So thanks to Best Buy and their subscription services and dumb automatic renewal shit, I am now down to my last $70 or so. And in a few days, lovely TCF will be doing their routine out-of-U.S. ATM checks and deducting another $40 from my account, which in effect means that at the moment I am very very dirt poor and will be nearly destitute in about a week. Not quite sure how I’m supposed to get through my last few weeks in Costa Rica on such meager funds. My financial situation in general has dipped from terrible to terribly preposterous to the point where I can’t even cry about it anymore, I just laugh pitifully at myself. Oh dear.
I have about three weeks left in this country. That’s three weeks left to enjoy all the following:
open container drinking in the streets
Cacique and Flor de Caña (hands down the greatest rum in the world)
Musmanni, Taco Loco, La Casa de la Hamburguesa, Bulevar pizza, and all the other food joints I’ve fallen in love with here
hearing reggaeton, salsa and merengue nonstop at all the bars/clubs/discos
steady 80 degree weather during the day (summer’s just started here, how insane is that)
my host mom’s FABULOUS cooking…SIGH
going to the beach! On either coast! Clear blue waters! Black sand! White sand!
Tico men (errrr hahaha…)
The list is endless, as you can imagine. I am not ready to leave Costa Rica. I am not ready to leave Central America. Whilst I am eager to reunite with familyfriendsandlovedonesyadayada and eat all my favorite delicious American foods again (oh, you can be SURE I have a list ready), I am not eager to leave my newfound favorite vacation destination. I am not eager to return to a life of stress and fast pace and go-go-go. In Costa Rica, we say “Pura vida” and “Tranquilo.” Basically, chill. Do I really have to leave all that?
So I’ve been meaning to document all my weekend trips and such on this blog, but as you can clearly see that has not happened. The last week in particular was particularly near-epic. My gringo friends and I trekked to Monteverde, a tourist nature/adventure-type town up in the mountains, first. After a day of exploring treetops and walking on some scary-ass suspension bridges, we resumed our drinking habits at night. Our next stop afterward was La Fortuna, another tourist town north of Monteverde and located right by Arenal Lake (it’s so strange to be saying that in English) and the Arenal volcano. There we frolicked, quite literally, in some waterfalls. It was glorious. The Thanksgiving break ended at the beach at Samara, yet another tourist town on the Pacific coast. I think I might have sunburned my right eyelid.
Alas, if only I had my dumbass camera with me to document it all. Further documentation of the past 3 months will have to continue at another time.
I pretty much spent the entire day today brushing myself up on all the popular Latin music I’ve been listening to since I got here. The Spanish-language music on my iTunes hasn’t really grown that much (mostly because a lot of the music I hear here, I’ve already got on my iPod LOL) but today I did a lot of Googling and lyric-guessing to find some of the stuff I’ve been hearing that I didn’t already know. Figured I’d take the time out and plug some of my faves…
“Danza Kuduro” by Don Omar and Lucenzo
Oh god, this has become my absolute favorite of the moment. It’s your most basic of party songs (all about dancing and having fun) and the whole Spanish/Portuguese mash-up is pretty cool. I always freak whenever I hear this at the discos and clubs because it’s seriously just an awesome song to dance to. Plus, Don Omar actually looks pretty damn good without his cornrows.
“Niña Bonita” by Chino & Nacho
My girl friends and I always cheese hard when this song comes on, because it’s just so darn cute (plus Chino is so darn fine). In the music video, the duo are like today’s modern boy band and hundreds of girls just flock to wherever they go (can’t blame ‘em!). It’s the corniest love song ever, but I, of course, love it!
