Living the Tico Life

This past week introduced me to a few new things about what it means to be a "Tico" or Costa Rican.

The rainy season has started here in Costa Rica and in the rainforest and will continue on until November. Those people that live in the mountains of Costa Rica are accustomed to a great deal of rain for a significant amount of time during each year. Many people seem to believe that rain can get you down, I may believe that after 4 months of consistent rain, but right now the pounding rain here in the rainforest is something to enjoy. After the rain ends, the big, moss covered trees drip for hours above our house - making it seem as if it is raining all day.

One of my co-workers got married this weekend in a relatively small church down the road from our base camp. We all piled in the back of a pick-up truck and arrived in style to the church. The actual wedding was not very long, and the 50 people that attended included several people from my work and of course family and friends of the groom (one of our drivers). Three acoustic guitarists provided the music in between talks from the priest, and after about an hour and a half the two were married and we made our way to the reception.

We cruised over to the small community center in the back of the truck, admiring the views of the central valley as we climbed up steep hills to the reception. As we made our entrance into the community center the gigantic speakers with music that sounded like Pedro from Napolean Dynomite put together, could not be missed. We all sat down, gave a toast with our orange soda (no alcohol), and before we knew it there was a circle of people on the dance floor waiting for the next person to bust a move. The bride's mom joined in, a random dude who re-defined "gettin low", and of course, myself. It was a great experience to see a Costa Rican wedding.

There weren't any fancy plates or food items (styrofoam plates / rice and tortillas), and no pressure to dress in a designer suit, everyone knew why we were there - to celebrate the marriage of two people. Quite a difference from the weddings I have catered in the US.

We have a chicken coop here on base where we get all of our eggs and chicken to eat. Our chickens were finally ready to be eaten, so I decided to help kill the chickens. I've never deliberately killed an animal so I knew it would be an experience. I've been eating chicken my entire life and I have only touched live chickens on a few occasions so I felt it was necessary to for once in my life to kill the chicken I was going to eat.

With the help of some co-workers, we gathered the chickens (8 in total) and held them down one by one to kill. I grabbed the head and with the knife in hand, killed the chicken. It was really intense, no need for details, but it was an experience to say the least. Afterward I felt naive to have never partaken in the process of killing the animal I would eat. It is interesting how removed we can become from some of the very natural processes in our lives.