Fun Translations

Almost every day I hear new phrases in Spanish that I hear from a Tico, the newspaper, or the people on TV. But only once or twice a week do I hear words or phrases that make me laugh thinking about their literal translation. My favorite one this week? Drum roll please...

English phrase:
surrogate mother

Spanish phrase:
madre de alquiler

Literal English translation:
mother of rent

Now that's getting right to the point.

Finding the Source

3:15am: Scratching the tops of my feet.
3:42am: Scratching my left ankle.
3:58am: Scratching the back of my left calf.
4:10am: Only 35 minutes left to fall back to sleep.
4:43am: Still scratching, on different spots on both legs.
4:45am: Alarm is ringing.

For some reason, bites and rashes itch most when I'm trying to get some sleep.

As I remove my covers, I scratch my legs a few more times to ensure they're completely raw. Looking down at the red, heated spots on my ankles, feet, knees, calves, and thighs leads me to wonder: from where did these come THIS time?

Needless to say, I spend a lot of time washing my bedding and sweeping out my room. Each time I perform any one of these tasks, it's likely that I have left at least 43 bugs widowed or orphaned.

But it's not always related to the cities of bugs nesting somewhere in my house. I have learned not to sit on the beach too long people- and surfer- watching. Sand fleas. I also learned NOT to go without pants on a zip-lining canopy tour. Those gnats passed up 7 students, 3 chaperons, and 4 zip-lining guides to get to my exposed, sweet skin.

Recently, however, some mysterious poison ivy/oak has been attacking me at different places on my leg. I have yet to find the source, although I'm thinking the overgrowth on the sidewalk near the gym is one of the top-runners.

Cheers to a life where I never have to use a nail file! I have my rough, itchy skin to thank for that one.

Tree Day?

June 15th is Dia del Arbol. It's a day to encourage people to plant trees. However, in La Nacion this morning, there was a full page ad that looked like this:


I'm not sure if this would fly in the States. Someone would sue someone for an increase in teen pregnancies in mid-March next year.

On the Driver's Schedule

June 14, 2009

A snack. A cat nap. A drink of Coke. A chat with the local Soda owner. A quick skim of La Nacion’s latest news. Staring at the clouds. These are all completely justifiable reasons for not allowing the line of passengers into the bus to get to the airport, work, hospital, or some other time-sensitive destination.

Where I live in Costa Rica – the mountainside rainforest of the San Jose suburbs – two bus lines end in our remote location. On break, these two buses park outside our local mechanic and Soda (for snacks). Here you’ll always find a fraternity of Ticos passing the time talking, eating, drinking, and making fun of the local villagers who spend hours standing patiently for the driver to restart the bus.

And the fun doesn't stop there: they sometimes take this mini-breaks while EN ROUTE. I was on a bus last week that pulled over to a market to get loaves of bread while his bus was full of passengers.

You can’t blame the Tico (Costa Rican) bus driver trying to relish in a break at the end (or in the middle) of the bus line. It makes complete sense for them to wait until the last second – and in some cases, a few minutes late – to turn on the bus again. You would, too, if you drove around on narrow, bumpy roads crowded with traffic, right?

All of those hours slaving away to:

1. Count change (yes, they manually count and make change) for EVERY passenger
2. Turn that two-foot-diameter steering wheel
3. Shift the stick on a manual bus (up and down mountains)

can be exhausting.

So, if you’re standing at the bus stop in the pouring rain, sinking in mud, running late for catching that only connecting bus to Puerto Viejo for the weekend, staring hatefully at that driver taking an extra few minutes to clean the dirt from his nails, you may want to take a deep breath, realize you’re in Tico-land, and give ‘im a break. Literally.