Bajo Tejares (updated) and Valentine's Day

Yesterday my immgration group went on a field trip to a poor neighborhood just outside of San Ramón called Bajo Tejares, or something like that. It is made up almost exclusively of Nicaraguan immigrants, the vast majority of which are illegals. Our bus ride took almost three hours becuase of a fatal truck accident on the main road there. Actually, it was first a walk to Intercultura, a taxi ride to downtown San José, a bus to San Ramón, and then another taxi to the ghetto. As you would expect, my camera died on the third picture I took, so I'll have to get the pics from my buddy Jeff. It can't really be described appropriately without photographs. The roads were not paved, the houses had numerous shared powerlines, and most of the wild dogs there were so small and malnourished that they were closer to cats than dogs.

We cleaned rocks (no, no misprint) for a few hours which were then mixed with this boiled hay. The mixture was placed in camas (beds) that were the size of a foosball table with a rubber house draining two inches from the bottom. The result was a hydroponic bed for any of the five crops the community is going to grow and share. Most of the people we worked with were women, because the men were out trying to get jobs which is usually construction. Women have a much harder time finding employment, at least in the San Ramón area. We asked lots of questions about how long they'd been living there in the slum, and all had been there at least six years or more. A few were born Nicaraguans who were Costa Ricans via marriage, but the courts in Costa Rica were refusing to recognize their citizenship, said they didn't have the right paperwork, etc.

The most ridiculous story I heard was the 14 yearold daughter of a Costa Rican father and Nica mother who was born HERE in Costa Rica, AND had all of the proper documentation was not allowed to attend classes because the school did not want to recognize her because she "looked" Nicaraguan. She had been sitting in an empty classroom by herself at the school for over a week while the school "reevaluated" her documents. Amazing really.

Valentine's Day this year was awesome. I told Emily to come over after her field trip (which got over just after mine), and we settled on her coming over at 8:30. Our dinner reservation was at 9:30 at Antica Roma, an Italian restaurant. I figured it would be appropriate since we pretty much met and started dating in Rome during our first abroad trip.

So she showed up at 8:30 and I had my mom and José Miguel stall in her in the kitchen. I had Turd help me put some Mariachi songs on my Ipod as well as "Total Eclipse of the Heart"--but the version from Old School (much, much funnier if you know what I mean). Finally they let Emily in to the terrace where I was waiting with candles lit, music playing, a bottle of champagne, chocolates, and a game of Gin Rummy set up ( which has occupied no less than 2o hours of our trip so far). The plan was to finish up a game and then head to dinner, but we didn't quite finish.

Dinner was absolutely packed, even with a 930 reservation, and we didnt get seated until 1000. Dinner was great: I had chicken, she had three mushroom pasta, and we split a pitcher of Imperial. Got overbilled for something we didn't order, so when it was all said and done we left about 1115. Went back home, finished our card game, and I fell asleep. My 11 hour field trip left me with an empty tank I guess.