Student life - ticking down

Current location: 10°0’2”N 84°6’38”W Jardines Universitarios, Heredia, Costa Rica

I live in a cement box with no window and I swear that there is an invisible mosquito that is trying to kill me. I have broken two glasses in less than two days and just now I cooked my food in a kitchen that also functions as a laundry room, papaya garden and dance floor. All and all I must say that I am pretty content with my everyday lull and I ought to have paid more attention to it in my blog posts. It is a bit of a bummer that I live in a room that never sees daylight, but the rent I pay makes for an appealing argument to why I should stick around. But more so – the people I live with. Today as I was cooking a casual salsa dance session broke out and I stood there and stomped my feet in a semi-rhythmical manner and continued moving around the contents of my frying-pan, as any Swede would have in such a situation. Next to the stove is a papaya tree and a newly planted pineapple, and next to those the laundry machine. The ceiling consist of plastic and metal sheets and covers about two thirds of the kitchen area. As a result I feel as if I’m drinking my morning coffee outside, yet have the luxury of having a fridge easily accessible. There are a few things I have noticed that are stereotypically Costa Rican but that I also find particularly strange: 1. The way they make their coffee. They boil water and pour the hot water into a cloth bag filled with ground coffee powder and let the coffee drip down into their mug. As a result their coffee in Swedish measures is more like colored water than coffee 2. They don’t know how to mop floors. Whenever they mop they use an already dirty towel attached to a stick and move around the dirtiness on the floor so that it spreads out in a unified manner. I have started to clean my floors Cinderella style on my knees for this reason 3. The word “now” means later (Ahora = más tarde). If you want to say right now you have to emphasize with saying “little now” (ahorita) 4. They eat their oranges by pealing off the orange part of the peal and then cutting off the top of the orange to squeeze the contents into their mouths. Most peculiar. But lets not get too excited about cultural differences. The upcoming weeks will serve as the final sprint of my master’s project and it seems as if I will actually be really busy for once. It feels good and I am up for the task. I will apart from working with my project also help out with a coral project, perform a chronic toxicity test and an ELISA analysis on fish. Finally I will be doing things that I can benefit from even after this trip has ended. I will keep you posted. Chau!