Shoes!

Quite a random side note

The other day my 12 year old friend was over and we were hanging out in my room talking about shoes and doing each other´s makeup (so this is what may life has come to, haha!) and she asked if I had bought any shoes since I’d arrived in Costa Rica. At first I said no, but then I realized that I had indeed invested in two pairs of shoes since my arrival in my site and then it dawned on me that the 2 pairs of shoes are entirely emblematic of my time here. After being here for less than a week, I realized that life on the farm is not complete without a pair of rubber boots. Sloshing around in the mud in anything but rubber boots is just not wise, unless you truly enjoy cleaning shoes all day long (which then leaves you with no time to actually do all the farm things you want to do!). So on my very first trip to my closest big town, I bought my big black rubber boots which I have probably used at some point during the day just about every day here.

My second shoe purchase was a more recent one. As I said in a previous post, I have been working to revitalize the women’s soccer team in my town, which poses the need for tacos (cleats), especially considering that it is currently the rainy season and therefore the field can get pretty slippery. Cleats are pretty much a necessity (literally, lots of people in my town own cleats and not sneakers, to give you an idea of how large a role soccer plays here—and how little a role running does, for that matter!) So last week when I went into San Jose to pick up the books for my English class (which starts on Thursday!) I also picked up, after much deliberation in the CR equivalent of a Foot Locker, a pretty cool looking pair (if I do say so myself!) of cleats which served me extremely well in our first game this past Sunday. Not to get into a whole thing, but although we did lose, we played against a team that has been together for over 8 years and so the fact that we totally and completely held our own (after being together for barely 1 month!), made me incredibly proud of us. I can’t wait to keep practicing and get better and better!