Part of what living in Costa Rica did for me was to validate longings I had internally and elevate them. I’ve always intuitively had a certain approach to connecting with a place – Costa Rica affirmed those tendencies in me. Because Costa Rica takes great pride in those parts of itself that I also long to learn more about a place anyways. For example: Costa Rican people from the get-go are very proud of their birds, their ecosystems, their intact canopy cover, and their protected wild areas – their wildlife and wild forests. Yes! I’ve seen those here already, intact jungle canopy, lush forests, and expansive ocean! At 3 degrees north of the equator. Pin that – more on that later, when I get more chances to explore it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Along those same lines – in Costa Rica, I learned to “be a tourist” in the land I lived in. I know the nobler aspiration is to be a traveler. I mean more of an eager traveler, a guest. Not a superficial tourist. A “responsible tourist.” But in any case, I learned to seek out the wild and beautiful places, to enjoy and support the beautiful parts of the country where God has placed me. Yes. Travel, exploration, even visiting touristed places – this is me praying with my feet, giving gratitude and walking in wonder. I lived and learned this for myself in Costa Rica, but I also learned this after the modeling of my dad, in Haiti, and my grandfather in Papua New Guinea. They loved to visiting the tucked-away corners of the country God had called them to, learning its history, and finding the places that showcased its complex human and natural history. For me, so far, this has been moped rides across the Bukit Selatan road.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Costa Rica also taught me – love the language. I’m enjoying learning a new language at 41 the old way – by hacking through it and making mistakes. For people in Costa Rica, their Spanish, like their ecotourism, is held up and reified. Because Costa Rican Spanish is full of slang, colloquialisms, jerga, idiosyncratic words and expressions. It’s weird. And colorful. And they know<\/em> it. And they talk about it. And they love explaining it. And they put it on t-shirts. And they use<\/em> it. Culturally. A good Costa Rican can manejar the jerga well. Costa Rica keeps language weird. It is the Portland of Spanish flavors of language. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Unfortunately, I haven’t heard anyone talk about Indonesian language that way… though they easily could. It’s fascinating to me. A centuries-old “creole”\/trade language with ties to Malay and Asia and Sanskrit and Javanese? Whaaatt does that even mean? And the way it sounds when spoken? Now that’s<\/span> colorful! It sounds like a babbling brook, lots of lips and puffs and mumbles jumbled together, mixed with lots of k clicks and n’s and m’s. Oh yes, Indonesian sounds<\/span> wonderful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The land. The language. And… the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What if Cuba, Afghanistan, and Costa Rica occupied a tropical archipelago. Yes. Maybe more closely… what if Turkey and Panama meshed together and blended some southern China in? That’s where I liv. But most of all, the Turkey and Panama in the tropics. With some PNG and South Korea thrown in. I’m really grasping for connections here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Part of what living in Costa Rica did for me was to validate longings I had internally and elevate them. I’ve always intuitively had a certain approach to connecting with a place – Costa Rica affirmed those tendencies in me. Because Costa Rica takes great pride in those parts of itself that I also long… Read More »Lessons learned in Costa Rica<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":284,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,11,14],"tags":[12,15,17,13],"class_list":["post-283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-language","category-places","category-travel","tag-costarica","tag-culture","tag-language","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalwanderer.net\/bdlfam\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalwanderer.net\/bdlfam\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalwanderer.net\/bdlfam\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalwanderer.net\/bdlfam\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalwanderer.net\/bdlfam\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=283"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globalwanderer.net\/bdlfam\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":285,"href":"https:\/\/globalwanderer.net\/bdlfam\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283\/revisions\/285"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalwanderer.net\/bdlfam\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalwanderer.net\/bdlfam\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalwanderer.net\/bdlfam\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalwanderer.net\/bdlfam\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}