March 8, San Jose: International Day of the Woman

The plan, extracted from H during the long dinner last night, is for him to come by the hotel on his way to CENAC around 11 or 12. There, I will calmly work with technology and rehearse in the space for a couple hours before the start of the workshop. I’m still translating like crazy—a process which requires internet, so not only am I not surprised when H doesn’t appear at 11 or 12, I’m not disappointed either. But I know I’ll have to get myself there by 2PM, so at 1:15 I print my notes in the hotel lobby and ask for directions to CENAC.

Once there, I realize it is the same cultural center I came to with Tattiana and Micheala the other day—I just hadn’t known the acronym. I find H racing around an open lobby, A few of Megan’s pictures have been propped along a piece of molding on the wall, and Megan and Michaela are standing near them looking perplexed.

“Ah Indy!” H says, and before I can ask any questions he pushes me to Vali and a woman I hadn’t yet met, who seems to work for the center. “You need to listen to what she says,” he tells me, and runs off in the direction of the attached theatre.

The woman then tearfully tells Vali how much she enjoyed the last night’s performance, and how much it meant to her. It is touching, rather personal, and completely awkward for me to be listening to, as it has nothing to do with me.

I sidle away and find Horacio again. “Where should I be?”

“I have a situation, he says, stressing the last word.”

He speaks to another woman, who leads me out of the lobby and up some stairs. She show me my “room”—an open air area lunch area with round cement tables and benches. No projector. No whiteboard. Either would be difficult, understandably, since there are no walls.

I explain to the woman about the DVD player and the whiteboard. She sees another woman and talks to her. The three of us wander and end up at an office called “VideoTeca.” That sound promising, but it is locked and empty. We go to another office to enquire, and are informed that the lady who works there has just returned. I don’t know how the person in the second office knows this, but we go back, and indeed the employee is in her little office.

Upon hearing what I need, she turns and pulls open a sliding door behind her, revealing a room with rows of chair, and a projector hanging from the ceiling. Perfect.

“Whiteboard?” I ask hopefully.

She thinks then points to a stack of boards in the office, one of which is a white board.

It has no mounting or stand, so I pull a table over the wall, prop it up and start playing with the AV equipment. Only one of the remote controls has batteries, so it takes some swapping, but both my DVD’s play. Things are definitely looking up.

I arrange my notes, and write the title of the lecture and my name on the board, and wait for my participants to arrive.

No one.

At 2:30, I wonder if my location has been passed back to Horacio and Amber. I’d heard H tell Amber she should announce to the incoming people where the workshops were, but the area below is rather chaotic—how will they know to approach her? Does she have a sign of some sort?

I go down to investigate and found H on stage talking to the half-shell amphitheatre about international day of the woman. He sees me and calls me to the stage. He made a big deal of introducing me, says something about workshops and then says some other things in Spanish as I stand awkwardly on the stage. Blah blah Spanish blah. Then he shoves the microphone in my face. I have no idea what would make sense to say since I’m not sure what he’s just said, but figure it can’t help to tell people where the workshop is,

“En la oficina de videoteca en Segundo piso.” I supply. I hand the microphone back. If he expects me to say anything inspirational about the spirit of the wild woman, it’s not going to happen.

He adds “En vente minutos.” Twenty minutes.

So we’re starting at three, now. That’s not bad.

I’m trying to figure out the best way to sneak off stage when he turns to me and asks in English… “Do you want to do a workshop on auto-care?”

He has mentioned this before—and I thinks he means self-care. But I’m not exactly sure what that means. He had at one point asked if if I would have coffee with two other cancer survivors while I was here, to which I of course said, yes, but I haven’t prepared in any way to give a workshop—and I haven’t translated any statements about nutrition, juicing and exercise. Plus, at this moment, I’m supposed to be giving the workshop I have been preparing for over a month. My eyes narrow. “When and where would that be?”

He shakes his head. “Nevermind.”

He resumes talking to the audience and I stalk off the stage, not caring if it’s timed with anything he’s saying. I find Amber. She’s too busy rushing around doing multiple tasks to be announcing anything to anyone. I ran into Runcel, the production designer. He is from Costa Rica, but has lived for ten years in German, and has traveled from Germany for the festival. He tells me that this morning he traveled to a distant suburb for one of his workshops only to have H call him after he had already arrived to say that there were no participants.

“Here is Costa Rica, I know the chances for anything are only fifty-fifty,” he gesture with his hands to show the uncertainty, “Still, it is disappointing… Maybe you could make some signs.” I corral poor Amber and we make a couple of signs, to put at the CENAC entrance and the door of the Videoteca office, but in my heart, I’ve already given up.

But then, at 3 o clock, a woman actually showed up! Thrilling. I chat with her and Amber—whom Horacio has sent to be my translator, more because she’s here than because she’s equipped for the job—but that’s okay. Her presence is comforting. I’m ready. My video clips are cued, my translation is passable, and now apparently, I will have a class as well.

Fifteen minutes pass. No one else arrives.

Feeling sorry for the woman who has been waiting, I get started. I ask my first question: “Why do we go to the movies?”

