Slothful

I ducked into a little smoothie place to escape the heat, enjoy a fan, and take advantage of the free wi-fi. I thought I'd use this opportunity to check in with some notes and thoughts. I'm off to Panama City for one night on Saturday, and then I have a seven and a half hour flight down to Montevideo, Uruguay on Sunday. The trip from here to there is the rough equivalent of crossing the U.S., distance-wise, so it's not a short one. Sadly, this means I'll be missing the Super Bowl. I will, however, be discovering exactly what South American airline food is like, so that's a plus.

Today's been a bit of a lazy day for me, which is what the title's all about. The Spanish word for sloth, "perezoso," is also the word for lazy. I realize that this is true in English as well, but for us "sloth" is a less common term. In Spanish, "perezoso" is the main word you use for lazy.

• Thought one is that I love fresh fish, and I will miss the abundance of that here. Mahi mahi being one of the cheaper items on the menu is a really amazing thing. Ceviche is everywhere, as is grilled fish, and it's just been heavenly. It allows me to convince myself that even with all the butter, it's still pretty healthy. It's almost certainly not, but shh, don't tell anyone.

• I got to try octopus ceviche at long last. It was really pretty tasty. Per my father's request, I posted pictures of it.

• Sloths are absolutely my new favorite animal. We had one show up at school today, a young one, and it was just preposterously and unreasonably munchkintastic. Seriously, I have no idea how evolution has permitted these animals to persist, because they move like molasses, but I'm so very glad they're still here. Interestingly, the mothers raise their young in a certain neighborhood, and then move away when the child reaches adulthood, leaving the child to continue living in an area with which they're familiar. I imagine that's the longest goodbye in the world, because it must just take a day for the mother sloth to get two trees over. Seriously, check out the Quepos album for pictures and videos.

• On the subject of adorable creatures, Junmei, the three year-old great granddaughter of my host parents refused to let me leave the house the other day until I used her scissors to cut her an elephant out of paper.

• I haven't mentioned this yet, but Costa Rica's presidential election is this Sunday. I've been very interested, watching a debate and discussing it with many of the ticos I know. However, I'm still having a hard time discerning the actual differences among the candidates. I'm sure there are some, but being so unfamiliar with the issues, it's really hard to tell. Based on things that have nothing at all to do with actual politics, I'm partial to Laura Chinchilla. In addition to having a last name that is the same as a pet I had in middle and high school, she has an extremely catchy theme song. She is also one of two sitting Vice Presidents under current president and Nobel laureate Oscar Arias. Other candidates are Ottón Solís, Luis Fishman (not the most Costa Rican name ever), and Otto Guevara. Laura started off as the bigtime frontrunner, but has lost a lot of ground to Guevara. She still leads the polls however, and seems poised to win on Sunday. I know that she has the vote of my host mother Doña Haydee.

• God bless the internet. The only TV I care about keeping up with is Lost, and I managed to watch the newest episode only a day after it aired. I also learned today that I'll be back home for the last episode, which makes me really happy, because I can watch it day of with other lunatics like me.

I think that's all for the moment. I'm gonna grab some dinner and figure out how to spend my last day here tomorrow.

Saludos,

Seth