Once upon a time Costa Ricans who lived in the mountains would grow coffee and, once it was harvested, they would take it to see in ox-carts. Eventually somebody decided to paint their wooden cart; this painting grew into a tradition. Sarchí is famous for its painted ox-carts, one of which is supposed to be [...]
I just learned how to say ‘culture shock’ in Spanish this morning, thus the title.
My favorite new words, which I think I forgot to mention earlier are words for speed bumps: ‘muertos’ or ‘policia durmiente’.
I’m struggling through my thinking on the relationship between culture and language, so this may not be very organized.
Some things I [...]
We are starting to get the fact that every window and door has bars and every house has a high fence. If you ask the ordinary person, they will tell you it has to do with robbery….and that, I’m sure, is true. However, the climate is a factor as well. In this sort of climate [...]
The taxi meter was interesting. I knew that the decimal point worked like a comma, so I thought I was going to pay 60,000 colones, which, at an exchange rate of 500 colones to the dollar (more or less) was pretty high. But no, it was 6,000 colones. The taxi driver was somebody the hotel [...]
The church building was built, apparently as a Methodist church building in 1928. I did not see any evidence of missionary work…meaning that it looked like a self-sustaining church. It was fairly large- I think over a hundred people were in the service.
Everything here is quite different from the US, the church service was a [...]
The ads that feature people in the newspaper have struck me because the people all look very European. Costa Rica is one of the areas where indigenous peoples were largely wiped out by the Conquistadores, but just about everyone has dark hair and eyes.
Another interesting thing is the manner of advertising. While in the hotel [...]
A pick-up truck approaches an intersection. The young adolescent boy in back notices the police officer and immediately ducks down. The truck turns left through the intersection as the police office walks past the truck in the opposite direction. The kid sits back up with a grin and looks back…
Perhaps the officer was distracted by [...]
I ended up sitting next to a couple from the Reformed Christian Church. We talked all the way here, which was good because we sat on the tarmac a LONG time because of the thunderstorms in Atlanta.
My hotel room is scrupulously clean and quite nice, but when I went to pull the curtains shut I [...]
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