Have you read ¨On Writing¨ by Stephen King? I am, right now, and I feel so vindicated.

I held off on updating this because I thought I was going to have photos to post, but I´ve continued to put that off too. I expect to have them put on a CD by the end of the week.

I´ve done a lot of things, so I´ll try to report on them as briefly as possible, except a few. First I´d like to share a story from two weekends ago. I went to a house party Saturday that one of my co-workers was at in Heredia, north of San José, with 16,000 colones ($32) in my pocket and by the time the taxi dropped me off I had 4,000 ($8). Thanks to bad advice from locals who will go unnamed, I grossly underestimated how much it would cost to get out there and get back. So before I got there, I knew I wouldn´t be going home that night. But the people were nice and interesting, a good mix of gringos and ticos, and I knew one of my friend´s friends would let me crash at his place.

(Insert all the good times here)

We got to the guy´s apartment at 3 or 4 a.m., and I had 1,000 colones ($2). The only major problem I was posed with by this unfolding scenario was that the next morning I had to be in Escazú, east of San José, by 2:30 pm, with stops in several other cities on the way. Around 10 am I was dreaming that someone was knocking on my door, only to realize that someone was knocking on my door, and I got up. Had a cup of coffee and watched Josh, the guy, slowly eat toast with strawberry jam. We were outside of Heredia, in an even more obscure area without a name. Josh called a cab, and they refused to pick us up. So we walked a few kilometers, past a coffee farm, forgotten public parks and locked up sodas. By 11 we were close enough to town to catch a bus, and by 11:15 we were in Heredia, walking smelly and unshowered through a festival with a full orchestra in the town square, and got onto a new bus to San José.

We parted ways, and at 11:45 I was running through downtown San José to the Coronado bus stop, not sure if I had enough money for a taxi and bus fare. I got to the bus (at what hour, I don´t know) and took a nap in the back. At 12:30, I was back home, and by 12:50 I was out the door again, now clean and on the bus back to San José. I found an ATM once I was in town, and by 2 pm I was in a taxi to Escazú. I arrived to my assignment, ¨The Night of the Iguana¨ being put on by the Little Theatre Group, and my empty stomach took advantage of the potluck provided by the Women´s Club. I awkwardly stood around smiling at all the old, pleasant British women for a few minutes and then went into the show.

And that, my friends and colleagues, is how you make it to your assignment on time.

Thursday night I was reminded just how fervently interested Latin Americans are in U.S. politics. I went to a watering hole in Zapoté with some of my co-workers (keeping with Thursday night tradition) and met a cop named Billy and his friend Rodrigo. Billy said he was a Democrat, Rodrigo (an aspiring young politician with slick hair and big ears, with a wide, ambitious smile like that of a rosy-cheeked and bushy-tailed SGA senator) the Republican. I said, ¨But you´re Ticos!¨ And instead of explaining, they just laughed. The next day my new friend Pedro, at this great Argentinian restaurant down the street from the Tico Times, sparked a conversation with me about the 2008 elections while my empanadas were cooking. Pedro wants Hillary Clinton to win, rather than Barak Obama, because ¨he is too young to run the nation.¨ He told me that it matters to him because anything the United States does can easily affect Central America. That´s what I assumed, but at least I finally got an answer from someone.



This past weekend I went to La Fortuna, a little town a few kilometers away from one of the 10 most active volcanos in the world, the Arenal Volcano. I stayed at Gringo Pete´s, run by Pete, a raspy-voiced, round-bellied, pirate captain of a man from Washington State. Very helpful and fun to talk to, but apparently not that fond of Alabama after a summer he spent there in military camp. He said, ¨You know the toothbrush was invented in Alabama. Of course, if they had invented it anywhere else they´d have called it the teethbrush.¨ I responded, in the presence of several non-Southerners who laughed heartily at Pete´s joke, ¨Yeah, we invented peanut butter too, you know. Good thing, I guess, because if they had invented it anywhere else they´d have called it fuckyouredneckbutter.¨

No hard feelings. I made a lot of friends at that hostel, some of whom took me to a local swimming hole with a waterfall, where we jumped off small cliffs in to clear, cold water with that near-equatorial sun beating down on us. One of us had to hang out on the cliff at all times to guard our stuff, because locals are known to run out of the bushes and take it. The best part was my hike through the jungle on Saturday, where white faced monkeys broke limbs and threw them down at us; where howler monkeys, well, howled; the wild boar ran in packs; and woodpeckers looked (and pecked) just like the ones back home. Clouds hung low over Arenal so we took an early trip to the Volcanic hot springs (the volcano heats the river, it´s amazing) and around 9 we returned to the volcano. Not only were the clouds gone but the full moon was up, and the smoke stack was illuminated as it grew out of Arenal´s cylindrical cap and we could see the magma boulders flash and spark as they rolled down the side of the volcano. Lava flows diferently here than in Hawaii, where you have thick, flowing lava. Arenal hurls steaming boulders at you, one, two or 20 at a time. You could watch some roll all the way down to the line where the ash ended at the jungle was starting, but we were well far off to avoid running into them ourselves.

Being in the presence of an active volcano is like watching the earth´s heart beat in front of your eyes. It is creation; it is truth; and it is impermanence. We all came from something as powerful as the center of the earth. How we got here, well, doesn´t seem to matter when you see a volcano work. The volcano doesn´t care, and it´s actually holding some of the cards. It covers the land with one of the most destructive forces ever known, and it will do that until it´s done. The earth will stop rumbling but the world will keep turning, and something else will start just as something ended.

The weekend ended. I´m back to my clock-in/clock-out schedule in San José, but, finally, it feels like wheels are turning.