My one woman audience blows me away with her thoughtful answer. She talks about seeing other worlds, and other people’s lives and learning about humanity. When I launched into structure, she is super-intelligent. Amber seems interested too. After another fifteen minutes, another three women wander in, as well as a photographer who seems to be listening. I show them the first sequence of Legally Blonde, and everyone laughs and seems to be enjoying themselves. For a few, brief, shining moments, it’s like a real workshop. But after half and hour, the three women have to go—we’d given no indication how long this workshop would be. I talk until after 4:30 with my remaining two participants until the woman had to go, and then it’s over.

March 7, 2011 - San Jose

Monday morning--the day of the "big gala," I wake early to make a trip to the nearest ICE office. Pronounced “ee-say,” the letters are an acronym for I’m not sure what, but they are the people who handle both telecommunications and electricity. The address I’ve found on the internet turns out to be outdated, but the new location is also within in walking distance. My research has indicated it will be fairly simple to buy a sim card with pre-paid minutes if I have an unlocked GSM phone, and this happily turns out to be true. By nine-thirty I have a local phone number and a hundred minutes, and am feeling very productive and super-satisfied with myself for having bought the phone on E-bay before I left the states.

I make my way to the theatre--which is a gorgeous old building.

I walk back past the stage, where lights are being focused, and downstairs to find the production office --a printer and a lap-top computer set up in one of the dressing rooms. I’m introduced to Silvia—who does indeed speak very good English.

“So I hear you are my translator for my workshop.”

She looks at me blankly. “When is it?”

“Tomorrow at two.”

“I thought I had to do something else then, I’ll check with Horacio.”

She runs out—she’s carrying a clipboard and seems to have a lot on her plate. Although I've been a little worried before, this is the point at which I start to suspect for real—that the whole idea of translator might fall through. That’s too heavy to think about so I turn my attention to Michaela, who H has assigned to make signs for each of the dressing rooms. He wants each one to have a little phrase that speaks to the performer, like “you ride the spirit of woman.” He waves his hands around as he says this, and people nod. I wonder if I'm just conservative or not in tune with my feminine side that these things sound rather vacant, but I nod too and say I'll help with the English speaking groups from from Norway and Nashville.

Before noon, H and I walk to my hotel, where I pick up my bag and take it to Hotel Presidente. The lobby is full of women and girls who have just arrived on the bus from the CaribbeanI see my friend Rachel, who I know from L.A. and ask if I can put my bags in their room—which is fine with her, except that the rooms aren’t ready yet.

The various groups of women who were traveling together scatter to eat and rehearse. I decide to hang out in the lobby. I have a feeling if I go back to the theatre I’ll get swept up in whatever project needed doing—which normally I’d be happy about, but I think I need to try an experiment: I take my first set of bullet points for my lecture and type full paragraphs. Then I translate the document with Google Translate and take a look.

Not too bad!

Not great though either—pronouns are wrong and “plot” is translated to parcelo. On intuition I looked the word up in my battered 20-year old dictionary. It refers to a plot of land, not a story plot.

I have my work cut out for me. But I can tell that it’s much superior to anything I’ll be able to say on my own if I walk into the lecture room and there is no one to translate. If there is a translator however, this will be a huge waste of time, and doing this will take all the time I was hoping to use to rehearse the English version. Sigh. Am I making the right decision? I never know. But my fear of debaucle is greater than aspirations for greatness. I start typing.

Another woman waits with me in the lobby. Megan is a photographer from Canada. Like me, she’s come as an individual, and since she doesn’t belong with any group and H is so busy, seems a little lost in the shuffle. I ask if she’s staying at the hotel, and she says she doesn’t know. She stayed at H’s house when she first arrive, and her clothes are there. She mentions that H had said that she wouldn’t have to pay for anything in Costa Rica—a familiar story!—and that she is already running short of funds. I say that Tattiana had said something about all the women going to her place that night, so maybe she’s with us.

I take her to a corner soda and show her the magic of the cheap and plentiful casado. Toward we walk to theatre so she can organize how to get her things at H’s house. Michaela is still struggling at the computer—she’s now been tasked formatting the programs for the evening’s show—even as the guy from the print shop waits at the door! A side skill that comes with learning to write for years on end, is some facility with Microsoft Word. I manage to quickly make two sloppy columns so that the sponsor logos will fit—which of course is the main concern, and we print it up.

For reasons I don’t understand, even though she’s been staying with Tattiana, Michaela’s clothes are also at H’s, so she and Megan are going there to change. I walk them back as far as the hotel, trying to understand the plans for the evening. I know that Michaela and a woman named Coral have to be back in town early in the next morning, and the evening will end late, and with luggage in two different places and nobody with a car—how are we all going to Tattiana’s and getting back in the morning? She laughs and says she thinks that probably no one will be at Tattiana’s that night, that she and Megan will probably stay with H again, and maybe I can too.

This all seems very hypothetical, so when I get to the hotel room, I offer to pay Rachel and her roommate Gabrielle, to share with them, and they generously agree.

As we dress for the evening, Rachel gives me a brief overview of the weekend. Apparently many of the scheduled workshops that were supposed to happen in the Caribbean never occurred. The women and their charges—fourteen teenage girls-- had waited around through multiple schedule changes instead of enjoying the beach, only to have many of the events disappear entirely. The glamorous Caribbean Feast that had been promised turned out to be more chicken and rice and beans, and the intercultural exchange between the girls and the girls of the village was attended by only the two daughters of the hotel owner, rather sullen and sulking—forced into it at the last minute. H had been supposed accompany them, but since he was busy at the last minute he had put Coral—a girl from Spain, who spoke both Spanish and English, but who had only been in the country for a few days, in charge of the expedition, which had put her in the awkward position of having to deal with money issues for the group that were supposed to have been worked out previously. Thus there was some question as to whether they wanted to return to the same place after the festival. Rachel and Gabi rush out, as their girls were performing, and I stay behind to dress more leisurely and, of course, add a few pages to my lecture for the next day.

