habla ya!

DISCLAIMER FOR THIS POST-
Kate makes mistakes too. A lot of them.

This morning while I was devouring a mango, I questioned my inability to make sense while speaking Spanish. It was 9 am and my Spanish lesson was scheduled to begin in a few minutes. Jamey was brushing his teeth for ten minutes and Ins, our awesome teacher, was on the skype with someone speaking one of the many languages she has perfected. This was a perfect time for me to think about several things including but not limited to the following:

1. Why do I sound like a two year old when I speak Spanish but write like a ten year old and read like a four year old?
2. Why cant we get mango's like this in the states?
3. How does Ins have three children and speak three languages fluently and always keep her composure?
4. Why did every school I ever attended tell me I had to take Spanish but nothing ever sank in for practical use?
5. Why am I starting to speak English like it is my second language?
6. I want a dog.
7. Gosh, where can I get more mango's?

Ok, I could keep going but that was the general trend of thoughts this morning. We started the lesson and I think I was loopy from lack of sleep. The night before we enjoyed cerveza and did our homework in a dark bar and did not get enough sleep for my brain to be able to conjugate verbs properly. Everything Jamey said was hilarious. He said "el niño tiene los chicles pequeños". He confused the word for teeth, in Spanish, for chicles, which means gum, and I could not stop laughing. So essentially he said, "the boy has small gum". To which Ins was instantly confused because she could not understand how Jamey could see that the boy in the picture had gum in his mouth. I was laughing because to me the word chicles always reminded me of the word chicklet, which is a type of gum in the U.S. (stay with me here). There is a movie, bonus points to ANYONE who can remember which movie, where a man gets his teeth knocked out and while he is out somebody replaces them with Chicklets. I cant help but think this is a childs movie. Anyway, all I could picture is this niño with chicklet teeth. Oh gosh. I still cant stop laughing about it. I really do think I either need food or sleep.

The whole morning went on like this. We kept making ridiculous mistakes and laughing, but learning. School was never this much fun. Never. Especially Spanish class. It was miserable and I realized that I had tricked every single one of my language teachers into thinking that I really did know what was going on. Very few lessons included an verbal session so our measure of success was solely on paper. I finally figured it out. Why did I continue to get good grades? Patterns, people, patterns. Spanish is all patterns. Could I follow the teachers example and apply it to different tenses, verbs and conjugations? Yes, because I see patterns. Not a complete language and certainly not a conversation. I saw bits and pieces and made it work and then left the class and went to Algebra. Again, useless. Less so than calculus however. The more removed I am from my years as a student the more I realized it was a game of tricking my teachers so I could move on and daydream.

I think I learned a little in school but a more effective course may be to give each student a ride to a certain part of the city, china town, little Havana, etc., an dropping them off for a few hours to order food, use the bathroom, get a haircut, go to the emergency room, you know, the usual. And then picking them back up at the end of the day, or not, and letting them panic and force the language on them. This technique is often used in wilderness training. You are left alone in a deserted environment and have to fend for yourself. You learn quick. How do I roast a squirrel?

Jamey is awesome at languages and I admire his ability to absorb information. But I do get to laugh.

Jamey- "hola señor"
clerk- "buenas"
Jamey- "Quisiera tres jueves porfavor" "may I have three thursdays please?"
Clerk- "si" (hands him three eggs)
Jamey- "Gracias"
Clerk- "huevos" (the correct word for eggs)

ahh, eggs. Not Thursdays. Lesson learned. Check and check.

roosters, among other things...

I finally did it! I found a computer that I could upload photos and they are finally available for viewing. Please check out the following link for our photos from Puerto Viejo and Bocas Del Toro. I have more from our time here in Boquete. I will post them as soon as I figure out where the hell my USB cord is. Grrrr.

http://new.photos.yahoo.com/jameybergman/album/576460762392660926#page1

this should work, if it doesnt then I will slam my head against this desk. I am going to eat cookies now. Enjoy!

Beverly´s Hill

Isla de Bastimentos, Bocas del Toro, Panamá

Naomi of the beautiful smile, has a scar that slides permanently down her cheek like a dirty tear. She shows me her purple shoes, and beams with pride. (I tell her they must be the most beautiful shoes in the world.) Takes her papa´s hand and leads us up a long path through the sharp edges of the garden palms.

