That literally translates to “Pure life, man!” in English and it´s the most common greeting in Costa Rica. “¿Como está?” “¡Pura vida, mae!”

Here´s a bit of what I wrote earlier about our time in Costa Rica…

So I should probably get you guys caught up on what’s been going on since I arrived in Costa Rica. Sorry about the serious lack of updates. We had 8 hours of training each weekday: 4 hours of Spanish, 1.5 hours of engineering lecture from an extremely experienced South African engineer named Rob Dickinson who’s inspected and fixed hospital equipment all around the world from China to Kenya, and 2.5 hours of engineering lab where we build and fix model circuits that are typically found in medical equipment. It’s been great, but add all those hours to the fact that the internet café is pretty far from our homestay and the result is delinquent blog posts. Oops. This is going to be more of a reflection on the past month, haha.

The first thing I want to say about Costa Rica is that it is absolutely beautiful. Everything grows here. I’m serious. Everything. There are flowers everywhere of every color and variety, flowers that I’ve never seen before. In the little courtyard of our school, two gigantic rose bushes erupt in enormous pink roses, while lush green bushes with red blossoms sprawl underneath. And why shouldn’t things grow here? Each day starts with radiant sunshine faithfully turning into showers in the afternoon that generally let up by sunset. The rainforests we visited at Monte Verde and Arenal were alive with sounds of birds, insects, and dripping water, whether from the sky or little waterfalls, a unique mixture of sounds that soothes the senses yet excites the imagination.

The second thing that struck me was the normal business hours. Even though we’re on Mountain Time right now (-2:00 hours), we are still forced to act as if we were still on the East Coast. Because we’re further south and east than usual, the sun rises and sets earlier, making everyone shift their schedules earlier. The first few days we got up at 5:30am to get to school at 8:00am and the sun sets by 6:00pm. Everyone goes to bed by 10:00pm. Hopefully I can bring these good habits back home with me.

Cecilia, our host mom, made us very comfortable. She’s a very joyful lady and our homestay was usually filled with laughter. We laughed a whole evening when she and her daughters taught us the word “guacala,” which means “disgusting.” Arlene (27ish, the older daughter who studies dentistry) got really excited when she got home that night to find that Cecilia had bought her favorite milk. She was so happy that she was literally jumping up and down. After Arlene had poured herself some, Cecilia poured me some, too, to try. It was white with curdles and tasted really sour, so I sipped a bit, tried not to pucker, and said it was “interesante” as Cecilia smiled and went back to making dinner. Not sure if this was a common Costa Rican treat, I turned and asked Kenly (19, the younger daughter still in school who teaches a dance class on Saturdays) if she liked it. Kenly quickly shook her head and said, “No, es guacala!” And that’s how I learned how to say “gross” is Costa Rican Spanish. Kenly broke out laughing and immediately told Cecilia what just happened, which sent both Cecilia and Arlene into hilarious laughter as I tried to explain, “No no, I’ve just never tried it before…it’s just different…okay, it’s kinda gross, haha.”