Yo quiero aprender Español

“The more you let yourself be distracted from where you are going, the more you are the person that you are. It's not so much like getting lost as it is like getting found.” – William Stafford

Aside from figuring out how to open the door and avoid STD’s at the farmacia, my only “job” on Sunday was to determine the location of my Spanish school, as I had to be there by 8:30 Monday morning. While this should seem like a very simple process, as you have probably learned from this blog, things aren’t as easy in Costa Rica as they are in the States. At least not for me.

One of the problems with determining the location of a place in Quepos is that people/businesses in Costa Rica don’t have mailboxes, which, in this case, rules out the ability to have a “physical address.” Come to think of it, I haven’t seen a single street sign here. I am not even sure the streets have names; though the names of the streets would surely be in Spanish and of little use to me at this point anyway.

This leads me to a story about a traveling dilemma of someone I know well. While I will not name him (as I did not get his permission to tell this story), I will give you a hint about his identity by telling you that he might be the father of my sister’s children. When I say “might,” I am not trying to imply that there could possibly be another father (if you saw these kids next to their Dad you would have no doubt), I am simply trying to be subtle with my hint. Clearly subtlety is not my strong suit. This should come as no surprise to anyone.

Anyway, this man, who I will call Tony (because that is his name), was in Moscow for business during a very cold time of year (which based on my limited knowledge of Russian weather means that it could have been absolutely any time during the year). During this trip he had some free time and decided to venture out one day, taking the subway to do so. As he doesn’t speak Russian, he came up with a great plan to ensure he would easily find his way back to his hotel; he memorized the Russian word on the sign at his subway stop (which I am sure looked something like this ЛЕНИЙ) and proceeded on his way.

After he made his way around Moscow (or went to the local watering hole, not really sure), he got back on the subway to go home. While on the train, he was watching for his “sign,” was pleased with himself when he saw it, and got of the train. I can understand his pleasure as I am sure that memorizing a sign with symbols/letters which you do not know, and remembering said symbols/letters after spending the afternoon at the watering hole, is not an easy thing to do. However, as is often the case with a good plan, this one had a flaw.

Upon his exit from the train he realized he was in the wrong place, so he got back on the train and headed to the next stop, where he again saw the sign he had memorized. As occurred at the previous stop, he got off the train to realize he was in the wrong place. After this went on for a few stops, he sadly realized the flaw in his plan was that he had memorized the word for “platform” which happened to be at every station. Not such useful memorization after all. “E” for effort. “F” for flaw. Luckily for me, I am not in Russia and while the words here are in a language I don’t understand, at least the letters are the same. Though I don’t seem to be fairing any better than him.

As there are seemingly no addresses or street names in this town (and possibly in all of Costa Rica), my usual method of getting my directions from Map Quest was not going to work. Damn. So I went with what seemed like the most logical next step, to ask my “neighbors” who live here year round.

I first asked Richard (the property manager), who is very kind and helpful, but he didn’t know. I tried knocking on Marianna’s door (an Argentinean woman who has lived here for years), but found out she was out of town. I had even previously asked a couple of Ticans who were at Barba Roja the night I watched the sunset. When I asked them if they knew where Escuela D’Amore was, they asked if I was going to the school down by the soccer field… to which I wanted to respond “If I knew that I wouldn’t be asking you where the school was!” Did they think that was my pick up line? Come on, I am much smoother than that… “Usted es medico?”

After finding out Marianna was out of town, I walked over to the pool to see if there was anyone there who might know. There were 2 people at the pool who said they were pretty sure my school was down by the Tulimir property and that all I needed to do was catch the bus heading towards Manuel Antonio Park and tell the bus driver I needed “escuela.” I asked if the school was close enough to walk as I thought a little more exercise would do me good, but they said it was a couple miles away, mostly up hill and dangerous. Good point. Walking along the side of the road here can be equated to being pushed off the Golden Gate Bridge, while death is not guaranteed, it is likely. The Ticans may stop to pick up a sloth, but they will not slow down to avoid killing someone, though they are not above slowing down to “cat call” or honk as they drive by.

I went to bed early on Sunday night in preparation for my “big day,” and awoke early the next morning to work out and get ready for school. I got up at 5:45 as I wanted to have plenty of time workout, eat breakfast, take a shower and find the school. Clearly I was giving myself a significant window in case of error. For those of you who know me well, you know that there is nothing I hate more than being late (not exactly true, there are things I hate more, like GW being President and people touching me with their feet… but I really don’t like to be late). And based on my previous traveling incidences and challenging Costa Rican experiences, I decided to err on the side of being early. Turns out I made the right choice.

