Weirdness of the Week - Episode 5.379

 

Curing “Hipo” – Hiccups in Spanish:  

I didn’t really think about how we have weird solutions for things like drinking water backwards or holding your breath to cure hiccups, but we do.  Ticos have other weird ways to cure things.  Last night, I was helping my friend decorate for her Godson’s birthday party.  The little baby girl had hiccups.  I look up from painting glitter on soccer ball cutouts, and the baby has a little piece of paper stuck to her forehead.  My friend simply tells me that that’s how they get rid of the hiccups.  Huh.  Also, I don’t know if this is specific to the friends I have… but it seems that Ticos are extra creative when it comes to making decorations.  Where people in the US would go out and buy party supplies, people here hand make everything!  They even make the piñatas out of old cardboard boxes, paper, and glitter.  I am so impressed. 

Chairs:

There are these very specific chairs that I have only seen in Costa Rica and everyone seems to have them except for my family.  They are these rocking chairs that are made out of metal and chords.  They are really comfortable.  I want one, but it seems the only way to buy one is from a guy who walks around town selling them.  I wonder when I will encounter this guy. 

Convenient Stores Everywhere (even if they are just the extensions of someone’s living room): 

As I was walking to one of my student’s houses yesterday, I started thinking about how easy it is to buy a snack here.  Walking through a neighborhood back home, you can’t just buy a bag of chips or a banana.  I can literally walk from one part of a neighborhood to the other a few blocks away and buy a snack in the middle.  I will miss this when I go home.  At home, you have to drive somewhere if you want to buy anything. 

“Punto de Reunion”:

 

When I lived in Heredia about four months ago, I went to the University.  I saw all these signs that said “punto de reunion” with pictures of people meeting on them.  I thought, “how weird that they need to be told where to hang out together.”  This week, I noticed a sign like that in Quepos and it suddenly made sense!  They weren’t signs telling students were to hang out.  They were signs signifying where it was safe to stand during an earthquake!  Like I said before, even when I understand the words… it doesn’t mean I understand the concept.  Just now, for example, I ordered coffee in Spanish and the waitress asked “Claro o Oscuro?”  I understood the words but had no idea what that referred to!  It turns out it mean “Light or Dark Roast.”  Again, there is a lot more to understanding than knowing the words.  That is something I had learned in my ESL class in college; just because students understand the words in the literature does not mean they get the meaning. 

Working an Hour for Ten Tampons… and announcing to the whole store what you want as you explain it to the guy behind the counter:

 Tampons are so expensive here!  A box of ten is six dollars.  That is over one hour of work for me.  Also, everything in the pharmacy is behind the counter.  I remember when I was an adolescent and was embarrassed to check out of the grocery store with tampons.  Good thing I grew out of that phase!  Yesterday, I had the joy of asking the young man behind the counter for exactly which box I wanted.  “No, not that one… the other one.  No, the pink one.  ‘Regulares.’ ‘Oh, ok… no hay algo se llama regular…. Medianos?...’ Haha.  That was fun.  Just another experience to add to the list of everyday life adventures here. 

Gringo quote of the day:

 

I’m sitting at one of the nicest cafes in town.  It is full of gringos.  The woman at the table next to me just got up to go to the bathroom and immediately returned to the table.  Her husband asked if someone was in the bathroom and she explained, “I didn’t need to go that bad.”  Her subtext was clearly, that bathroom was gross… there was no way I was using it.  My standards are way higher than that.  It is a perfectly nice bathroom.  Oh, Americans…