Gallo Pinto

So before we get into the rest of this story (if I could remember how Paul Harvey began his preambles every afternoon while Grandpa and I sat listening and eating whole tomatoes like apples and arguing over whose was the best- he and I had a tomato-growing contest one year- I would rip it off, en totale, and use it here, but I can’t, so I’d better just move on), I need to clarify up front that I am fully aware that it is extremely foolish for one to believe that they can learn to speak a foreign language simply by taking a one-week course in the relative foreign country, but for some reason, the link between full awareness and full comprehension didn’t connect in my brain…and now I want to cry. 

 

But our teachers, Marco and Gloriana, at the Montana Linda Spanish-speaking school in Orosi, Costa Rica, are extremely kind and never fail to wait patiently as I struggle find words behind my eyelids, or forehead, or nasal cavity, or wherever those buggers go to when they disappear- usually whenever someone asks me a direct question. Marco and Gloriana have taken us on some beautiful walks during our classtimes, when we’ve all set our books aside in lieu of a daily three-hour long conversation in Spanish. The teachers and Joy, all of whom actually understand these conversations, speak slowly enough for me to be able to pretend to understand. I smile a lot, too. 

When we aren’t in class (i.e. on our walks), we spend a good part of our days in the school’s cafeteria, where Joy reads a lot- or looks at wedding pictures on the internet- and I study my Spanish homework; I’m studying diligently right now, as I’m sure you can tell. 

Our evenings this week are spent at the home of our ‘homestay’ family, a small two-bedroom, one-bathroom, red concrete-walled, tin-roofed, cozy abode located in a small neighborhood that could serve as an alternate example of a “gated community”: every house is surrounded by its own steel-spiked, and sometimes razor-wire topped, protective fence- an attribute that runs in direct contrast to how nice everybody in the neighborhood seems to be. 

Especially our family. Living in the house are Adriana, the mother, her two daughters, Meilyn and Hazel, and her son, Jordan. Adriana’s first daughter, Diana, lives in the house that is directly behind, and inexplicably attached by each home’s open-air kitchen, with two small children of her own. The girls’ bedroom, in three shades of pink, currently serves as the guestroom, complete with two separate twin beds that have steel frames and spring-metal mattress supports. They almost certainly won’t support two people at once, so Joy and I have remained in our neutral corners all week.  Hazel and Meilyn, room-less at present, are bunking in the home’s other bedroom with Adriana; we think Jordan might be staying with Diana. 

It’s amazing to Joy and I both how little this family has and how well they get by. The kids are all happy, friendly, patient with the red-headed gringo who struggles to say “good morning”, and Adriana is a model of the tough good-nature only found in mothers.  We hope that our week-long visit will help with family expenses a little, but we suspect the girls might just be happy to have their room back. 

The breakfasts and dinners that Diana and Adriana have been making for us are excellent! I’m excited to see the various types of food that we encounter among the many cultures we’ll visit during this journey, and interested to discover what is each group’s ‘mainstay’: it’s most common dish. 

For Costa Rica, it seems to be gallo pinto, or maybe just rice and beans in general; almost every lunch or dinner we’ve eaten in Costa Rica can be described as “something, something else, rice and beans”. But most breakfasts can be described as “gallo pinto plus something (eggs, cheese, beans, etc.)”. This morning- I think today is Thursday, but I’m unemployed and homeless so I don’t really know or care- while Joy and I were eating our two-mounds apiece of gallo pinto with some scrambled eggs that Diana had prepared (Adriana catches three different buses to get to work, so Diana has been making our breakfasts) I was trying to think of how best to describe gallo pinto, but my gringo sensibilities just can’t tell if it’s really anything other than more rice and beans- just mixed together before being served. As we’ve discussed earlier, Joy knows a lot more than I do about Spanish, and Spanish-speaking cultures, and well, just about everything, so I thought I’d ask for her insight into the secret ingredients of gallo pinto that sets it apart from other rice and bean dishes and makes it the desayuno staple for Costa Rica. 

“I think the beans have to be black,” she said.