¡El Presidente!

So I saw the president of Costa Rica (and Nobel peace prize winner) Oscar Arias speak Thursday at the opening of the new headquarters of the National Museum in Pavas, just outside the capital city, and Arias is definitely better at speaking than ole Georgey B. After the different officials spoke and the tour of the building was over, the photographer and I started heading up the street toward the main road to hail a taxi in the rain. On our way a van full of people stopped and offered us a ride to San Jose and, standing in the rain, we said yes.

After we got in, it turned out we had just hitched a ride with the president´s personal press crew. His photographer, cameraman, PR woman, scriptwriter..the whole gang. They were ridiculously nice. There are people who are personal assistants for much less important people than Oscar Arias who´d just tell us about how great they are and fortunate we were to be in their presence (trust me, I´ve met them), but we all just talked about the president, touched on CAFTA a little bit (Arias is pro-CAFTA, so they gave us these rubberbands that supported it saying ¨Yo Sí Quiero¨), and we even talked about the Tico Times (the only - or so the old folks tell me - newspaper to support him when he told Reagan to shove his plans for an air force base in Costa Rica up his you know where). I had a lot of fun getting to know them. Afterwards we joined the rest of the Tico Times staff for chicharrones (these fried pieces of pork that are really good) and platacones (mashed and fried plantain topped with salsa and meat, almost like nachos) at Union Bar downtown (named so because the unions used to meet there). Going out on Thursday nights after the weekly budget meeting is kind of a tradition for the Tico Times (What do you guys at The CW think about that?)

Saludos.

Apologies for not updating in almost a week. I´ve been very, very busy.

So where did I leave off? I went to a rock bar in San Pedro (called ¨Sand¨ but the whole place was all about some heavy metal) on Saturday with Melissa, one of the girls who lives here. I played fuzbol with one of her friends and we won a few times but then kept getting walloped by these unstoppable guys who kept beating everyone till they quit. Of course, the games were weird because they only played to 4, not 10, and we came closest by losing 4-3. At the bar some guy was handing out flyers for a former member of Iron Maiden who´s playing on Paseo Colon on June 14. I figure we´ll go see it, cause how many people get to talk about that time that guy from that band played in Costa Rica? No one I know, thank god.

The hotel and restaurant ¨City One¨ that I reviewed was in a sketchy part of San Jose, but not all that much sketchier than the rest of the place. There were strip clubs and casinos, but also children´s museums and historic districts. It was in a location any of the visitors could enjoy, and the place was pretty nice inside. I got to go out to another club that same night called Cuartel in San Pedro, and that was an interesting place. There´s a good mix of gringos and ticos there, and they had a hilarious cover band that you could tell had performed the same Latin pop songs again and again and weren´t getting tired of it at all. So corny but so entertaining. There was this big tica fronting the band and this little tico guy backup singing, wearing a tight Hollister shirt and jeans. When he wasn´t singing he´d just stomp his feet, thrust his chest out and swing his arms from side to side. The gringos all came in groups of 20, all in preppy clothing, all taking 50 pictures of themselves before they´d sit down, douche bags at the bar waving $20 bills and making smoochy faces. Wow. Fortunately when you can´t help but laugh at people, beer helps you forget that people know you´re laughing at them. The funniest thing about these bars is that throughout the night one thing becomes incredibly obvious: the gringos want the ticos, and the ticos want the gringos, and that´s all they came for. Few people of the same nationality interact at these places, it goes the same for discotecas I visited in Peru.

On Tuesday I went to an early press screening of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World´s End (Piratas del Caribe: En El Fin Del Mundo) and I thought it was pretty entertaining. The whole series is over the top and goofy, but if you put yourself in the shoes of a kid like yourself watching Peter Pan back in the day, it´s a far superior production than what we got. Maybe because the pirates are the heroes. I almost thought they were going to turn me away from the door because as everyone walked in they scanned us over with a metal detector to make sure we didn´t have any recording instruments on us. I, foolishly, had my digital voice-music recorder on me in the top CD compartment of my bookbag and very cleverly manuevered it without suspicion from the security guard´s detection. Maybe I should do a security review of Terra Mall (which is a huge, bright, modern, elaborate, Birmingham suburbia-like mall structure with a gate around the entire perimeter that cuts it off from all the poor housing areas surrounding it.)

Tonight I went to the dress rehearsal of the play ¨Bang! Bang! Estas Muerto,¨ translated from the American play ¨Bang! Bang! You´re Dead¨ about school violence. Tico Times normally just covers plays that are in English but my editor thought it would be good since it deals with a serious issue in America. It´s being put on at the Costa Rican-North American Cultural Center in Los Yopes, and is performed by student actors from the University of Costa Rica. It was a good play, even in Spanish, though some opening parts border between interesting presentation of an important message and yuppy school counselor destruction of an important message. There were some odd adaptations for this version as well, including a brief hip hop scene between the souls of some people the main character killed and himself. But still good.

Tomorrow promises to be an exciting day for me, I´m covering the opening of the new National Museum in Pavas, and Oscar Arias, president of Costa Rica and Nobel Peace Prize winner, will be on hand. So hopefully I´ll actually get to meet him. My next assignment is Sunday, where I´ll go see ¨Night of the Iguana¨ by Tennessee Williams (in English) at some other theater around town.

