Hey hey, it´s about five and I´m heading home for dinner here in a bit, lets all hope for fried bananas. I´ve been emailing back and forth with Andrea down in Santiago, looks like it won´t be too hard to find a place to stay when I land early in January. I´m really pumped about going, looking forward to those weekend trips into Argentina and the trip down to Pablo Neruda´s house in southern Chile, he´s this rad poet who won the nobel prize a while back. I´m gonna miss my host mom, especially her cooking, but she told me this morning that she´s gonna write down all her vegan recipes for me so I can eat tico no matter where I´m living. And then she called me an hijueputa for leaving Costa Rica. She´s a good lady, hopefully I´ll be able to share her food with everyone.
My friend Mike and I cruised the thrift stores earlier and I found possibly the most offensive shirt ever. It´s something I don´t think I could wear, but I think I might pick it up anyway in case I ever find someone who might like it. It has to do with Monica Lewinsky, and that´s all I´ll tell you. Mike found this bright green shirt that said in big iron on white letters, ´I´M WITH HO´ and an arrow pointing to the left. God bless the Costa Rican thrift stores. I even found a handsome shirt to wear to the bar tonight, so I´m stoked.
Working on a trip to Nicaragua this coming weekend since things didn´t pan out last weekend. I´d kinda like to be back on Sunday though since the local soccer club is playing at the stadium fifteen minutes on foot from my house. The games here are great, the people get so into it. Watching little old ladies yell ´Fue Puta!´ at the players is an enlightening experience. Our team sucks, too, and it´s always fun to root for teams that suck.
Well, the Cuba countdown continues and I´m very proud of being able to call myself a blockade runner. The other fun part is going to be when I come back to the states and try to make it through customs with my beautiful Cuban guitar that I´ll probably spend a day or two hunting for in La Habana. I want an acoustic bass, too, but we´ll see. Everybody think good thoughts for me on the twelf of december as I soar through the skies towards Havana on Cubana airlines, the airline with the highest passenger to fatality rate in the world. I remember being really young on flights with my family and giggling like a schoolgirl whenever we hit really bad turbulence. Now that I´m older and understand the risk, I´ll probably sing Buddy Holly songs instead.
Oh yea, I went to the Mall Cariari about 30 minutes outside of Heredia yesterday. It´s the first time I´ve been in a mall since I left, which was weird, but the place was packed with ticos so the shock wasn´t too bad. 3 friends and I were taking my friend Emma´s host brother, this tico hellion of ten, to see Harry Potter in spanish. All the shows were sold out for the next four hours, so I was saved from was I realized was a mistake as soon as I told my friend Austin that yes, I would go. There were a couple cd stores and I stumbled across a couple cds that I have on vinyl sitting in boxes at my folks place like Blood Money by Tom Waits, man I´d give a lot to hear Starvin In The Belly Of A Whale right now but those import prices on cds are ridiculous. There´s another big mall called the Multiplaza in one of the suburbs of San Jose called Escazu that I don´t really want to go to but there´s supposed to be a store with good camping supplies and I need a tent for new years. This is my first winter holiday time outside the states, it´s not so bad because the people here are so friendly and cheerful about it. Maybe it´s like how christmas was in the US fifty years ago before buying stuff became more important than enjoying each other´s company. My host mom is gonna take me to an old folks home on christmas day to visit old people, for those who know me this is right up my alley. It´s also the second christmas in a row that I´ll have spent in an old folks home, the only difference is that this time I´m not getting paid overtime. It´s gonna be really neat and I´m stoked on being able to ask old ticos about what Costa Rica was like before McDonalds cut down almost all the fucking trees for pasture land. Well, this is a long enough addition, gonna go git me some eats.
Posted by steve at December 2, 2002 05:23 PM