"Fearless"

Around the time of New Year 2011, I was shuffling through ideas of resolutions. I think I decided something arbitrary, like to bite my nails less (which I still do) or run more (which I still don't) and wrote it on a piece of paper and put it up in the lobby of Templin, where I lived. At the time, I was harboring a secret love for the song "Fearless" by Taylor Swift, and while listening to it about 89459385 times a day, I realized the reason it stuck with me so much:

Taylor and I, as 20-something females, have grown up in worlds of relative comfort. Sometimes I feel like most of the problems I have were invented to give myself something to worry about, but in reality, the world (all of it, but especially mine, graciously) is a beautiful, vibrant place, filled with experiences and people and places. I can't let my pseudo-worries stop me from living fully in it.

So, the real resolution, in that I've carried in my back pocket on my adventures thus far: be fearless. Climb the tree in Monteverde. Fly to New York City on a whim. Climb the rock wall, go snorkeling. Apply for study abroad, even if you're not sure you're mature enough, or whatever. Everything. If it scares you, what that really means is now you have to do it.

Disappointingly, after this incident, I'm having more trouble with this conviction. I know my fear of walking around Sabanilla, bringing schoolwork out of the house, parked cars, all men, etc., is a lot more rational than jumping off the dock on Catalina Island, but I still want to dig my heel and crush it until the fire is just embers. I can keep the caution that accompanies, but I will not let the fear keep me from soaking in every inch of this country, eyes wide, incredulous.

On a more whimsical note, I've translated all the places I go into English to make them sound less intimidating.

I live in "Saint Joseph," in the country of "Rich Coast."
I live in "Goose Mountain" county, in the city of "Alter Cloth."
I take the "Alter Cloth" bus to the part of town where my university is, "Saint Peter."

Doesn't everything sound better?


Really though. Thanks for the inspiration, Tay. In summary, I read this the other day blog surfing and it has really stuck with me: this will not be me.

"I thought of how different I was a year or two ago, what I dreamed then and wanted and believed about the future. I didn’t say it aloud but I felt the thoughts punching my chest: I should have been braver. I should have done it alone. I made so many mistakes. How terrible it is to sit with the knowledge of the ways you’ve made yourself less because you were afraid."

Adventures with Mom: Days 7 and 8

And thus our trip came to an end.

The seventh day my mom was here, we braved the Costa Rica rainstorm to explore San Pedro and part of downtown. Dinner was Casa del Pie (obviously?)

The next day, we bussed to Puntarenas to take a private yacht to Tortuga Island to snorkel. It was as great as that sounds. They didn't make us wear life vests while we snorkled so it was easy to dive down to see the starfish, anenomes, sea snake, octopus, and hundreds of rainbow fish. It is the kind of beauty that just extends to everything else you see for a while.

We enjoyed lunch there, too, a fun boat ride back to the mainland and a fun dinner with Liz. I was sad to take mom to the airport the next morning at 4. And sorry Mauricio I dozed the whole way home. Tortuga wore me out.

Thank you so much for visiting me, Mom! It was the best birthday that I can remember, and like I wrote, I am notoriously bad at birthdays. I love you so much and can't wait to see you again.

Adventures with Mom : Day 6

Debatably the coolest day of my mom's visit.

Dia de la Independencia — In honor of Costa Rica turning 190, we went to Sarita's school and watched traditional dances, dresses and ate traditional food! Sara represented San José in a gorgeous dress. This is extra cool, because most of Costa Rica's independence day activities are in the form of parades and celebration put on by the schools of the country.

Volcán Irazú — My host fam surprised my mom and I with a visit to the volcano! It was way up on my list, and a lot easier and more fun as a car ride with all parts of your family than on a bumpy city bus. It was chilly and beautiful and I love volcano crater and the plants that only grow at high altitudes.

Exploring Cartago — We stopped by a couple family houses and ate lunch in the mountains, overlooking the city. Cartago is as-of-now my favorite province and a great contrast from a touring perspective to the hot beaches and steamy forests.

Harvesting chayote and guyaba — One of my mama tica's sisters lives across from a chayote farm and they let us go play and pick chayote, a tuber sort of like a potato! Also we picked guayabas from a tree and ate them right there. It was like a big food tasting party. I was so full but I still had the chayote in soup form for dinner.