That night the show somehow actually begins at 8:10, a reasonable start time for theatre anywhere. There are a series of little speeches by community figures and politicians of which I understand little, but the performances are all entertaining and well received by the audience. Although the all 900 seats are by no means filled, the attendance is reasonable. The performance is a success.

Afterwards there is no talk of a gala party on the stage, but H invites me to go with the performers went to a restaurant. I sit upstairs with the dancers from Norway, and get to know them a little. Tine is a red-head who splits her time between New York and Oslo. Nina is sharp-tongued and attractive, and gives me the impression that she has things she would rather be doing than hanging out with me, but I like her nonetheless. H arrives and beneficently announces that our meals were paid for, although alcoholic drinks. For the moment, after the long evening, our large table is more concerned with just having glasses of water. After 20 minutes for water, Nina says she would like to go get the water herself. This is something I often feel, but rarely am brave enough to do on my own, so I offer to help, and we go down the kitchen and demand glasses of water from the bemused workers, which we carry to the dozen people table upstairs. The restaurant seems not prepared for our party, and it takes an hour for the food to arrive. By the time it does we are exhausted, and have exhausted our conversation as well. When we’ve eaten, we don’t wait for a bill, but descend the stairs, and check in with the cashier as we exit. I hadn’t had alcohol, but thought I should offer to pay for food since the offer might just have been for the performers. The man at the register waves his arm, and says it applies to everyone. Great. I ‘m on my way to bed and sleep. But as we stand on the street, looking for a taxi at 1a.m. We see Megan and Micheala looking despondent. H has just told them they could not stay at his place after all, and they would need to get a hotel. I’m stunned. Since I’m already staying on the hospitality of others, I can’t invite them to our room myself—but I tell them to talk to Rachel and Gabi, who I’m sure will say yes. The others are waiting in the cab, so I go with them, feeling bad for the two women.

Rachel returns to our room later and says that the three women had decided to get a room, so that’s good. But she has another shocking report. After the meal, Horacio told Vali, who is in charge of Rachel’s group, that she was expected to pay for herself and the girls. “But I had heard the meals were paid for,” she’d said.

“No, you have a budget, you pay what is in your budget.”

Since Vali had already bought dinner for the girls before the show, and had only come to the restaurant because she thought it was a celebration, this put her over budget, and made everyone feel weird to boot.

March 6, 2011--San Jose

“Tomorrow we make you a tour of San Jose. Amber will come by for you in the morning.”

This is what H said to me yesterday.

“What time is morning? Like ten. Or eleven?”

“Yes.”

I awake and immediately set to work on my presentation notes, worried that the day will be consumed by the tour and meetings. At 10 AM I look up and realize I’m hungry. Will the woman named Amber show up right at 10? I decide this is unlikely and it is safe to risk a short foray to find something to eat, though I leave a message with the reception desk on my way out. The hotel is located on a pedestrian mall, and I walk for several bl

ocks but find nothing but fast food. Not wanting a breakfast burrito from Subway or Burger King, I settled for a pastery from the bakery at a small supermarket. It has a flakey crust and a only a disappointing dab of chicken inside, but it will tide me over.

Back in my room, 11AM comes and goes. So does 12 PM. I decide to give up, and go out on my own. But as I pass the reception desk,the attendant holds out a note: Tattiana and Micheala are coming for me. One is wearing a red shirt. I should meet them at the Plaza Cultural at 12:30.

The Plaza Cultural is 30 seconds from my hotel, so I arrive early. I decide to try my luck at an ATM with my bank card I got from the USC credit union at USC when I signed up three years ago. I’ve been thinking of possible passwords I might have chosen—and hoping the ATM won’t eat my card if they are all wrong. But then, as I am nestled in the glass alcove, away from the traffic, looking at the glowing screen, another number pops into my mind.

I punch it in.

Yes!

I pull out some cash, and feeling flush and still hungry, I make my way to a storefront alongside the Plaza and order a churro. I’m told I have to order four, so I do, thinking I can share them with my new friends when they arrive.

12:30. After a few minutes, I approach two women , one of whom is wearing a red blouse, and I ask if they are Tattiana and Michaela. They look at me as if I am crazy. I guess they are not. A cel phone would make all of this easier, but I don’t have one yet. I ask someone to help me make a call at a bank of pay phones. Tattiana answers and tells me to wait a little longer—until 1 PM.

1:15. They arrive. Tattiana has hair dyed a magenta highlighted red, Micheala is smaller and darker with a different accent. They are starving, says Tattiana, and they need to go to the bank. I earn some points by producing the two now-cool churros and a few basic Spanish sentences.

“Oh you speak some Spanish, I had no idea what we were going to do.”

