Long time no see

It is been a few days since my incident at the center. For those of you who didn’t read my last blog post, I ended up crying after a huge misunderstanding. It was silly, but everyone needs to cry every once in awhile. It was necessary for my mental health, and after a month and a half of smiles and laughter, I needed a moment of blues.

On my free day (Sunday), I was invited to chanting and meditation with Ron and Diane. I met Ron at my hotel’s reception desk. He was trying his best to communicate with the security guard, Alex. Between Alex’s poor English and Ron’s inability to speak Spanish, they were both glad to see my sleepy face. In my somewhat broken Spanish, I asked Alex where the black chair was, and within minutes the mystery was solved. Ron was amazed at my timing and ability to speak Spanish (the whole "donde esta la silla negra?" is obviously Level 5 Spanish) and asked me where I was from. From then on, he would show up to my hotel, on and off with his wife, Diane took care of my sunburns and would invite me places. On Thursday, I saw them in the street, and we started chit-chatting about my sunburns and future plans. That's when they invited me to do some chanting and meditation. I use to meditate two years ago, and I haven't been able to since. Eager to try again, I agreed to wake up at 8:30 on my day off to attend the 9AM session. 

I was not disappointed. The meeting took place at Casa Amma, which is named after the whole belief that with love, peace on Earth is possible. It is not a crazy concept, and the songs in old sankrit are quiet amusing to sing along to. At first, I felt extremely out of places. The people there where very hippy and not as welcoming as I expected. I think Diane noticed it and tried to get me to sit next to her. As ironic as it sound, I was so tense, I barely noticed I had dug my nails into my knees. Here I was trying to relax, and I couldn't help but be stressed out. This is why I tend to be a mess. It wasn't until the moment the reunion between old friends turned into the actual "service" that I started to feel better. After listening to Amma's views on the world and on oneself, we started chanting the mother's many names. Such as "Mother who cares for the blind." or "Mother who touches lepers." I mean you get the picture. The cool thing was that because this was all written in phonetic sanskrit, this experience could be juxtaposed to any religion. The point of going was to have a spiritual experience again, and to feel refreshed from it. After the chanting, we had ten minutes of meditation. Those ten minutes were the easiest ten minutes of meditations I have every performed. The open balcony provided us with the sound of the wave crashing on the black sand of Playa Negra, and the baby birds in the nest nearby started to chirp. Those are barely distraction when you can focus on your breathing and feel every muscle in your body release the stress and anger from earlier. 

After our meditation circle, we had a ritual to perform. Everyone seemed to have done it before, and I tried to pay close attention in order to be able to repeat it. I am not sure what I just agreed to, or what I just express through my performing of those actions, but I robed myself in incense smoke, and dotted my forehead with ash and a red pigmentation powder.  After the whole ordeal, which I think I handled pretty well, we were invited to Leo's house (which is on the same premises) for banana bread, and chai tea. I accepted the kind offer since I did truly want to try to befriend those strange people. The Chai tea was absolutely incredible. I barely talked to anyone, because I was too busy drinking cup after cup. The banana bread was impressive for being home made, but I was not to fill myself up on banana bread as I was determined to have my eggs benedict later. 

Surely enough, after a few bits of communication with others and trying to relate to a group of people that was not fully my own, I went home. That's right, last time I hunted down eggs benedict without knowing that downstairs, Dulce knew how to make them. How silly of me. Kaya's place is constantly surprising me. I sat down with some of the staff and waited for my freshly home made eggs benedict. After a chat about Panama (which I will be going to in a couple days), I discovered where to stay, and which island in Bocas to go too. Not only that, but all those websites warning you about yellow fever are wrong, and you don't need to worry about much. Silly internet. 

After my delicious brunch, I went to get my hair braided. I, now, have a long colorful braid with seashells attached to the end of it. Very beachy. And therefore, I went to the beach afterwards. For the first time in the month and a half I have been here, I did not burn. Or I didn't get worst I should say. On the beach, I found Marloes, who trained me for the nursery. She invited me to go to her apartment for dinner. I bicycled until we hit this terrible hill, where I had to walk the rest of the way. her apartment is very charming expect for the fact that it is far away from the main road. Most of the volunteers do stay here and it makes a nice family style dinner. Marloes, some of the tour guides and I had some dutch pancakes, which are really like French crepes, but the butter is melted on the pan instead of the being already in the batter. Our small choice of toppings was not a problem, as when everyone showed up it was late into the night and we were all starving. 

On Monday, I learned that Encar was leaving for San Jose to bring the baby sloth to a specialist. She tried to show me how to give everyone the medication, but between giving tours and trying to keep myself sane, we barely had time. It wasn't until the end of the day that I could finally breath and she could finally try to show me. As she was exhausted, she decided to show me in the morning, right before leaving. I was alright with that since I very much wanted to go home. We got a new arrival, a tiny little Lola (which I call Bebe lola). It is a little exotic parakeet who is still a baby and is still growing his feather. Similar to the baby owl, he was kicked out of the nest, most likely because of his little infectious beak. Birds tend to kick out their contagious siblings in order to limit the disease, even if it means death for that sibling. 

