Catching up

It is now the middle of week 3.  As always, I have more notes jotted down than I have had time to flesh out.  (A preview: hi from Nicaragua!)

People in the office are super nice/friendly, not only helping me with work but everyone has said to give them a call on their cell phones if I want to hang out.  During my first weekend a colleague invited me to join him and some others for a party on Saturday night.  I showed up at someone’s house to find 5 couples and a few of their kids were finishing dinner.  I realized that the connection was that everyone else was Salvadoran.  We all hung out and talked for a while – mostly about the difference between Central American countries and their Spanish – and then came the main event for the evening: karaoke.  I was not expecting that.  Every couple of years I’m in some foreign country, go sing karaoke with a group, and tell myself that I need to really learn one classic American karaoke song.  So far it hasn’t happened.  The result is that each time I’m trying hard to find a song on the list that I know, since 2/3 are in the local language and the other 1/3 are split between old 80’s songs that I never hear outside of karaoke and songs that flopped in the U.S. but were huge hits in the local country.  A good time, though, and interesting to see the inside of someone’s house.

I have also quickly decided that the expat group here is, in general, very different from the expat groups in my previous locales.  I’m used to expat groups of young but high-skilled professionals and mid-career execs on temporary international assignments, which usually means up to 3 years.  The result is high turnover.  Here, the majority of people I have met have been in the country for >5 years and consider it home, with no plans to move back.  A good number came for a specific reason and then just stayed.  One guy who is 81 has been here for 31 years, which he says is “longer than most Ticos [Costa Ricans] have been here.”  I haven’t checked that stat, but I’m willing to bet that the demographics mean he is right.

As a result, there is much less of an “expat bubble” here.  The people and their interests are also different (e.g. less “big-company professional”) since many came specifically to come to Costa Rica, not because they were sent by a company.  More expats here have families, and many of them include a Tico spouse (which may have been the reason they stayed or may have been a result).

We’ll see how much I plug into the group.  In the short-term, I went to a jazz place with someone I met through Internations and have plans for this coming weekend with some others.

Some other entertaining and miscellaneous facts and stories for today:

Apparently every Thursday at 10am my company tests an air raid siren.  No one bothered to tell me that, though it was pretty obvious when no one budged.

Eating out is expensive here.  Surprisingly so.  You can get a typical “casado” (standard lunch plate) fairly cheaply at a local neighborhood place.  Lunch at my office cafeteria is ~$5 for rice, beans, a meat main dish, and a salad; it won’t win awards but isn’t bad.  Outside of that (meaning even local places that serve something other than Costa Rican food) main dishes for lunch and dinner will easily run $15.  This isn’t’ so bad for dinner, but the surprise is a) this is (relatively) even more expensive when you consider Ticos don’t make as much to start with, and b) I keep wondering where the “in between” exists – the Chipotle-style “fast casual” where you can get decent food at a decent price in a decent amount of time.

I talked about the need for a GPS earlier; I still don’t know the name of the road my hotel was on, because it is “the road between Panasonic and the Red Cross.”  Keep in mind that this is a major artery.  A guy the other day told me he lives near me, and that to get to his place you go down a named road and “turn left at the really wide tree.”

In Spanish, people call Winnie the Pooh “Winnie Pooh.”  Have adults say that in a Spanish accent and try not to laugh.