Mother's Day

A little late this week as I was a little under the weather at the weekend. I had a bit of a cold with a chesty cough. My students tell me there is a virus doing the rounds. Still, it was my first time with any sickness in my 16 months here.

Mother's Day
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Mother's Day is a bank holiday in Costa Rica, which probably shows the extent to which mothers play a role in the national psyche. It was a bit confusing this year, because Mother's Day is August 15th, which was last Tuesday. Traditionally this would have been the bank holiday as well, but the new government is moving bank holidays to Mondays. So yesterday was the official holiday. I think this has confused everyone. The school closed on 15th and lots of students turned up. And it was business as usual yesterday; I had one student in my first class and two in the second.

Irish Americans
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The new American teachers seem at pains to stress their Irish roots to me. One, Erin, has family from Roscommon and has been to Ireland on holidays most of her life. Another has dogs called Guinness and Bailey. She would love to learn Gaelic, and can't understand why none of her Scots Irish ancestors have held onto the language.

Tico furniture
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Tico furniture has to be experienced to be believed. Comfort has not entered as a requirement in Central America. Couches are always boxy, and you can literally feel the planks of wood. Our couch had been getting worse and worse recently. It sagged in the middle and had one end so bad that it was better to sit on a pillow on the floor in front of it.

We reported it to our landlord. Now, in Ireland this couch would be for the skip. But not so in Costa Rica where nothing is thrown out. We seemed to go on a 3-week waiting list for the couch repair man. When he arrived on Saturday he literally took it apart. The sides came off, the back came off, the sponge came off and the springs were revealed. Everyone one of them was broken. I never felt so heavy in my life.

Anyway, I saw that the inside was made of wood, springs, twine, plastic bags, and bizarrely, cardboard boxes labelled chicken and beef. After replacing the springs the couch was partially reassembled before he left, to return on Sunday morning at 8am(!) to finish the job.

However, I'm amazed to say that he did a really good job, and the couch, while not exactly 'comfortable' by Irish standards, is not an ordeal to sit on.

Ant attack
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You will remember that Costa Rica has 0.03% of the earth's landmass, and 6% of the biodiversity. Well, we're struggling with a marvel of evolution in the shape of thousands of tiny ants that invade our kitchen. They've always been here since we arrived, but this time of year must be particularly prone to them, because there are legions marching up and down the walls. If you so much as leave a knife down with food on it they're all over it within minutes.

I've looked them up on Wikipedia, and they're Argentine Ants. They're impossible to eradicate. They live in cavity walls or in any nooks or crannies. They have several queens, so even if one is killed the colony continues. If you kill them (and I have to confess that I do it with regularity, sorry animal lovers) the ones that escape run back up the trail, which is normally on the wall over the cooker. You can see them 'telling' the ones on the way down. They go head to head and twitch like they're chatting. Then they turn around and flee, telling the others as they go. About five minutes later a 'scout' comes out, and in a completely mad zig-zag fashion he runs about checking out the trail and brings back the 'all clear' or 'stay for another while' message. It's truly fascinating.
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Well, that's it for another week. We're on our big work 'freebie' in a resort hotel on the Pacific next weekend! So until next week.

Pura Vida,

Éamon

Sunday's headline from La Nación: Ticos discover fossil of prehistoric mammal