It was a wonderful day. We even got in a good Yahtzee game (mom vs. me vs. Sara) when we got home.

Adventures with Mom : Days 4 and 5

Look how expansive Panama City is from the Bosque Nacional Metropolitano. It is like San José, if San José decided it wanted to be clean and pretty. Mom and I hiked up and looked out over the world; it was a perfect ending to our stay in Panama. The next day we spent almost entirely on the bus and going through customs.

In present news: Someone must have unloaded the gringa bus, because Sabanilla is swarming with machitas. I hope to God I don't stand out as much as they do.

Adventures with Mom: Day 3

Day 3. Welcome to the Panama Canal! This boat was so big, they called it Pana-max. Get it? Maximum size. It was even funny in Spanish. Aha. Boats move approximately six inches per hour while going through the canal. It is a thrilling way to spend a day.

No, but really. We had lots of fun on Monday.

Casco Viejo — A neat neighborhood that looks a little bit like Italy and a little bit like New Orleans. In going to an indigenous goods shop, we met a 75-year-old man living in a refugee camp who followed us around the rest of the morning. You know what? It was great! He showed us all kinds of neat churches and buildings, and although he made us nervous talking so much about the underground dungeons, even those were interesting. What a deal.

Miraflores Locks — Infinitely more interesting than I expected. We ate some excellent food and watched the barcos be lowered down before entering the Pacific Ocean.

The Islands — After negotiating with our taxi driver, we asked him to take us somewhere interesting. He drove us out to three islands (?!) where we wandered around and looked in shops until the sun set. It was absolutely beautiful and fantastic.

Then we went to a cafe by our hotel, and to bed. Great fun!

Adventures with Mom : Days 1 and 2

Being totally overwhelmed after not having done schoolwork for ten days, I'm going to post about my last few weeks in day increments. As you can maybe remember, my momma hopped on a jet plane and came to see me for my birthday! And as you probably already knew, she is the greatest mother I have ever had or could ever hope to have.


To begin: days 1 and 2. Highlights include spending all of that time on a bus. Then we got to Panama, checked into our hotel which was graciously right next to the water and wandered in awe of what a beautiful city Panama City is.

I am a fan.

Anyway, we negotiated with a taxista to drive us around and find us a place to eat, which is apparently hard because I do not think that people in Panama eat. Finally we got Mediterranean food and called it a night.

Stay tuned for action-packed Day 3!

Wait, what?

So I was just talking about presents.

This is the proverbial icing on the cake. Fitting because I'm talking about birthdays. Or perhaps then, this is really the whole cake. So the cake is decorated with maní garipiñado. Wait, what? I'm OK with it though.

Anyway: the cake.

I have a camera!!

Wait, what? My mom got here and had an extra gift bag for me, besides the backpack I had asked for. It was like 10 p.m. and we were going to go to the bus to Panamá, so I waited to open it. But she made me. Welcome into the world a new Nikon point-and-shoot, beautifully portable, 12.1 megapixels, memory card and case. 

"Wait," she said. "You have to see the card."

So, in the back seat of our tiny car filled with my familia tica and my mom and I opened the card. And it was a cat card, and it was signed by, like, twenty people from T6. And apparently not even everyone signed it. T6, my old home, my "residents" or what-have-you, my best friends last year, bought me a camera. 

I cried even harder than I do during the resurrection stone scene of the Deathly Hallows, which I watched again on TicaBus. Oh my goodness. I have no words. Best present of my life. I love you friends. I love the camera. It is absolutely wonderful. I dedicate every single future blog post to you. 

O sea, I have pictures again!! From Panamá and Independence Day today! It was great, I will tell you all about it later!

Also my mom is here! It is the best! Hi mom!

So so so so so much love from the tropics,

Bailey

20.

I am normally really bad at birthdays.

But obviously not at this one. There is nothing I can do but be happy today! Sara and I played for like four hours today, and then everyone came to Casa del Pie to celebrate. Is that fantastic? Life is so simply great sometimes. And my Casa del Pie friends gave me FREE PIE, and my Portuguese teacher was there, incidentally (per my recommendation) at the same time I was.

