Cultural Experiences

Even though we have been living in Costa Rica for nearly 6 months now, we continue to have "cultural" experiences weekly. Last Sunday was Presidential election day. Weeks leading up to the big day you would see cars driving by with flags hanging out their window, honking their horn. Each candidate had specific colors and banners to display those colors. As cars drove by honking, those in support of the same candidate would respond back with a honk. On election day itself it was like a city wide celebration. As we were walking to a fellow student's house to watch the superbowl (a very north american thing to do by the way) we came across several groups gathered on the sidewalks with their lawn chairs and their banners. The number of cars honking and waving flags had increased exponentially and there were now people on the sidewalk to respond back. It was like a big parade! The results: Costa Ricans voted in their first woman President!

By the way, we watched the superbowl in the back yard of our friends house with the game projected onto a sheet they hung onto their house. Having an outdoor picnic and watching the superbowl, that's a combination we haven't done before!

Sunday February 7th was also our host mom's birthday, but since election day is a big deal and all encompassing, we celebrated on Saturday night with pizza and cake. It turned out well that we wanted to treat for pizza because there hadn't been water all day long so she wasn't able to cook supper anyway. Another common occurance, no water for a period of time due to various reasons.

Her gift from us was also a new cultural discovery. Did you know they make covers for your clothes washer and dryer? Kind of like a toaster cover only bigger. She told us several months ago that she had been looking for covers for her washer and dryer to keep them dust free and clean because they are very valuable to her. They don't take those kind of things for granted here. So I had been keeping an eye out for them, and happened to see some in an Avon catalog, of all places, that an employee at the school had. She was thrilled and later took us into the basement to show them off!


Another cultural thing for the week. Norman has been out and about the neighborhood practicing his spanish and has met lots of neighbors. He has been visiting with an older gentleman who lives on our route to school a couple blocks from our house. His grown son was there one day and they invited us to dinner for this past Monday night. I was a little nervous about this adventure. What do we bring? And most importantly when do we go? It is cultural to show up at least 15 minutes later than the time you are invited. We may have done that in the states when visiting friends but not usually on purpose. So after talking to Norman's tutor we decided to get there just a little after the appointed 7:00 and we brought along pop and an appetizer. We knocked on the door and the dad answered. We could see his wife sleeping in a chair behind him. They didn't look like they were expecting company at all, especially not for supper! He informed us that his son had to work late and wanted us to come the next week instead. Okay, no problem. So here we are all dressed up and no where to go! :-) We returned home and found some supper still left on the stove, so we had spaghetti and appetizers for supper. Take 2 is this monday. We will see how the 2nd try goes. Now we have to figure out what to take again. Hmmmmm, we'll see what we come up with! :-)

So there are our cultural experiences for the week. I'll save the ant stories for another day. They are unbelievable here in Costa Rica!