Later, drinking a beer in the hammock, I get the story of the scar from her papa, Simon, between lengthy laments over his futbol club´s latest loss. "Ahh... 3-2 in the 89th minute, and they lost it 4-3 ... 95th minute ... extra time. And Eduardo scored - hasn´t scored in months, has he? But he did, and he was over it. And the passion - he goes bonkers diving in the stands - nearly murders the front row - and he stands up and looks at the crowd and rips his shirt off. Oh, He´s got the passion, no doubt."

Apparently, Naomi loves the cat more than the cat would like, and when she was squeezing him, he had enough of it and got hold of her cheek. "She thinks he´s her baby, and that, but if he does it again, I´ll have to get rid of him. Not that I want to, mind you, but he can´t be scratching up the prettiest face you´ve ever seen - I´m a bit biased, you see."

But he´s not biased. She is one of the most adorable and precocious little girls I´ve ever met.

When we say goodbye the next morning, she´s singing a song of made-up words, standing in a foot of water in her bathing suit and water wings dumping a cut-up-half of a-gallon-milk-jug full of water on herself and feeding the 80 pound bulldog named Reno some melted chocolate.

a little slice of paradise

We always decide to do hikes that are never planned out and rarely easy. In a little town named Manzanillo, about 100 potholes away from Puerto Viejo on the Caribbean coast, we decided to hike into the rainforest to discover some hidden beaches where we heard the snorkeling was awesome and the reefs still thrived. Okay, we thought, so we grab some food and head into the jungle on a hot balmy afternoon. I had sunscreen, snorkel gear, food and a bathing suit. I wore flip flops and I thought it would be a quick jaunt to a beach but I realized I should have opted for real shoes once I climbed the first of many steep hills on this jungle path to no wheres. I did remember to pack our trekking poles and they saved my ass, literally. We hiked for about an hour and a half on steep difficult terrain covered with huge spiders webs and roots of trees that looked like they could come alive at any moment, grab you and fling you to the sea. We knew going into the Manzanillo Wildlife Refuge that there were no marked trails and we were told just to follow the foot path that had been worn with time. As we walked we past barefoot surfers and managed to hike past a group of 70 year olds (no offense dad) on a guided tour. I thought that it was a good sign that perhaps we were close to our destination and that the terrain may be easy after all. One hour and forty almost -break-a-bone moments later, we arrived in a cove on the Caribbean coast that can only be described as perfect. Perfecto. We had heard when the surf was up that the snorkeling was no good. We had stopped once on the trail and found a perfect beach break that Jamey vowed he would come back to to surf once we had fulfilled our desire to see the reef below. It appeared that the surf was indeed up and we wondered if we would be able to see a thing. Luckily this little cove was protected and seemingly calm so we slathered on the sunscreen and dove in. This area is notorious for its rip tides which we were warned about several times. As soon as we dove in we could feel the intense pull and with some muscle were able to swim around and discover the reef underneath. The beach was deserted. Only us and the fishies. What a gem. A true piece of paradise. We swam and swam until the salt sucked the water out of us and our hands were pruned like when we were kids and played in the tub for too long. I didn't even notice the time pass. The beauty above and below had me so enraptured.

I had read a bit about the reefs in this area. In the 90´s an earthquake devastated most of the reef when the seafloor rose up about a meter above the sea level. Much of the reef was destroyed. Walking along the jungle trail you can see the remnants of the reef, the carcass of brain coral nestled in the rich dark earth. Another part of the story is found in the interior in the many banana fincas splattered all over the land. The banana trade has brought a lot of income to these families but has brought an incredible amount of deforestation and degradation to the rainforest. As the land is cleared for the banana finca, the stabilizing force for the soil is wiped away. During the rainy season the soil is washed out to sea from the mountainsides and much of it ended up on the reefs, clogging and killing the sensitive life that existed. The banana farms have had their impact in so many ways. As we passed the farms on the drive across the country we saw all of these blue bags that covered the bananas as they grew from the tree. I found out that the bags keep away the pests and protect the bananas so they can grow, then harvested and eventually end up in your fruit salad in August (no guilt there, wink, wink). And the blue bags? Oh they go out to sea. They float down the mountain side and many end up floating on into oblivion. I had asked a local about what they are doing about the bags and he said that he had heard in an effort to control the bag litter that the farms were now gathering the bags and taking them out to see on a ship and burning them in massive piles. I personally don't know if I believe that. It sounds nice, I guess, that they are attempting to solve the problem by burning them but I cant help but get the feeling that there is a graveyard of blue banana bags at the bottom of the Caribbean somewhere. It is this struggle between economic survival and environmental protection that is so vivid when traveling in Central America. I kept having "wow" moments when confronted with the staggering poverty on the Caribbean coast. Moments when I could not see the beauty past the shack falling into the sea where a family cooks, laughs, cries and tries to survive. Is this truly a slice of paradise? In many ways yes but with 37% of a population in poverty it makes you think twice.
I´m thankful for the time we spent in Puerto Viejo and when we ventured on to Bocas Del Toro Panama we were equally as amazed with the beautiful lush scenery. That is perhaps chapter two...
oh yes, and if I can figure out how to say "harddrive" and "upload" in spanish I will be able to post my pictures. We´ll see.