As for tourism, uncle Tony has said that he´ll take me to the Poas Volcano or the Irazu Volcano on Saturday. I´ve already been to Irazu, so I think it´ll be Poas, which is a little farther away from here. Everyone says it´s prettier, though if you´ve looked down at the valley from the side of Irazu, it feels like you´ve seen half the country.

As for photo uploads, I forgot to bring my chord to upload, but after I get another 50 or so photos I´m going to make my first CD and put them up for everyone. So expect to see them after this weekend. Going to bed now, muchachos. Que le vaya bien.

Not a whole lot new to report. I wrote a brief for the photo essay on the Central Post Office today. I asked their spokesperson for a very brief little quote on the importance of the building and she wound up having the general manager of the whole postal service write me this nice, lengthy letter about the building. While at the post office the photographer and I learned that the city and Correos de Costa Rica are currently fighting over control of the building, with the municipality trying to take it from them, so we kind of stumbled in for a photo essay at a politically sensitive time.

Speaking of politics, the CAFTA referendum is coming up in September, so unfortunately I won´t be here to see it. If you haven´t heard, they´ve been trying to get this free trade agreement passed throughout Central America and there has been a lot of resistance to it here. A few months back it was decided that CAFTA would be ratified by popular vote, which stunned some politicians, but I don´t think this really hurts its chances of passing. The anti-CAFTA people seem to be gaining ground though and the population is basically split on the issue. The main problem with it in Costa Rica is that it forces several monopolies (in electricity, telecommunications) to compete against other (foreign) businesses. These industries employ a huge chunk of the population, and if the market opens up they might not be able to afford their workers or be able to provide certain discount services to poorer areas. I think the real question at heart though for the people is asking themselves whether or not all this foreign investment thats been coming into the country anyway is actually benefiting Costa Rica, or foreign governments and industries.

I have a hotel and restaurant review to do Monday for a very nice, modern looking place set in one of the ¨sketchiest¨ (according to my editor) sides of San Jose. It´s a Caribbean-themed hotel and restaurant, and since it´s in town I´m not going to stay there, just eat and ask for a tour of the rooms. Chelcey, a photography intern from the University of Texas, is going with me. Shouldn´t be too sketchy.

I´ve also been put in charge of coming up with content for the annual Fourth of July supplement the paper distributes at the U.S. Embassy´s Independence Day gala, or something. We´re not sure what events are planned because the 50-year-old annual hot dog cookout has been canceled for the first time this year, and the hot dog committee is being a little hush hush about why. One funny thing about the U.S. embassy cookout is that it´s free, but it´s closed off to anyone who isn´t an American. Most other embassies in San Jose have a food-related event that people of any nation can come to, and they charge money, but then donate it to charity. Anyway, I think this supplement is about 20 pages, so I´ve got a lot of brain storming to do. They told me I could write a column for it too. That fills me with joy.

It´s raining. Mucho. I got off work early today so I could go around Coronado to take pictures...but when I got home it started raining. Mucho. For those who don´t know Costa Rican weather, the rainy season just started and will progressively get worse throughout the summer (but much worse in the fall). It´s normally sunny in the morning, cloudy by lunch time, raining by the afternoon, cloudy at dinner, and clear past midnight. It really is that simple to measure. It´s quite a contrast to my summer in the Peruvian desert, where it didn´t rain once the whole time I was there. The rain helps you take a nap, at least.

Into the swing of things

Alright, so I wrote the three stories over the course of yesterday and today...and though I´m proud of my resilience, I´m not proud of the final product. One was about how to ship things (from letters to furniture) out of Costa Rica, the other was about how to ship stuff into Costa Rica, and the third, which, OK, I kind of like, is about how people buy post office boxes and physical addresses in Miami and have companies ship the things they buy online from US businesses down to Costa Rica. Most businesses won´t ship outside the US, for reasons of cost to reasons of exclusive distribution of certain products, but creating a foreign address makes a loophole in the system so you can buy whatever you want from anywhere.

I´ve already started learning that sources in Costa Rica are very hard to keep up with, in the government and the private sector. Absolutely no one would pick up the phone at the Public Health Ministry (which gives permits for shipping restricted items into Costa Rica) or at Correos de Costa Rica, the national postal service. A lot of the information in my stories I just had to pluck from their official Web sites, so it´s legit, but looks like shit to readers, or at least to me. Other sources, they´ll tell you they´re sending something to you later in the day...and then it never comes.

Tomorrow I have a much more relaxed story assignment, where I´m just accompanying this photographer on a photo essay about the Central Post Office in San Jose. I´ve seen it before, a very big, colonial-style building that´s a faded lime green color, and it´s been there for a hundred, maybe two hundred years. All I have to do is make a little write up about the building and maybe talk with someone who works there. Facil.