It soon becomes obvious that there is more that I can’t understand than what I can, but we manage well enough—standing in line at the bank, I find out that Michaela is from Argentina and has been staying at Tattiana’s house, which seems to be in a suburb of the city, a place she describes as “more rural, more beautiful,” than San Jose. Last night they stayed up talking late into the night like a couple of “brujas” they tell me, laughing. Tattiana has a teenage son, and I glean that he is at home, and she doesn’t like to leave him home alone. I can’t figure out when and how today’s plans of touring me around have come to include her. How did Amber at 10 AM become Tattiana at 1 PM? I have a feeling it has to do with H, and that, although friendly, Tattiana has been a bit inconvenienced by having to come into the city on the bus in the middle of her Sunday to entertain me. It is only a feeling though. My Spanish is not good enough to phrase these questions in a way that won’t elicit polite lies. She finds us a Soda—a restaurant that serves typical Costa Rican food—not fancy, and not expensive. We each order a Casado, which means “married” and is a combination of foods—in this case, beans, rice, egg, salad, cooked bananas and a drink. I’m very happy with the choice, and vow to eat at these places as often as possible during my stay. During lunch, Tattiana’s phone rings. She answers, rolls her eyes, talks fast. I intuit that the caller is H, she tells him we are having lunch, and where. I can only guess at what is happening, but I think he is worried about the place, whether it is not nice enough, and that maybe she is saying that we are where she can afford to eat.

As we leave the restaurant, Tattiana asks me how long I am to stay at the hotel, and I tell here that H has said I will be moving the next day, but I don’t know where. She says I should come and stay at her place. She wants all the girls to come to her place. It will be crowded, because the house is very small, but outside is more beautiful than here, and it would be fun to have all the girls together. I have no idea what other girls she is referring to, but I say that sounds fine, and am relieved to have plan.

After lunch we walk to a Cultural Center, where there seems to be some kind of festival happening. We listen to a man sing for awhile. The topic of his songs seems to be political. They are lost on me. After a little while Tattiana escapes to have a cigarette. I look at Michaela. “Are you happy, or bored?” I asked. She chuckled and nods her head. We leave and wander through a nearby park. Tattiana says we are meeting with H at 5:30, after which she and Michaela will head home and H and I will go to dinner with some other people. It’s only 4 PM. I wonder if they are just babysitting, until I can be handed off. If so, I’d prefer to I return to the hotel, nap, and meet H on my own later. But I don’t know how to ask any questions that contain the word “if”. This requires a conditional verb, and I don’t know any. Eventually I gather, however, that they need to talk to H as well— many plans have not been articulated yet.

At a café, w meet with H and production designer name Runcel—he is Costa Rican, but has spent the last ten years working in Germany. They talk about make-up workshops as part of the feminist objective—this talk is fast and vehement, and I don’t understand the who is on what side of the controversy. Finally, the conversation turns our the upcoming plans. H says my workshop on the 9^th at the university has not come through, but that he is still trying to put another location together for this day. I am secretly relieved, and tell him the second workshop can be just three hours, like the previous day. He says there are six reservations so far for my workshop on the 8^th which will be at a place called CENAC at 2PM. I ask, as I do every time the opportunity arises, if a projector and a whiteboard have been arranged.

Yes, yes, no worries.

And, I ask, if it’s true that someone named Coral will translate?

H thinks, Coral might have a workshop of her own. There is another girl, Silvia, perfect English—who might be better.

Tattiana tells Horacio about her idea for the women to stay at her place, which spurs more conversation that I can’t understand—about buses and taxis and transporting our luggage. H explains to me that the café we are in is attached to the Teatro Salazar, which is where everyone will be tomorrow, setting up for the big show that will be followed by a gala party on the stage afterwards. Tomorrow I will check out of my hotel, and take my bags for the day to another hotel, which is where the group who has been to the Caribbean will be staying. He says I can leave the bags with one of the rooms of girls, get dressed there in the afternoon for the gala, and later move to where I will be staying. He says he thinks maybe staying with Tattiana is not the best, because her place is small and far away, but he does not volunteer any ideas for another place. Our group breaks up, and once again, dinner seems to be forgotten. I am tired, so not sad, although I am again a little hungry. Maybe that will be my state for much of this trip. Since I don’t have to come up with additional material, I devote my last waking hours to piecing together an employment history for my job application. Before I fall asleep, I check Facebook, and am surprised to see a post from H saying that our International Meeting in the Caribbean might have to be canceled, because people can’t come. This seems sad, since I have scheduled five extra days to accommodate the trip and the meeting, and I was looking forward to it, but for the moment I am too tired to contemplate it. I know that everything can change tomorrow.

March 5, Guanacaste-San Jose.

When I wake in the morning, the air is warm and close because I turned off the A.C. before I went to sleep. I breathe, feeling the lump of anxiety in my chest that has been my morning companion for the past several weeks. It’s not the same as fear, but the weight of things I must do seems to settle on me in the night and be sitting on me when I wake in the morning. Some people have cats who sit on their chests. I have anxiety.

On the way to the bus station I make chit-chat with the driver. He tells me my Spanish is good, my accent is good, that I am good looking, and do I have a husband? I say yes—but thank you for the nice compliments. I ask—Cumplido—is that the right word? He laughs, says they call it, piropo. It is like flattery. And it is apparently (from my experience, and according to the guide books) customary among Costa Rican men. These comments are not serious propositions, but little compliments. When I get to the bus station, I look up the word and it translates as “semi-precious jewels” and this seems perfect. Little verbal baubles cast in one's direction. Conversations with too many of these always feel a little undignified to me, but I tend to get through them by saying "muy amable, muy generoso," very kind, very generous, and the like. I don't really particularly think so, but then, they don't really think I am beautiful or really worth pursuing, so I figure that makes us a little bit even.

