Sufficiently American for the day

I was not sure what we would do for the fourth of July - but I think we qualify as being sufficiently American for the day. The US embassy sponsored (or at least endorsed) an American get together picnic for the 4th. It was held at the Imperial factory grounds. Imperial is the nationalized Costa Rican beer company (they have a very cool logo) - however - the grounds were not simply a beer factory. They had vast amounts of open space, nice athletic courts, a swimming pool (not in use), etc. Pretty amazing actually. We got there at about 8:30am in the morning and got right to work by having cotton candy, TCBY yogurt with M&Ms & Oreos and Diet Pepsi. The kids were able to play many games like bean bag tosses, fishing games, a moon walk, etc. One of the best things was all the candy the kids won like Skittles, SOUR SKITTLES (my favorite), a three musketeer bar, runts, etc. To top it all of, we had a bagel, tons of cheese, and multiple hot dogs. At a minimum I feel like we earned out our 8 dollar entrance fee to the activity.

The one downer on the whole day was that our car got stuck in the mud. They made us park on about a 15 degree grade grass hill on the side of the road. I had a bad feeling about it when I parked, but we really had no choice. When I came out after the picnic and tried to back out, not surprisingly, my back tires just spun uselessly. We had four guys try to help us push it but with no results. Luckily, a city tow truck stopped and was able to hook up some cables and get us out. Praise God that they happened to be driving by because we could have been stuck there for a while.

Another unexpected thing happened. I found myself more annoyed with some of the oddities of Americans than I ever normally might be. One of the things we learned about during orientation is that reverse culture shock (readjusting to the society in which you left initially) can often be more difficult than the culture shock with the initial move. After only 3 months, I can see how if you were on the field for several years, or even more so for a full career, it would be very hard to move back home and not go a little bonkers - or at least feel like you do not fit in.