Coronado is pretty, but quiet. I want to take pictures but so far I´ve spent all my daylight in San Jose and by the time I get home it´s either dark or raining. The two daughters of my host aunt Iris, Tanja (17) and Melissa (24) who I guess I´ll call my host friends, took me out to downtown Coronado last night for a hamburger, and they said that´s about as exciting as Coronado gets. The city is still celebrating La Semana de San Isidro, but all the activities downtown are for kids. They took me into the church in the main square, La Iglesia de Coronado, which is the only gothic church in the whole country, and inside there were more celebrations for San Isidro. We walked in at the end of this mariachi-like performance where a band of men decked in traditional black suits with trumpets and guitars stood at the front of the church around a little statue of San Isidro. As soon as I found a spot on the wall to lean against, the band filed out into the rain, still playing.

On an important movie-related note, we passed a sign for Spider-Man 3, and Melissa pointed her umbrella at it and exclaimed ¨¡Que decepcion!¨ And yes, I agree.

So basically I´ve spent the last few nights either studying my Spanish or watching TV with uncle Tony, who continues to astound me with his stories. He has met presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Reagan. There´s this funny story about how the Irazu Volcano, the oldest in Costa Rica, had not erupted for many, many years until President Kennedy arrived for a visit. The same day Kennedy got here, it started erupting, and it stopped when he left. It was also during these eruptions that Tony´s friend saw alien spacecrafts rise up out of the volcano...hmm...

Melissa invited me to go out with her friends in San Pedro on Saturday, so I´ll finally get to take the city night life back in. Until then, well, hello uncle Tony!

I landed in San Jose, Costa Rica not long after lunchtime on Sunday, and according to my host uncle Tony, I couldn´t have picked a better day. The national championship game for soccer was held between Saprissa and Alajuela, with Saprissa winning 3-2. Both teams had 24 national championships each, so now Saprissa has their 25th and reigns supreme...until next year at least. Soon after the game ended we could hear the first fireworks from inside the house, and later we rode around Coronado (the town of my host family, about 40 minutes from San Jose) to see young, shirtless men dangling from cars, waving purple flags (the color of Saprissa) and calling out the team members by name and number. The guys in this photo were in a bar tio Tony and I went to called Villa San Isidro, and they were performing some Saprissa fighting chant.

This is also the week of the town´s saint, Isidor (Isidro), so there were games and celebrations downtown for that as well. A parade of the town´s finest horses, which they called topé, came by the house, and there were maybe a hundred or more of them, all with different colors and shining coats, prancing for the crowd and their proud owners.

So let me tell you about the family (or what I´ve learned so far). I live in the house of Margarita Facio, one of the country´s most renowned artists. Her works are highly valued, and the king of Spain even has one of her works. Despite all her success and reverence, she is very humble and easy to speak with (though this trip is already revealing that my conversational skills need more work). Tony works in real estate development mostly, and has had a hand in developing some of the country´s newest and biggest hotels. He´s a real card, very nice and very informative, also speaks English, and I´ve spent most of my time with him so far. In two days he has already fascinated me with stories about his good friend who was abducted by aliens and was told about the fate of the world on their mothership (he wrote a book about it that Tony showed me) and Tony told me earlier tonight about how he was been present for three exorcisms. He said when the demon took control of one woman, her eyes turned white, she could make her whole body swivel like a snake, and could wrap her tongue around her own head. Now, I don´t believe in aliens, and I don´t believe in exorcism, but for uncle Tony, I´ll believe anything.

Aunts Iris and Toti live here as well, in other houses on the property. Iris is also an artist and has two daughters who live here, and Toti...I´m not sure, but she is also very nice. Everyone I´ve met has made me feel comfortable here, so getting settled in hasn´t been as awkward as it´s been for me with host families in the past. This morning Tony drove me to my first day of work at the Tico Times today, which is another story, of course.

The office is in an old, two-story white house with a blue trim. A white sign in front reads in faded blue letters ¨THE TICO TIMES¨. I arrived before my editor so another co-worker, Sonia, took me upstairs and showed me to my computer, which was the standard black Dell computer you´d find in any college dormitory. The office setup is very much like The Crimson White, editorial is upstairs and advertising works downstairs. Upstairs they keep back issues on one shelf and other newspapers on a shelf across from that one. The photographers are kind of cut off from the rest of the editorial staff in an office on the opposite side of the second floor, and the room I work in is very small and shared by three other reporters. There are no doors between the rooms, so right across the hall from me is the editor-in-chief of the Tico Times. It´s kind of awkward for me because I prefer to do my work with as few people around as possible, and when I´m not interviewing in my own native tongue it makes that even more tough. And of course I just assume people are listening and waiting and deciding what to think of me; it´s just natural human behavior I believe.

I write for the Weekends section and Meg Yamamoto is my editor. Today I was handed two (maybe three) stories that I have to finish by TUESDAY. It´s for an advertising supplement they do, and my stories are all about how to ship things to and from Costa Rica (from letters to sofas). Since these stories are basically free publicity for businesses that offer international shipping in Costa Rica, for the purpose of fairness I have to call every business on this list of contacts given to me by advertising...so tomorrow will be, mas o menos, a sweet little headache.
But that is of course how journalism is supposed to work.

My friends, I hope all of you are well, no matter where you are.