The station is an area with a roof but no walls. The landscape around us is dusty and dry. I’m happy to get a direct ticket, leaving in just a couple hours. I go to the little concession counter and order my first food, gallo pinto…a typical breakfast of eggs with rice and beans.

“Con natillo?” the woman asks.

I can’t remember what this is. “Uh, sure.”

When I see it I remembered, it is a kind of cream, and definitely makes the dry-ish beans and rice and egg more palatable.

As I sit at a little table, with my lap-top, eating my gallo pinto, I experience my first real sense of anticipation. I’m still nervous—my hands are shaking a little as I eat-- but I am beginning to feel a sense of adventure, and the freedom that comes from being on my own, which I enjoy when I travel. I always miss Paul, like Linus misses his blanket—but in some situations, a blanket can turn out to be a wet one. Paul would not like gallo pinto very much, nor the fact that it is hot here, and there is no air-conditioning in the open air station. Whether the bus will have AC will be a matter of luck.

Luck is with me, and there is AC, but so little leg room that I can’t even cross my ankles. But every seat is full, so I feel lucky to be on the bus at all. My seatmate is a man who overseas construction projects, and for a year has been making the four hour commute each week. A young woman a few seats behind us and across the aisle. Plump, dressed in a tube top and shorts, her only traveling possession seems to be a purple cel phone. She smiles at me almost the whole trip. Whenever I glance back, she is looking at me. Sometimes she says to me “God walks with you.” I don’t know if this is a blessing, or an observation. The other people around look away as if a little embarrassed. With the language barrier it is hard to tell if she might be a mentally impaired, or if she is begging, and that is what makes people stiffen.

The four hours is long, but at last I debark at the station in San Jose. I look for someone who looks like they might be looking for me, but no one appears. A Caribbean Costa Rican man who speaks English keeps me company as go out in front of the station to wait. The young woman from the bus comes and stands there too. She tells the man she needs to get to the other bus station. He points to a taxi.

“I don’t have any money.” she says.”

“Well, then you can’t pay for a taxi,” he says.

She keeps standing there.

The man lends me his phone and I call Horacio. He picks up, “Indy! Where are you?”

I’m a little miffed, since I am exactly where he told me to be. “At the bus station, in front.”

“Which bus station?”

“Pulmitan.”

“Ah, Pulmitan! I’ll be right there. Ten minutes.”

I thank the man, and report that my friend will arrive in ten minutes. I give the young woman 2000 colones—about four bucks. She takes it without comment and climbs into a cab.

Each time a cab passes, the man, still standing next to me, asks, “Is that him? Is that your friend/” even though nothing close to ten minutes has passed. I am remembering how it is in Costa Rica—I am constantly in a state of confusion, about whether any given male is protective, or predatory—or both. What will this man do if Horacio doesn’t show up? Recommend a hotel where a friend works? Ask me out?

I don’t find out, as Horacio does show up, looking much the same as I remembered—long curly black hair and a face like Sartre, and the energy of an excited six year old. He is in a cab, which we take to the hotel, where he asks me to pay the driver. As I check into the hotel, he tells me the price is $50 dollars a night, but that I might have to change hotels on Monday because that’s when the discount ends. I haven’t seen him for a long time, I don’t want to quibble over money on the first day, so I don’t question this.

He tells me there is plan for dinner, but also, before that, he wants to take me to a café to meet R, who he explains is an ex-girlfriend, but whom he is living with still. He says they are trying to decide what to do next in the relationship. He says this as if he hopes they are getting back together. When I see her, she is beautiful. And because it is my experience, from know him, that he falls in love with beautiful women who don’t fall in love with him—at least for very long—I assume this is the situation…but I could be wrong.

We end up at Spoon, which I remember from my last visit. Something about the place annoys me. I think the English name, and the prices seem a little pretentious. I wonder if he really likes it, or if he’s chosen it as the closest thing to my comfort zone as an American. H and R have food and coffees, and I have water, and though I’m hungry, I just order a small dish, since this is just coffee, and we have plans for dinner. I present my gifts, of peanut butter and chocolate. I had asked Horacio what I could bring and he had mentioned these items. I see now, they were both with R in mind. She seems happy with them.

As we walked up to the cashier, H says, “I invited you,” indicating he wants to pay. I don’t argue.

But at the register he pulls out a fifty dollar bill—American. The cashier says something I don’t catch—they can’t change such big bill perhaps, or maybe they don’t take dollars, although a large number of businesses do. H turns to me “Do you have colones?

“How bout I put it on my credit card?”

“Yes, that would be best,”

The bill comes to about $30 dollars. With the hotel, taxi, breakfast and woman on the bus, I’ve spent almost $100 in one day, and we haven’t been to dinner yet. At this rate, a ten-day trip is going to make our next credit card statement one that will make me cringe, especially since this is also our first month without Paul's paycheck.

Later, in my room, I’m rather relieved when H calls to say it would be better to stay in this evening. And although I’m not thrilled about the cost, I enjoy having my own room. I’ve started my period and, I’m still working on my presentation, so I’m grateful for the privacy, and the freedom the room allows. My friend T calls me on skype, and I carry my laptop out to the balcony to show him all the people downtown on a Saturday night. We have a nice chat, and despite the noise from the street below, I don’t have any problem falling asleep.

