Teacher on Two Wheels

Above: Main living room of the house I’ll be staying in for the next month

Saturday 2/16/08 Heredia, Costa Rica

For three and a half months, I was alone. Sure, I’d talk to people throughout the day, I’d stay with someone a night here, a night there. But during the times when a person can feel most alone, during quiet sunsets and slow meals, during time spent standing under starry skies on cloudless nights, I was by myself. I grew used to silence being the default sound of existence. My daily failures and successes were the result of my decisions and mine alone. I ate what I wanted to eat. I stopped riding when I wanted to stop. I spent my time as I wanted to spend it. Life was simple.

After two full weeks of living in a house with a family in Heredia, I still don’t feel used to living in one place, living with other people.

At night, because of electricity, I stay up much later than I did while riding. Lights, television, and the internet allow me to indulge in lazy, sloth-like lounging that I later regret wasting time on. While riding, I went to bed shortly after sunset no matter how energized I felt. With no lights around, I often slept because it felt like my only behavioral option. Now, electricity eats away at my time and keeps me up later than I’d like to be.

I live with four people (sometimes six or seven depending on who is visiting) in a house in which cooking, cleaning, and eating are activities that are taken seriously. Like, for real. On weekends, the family often has three sit-down meals together each day. To cook and clean up after the meals prepared for six or more people is no easy task.

I usually help clean up after every meal I don’t help cook, and this can take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. On a Saturday or Sunday, this translates to two or three hours of cleaning throughout the course of the day. Considering I spend about 14 hours awake on a Saturday or Sunday, three hours ain’t no small thang.

Sometimes the prospect of cleaning up yet another dirty kitchen, yet another stack of plates, bowls, utensils, and cups, is beyond daunting. I can’t help but feel like I’m losing my time when I clean up after elaborate meals each day. To me, spending 45 minutes cleaning up after dinner each night is not a productive way to use one’s time. I appreciate the good food I’m being fed, but at the same time, I feel like the process is exhausting because the meals are so elaborate.

When I used to cook for myself out in Japan, I’d cook two or three times a week. My cooking sessions involved cooking a massive portion of one dish. After cooking, I’d eat dinner and then wrap up the rest of the food in five or six containers. For the next three days, I’d eat from those containers for lunch and dinner. Simple. Because the meals were never elaborate, I could eat off of one plate and spend a minimal amount of time preparing the meal.

I understand that eating with a big family is very different than eating alone, but I have been shocked by the amount of time people are willing to give away to cooking and cleaning each day.

In the same breath, I enjoy the sense of community I feel here. At dinner, people talk about their days, comment on current events, and crack jokes. The family goes to church together and runs errands together. After so much time alone, it’s nice to once again be involved in the lives of others. But this involvement does require a great deal of communication.

I have been surprised by how much communicating I’m required to do each day now that I have stopped riding and jumped back into the ‘real’ world. I’m not surprised by the amount of talking I do at work (my tongue and the words it can spit out are the only reason I’ve been allowed to teach at Kamuk), but I have been surprised by how much communicating I do at home and on my commute to work. When two people of certain cultures share a common space, they feel the need to fill the air with words. After so much time alone on the bike, I had forgotten about this.

Silence rattles a crowd and makes people feel uneasy in their own skin, but when it visits a man alone, it illuminates the sacredness of existence by allowing him to do the type of contemplation typically banished to the far corners of his mind by talk and chatter.

Other things I noticed:

Using a towel feels good.

Sleeping in a bed feels even better.

Walking up to the fridge and drinking a clean, cold water with ice from the little water/ice dispenser thing feels even better than even better!

In the midst of so many co-workers, friends, and members of extended family who hold hygiene in high regard, I can longer play host to the stink and dirt that ride with me most days while on the bike. I kind of have to shave now. While here, I can’t evaluate the cleanliness of an article of clothing simply by the size and number of stains on it; smell matters when you see the same people each day.

Time passes just as quickly as it did while on the bike, but it passes in more of a blur. The days bleed together, and, unlike those spent on the bike, they can’t be cataloged in my mind according to the uniqueness they possess. I have a routine now that doesn’t change much from day to day. Even after two short weeks, I find the days devoid of the new smells, breezes, sights, and foods that have been able to satiate my thirst for new-ness during my time spent riding.

It’s nice living with all of the comforts a house provides a sedentary person, but at the same time, I can’t help but feel like so much life, so much world, is spinning on beyond the reaches of this town. And I’m missing it. On the bike, I have a chance to ride through it. Not all of it, but enough where I feel like I’m doing my best to experience it. Here, while living the type of life that doesn’t hold time accountable, doesn’t respect time in the way it should be respected by letting it slip away unremarkably, I feel more stuck than still.

Who knows, maybe I’m just in a funk today because my butt and my back hurt from sitting on hard bus seats and standing in front of classes for hours on end this past week.

I’m going to a huge birthday party today for a one-year-old baby in the family. Birthday parties are funk-slaying events.

So that’s good.