boring days, happy days and being attacked by a cow.

Day 145, el Jueves 6 deciembre 2012 23:06

The worst days so far.

As the title says, these were the worst days so far, nothing bad happened, bad thing that happened is that nothing happened. No it were not the days that I was changing host family nor the days that I felt stuck in translation. In those days something actually happened, these thing were bad but the bad things learn you something and that is exactly the reason the go on an exchange; to learn. 

The first day of doing nothing I enjoyed the rest and piece, a moment for myself to relax and get everything together, the second day I got bored but today, today I just went crazy of boredom. My friends are busy, well most of them. I need to stop lying to myself and just fucking call them, I have to get out of the house. I will go crazy here, I am wasting my time.

But it is true, most friendships here are different, they don’t feel that natural and sometimes even forced. I thought that I would have really good friendships after 4,5 months here but it doesn’t seem to be that way. It is even friendship which is different here, everything is different every single thing, name it and it is different. Everybody here had a life before I came here and I had mine. But then I came here and everything changed for them, but mostly for me; I think I’m still searching for the new me, who am I? In the meantime my paused life in The Netherlands is changing but without me, damn going back home will be the weirdest thing ever.

I spent a lot of time on the internet searching all kinds of stuff about the Netherlands. First a read all the posts on 9gag about the Netherlands, after that just the internet. I am really proud of my country, I am not homesick and don’t want to go home but I do miss my country. The thing I probably miss the most is just simply the normality. In the Netherlands I know about everything, I know the how people think, what I can and can’t do and what is normal and what normal. Here I learnt those things and sometimes you learn the wrong thing, also a side effect of changing families.

But I still love my life, I will always love my life here, even though I will not love every moment I will always remember the good times and right now I just have to look forward, there are 2 holiday across Costa Rica planned within the next 15 days, that’ll be great.

I just had to write down these feelings, also pushed by anger, or more by disappointment because of the fact that I should have had this internship this week. Writing down or talking about something really helps, glad I have my blog and some incredible friends.

Day 147, el Sabado 8 de Deciembre 2012 12:08

Very extremely happy!!

Being bored and going a bit crazy of that completely changed to happiness when my host family came back yesterday. I noticed that I actually missed them a bit! They were back when I came back from taekwondo and I directly joined the dinner table to eat. Over dinner we spoke about all the things they bought and had done. This mainly just was shopping in dirty and tiny stores at the border.

Now comes the good part, they bought a lot of Christmas presents! They bought me: 2 shorts, 3 shirts, slippers and epic Nikes! All of these divided over my host dad, mom and aunt. It made me so happy! Not the gifts them self but just the fact that they thought about me! I will buy them epic Christmas gifts as well. But I got to find a good day for that since the coming days will be very busy, por dicha! Por dicha are Costa Rican words without translation, it means something like: luckily, happily something like that. An example:

-How are you?

-I’m fine and you?

- I’m fine as well,

-          Por Dicha!

Something like that :p

The taekwondo practice was very cool as well, most of the people were early so we just played a bit of soccer and we were just kidding and stuff. They really are my friends now as well!

Day 148,  el Domingo 9 de Deciembre 2012 22:48

Crazy cow attack

Saturday was a chill day. I spent a lot of time in the house with my family, helping cleaning, cooking and just talking over coffee. It felt really good, and my boredom is totally over! In the night me and my hostbro went to a festival in the park; the enlightening of the Christmas tree. This event wasn’t even close to the one we have in Gouda. There was an ugly fake Christmas tree which was horribly decorated. At the moment of enlightening all the lights in the park went off and the lights of the tree were turned on. That was a kind of cool moment. My host bro went on with his girlfriend and I found some friends a met some day. There also was another Japanese girl who is living in Orotina now. First Orotina was ‘my’ village, but now there are 6 exchange students, but I’m very glad they don’t go to my school. It doesn’t sound like a nice thing to say but it is just how I feel about it. So I spend the evening with these friends chilling in the park and eating ice cream.

Today we woke up, ate breakfast and went to Desmonte to my uncle. First we talked with my uncle and aunt a bit and later we watched James Bond, Skyfall; nice movie by the way! During the day more family members came, some went away after a while others stayed. I put up a small pool for my little hostbrother and played a bit with the water tube with him. It was a fun thing to do, but it is just everything the other way around, instead of me in the pool and my big brother splashing me with water it is now me splashing the water with somebody else in the pool, that’s still kind of weird to me. It’s not that I don’t like it, but it is more that I still need to get used to it and I still need to figure out the role of big brother exactly; which is even harder with him not being my real little brother.

In the meantime a lot of uncles and aunts came. One uncle brought meat of a whole sheep, and around 25 fish. We always eat a lot there, so today it was almost a half sheep, 25 fish a lot of Patacones and 5 baquettes; always accompanied with rice and beans. Also we drank a total of 15 liters of Coca-Cola, like I said before the Costa Ricans love Coca-Cola.

We went for a small walk down the hill into the nature. The walk didn’t was that far but I really liked it, I cut of a branch with the machete I brought and made a walking stick of it; like I always used to do when I went on holidays with my family in The Netherlands. Every Costa Rican family has at least 1 machete by the way, that’s because almost every Costa Rican has a farm, and at farms there are snakes and snakes have to be killed with machetes. So I aslo brought this machete to kill possible snakes. We didn’t see any snakes though. On our way back we took some photos and chopped of some sugar cane, and ate those. That’s something else I love about Costa Rican, just eating straight from the nature!

In the afternoon we were cooking outside as always. I was making patacones with my aunt while there suddenly  a cow came running down the mountain straight towards us. And it did, it almost ran into the house but it fell, it got up and started a fight with my uncle, he grabbed the machete to defend himself and led the cow away from all the people; the grandmother and my little brother were there so it was pretty dangerous, and this cow really was into a fight and pretty damn crazy! The cow tried to jump over a fence to the neighbor’s house. There it had no way to go. Then the cowboys we lost the cow came, and they were the most stereotype cowboys you can imagine: cowboy had, heeled boots, jeans with a shirt into and a big belt and of course, lassoes! They seemed a bit drunk but they managed to get the cow the jump back over the fence and then get it with their lassoes and lock it up. It all happened really fast but it was a pretty cool experience!

Furthermore we danced a bit of salsa, we watched another movie and we cooked and ate more and more. I thought about the fact that I don’t have that many friends here but today I realized that I have something else, a huge second family that loves me.