well, we're home. and i've been ignoring my blog. i'm afraid of starting because i don't know where to start. so i'm going to avoid getting into details of the trip until i figure out how to tackle it. two weeks is a long time.
i will tell you that from la fortuna we went down the coast to manuel antonio and then up a bit to jaco (pronounced ha-ko) and finally back to san jose and then home again. home on the range you see. because we live on a range. which i'm guessing is a farm, or a lot of land at any rate. we don't live on any kind of range. we live on an over-sized postage stamp of land. in suburbia. not so range-y at all.
can you tell that being back at work after having two weeks off is completely frying my brain? i've become stupid. but it's nice to be back. back home, not back at work. work is the exact same, it chugged along while we were gone and basically piled itself up on my desk and on my chair and on my floor, anxiously awaiting my return. you know it's bad when your boss is so happy to see you, not because she missed you but because now she doesn't have to deal with your clients. ug.
but i'm being optimistic because apparently it's optimism month (the radio might be making this up though) and generally i'm an optimistic person. i truly believe i will dig myself out of this two-week big hole. eventually.
so, while avoiding actual work (and hence adding to the pile/hole) i will award you all with some things i noticed while traveling. in no particular order:
- j and i are NOT budget travelers. we don't mind paying $10-15 more a night for a room that does not require the lights to be left on while sleeping.
- home is where the... j&k are together. we were wondering how we were so totally fine with traveling and being away from home for so long, but really, it was because we were both there together and we knew the cats we fine. paying someone professional to look after your (high-maintenance) cats is worth the money.
- canadians (and north amaericans in general) have a lot of stuff and put so much worth in material things. our little house is huge when compared to the concrete cubes that whole costa rican families live in.
- cold showers are fine when it's bloody hot out. when it's not, like in canada, cold showers are not fine. bring on the heat!
- i really am allergic to fabric softener. thankfully the rash is not red, but skin-coloured.
- canadians really do like to talk about the weather. americans really are, for the most part, loud, obnoxious jerks, even when they think they aren't.
- i have two language capacities: english and "not-english". when flustered by spanish-speaking people, french pours out of my mouth. i do not have a great natural ability for learning languages. no hablo espanol. pointing and french will help you get by in spanish-speaking countries.
there you have it. my thoughts. soon i will figure out how to deal with recounting the past two weeks of my life. and maybe get some pictures up.
Monday, March 5
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4 comments:
Your comment about having an english part of the brain and a non-english part of the brain is spot on. Ever since I started learning Dutch I haven't been able to speak french any more. If I try, it comes out as a dutch-french jumble. And the same for trying to speak dutch. English is still ok, thankfully, and I can understand everyone just fine in all three but speaking? not so much.
Work will slowly sort itself out as long as you keep on trucking. Like you, I had a (virtual) pile of work growing on my desk (during my short unemployment stint between contracts - I would have rather been on vacation!). It's now gradually being dealt with. I figure, if it was really important, someone else would have done the work while I was 'unavailable'.
You're home! Yay! You have too much to write! Yay again! I'm super glad you had a great trip. It sounds like you did some really fabulous things and saw some beautiful sights. That's great news for me too, since I'm living vacariously through you. Speaking of which, how did we like the cloud forest? ;-) Oh, I can't help it.
I don't know how to get over the overwhelming catch up posts either. Maybe do a day by day analysis, like on day at a time? If you figure out a way to do it, I'll probably copy your style. Just sayin'.
You're back!
alan, do you think that if we learned the languages at a younger age that we wouldn't have the same problem (mental block perhaps)?
work is already sorting itself out. people go on vacation all the time. just not me.
m, your comment made me laugh! you went on a trip the exact same time i did so you don't need to live vicariously through anyone!
i think i've figured out my problems with too much to write. i'm going to do one post per place/city/village. that way i'll have something like 7 or 8 posts instead of 15 if i did a post for every day.
I totally believe that languages learned at a young age don't get lumped into the 'foreign languages' part of your brain. Also, I would be curious to see what would happen if (taking myself as an example) I had to live in, say, Belgium, where I would use either French or Dutch non-stop. My guess is that over time (say 5 years, at my present age, or 15 years if I were older) they would both migrate out of my 'foreign language' brain and I would be tri-lingual almost forever.
This is all just guesswork on my part, though. However, I do know for a fact that if you don't use it, you lose it. Mother tongues take longer to lose but it still happens nonetheless.
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