A Life Less Temporary

I subbed a few days last week, and found myself at the high school for the first time. Its changed but still very much the same. I shared with the first class that "I went to this high school...in the 90s--yay!" They looked me like I was a serious loser, so I stopped telling anyone but the other teachers about my alumni status. There were some nice students but it didn't really matter because all I had to do was show videos. If you can press play on a dvd, you can sub for high school English. For history class I showed a dvd on the 1950s in which Hugh Heffner and a woman who protested the intergration of schools at Little Rock are interviewed. Inappropriate.

One kid came in, put his bag down, stayed for attendance, and ask to use the bathrom. He didn't come back for forty minutes. I wrote a note narcing him out, but also included his explaination (got pulled into his guidence counselor--no, his deans--office). But high school distain is gravy compared to the intense malice of seventh graders. More to come on this next.

Basta Familia

My family has been visiting since last Thursday and will be here for another week. It's too much, I tell you, too much. The first morning I found my cousin sleeping on top of a pearl handled pistol. Are we back in prohibition? Did things get a little wild at the juke joint last night and she thought some of the boys had followed her home? No. We're in West Roxbury, one of the safest parts of Boston. Guns are unnecessary, and sleeping on one is totally unacceptable. After we fought about this she started sleeping with steak knives, which is an improvement. I think the gun has been stashed in the car, but I'm not sure what will be done about her intense paranoia.

Yesterday we had a our annual bbq, which was rained on literally--by water falling from the sky--and figuratively by all the inappropriate alcoholics. At one point I was instructed to hide a giant (1750 ml) bottle of Baileys that my uncle and his highly medicated friend seemed intent on polishing off. There was many an awkward conversation to be weaseled out of, and a couple of creepy dudes to avoid. Finally all the younger people remembered we have cars and licenses and got the hell out of there. Regrouping later at a bar where we healed the pain by creating a top 10 list of the biggest crazies of the party. But a few of the "old ones" (as my brothers call them) were still raging when I got home at midnight. It was such a fun, carefree time, I wonder why I spent my childhood glued to the desert table at family functions.

No Me Gusta

So Costa Rica wasn't the dream vacation I had hoped. Torrance had to bail at the last moment for family reasons, which was upsetting on multiple levels. I amassed an injury count to beat the band:
Day 1 bitten by ant with real teeth
Day 3 horrible sunburn
Day 4 stung by stingray in the foot
Day 5 stung by bee in the forehead (after yoga on the beach)
Last day stepped on a crab

Somewhere in between all that my credit card stopped working and I had a serious breakdown. I'm not the luckiest person ever, but I've traveled a fair bit, and this was a bad trip for me. Just one thing after another. I was in so much pain from the stingray--they said it would take 45 min to feel better, then 2 hours, or 3, and finally 24. But guess what? It hurt for days, not the horrible, intense pain of the moment, but a real crappy, owie foot feeling for a week.

Nosara-Where the Streets Are Paved In Molasses

I'm not kidding, it's smelly and there are giant yellowish-brown puddles in the road. Its the rainy season and things get quite muddy, hard to navigate in flip flops for sure.

Nosara is a surf haven, and the beginning of the trip was dominated by trying to learn. That was all put on hold as of yesterday when I was stung by a sting ray in the foot. It hurt so much, apparently it makes grown men cry like babies and is supposed to be worse than childbirth. I wouldnt know, but I cried enough to make the doctor give me an opiate dirivitive. Then the surf people sucked out the venom. It was a dark red little blob, get it out of me!

The trip hasnt been relaxing because surfing is quite a workout, and I got wicked sunburned the first day. The second day we went canopy zip lining, which was one of the most terrifying expereinces of my life. The men that took us up were serious tricksters, it felt like we were on the costa ricaian version of jackass. Except I was the fool who paid to risk my life.

Then yesterday was the sting ray incident which put me out of commission. I may try to go surfing tomorrow if I am up for it, but I feel cursed now. Its pretty uncommon to get stung, so apparently I have bad luck. Hopefully there will be no more mishaps.

Gender roles down here are intense, but Ill write more on that later.

Los Hombres Son Guapos, Pero Soy Gay

Neither of us packed an alarm (why would we do such a helpful thing?), and the front desk failed to awaken us this morning. Just as they failed to pick us up on time from the airport. So we nearly missed our safari tour. The tour guide Tomas was loco en la cabeza and Im not sure I liked him, but parts of the trip was good. We cruised around on a river boat and saw baby crocidiles and then tramped around in the rain forest where I was attacked by solider ants. They have actual teeth! True to form I was devoured by mosquitos, but got to splash around in the brown Carribean Sea which took the sting out.

We were stuck in traffic coming home because there was an accident on the highway in the cloud forest, and ended up hanging out in the middle of a road for an hour. Jen and I got dolled up and went out to a Lebanese bar-club where we were quickly befriended by two dudes from the US. One was seriously macking on Jen, the other was my anarchist soul mate. We talked politics for hours, it was awesome. Hes orginally from CA and sounds like a major stoner, every other word was "dude." Being extremely tired, I fled the club despite his offer of taking me to a spot to score some ganga. Jen decided to stay behind with her novia neuvo, but I have his government id, should anything happen to her.

Llegamos!

Jen didnt sleep last night and I only got a few hours, so we are not playing with a full deck, but we are here. After traveling for what felt like many days, we arrived in San José this afternoon. On the plane I realized that I forgot my bathing suit and new, green tank top. FML. Jen realized she forgot her make-up case and was equally devastated.

San Jose is not cute or charming, as I was warned, and reminds me of San Salvador where I spent a depressed semester teaching English as an undergrad. However, our time here will be brief. Tomorrow we are going on tour of the Caribbean coast with the unfortunately named Jungle Tom Safaris. And Sunday we take off for beach-yoga paradise when the rest of the homies arrive.

The good news is that our hostel is located next to an Indian food restaurant. Super random but really yummy. The bad news is a train goes by our window every twenty minutes blowing its horn as loud as possible. If I wasnt totally sleep deprived I might be worried. As it is, Im going to have another Imperial, the official beer of Costa Rica, and collapse into bed.

STILL HATE FINALS

i thought that maybe i was losing my shit because i stopped taking prozac (i'll show you, stupid doctor at my school clinic!). but then i looked around emerson and realized that's only part of it. something even worse than the swine flu is going around right now: finals.

i also thought things would get better after i went on a spiritual pilgrimage to gillette stadium, but not so. i saw the dali lama yesterday, he wore many robes and looked snuggly which was nice, but not all i was hoping for. many people said he sounded like yoda, but i heard tom waitts. the audio was all f-ed up during the morning session so today i know about as much as the 4 noble truths as i ever did. they fixed it for the afternoon talk which was a massive improvement. he laughed when someone asked for an example of one simple thing they could do to bring about world peace TODAY. his answer: nothing, it's really complicated. make a miracle fall out of the sky? it was hilarious. in the end he settled for telling us to use less water and work to conserve ecology.

i pity the fool who is me because i have finals.