the world is my mollusk.: Almost There...

Hello from the lovely town of Cañas! We’ve spent the last 2 nights here with the Ramos family, who staffed at the base with me back in 2008. Javier is a travelling pastor who is off in Guatemala at the moment, Catalina is his loud, quirky, and hilarious wife, and they have two daughters – Mariela, who works in a clothes shop, and Saray, who is almost done with a degree in physical therapy. Since 2008, they moved from Nicoya to Cañas and got 2 yappy little dogs, Luna and Quita, who are constantly play-fighting with each other.

On Monday we said goodbye to the base and staff and cowboy team, and took 2 buses here. That night during dinner Ina said she’d like to visit a Costa Rican nursing home. The next morning Catalina called one where Saray had worked, we hopped on a bus, and went to a “hogar de ancianos” in Tilaran, a nearby town on an old volcano. (These are the sorts of things that happen when you travel with a social worker.) We arrived just in time to feed a table full of very old and disabled people their lunchtime soup. This proved to be quite the test for my Spanish, and too big of a test for Ina, who resorted to speaking loudly with everyone in Finnish, making most of them more confused than they already were. An old man at a nearby table said he’d like to run away with both of us, and an old German guy gave me an ‘endearing’ bum smack with his walker. All in all, however, it was such a good experience. I’m including a picture of a slightly less enamoured old man who tended the nursing home garden the entire time we were there. It was precious and he was so happy doing it. Ina and I found it so interesting that old people are really the same everywhere. The language may differ, but both of us could pick out the confused and perturbed ones, the content ones who sleep all the time, the quiet ones who pace back and forth, the happy, social ones who chat with the visitors like they’re family and of course the paranoid sons and daughters who stop by every 5 minutes to check up on Mum or Dad and bother the staff. You could’ve nearly matched them person-to-person with each of the characters we’ve worked with in nursing homes back in the US and Finland.

Today we ‘took some sun’, as it translates from Spanish, in Ramos’ lusciously green backyard (also pictured). A last-ditch effort to get a little colour before the flight home, inevitably resulting in getting uncomfortably fried. We will go and get our nails painted later, stock up on water and peanuts from the Super Compro, have one last amazing Tico meal, and hop on a 9pm bus to San Jose. After a few amazingly refreshing hours of sleep there, we board our respective flights to Miami and Houston. To everyone who said a month in Costa Rica would just fly by, you were very wrong and it feels like it’s been at least 6. Nonetheless, it has been a full and challenging and productive time that I’m thankful for, and it’s been so good to see familiar old faces again.Looking forward to seeing all of your faces soon!