I packed up my backpack grabbed my bottle of water (don’t want to be without fluids as I am trying to avoid having to go see Dr. Salas for dehydration, or anything else for that matter) and headed to the bus stop. The buses here run “every 20 minutes” however there is no bus schedule and the “every 20 minutes” is a very loosely based timeframe which I will refer to as “Tican Time,” meaning the bus will get there whenever the hell it wants to get there. I left my house at 7:15 with my backpack on and headed to the bus stop, half expecting my Mother to be waiting with a camera to take a picture of my first day of school. It then dawned on me the significance of the little piece of paper our Mothers used to pin to our shirts on the first day of school which said our name, our bus number and our teacher’s name. This is really very valuable information to have when taking a bus (or any form of public transportation) that I took for granted growing up.

As my Mother was not here to pin a slip of paper to my shirt outlining who I was and where I needed to go, I was forced to once again make a shotty attempt at communicating in Spanish. I sat at the bus stop (for more than 20 minutes I might add) and continuously rehearsed what I was going to say to the bus driver once he arrived. However when I got on the bus I fumbled and mispronounced escuela. The bus driver corrected me and nodded, possibly indicating he would tell me when it was time for me to get off the bus. Note I said possibly. As he was clearly not the friendliest of drivers, and the only indication I had that he might help me was a slight nod of the head (I am using the term nod generously, it might have actually been a mild twitch that was a reaction to an untreatable STD), I decided that I had to watch like a hawk out the window in hopes of seeing the school. Usually this would have put me in a small panic, but the thing about having only one road in between Quepos and Manuel Antonio is that there are only two directions the bus can go, thus preventing me from really getting lost. I figured the worst case scenario here is that I would miss my stop in which case I would just keep on riding, which after a short time, would bring me back my stop again.

That is what I thought was the worst case scenario…

I am sure it comes as no surprise to you that the buses here are not particularly new or high tech. As it turned out that morning, I stepped onto one of the older busses, and after riding it for about 30 seconds I was not convinced this bus had the engine power to get us up the hills. As we rounded the corner to go up a rather steep hill, the bus literally stopped moving. Now, I would like to point out, the driver’s foot was not on the brake, the bus was simply failing to move forward as it seemed to be in too high of a gear to maintain forward momentum. When I say too high of a gear, I would like you to know the bus was only in 2nd gear. Not very comforting.

I was trying to remain calm, and was looking around me to see if any of the other passengers were registering any level of panic, when I realized that instead of switching gears, thus preventing my impending death, the bus driver decided to change the radio station. EEHHMM, excuse me, Mr. Bus Driver, even with my limited exposure to Costa Rican American radio stations, I feel confident that I can guarantee in another minute and a half, a new Madonna song will come on the radio (and by new I mean different Madonna song from the 80’s), if you could kindly pop that sucker into 1st gear, that would really help to prevent me from losing my shit. The only thing currently preventing me from losing my shit was that while we weren’t moving forward, we also weren’t moving backwards, though I was convinced we would at any second. Luckily, right before that happened, the driver found a Jackson 5 song that seemed to suit his needs, popped the bus into 1st gear and we began to slowly chug up the hill. While Michael was singing “I want you back” I was repeating the mantra “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can” in hopes that my positive affirmations would help get us to safety.

At the next stop, a kind woman across from me got my attention and said something in Spanish that I didn’t understand, however she pointed, indicating that it was time for me to get off the bus. Thank God.

I got off the bus and walked only a few steps before realizing I had gotten off the bus at the COSI School (another immersion school), which was not the school I had signed up nor paid for (but was across the street from the soccer fields). While I realized this before the bus had driven away, I made the executive decision to find my school on foot. Although I know the roads are dangerous, I figured at this point my death by bus/walk was at even odds.

I walked for a short way when I came to a sign that said “Escuela D’Amore.” Hooray, I found it. So I walked inside and introduced myself, just to find out that this school was the “Academia” and that the school I needed was back in the opposite direction. Hmm. I then asked which bus stop I needed, to which the man replied “Mono Azul.”

Mono Azul (the blue monkey) is a hotel and restaurant….right across the street from my driveway….which is where I caught the bus to begin this journey.

So I crossed the street to wait for the bus going in the opposite direction, to take me right back to my place of origin. That is an hour of my life I will never get back. Coincidentally I was picked up by the same bus driver who dropped me off 100 yards back approximately 15 minutes before. He was perplexed when I got back on the bus but I just gave him 110 colones, smiled and took my seat. Some things are better left unsaid, especially when you don’t speak the language.

The good news is that the school is approximately 2 New York City blocks from my front door, so I can leave my house by 8:15 and arrive at la escuela with 5 minutes to spare. And while I have to walk down the main road to get there, I now feel as though my chances of being hit by a car are surprisingly less than being in a bus that rolls backwards off a cliff.