“Corazón Sin Cara” by Prince Royce
I first heard Prince Royce back home when radios started playing his bachata version of “Stand By Me” (which, by the way, is amazing). I finally took the time to listen to his second single, “Corazón Sin Cara,” and was immediately floored. First of all, just watching the music videos (there’s two versions, I believe) makes me want to bone him. Forreals. The boy is my age, from New York, has a pretty dope fashion sense, and is soooo cute! See, look at how I’m regressing back into a giggly teenager just thinking about him. I saw someone on the Internet compare him to Bruno Mars, which sounds silly at first since obviously Bruno Mars does not sing bachata, but the more I think about it the more it makes sense. They’re both rising stars in their respective genres, as well as songwriters/singers of color (Mars is Puerto Rican and Filipino while Royce is Dominican). And “Corazón Sin Cara” is essentially Royce’s version of “Just The Way You Are” — both songs are about assuring women that they’re beautiful no matter what. Although if you ask me, Bruno Mars isn’t that cute and doesn’t make me want to bone him. Sorry dude.
I don’t know what to do about my camera dilemma. I’ve just about given up on trying to repair it on my own, and were I at home I probably would just hold off on buying a replacement or charge one to my Best Buy credit card. But I’m here in bloody Costa Rica, with about 4 weeks left. There are beaches, animals, and final good-byes to be photographed and I’ve nothing to fucking photograph them (is it weird that I just imagined myself saying all that in a British accent?).
And I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I don’t want to go home.
I don’t want to go back to the real world. To real life. I’m already starting to feel heart palpitations over my financial difficulties and the fact that I’m still not even fucking registered for classes for my supposed last semester of college. And what about after? I have to find a dumb job that I won’t even want just to pay off this useless paper degree? I love college for all that it’s taught me, academically and socially, but there is something to be said about a society such as ours that practically forces you into the most financially draining institutions possible because the “alternative” is supposedly worse.
My parents are updating me on all the goings-on at home, but surprisingly I don’t want to hear it anymore. The more disconnected I become, the more disinterested I am. I keep thinking about last weekend on the beach, and how I spent much of my Saturday night (or rather, early Sunday morning) sitting on the beach with random strangers from all around the world, smoking up and not having a care in the world. I felt I could literally spend the rest of my days staring out into the sea and not have to worry about anything else like bills or family drama or grades, whatnot. There’s no other feeling quite like it.
So today, as I’m sure everyone knows, is the day the first part of the last Harry Potter installment comes out. It’s been a whirlwind. At first I believed there were no midnight shows here in Costa Rica and that all the weekend evening shows were sold out. Then my friends discovered a midnight show at the cinemas nearby. I was all set to join then, and then I heard that the midnight show would be dubbed and not subtitled, which I absolutely refused to watch. So I didn’t join my friends. Then this morning, I hear that there were indeed subtitles at some of the shows last night and that the movie was, of course, amazing. And now I feel exceedingly frustrated.
After literally a decade of trying to get my younger now-19-year-old brother to read the Harry Potter books (although to his credit, he has seen most of the movies), I woke up this morning to the following email:
Hahaha I am suddenly interested in Harry Potter now. I’ve just finished reading the last book (i skipped the first 6 books but I made up by watching the movie) and I really want to watch part 1 of the last movie. Who knew I would be interested.
It almost caused me to fall out of my chair (AKA small wooden stool). This just made my week.
My camera has broken. Temporarily, permanently, I do not know; the fact of the matter is, it will not work. I press the button, the lens has a fit, and the LCD screen screams “LENS ERROR” to me for about half a minute. I’ve no idea who to blame for this. It was residing comfortably in my black purse all of Saturday night, I heard it accidentally turn on at one point and am wondering if the lack of space for lens extension in my small bag is what’s causing this malfunction. It was 3 in the morning and I was in the midst of chilling, hanging out with complete strangers at the beach when I realized my camera had ceased to function. Although I sadly suspect that it might be all the sand…
This is absolutely NOT what I want to be happening as I wind down my last few weeks in this glorious paradise known as Costa Rica. What the fuck?!
What else has brought me down besides the fact that my 3rd camera in 4 years has failed on me? I missed my first Pacquiao fight in years, and it turns out to be the most exciting one so far. I’ve yet to register for my last semester of classes, which probably means I won’t graduate on time. The amount of money I have to my name is very very limited. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing with myself anymore.