At night, I decided to do a night tour. I was quite excited since I hadn't seen much wild life in the wild (which is somewhat of a lie). After putting on my hiking boot, and taking my nearly-dying flashlight, we hopped in a truck to Manzanillo at dawn. It was me and 6 other friends and we were excited to see the river at a passable level. The last two times they had done it, the girls had decided to take off their pants to pass the river, while this time we could just hop over it. Once on the other side, we started to look for little critters. Robbie, our tour guide, was fantastic and could pretty much see anything, while I had my nose pointed at the ground- checking for Fer-De-Lance snakes. Snakes come out to play at night, and looking at the ground was my main concern for the first half of the trip. We saw a few little non-poisonous snakes, tarantulas, tons of ants, lizards (including one name Jesus Christ Lizard, because he can run on water) and tons of frogs. At a certain point in time, I thought I saw two glowing eyes in the forest, and I urged Robbie to go check it out. As soon as Robbie came closer, my heart was pounding, hoping for a Kinkajoo. He announced he had found an incredible rare animal and I quietly rushed over as to not scare it. A minute later, I find out he was only jocking and we had found a wild dog who had a pretty nasty infection on his groin area. Leave it up to me to find the sick animals around here. The tour was coming to an end, and we found a beautiful kitten who quickly ran away from me as I was babbling about it hugging it. Once home, all I wanted to do is sleep, and that's all I did. 

On Tuesday, Encar left. Before going she showed me how to give medication, to who and when. Everything was pretty much spelled out on the board for me. It seemed fairly simple enough, and I was not worried about having problems with medication. I was worried about people coming in with sick animals, or Picchio forgetting to turn on the baby's light. The whole day was spent telling Picchio that if my babies got sick it was his fault. He got the idea, because the next day the lights were on. My day was spent with the monkeys. I was glad to be able to lay down on the blanket and cuddle with the little monkeys rather than guide people around. I enjoyed my time very much, and spent some extra time with Othello, one of our male monkey. Othello recently got casted out from the troop. Chipito, our alpha male, attacked him and the rest of our little troop followed. Only Shaki, our little one-eyed spider monkey, now wants to play with him, while the rest would attack him. This means that Othello is going to have to go to La Cieba so we can try to rehabilite him in a different manner. Othello was a pet and has mental problems. He has random fits and bites us. He casually bite my wrist after I kissed his head -the noise must have surprised him. After the center, we had a get-together for Daniela and Robbie since they were moving to Honduras. Both were great tour guides, and will be missed dearly, especially since they had such big hearts and always made me smile (even the day I cried). 

Today was a whole ordeal. It is the third day since Encar is gone. It was a bit hectic for me, as it was raining, and my sloths were not going to come out, and the roster had been changed so many times, I didn't know who to give a sloth to. Not only that, but I was to be a tour guide today. So I quickly handed my sloths over, and I went to give my tour. When I finished my tour, someone came up to tell me they had let the scabies-sloth out with the others, and when I went to check on them, I found out Tyson, our non scabies sloth, was wrapped up in Dante's, the scabies sloth, blanket. I was fuming, and tomorrow I am making sure everyone knows not to touch my babies. 

After an upsetting day at the center, I took a bike ride with Angelica, our kitchen lady. She is a delight to talk to and in Spanish as well. We had a long conversation on the ride to Puerto Viejo (we both live in Puerto Viejo) and talked about our favorite animals, about the town back in the days and what Philadelphia looks like. Her first comment was that Philadelphia was filled with blacks. Now Angelica is not white, her skin is much darker than my tanned skin, and her saying something like that made me laugh. She asked me if I was the only white student at my university and if black people fight all the time in Philadelphia. For the record, I tried to keep it as politically correct as possible, but this woman had seen/ heard about the worst from Philly. Then she asked me about our dances, and the corsage. We laughed when I told her that indeed, I would get a little flower at prom, and the tradition is to also have one for the guys. She said she wanted one, and her birthday is coming up, so I must go out in town and find something, or stitch something together. Especially since her birthday is on Saturday. She showed me a quick tour of the city, so I could see the one side of town I had fully seen yet. She showed me where she grew up, and told me that every thing was just grass when she was younger, and how there wasn't any tourists here before. She called the town much bigger than it use to be. I am not sure if the town could be smaller and still be considered a town. 

Tomorrow is my last day at the center for a little bit. I will be going to Panama on Saturday until Monday. So I will have to leave my little babies in the trusting hands of Laia (which is the only real way for me to relax), and hopefully I will have plenty to blog about. 

Ci-ciao!