March 4, 2011--Guanacaste

MARCH 4, 2011

Guanacaste

There are two international airports in Costa Rica. One is just outside the capital city of San Jose, and the other is in the province of Guanacaste, located in the northwest, along the Pacific coast. The terrain in Guanacaste is dryer than other parts of Costa Rica—it’s not tropical. In fact, areas of it remind one of the southwest United States, with brownish plains and tall grasses.

The airport is adjacent to the city of Liberia, an hour from the beach towns that I would love to visit, but with my travel plans, do not have time to appreciate, since I arrive late, and will be taking a bus in the morning. After my bank card fiasco, I spend my first night at Hotel Santa Ana, five minutes from the airport, and five from the Pulmitan bus station in Costa Rica. My friend, Horacio, has made the reservation, but left the bill to me. I've agreed to come and do these workshops on a volunteer basis, and to cover my own travel, but with the explicit understanding that once I arrive in the country, the festival can take care of all my expenses in terms of meals and places to sleep, and transport to the beach on the Caribbean Coast for a meeting the participants will have after the festival is over. Lately however, though he has not contradicted this statement directly, he seems to be talking about discounted rates for things, as though I will be picking up the tab. I've prepared for this to happen some, but I’m hoping it won’t be too much. I’m assuming that when I get to San Jose tomorrow, he will have arranged some kind of home stay, although any details about arrangements have been hard-won, and even then, limited. (For instance, I know "someone" will meet me at the San Jose bus station tomorrow afternoon, but I don’t know who, as Horacio is apparently on the Caribbean coast with some of the other participants, doing so pre-festival activities. I'm hoping the person will have a sign.)

So I pay the bill with my credit card, proprietress hands me a key, and a remote for the air conditioner. I settle in to my room. It has a desk, which is nice, and wi-fi, which I love. I take a small shower, then step outside my room for a few minutes to enjoy the post-heat-of-the-day balmy breezes, before retiring to my room to make a stab at the long job application. I make it to the prompt where they asked me to recount, in backwards order, every job I’ve ever held, and give the names and phone numbers of my supervisors. As a freelancer and frequent part-timer, my “supervisors” could run to the dozens, more, if you counted my time in Chicago. Many of the companies where I worked are defunct, or my supervisors left long ago. And even if my supervisors were still at those places, most large companies only allow prospective employers to speak to human resources (or the payroll company) who are only allowed to verify dates of employment and not make other comments. So overall, this listing an exercise of will—a will that I don’t quite have in me this night...

Instead I turn to my notes for my upcoming workshops. I have my two DVDs full of clips safely tucked into the backpack I plan to carry tomorrow--sometimes luggage migrates from under the bus, so these most important items will stay with me. I think I have my concepts laid out for the three-hour version of the class on Monday, but am nervous about the five-hour class I’m supposed to do the following day (I'm nervous about it all, of course, but have more nervousness about the longer class). I was initially thinking of doing writing exercises, but I’ve realized that while I can lecture with the aid of a translator, going over exercises written in another language is not the best idea! So I’m considering adding some more concepts, and showing longer clips of film for the second class. Or, in truth, plans can be slippery down here, so possibly I can just announce that the workshop will be shorter, and no one will bat an eye.

Costa Rica--Present Day

I've been working on putting to paper a blow-by-blow daily account of my trip for personal use...but as I near 7000 words, I wonder if it will just be boring for readers of this blog. Still deciding.

In the meantime, just just the facts, Ma'am.

My first attempt at teaching screenplay structural elements went fine from my end--so that was a relief. I was really prepared, and even had an imperfect translated version to work from in case there was not a translator. My fancy custom-made DVDs looked good, and I had come up with pretty good transitions for my subject matter.

From the end that was not mine, the workshop--and the entire series of workshops that might was part of--was disastrous. A mountain of misinformation and non-information meant that some workshops never happened, and those that did were ill-attended (as was mine)...

So, incredibly long story short--it was pretty fucked up, but I didn't fuck it up. I spent more time, money and mental resources than I had budgeted, and the results were sub-par, but I also bonded with some talented people from all over the world who were in the same boat. So in the "everything happens for a reason" line of thinking, it remains to be seen what might come of those relationships in the long run.

