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| just a little late, as i´m already coming to the end of my journey in Costa Rica. I´ve been here for 3 weeks and lamentably, have to return in 10 days =( I´ve been contemplating extending my trip, and even saying fuck it! Screw grad school, I just wanna be a professional adventurer, forever!
Well, where do I start? Over the last few weeks I´ve been resisting scratching the plethora of my insect bites, wiping rivers of sweat from my forehead, and traversing potholed roads with soggy socks and rain-soaked shoes. Although my beach towel never dries, and sporting my plastic poncho over my backpack is slightly less than sexy, traveling during the rainy season is only another adventure story to add to my travel chronicles.
I spent the first week and a half on the Carribean Coast, dodging testosterone-filled reggae clubs and curling up in bed with a stomach
flu from the supposedly sanitized water here. Though the excitement of my trip came to a slow start, my experience here has been incredible and becomes more magical each day. Not only is Costa Rica the lushest, greenest country I´ve ever visited, but the people here are the most hospitable and friendly people i´ve met who never hesitate to offer help with a giant smile on their face, and remind me to chill out with an upbeat "pura vida."
I´ve been wandering thru magical forests, hiking up active volcanoes, diving into fierce waves at the beach, and more exciting than all, i´ve been speaking nothing but Spanish every single day. I´ve been sleep-talking, dreaming, and falling in love, in Spanish.
Since I arrived, I´ve been mostly staying with host families - first with a Afro-Costa Rican family in a tiny beach town off the Carribean coast, and this past week I stayed in the awe-inspiring mountains with a local Tico family, in a beautiful house overlooking the green hills. A few days ago I went out to a local cafe and met some musicians who were performing live Latin music, and that´s where magic happened. The group members were composed of five amazing souls from Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica and Mexico, who performed with so much spirit and energy. I was entranced and my gaze transfixed on the Colombian lead singer/guitarist. Afterward I introduced myself to the musicians, chatted a bit, then relocated to a local arthouse/bar, where I found myself surrounded by jewelry-makers, ex-pilots, artists, traveling musicians, social justice activists, and Earth-lovers. That night ended with salsa dance swirls and open invitations to visit them in South American countries.
The next night was lamentably my last night in town... and that´s when I fell in love.
So here I am, entranced in visions of summer rain and starry nights.
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| Ok so I know I haven´t posted any pics recently, and that´s cuz I´ve been too busy hopping around from city to city in Peru and haven´t had a chance to go online to scan pics! But there have been too many amazing sights I´ve visited over the last couple of weeks to be able to upload all of them. So I´ve decided to have a big slideshow of my travel adventures once I return to the States - that way you can see all the highlights at once! Over the last couple of weeks I´ve been learning how to surf on the North Coast of Peru, gawking at erotic pots at the museum in Lima, strolling thru the beautiful city of Arequipa, touring the Colca Canyons - the 2nd deepest Canyon in the world, climbing cobblestone streets in Cusco, and today came back from the awe-inspiring, breath-taking Machu Picchu. It has all been absolutely amazing. It´s been a lifetime experience, but I must say that after 4 months of being away from home I´m getting slightly weary of hostel-hopping, sleeping on 22 hour overnight buses, and battling illnesses constantly (yes, I am still sick - I´ve had a stomach parasite, a nasty flu, altitude sickness, bronchitis and a cold all in the last month). So after receiving an acceptance letter to grad school, it´s looking pretty likely that I will end my journey soon and return to my favorite city in the world, SF! It looks like I´ll be a city-dweller for the next few years - whoo-hoo! I´ve spontaneously decided to stop by Guatemala on the way back in the attempt to neutralize my Spanish accent, live with a host family again, and save some money before turning into poor grad student! Looking forward to seeing you all soon! | | |
| So of course the whole incident last night got me thinking. I´ve been getting shit my whole life from my own parents, my family, other Asian-Americans, Asians and non-Asians alike about being "whitewashed", not knowing my culture, etc. It seems like NOBODY understands my struggle of being a 2nd and a half generation Asian-American who just wasn´t raised around other Asian-Americans. How do you definte a person who left home at 14, went to twelve different schools before she was 18, lived in over a dozen different cities during her childhood - often with no other Asians around? Growing up around white and black classmates, it wasn´t considered "cool" to be Asian - so to avoid coming home with a bloody nose and fat lip from the fists of white boys, what else could I do but to resist my culture and try my hardest to fit in with my non-Asian peers? How do I explain that my parents spoke Cantonese to each other and Mandarin to me, so I could never communicate with them? I probably know more about HK and parts of Asia than lots of other Asian-Americans since my mom lives there and I have worked and gone to school there, but I will never be that stereotypical Asian-American girl that everyone expects me to be. I´m a free spirit who roams wherever my heart takes me. And that´s enough to be called "whitewashed" and bashed for not being "Asian" enough. But what is that saying about Asians? That we´re all supposed to be over-achieving, "practical" money-seekers and parent-pleasers? This is so far from the truth! My identity growing up changed with each school - so that meant, every 4 months to 1 year, I went from being a quiet, shy girl to being a hippie-chick to goth girl to skater chick to sullen artsy-fartsy chick to wannabe gangsta girl to angry, rebellious trouble-maker, to a near high-school drop-out...I could go on forever and ever. My friends all throughout adolescence have ranged from wealthy children of liberal elites to street kids from broken homes, in and out of jail and running away from the law. My friends from childhood have been artists, hippies, druggies, gangsters, alcoholics, hip-hop heads, punk-rockers, Ivy-leaguers, straight A students and high-school dropouts alike, of all colors, shapes and forms. So if this means that I´m not "Asian" enough then does this mean that Asians are all conformists who hang out with other Asians who get straight A´s and all become Computer Engineers who eventually will make big bucks at Google? (no offense to those who fit this description). Way to subjugate and confine your own race - Asians are way more diverse, in ethnicity, in culture, and in our thinking than anyone ever gives us credit for! It seems like my identity is something that is always marginalized, in flux and caught inside a mosaic of cultures - which I´m very proud of, but trying to explain this to others who only see me from the outside and nothing else - is next to impossible sometimes. Thanx for reading. | | |
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