectually. Our guide "Meditar" said, "En el corazódue north de la tierra." In the heart of the country. We sat silent, still. At peace in the darkness of the World, in the forest hiking, in the hotel puddle tucked between the shadows of mountains.

Simply by noon nosotros were in the weald of Guanacaste with nada else to practice. Our breakfast of soggy peanuts was fading fast. The bus didn't run on weekends. We stopped at a Pulperia run out of the forepart of a house. It wasn't much, simply it was everything nosotros needed. Chickens clucked around the firm and dogs lazed in the shade. We chose from slim pickings–got three loaves of staff of life, two avocados and a lycopersicon esculentum. We relished that nutrient, ate like kings. One of the women who lived in the firm came out with a plate half mode through our meal. "Comida típica," she said. She had a kind smile and shaky hands. She handed the states a plate of cornbread treats. Her hospitality gave us a surge of strength. Nosotros set off walking. The sun was hot on our shoulders and the road rocky and hilly. We were prepared to expedition to Nicoya. With a good pace, we could make information technology. Information technology would exist dark when we got there, just we could arrive. We kept up our stamina with good chat and Powerade.

Then the universe sent a sweet soul with a selection-up truck our way and we hitchhiked to Nicoya with the air current whipping through our hair. From there we caught a passenger vehicle to Samara.

The beach town of Samara was a stark dissimilarity to the rural mountains of Santa Ana. Samara hosted a sprawling expat community. White people in flowy pants dominated. People talked to us in English before Spanish. We were running low on money. Nosotros decided to camp. We pulled on our backpacks and walked along the shore of the beach. Beaches are often public property in Costa rica, and then any spot was off-white game. The heaven had faded to dark at this betoken. It sparkled with stars. The sky is infinite and the stars are old. They've seen it all. The sky sits still, patient, suspended. The stars await. They watch the world change, people change, me change.

The water was cool on our roughened feet. In that moment, there was no place I'd rather be. I didn't desire to stop walking. Could've followed that shore to the border of the globe. . Theresa looked at me and said, "I'thousand so proud of us." We searched the sky for shooting stars. "We're becoming snails."

From the corner of my eye, I saw a streak of light fall through the moonlit ceiling.

*****

Photo credits:
Snail: Dave Huth via Flickr
Hammock: Christoffer Undisclosed via Flickr
Grandpa and Boy: Pablo Contreras via Flickr
Café con Leche: Jesús Dehesa via Flickr
Woman in Puntarenas: nateClicks via Flickr
Woman with Costa Rican Children: Rebecca Garcia via Flickr
Samara: Peter Wilton via Flickr

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Source: https://wanderlustandlipstick.com/wander-tales/central-america/home-is-a-state-of-being-studying-abroad-in-costa-rica/

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