Costa Rica Flashback Post #2

October 11, Monday 1999
Santa Elena, Costa Rica

Santa Elena is a small town about five kilometers from Monte Verde Cloud Forest and Reserve. Our bus departed yesterday at 6:30 AM. We arrived five hours later and settled ourselves at Pension Santa Elena. For five bucks per person per night we have a room for three (myself, Moira, Stephanie) with a shared bathroom (heated water!--well, kind of). The place has kind of a nice college dorm feel about it, with a large communal kitchen for cooking, attached to a dining/lobby area with tables for eating, writing, playing cards. This room opens out onto a porch with a couple of hammocks and lounge chairs where you can sit back and enjoy the Pink Floyd emanating from within.
Today we visited a private reserve that plays host to a series of suspension bridges and cable lines known as SKY TREK. We hiked through the forest wearing climbing harnesses and carrying small metal pulleys. At intervals on the tour we would climb towers or steep paths to the cable lines, hook on with our hand pulleys, and zip through the treetops to the other side. The longest cables were about 300 meters long, and 60 meters high, and we traveled at between 25 and 30 kilometers per hour. Propelled by gravity, a heavier person travels faster and further, while a lighter person (or one not so adept and shifting one's body weight) might find oneself stalled before the end, and proceeding hand over hand for the last few feet of the trip (not that that happened to anyone we know ha ha!).
After this adventure Moira and Stephanie made for base camp, but I continued up the mountain with an English couple we had met during our tour. Terry and Alice are father and daughter--she seems about my age--and were good company. They are traveling together through Central America for six months, and each is writing their own account of the trip and their relationship. At the end they hope to compile a book. It was raining even before we began our hike up to Santa Elena reserve. The rains seemed to end as we arrived and began our trail, but this was deceptive as half an hour later we experienced monsoon-like conditions. It was fun, but I fear my boots will be drying for days to come!
In the evenings we entertain ourselves playing cards with a sweet tempered boy named Casey-- the type who would have captured my heart as he came running out of the Fiji house for a game of Ultimate back at Hanover College. In the off-season he is Pension Santa Elena's oldest (duration, not age)occupant. After a little over a week he is as completely comfortable as a stray cat that wanders into your life and simply chooses to stay. He has the face of an angel, framed by shapely sideburns, a stud through his lower lip, (there is another through his tongue)and a shell necklace. He tells us in a monotone Savannah,GA drawl about his favorite DJs and mixers who spin drum-bass, jungle and house. Unlike the cat, Casey would like to leave--his friends have already left for Montezuma, but he is a victim of the country's rather slow money wiring system, and so each day since Friday he's been "waitin' on tha bank." Because he has to conserve his money for the essentials (food, cigarettes and some kind of local moonshine) he has not visited any of the wildlife attractions--he's always right there when we come home. We depart tomorrow before the bank opens and so I won't know how the story ends. I think I will always have this sense of him being here, like an episode of "The Twilite Zone" perpetually sitting on the porch bumming smokes, every day waiting on the bank that never comes.

Costa Rica, 1999-Montezuma (My First Blog)

Getting ready to leave Costa Rica. It's been an eventful nine days, which I intend to write about today on my four hour bus ride to Liberia. But being here again has caused me to reminisce about my other trips to this country. Back in the day--I wrote emails to a list of friends. I guess I have always been a blogger at heart. Amazingly, some of them are still in the my inbox (attached to replies). I thought I might post a few of them here.

In September of 1999, just after I had left my three year gig working at Mattel, and my sister Moira had recently returned from her years in Spain and India, we went to Costa Rica for a couple of months. Somehow I remember staying in San Jose for a month, and then traveling...but we must have done some traveling at the beginning as well, because this is one of the first dated emails...

Sept 1, 1999 Wednesday
Montezuma Beach

Our travel day, consisting of a taxi, a bus, a ferry, and another bus--was almost 12 hours in length. We passed the time waiting for the ferry in Puntarenas (the port town) with a Canadian guy we met on the bus named Mike. He's just back from spending 3 months on an isolated island doing a study where they tagged wild pigs and then followed them around all day. He seems a bit undershowered, but amicable.
Our room is behind an Italian restaurant named "El Luz Mono" (The Monkeylight). Off season, for a moderate price ($15) we can share a sizable room with a private bath (no hot water of course), and they say they'll bring in a table tomorrow so I can study. Moira says I am a bit of a Princessa, but I don't think she minds the more deluxe accomodations.

Sept 2, 1999 Thursday
Montezuma Beach

Regarding our planned daily schedule. I woke Moira up bright and early this morning; we were in the water by 7am. By 7:07 we were feeling little stings all over. We quickly headed for shore, to find find mosquito bite-like welts all over our bodies. With some resarch we found out that until the water reaches a certain temperature (usually around 9 or 10am) there are "Pulgas del Mar" (Sea Fleas). The welts seem to be subsiding rather quickly, but even so--we'll be swimming warmer waters in the afternoons from now on!

Sept 4, 1999 Saturday

Yesterday we took a snorkeling tour to East Tortuga Island. Due partially to the great amounts of rain, visibility isn't great, but is relatively clear near the rock formations...
...Some technical difficulties with the motor boat on the return leg of the trip. Something with the gears in the steering column. (I got a good first lesson in walkie talkie speak in Spanish). In the end they detached the steering attachment and steered manually from the rudder by wrapping the anchor line around the motor to move it. It made for a bit lengthier and choppier trip but everyone made it back...
...Glad to be back we went to look for food, but were so quickly and aggressively accosted by this guy named Swenn from San Diego who has lived for the last ten years in Japan teaching English "at the University level" (we found all of this out in his first two sentences) that we beat a hasty retreat and splurged on a meal at our home base. El Luz Mono is a fine restaurant, run by Italian expatriates, with whom Moira flirted so successfully that by the end of the meal they were plying us with alcohol filled deserts and free shots until we could take advantage of another table paying their bill to escape into the pouring rain and back to the relative safety of our room.