rejoice, in the beauty of small things

Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica (Southern Caribbean)

So, I´m lying down staring at this gecko on our window screen, absentmindedly watching him hunt for one of the houseflies that we let in, when he crosses a three-foot span of window, catches the fly in his mouth, holds it, and then tosses it a few times to make sure the head goes down first when he swallows (so the wings and legs don´t bend backward, clog his windpipe and asphyxiate him). He´s the crocodilian, in miniature, snatching his prey unawares, snaring life in his powerful little jaws, playing out the primordial lesson. Ambush. Eat or be eaten.

The strike was so nearly instantaneous that the fly saw it coming and still couldn´t get away. And, almost as fast, I´m up off the bed cheering, yelling at Kate to come watch the hunter savor his kill. (Who needs TV?) When her enthusiasm inevitably doesn´t match mine and she goes back to what she was doing, my bloodlust wanes and the emotional void is filled with a mixture of conflicting thoughts:

1.) something less than a half-hearted pity for the fly,
2.) deep respect for the gecko, and
3.) a line that might be from a hymn sung during some church service a long time ago that says something like, "rejoice, in the beauty of small things"

And, after four days of too little to do with too much time on my hands, my list-making, electronic-entertainment-craving mind calms down a little bit, and I take the first tentative, hesitant, self-conscious steps back toward equanimity - life lived outside the bubble of constant access, mass media, and to-do lists.

And, later, I fall asleep to the tapping of light rain on palm leaves and the pinging noises of tree frogs in the jungle.

potholes and mangroves

Hi friends and family,

I am trying to nudge jamey into making an entry into this blog but seeing as our internet time is extremely limited and expensive we often make quick trips just to check our emails and run before the time clicks away with our dollars. We´ve discovered quickly that being here is expensive and because of that we end up halving everything. Food especially. I was eating like a starving horse in the winter time before we left and now, we manage to get by on very little by comparison. I believe its the sudden shock of our bodies being thrown into summertime mode. We play all day and eat in between.
Anyway, once we get to a place that actually has internet that works for five minute increments consistently then we will be sure to write about what kind of trouble we are getting into and our plans for the near future. Right now we are in the Bocas Del Toro region of Panama. We´re not quite sure how we feel about it. I think I had some expectations that would be met if I had a $100.00 a day to spend. We are trying to do a lot of snorkeling and swimming in whats left of the reef here after deforestation. Thats a whole other entry.
We had a great stay in Puerto Viejo and befriended a lot of quirky and helpful locals. The humidity was suffocating but amazing at the same time. Jamey is convinced he has malaria. We spent much of our time there swatting at bugs that looked like mosquitos and covering ourselves with deet. Mmmm. We made some great connections there and ate very yummy food. I would not be surprised if we ended back on the Caribbean coast again before we leave.

I hope all is well and we will be writing feverishly soon!

Peace

Kate and James

Slowly but surely...

This was a fun year to do taxes. In fact I think it is the sole reason I am not already in Costa Rica. Now that the mess is behind us and we have deducted every possible thing in our lives, we are off to San Jose on Tuesday February 20th. For those of you who dont know that is Jamey's Birthday and he is going to be 29. Send him a shout out or mentally give him five. We are flying into San Jose via Miami on Tuesday and will be arriving at night around 10:30. We are staying at a pretty cool looking hostel in San Jose for a night and then we are off to celebrate our 1st wedding anniversary on the carribbean coast near Puerto Viejo. We found some cool digs for a good price. We're hoping to find a place we love and call it home for a while. I let you know what I think of Puerto Viejo. After the celebrations we are planning on getting down to business. First and foremost, where are the best waves? Second, where can we get a board? Third, conservation. Fourth, money. I want to sell churrros and Jamey wants to teach. We'll see who wins that one.

I will posting some pictures here but mostly on my yahoo account. I will leave the link when I start uploading.

Love and kisses all around