Please, Call me Macho

The fact that we haven't posted in a month and a half should be taken as a good sign that we're starting to adjust to life down here. Work is work and playtime can range from fantastic day-trips to the crater of an active volcano (Poas, about an hour away from Alajuela) to simple games of basketball against Ticos who love to foul. And besides, we won't have pictures to post up until we either cave and buy a "used" digital camera, euphemistic for buying the stolen camera that some other poor Gringo had taken from him/her, or I get mine in the mail. This post will be a short one, but hopefully we'll put some more up this week. We've got some good stories to tell.

We were warned during our first couple of weeks of teaching that we should prepare ourselves for the hilarious honesty of Ticos, particularly the men, in the city. The other teachers weren't kidding. In some ways, our experiences with students have reinforced the prevailing stereotypes that Costa Ricans are almost childishly non-confrontational. Instead of emailing me, talking to me privately, or calling me out in class, two of my students wrote page-long letters to my boss about how I don't include enough conversation activities. Thanks guys. But in the realm of nicknames, Ticos could almost compete with Germans in the realm of in-your-face up-frontedness.

Here's the deal - if you want to catch the attention of someone in the street, you call him or her by their most striking attribute. Fat people get called Gordo/a, black people are called Negro/a, short people Bajo/a, tall people Alto/a.... well, you get the picture. It's not even considered rude. In Megan's case, she gets called Guapa (beautiful) pretty consistently by men of any age, regardless of how angrily I stare them down. For me, though, they haven't settled on just one nickname for me. Depending on how they feel about me and how old my fuzzy half-beard makes me look, I am usually called Gringo, Machillo (little blond guy), Machito (really little blond guy), or Macho (just plain old blond guy). It doesn't matter that I'm probably average or above-average for height and weight here, I'm still usually Machillo.

So, just ignore me or please forgive me if, upon returning to the states, when someone calls me David, Nims, or Nimblybimbly, I insist that he or she dispense with the formalities, forgo pretense, and just call me by my new name: Macho.