Samantha Stumbles in Language Once Again!

The sun is out and time to write Life in Ticoland means that once again it is Friday. Good days, good days! This week has been somehow lost in translation with too much tripping up in language. Writing an article on the state of the roads in Costa Rica, my translation of the technical part warranted: “damage to the car’s axles, tyres, kneecaps and earrings”. Later on, I boasted about having strong arms thanks to hand weights, but accidentally saying peces and not pesas meant that I was thanking the “fish” for giving me toned musculature. Oops!

Last weekend was as gorgeous as I was hoping, spent at Villa Buena Onda, a Costa Rica rental property in Playa del Coco. Breezy, hot air blowing across two pristine pools of salt water, the weekend was effectively spent doing nothing. Driving back to San José, we stopped at a small cafe. Looking out through the window, I saw a red macaw. “Look at that!” I cried. We had stumbled upon the resting place of ten of the beautiful creatures. Swooping and diving across the open trees, not a cage in site, the macaws tried a little too hard to knock down the strongest of our men. I ran to the car!

For those somehow not in the loop, the new James Bond: Quantum of Solace film has been out in Costa Rica for almost a week. Not quite believing that I could legally see it here, ahead of its U.S. release, my boss and I engaged on a two-for-one deal resulting in a mighty $3 a head. Indeed, the film was showing and in comfy seats too. A shame they do not copy the Indian tradition of the audience standing tall to the national anthem, ahead of the screening. No, that just happens on Costa Rica’s radios – that’s right, at 7:00 a.m. en punto, every local station pauses to support the nationalist cause. Noble patria tu hermosa bandera …

I am often asked what the food is like here. Alas, I am yet to try much of the local delicacies, but last night I did get to taste Costa Rican seafood. My adopted family had prepared a paella dish, complete with just-sticky rice and succulent prawns. Stumbling upon an unknown fish, I had to run spoon-in-hand upstairs to ask Antonio if I could eat “the black bit”. Quite proud at having finally tasted something exotic, I asked him for the name. “Sam, that’s just a mussel!” he laughed. The question remains … how have I never eaten a mussel?!

Having reached the end of my first month living in Costa Rica, I decided to finally don my sports clothes and start doing something productive. Running around my neighbourhood early in the morning, the fluffy clouds having just woken up the mountains, it seems my ancient dream of running high in the mountains was finally complete. Ok, perhaps not that high and perhaps not quite running, but very content I was indeed. Having to soon move house to somewhere more polluted and further down the valley, I shall soon be back to those dreams as I trip up and off the side of indoor treadmills in indoor gyms. Vamos a ver (”let us see”) …

_____
Find out more from Samantha next Friday about ex-patriot life in Costa Rica:
“Life in TicoLand”!

This post's rating:

Related Stories

Filed under: Living on November 14th, 2008