Perhaps the best part, though: mom will be here in two hours. I will see my mom in two hours!


Also, when there is no obligation to be given things you don't need, your friends just hang out with you for your birthday. Or if they do get something, it is maní garipiñado, the best food ever created and a popular choice for birthday presents (see photo above). Or things to read in Spanish. I have great friends.


Off to Panamá with mom now, see you in a week!

Cupcake update

Those cupcakes we made?

So good.

The sank so much and never turned cake-y though, so we called it pudding and everyone was impressed.

Chalk one up for the Liz-Maggie-Bailey baking trio! Sort of.

Major Change #85074801

Don't worry: I'm keeping American Studies. But today, I had a revelation.

I really, really, really love linguistics.

Old news, right? But I have a six consecutive hour block of linguistics classes on Tuesdays, and that's enough to make you hate just about anything. But somehow linguistics is the only thing I want to do. Case in point: two weeks ahead in my ling classes, won't even have to make anything up when I miss next week for Panama (reading-wise, at least).

And I always just feel like the world is more beautiful on Tuesdays. About two hours into class, I'm thinking, I really can speak Spanish! I'm understanding everything! And three hours in, I'm thinking about how great my professors are, about how great learning is. By the end of the day, I'm on to just thinking I'm probably one of the greatest girls in the world (no longer related to the topic at hand).

Don't worry, that's promptly crushed when I go to my other classes. The point is: KU, I am picking back up my linguistics major. Forgive me that I only know how to talk about how much I love it in Spanish.

Why I Don't Bake in Costa Rica

Dear Maggie and Liz,

You know how much I love spending time with you guys? A lot. I feel like we have the same priorities and the same interests and like Casa del Pie as much as I do, and for this I feel like we really just mesh well. This is why I was so happy when I realized we all like to bake, too! I consider myself a bit of a cupcake artiste in the states (see exhibit A), and anyone who knows good flour-sugar ratios in their baked goods is golden in my book.

You've taken good care of me in the past: lava cakes, the chocolate chip cookies, snickerdoodles, scones, lemon curd and so on were all absolutely delicious without my help. And since we all had terrible weeks, I knew it was my time to sponsor an ingredient purchase to make something tasty. And what else? Cupcakes, of course. Peanut butter chocolate chunk.

So let me tell you about my trip to Mas por Menos tonight!

1.) They don't even have cupcake liners. I actually walked over to MegaSuper in my ballet clothes to check if they did, but they didn't either AND they didn't have my mango nectar, so I went back to MxM and cut my losses.

2.) Have we really been paying $5 for a bar of chocolate?! I mean, it is good chocolate, but I am a poor girl here. Forgive me, but I decided to forgo the Baker's Chocolate and bought a bag of Costa Rica-brand chocolate candies. We can chunk them up. (730 colones instead of 2,600, thank you very much.)

3.) HOW IS PEANUT BUTTER SO EXPENSIVE. Right when I thought I would go ahead and splurge on aforementioned Baker's Chocolate, I noticed that good ol' creamy Jiffy is 2,847 colones. That's almost $6!! The Nutella was cheaper! There was no way around that one, unfortunately... peanut butter cupcakes without peanut butter? Please.

4.) Frosting. A dinky can of Betty Crocker was $3. Not bad, I know, but I just couldn't get into it.

5.) So... I bought cream cheese and powdered sugar. Costed less, will be more fun.

6.) The victory was definitely the stick of butter! I bought the brand NuMar margarine on sale for 185 colones! That, my US friends, is 37 cents. I don't really want to know why it was so cheap. NuMar.

As you can see, I am pretty revolted by the fact that I essentially bought peanut butter and garnishes for $10. This is ∞ times more than my weekly income. However, I love you and I love baking and I love baking Saturdays with you, so I am happy to do it. Just peanut butter may not be the dessert theme again.

Love,
Bailey

p.s. I did redeem myself in that I, for once, managed to get a 550 colones taxi from MxM.

p.p.s. Exhibit A. What the cupcakes will not look like, because where the heck would I buy fondant.