Sept 5, 1999 Sunday
Still Montezuma

A day trip today to "Cabo Blanco Strict Nature Reserve". The ride was short, even with the small detour to jump the driver's friend's jeep. Having always owned an automatic, I was fascinated to learned you can just tie a rope to a manual vehicle, put it in gear and pull it a short way and it starts!
The reserve is very interesting, we saw various monkeys, birds, butterflies (there are so many here) and birds. The trails were incredibly muddy, at times we were sinking to above our ankles (I am loving those Tevas you guys).
Mike joined us for the hike. We are finding him less pleasant. He kept picking up insects and then throwing them a bug's mile away from where he found them, then told us this story about the German guy who had so rudely complained when Mike threw a beer can at a dog the night before... by dinner we were avoiding Mike, Swenn, and the Italians. We picked the most remote table at the most remote restaurant (not that remote, there's only about four), but about halfway through Swenn found us and seated himself alone at the adjacent table and proceeded to stare ceaselessly. Too hungry to run,and over Moira's protests, I broke down and invited him over. He's not all bad--just really dysfunctional. We had a nice discussion about fucked up childhoods and life in Japan--but declined to go bar hopping after...It might be time to start thinking about returning to San Jose!

Let the Fun Begin

Landed in the Liberia airport this evening. (Liberia, Costa Rica, for those who haven't been following.) Beautiful and balmy--the way it is in the evening after a warm day.

It's not super large airport--it's kind of like an open air Burbank airport. Customs is super easy and quick. The plane landed at 8:40PM and by 8:50 PM, I was talking to the guy at the information desk, asking about the ATM machine I had read was at the airport.

"Oh!" he said, as he pointed around the building, "It closes in ten minutes."

Uh-oh. I hadn't done any old fashioned money exchanging or travelers checks before arriving. I raced outside and around the building to get colones. There was a brightly lit room contained the glassed in closet with the ATM...I didn't see much there, but guessed it was a bank? One guy in a uniform--bank security?--saw me and asked for my passport and boarding pass. He looked at my boarding pass, confused, then called over one of the other guys--I realized they thought I was running for a flight. I explained I just needed to use the ATM. They laughed. "What time does it close?"

"A las Diez (ten)"

"No...Nine."

(To me) "Nine or ten."

One of them opened the glass door for me, furthering the impression that he was bank security, but now I think he was just a polite guy who does something else at the airport. (There are a lot of uniforms comprised of white shirts and dark pants here.)

I inserted my bank card and looked at the withdrawal options:

2000 colones,

4000 colones,

10,000 colones,

20,000 colones, and

50,000 colones.

At home I usually pick about the third highest amount, so I picked 10,000 colones. That seems like plenty to start, right?

It came out in one bill.

I worried, would the cab driver be willing to change that? Was it like a hundred dollar bill in the U.S.? Better play it safe, I thought--I'd get some smaller bills, just in case. I re-inserted my card and requested 4000 colones. It came out in two 2000 bills. That's better.

One of the guys in uniform wandered by, and I decided to ask him how much a taxi would be to my Liberia. A website had estimate fifteen bucks, so from the price, I could figure out the exchange rate.

"Diez mil colones," he said.

Wait a minute--was this guy putting me on? Then it started to come back to me--I had seen something about 500 colones being equal to a dollar. So that would be twenty bucks. Thus far I had accumulated $28 worth of colones. My hotel would be $40, and the bus the next day would be $10, and I might want to eat at some point... Twenty-eight bucks wasn't going to cut it. I returned to the machine.

At this point another woman with a back-pack came running up.

"Is it still open?"

"It's actually open 'til ten. Maybe"

"Oh good. Do you have it figured out?" She withdrew 50,000. "It looks like so much."

The guys were hovering around the glass...were they about to lock up? Men in uniforms make me nervous--I always think I'm going to get a ticket. I quickly inserted my card again and withdrew 50,000 as well, as the woman looked at her bills.

"Oh my god, all that is only only three bills!"

I looked at her money. "No, it's five--see those two?"

She flipped over two bills she hadn't noticed on the bottom of the stack, "Oh they're all the same. How much is this worth?"

"Ten thousand is worth twenty bucks, so that's a hundred."

"You're so fast with the math--oh no--your card!"

I hadn't noticed machine had ejecting my bank card. Now it beeped. I turned to take it, just as the machine swallowed it back up.

Shit.

I turned to the uniformed guy near the door and had a conversation in pidgin Spanish that basically went like this.

"Your card is gone? You have to be rapido, or it will take it!"

"Yes, well. What now?"

You have to come back when the guy is here." He pointed to a service window. "Tomorrow."

The other man interjected, "No, Monday."

Then they looked at each other. "No, maybe Tuesday."

When I return to the airport in ten days, they assure me, the guy at the window will still have my bank card.

A very typical situation for me...where I start trying to help out other people before I even know what's happening myself.

Fortunately, the hotel tonight takes credit cards, and tomorrow I'll be with friends, and I think I can probably borrow some money if I need. But I thought that was a pretty amusing tale of my first twenty minutes in Costa Rica.

Going Places...or Not

Two of my screenplays made it into the Austin Film Festival this year. On Friday I got a phone message from "Ashlee." She had called to tell me about some of the benefits of going to the festival as a second rounder. I

A friend of mine from Costa Rica wrote and invited me to teach a workshop at a women's festival there in March.

I have the rights to the story of a woman in Pennsylvania. I should go and interview her in person.

I need to go see my mom this fall.

None of these trips pay money. They all cost money. And time... but money. That makes me anxious. I wonder, if money were not an issue, would I not be anxious? Would I want to go, or do I really just like staying home, in my pajamas, typing?

It's hard to say.