Day Twelve – “Con Gusto” means something totally different in Spain…

I finally learned how to speak in the future tense! That was my big breakthrough today in class. Prior to today, I was able to tell you what I am currently doing and what I had done before; however, I didn’t have a future! Now I do, and it looks pretty bright. The Spanish is coming along pretty well and every day I am learning new things.

Today’s adventure after school was a tour of a coffee plantation and farm called El Trapiche. This tour, like so many of the others was absolutely amazing. For about two hours, we walked around the grounds of the farm and plantation learning about where and how coffee is made. Besides the café, we also got another look into the farming culture of Costa Rica. We learned about sugar cane and the many uses of it, and to top it all off, we got to make our own sugar cane candy. The candy was REALLY sweet, almost too sweet to eat; nevertheless, we ate it. I really enjoyed the tour, and what made it even cooler was the fact that is was entirely in Spanish…and I understood most of it!

Funny story from the tour…While we were walking along the path, we talked about the importance of banana plants and one lady from Spain was trying to take a photo of the plant. I asked her if she wanted to have her picture with plant, but she said “No gracias.” I replied with “Con gusto” which is the Costa Rican way of say no worries and responding to gracias. Unbeknownst to me, “Con gusto” has a very different meaning in Spain. It literally translates to “With pleasure” and the older Spaniard turned a few shades of red. Kelly wasn’t jealous, but I definitely learned to be a bit  more careful of who I say “Con gusto” to.

After the tour, we headed home for dinner with Tomas and Ana Patricia. Over dinner we conversed about the tour and coffee, all in Spanish. These dinner time conversations are really helping my Spanish come along. I mean, I could conjugate verbs for days, but the actual application of the language is what truly leads to mastery. During dinner, we decided that Tomas and I share very similar personalities and hearts, much like that of a butterfly. We float around and try to make people happy. Kelly on the other hand decided she was more like a wasp – or we decided that for her…. I don’t know if I actual believe that though; Kel is definitely more like a beautiful bird than a wasp.

After Kelly and I went to bed tonight, it started raining tremendously hard. It definitely sounded like we were in a bomb shelter with the pitter patter of the rain hitting our tin roof. Even though we knew that our house was built for this type of weather, it was kind of scary! Rain like that usually means tornadoes or something else is on the war path, but luckily, there aren’t tornadoes here in Costa Rica. I’m happy about that because we definitely would have ended up in Oz with ruby red slippers if our house would have been caught up in that star.

I can’t believe it’s already Thursday, and our time in Monteverde is almost half over. The time is flying by; but isn’t that the saying – time flies when you’re having fun? We are having fun and loving every minute of it.

Pura Vida,

Casey