Dinner at the Leiton/Vargas house (one of them, anyway...)

I just returned from a lovely evening- a dinner with a Tico family from my school. I teach their son in my 5/6 class. They invited me to join them for dinner a few nights ago...and I must admit, I was a bit apprehensive. My fear had nothing to do with the family themselves (they are incredibly nice people), my anxiety was centered instead around the language barrier. I knew that I was going to have a social evening in which I would have to speak and hear only Spanish. My student does speak some English, but his parents do not. And I know that they have conversed with me in Spanish several times before and therefore assume my Spanish level to be a bit higher than it is... It's a common misconception. I can typically piece together what is being asked of me and am able to respond appropriatly, at which point the Spanish speaking person to whom I am talking suddenly kicks up the pace and begins speaking rapidly. At which point I get lost and just nod until the other person begins to look confused.
But! This evening was quite a success. I conversed for a full two hours in Spanish, and understood almost all of the dinner conversation. I even made jokes. I think. Everyone laughed, so I assume the jokes were understood. It's helps to talk with your hands a lot and make some exageratting faces, then people laugh because they know you are at least TRYING to say something funny. But I think my Spanish was understood. One highlight of the evening was when the mom asked me where I learned my Spanish. That made me feel nice because she must have assumed that I have studied Spanish somewhere. I assume that means that I must have made some sense. Or perhaps she was asking where I studied because my Spanish was so POOR, as in "Gee, what crappy school did you go to that taught you such horrible Spanish?" Let's hope that isn't what she meant.
It was a really interesting conversation about the differences between the U.S. and Costa Rica, mostly in terms of size. They were amazed to hear the population of Philadelphia, which I think is the same as the total of Costa Rica. They wanted to know about how long it would take to get to places by car in the U.S...including Los Angeles. They laughed so much when I told them it would take DAYS to drive to L.A from Philly. But were also amazed that it would only take a few hours to travel between the cities in the North East.
We talked a little bit about traveling by train in the U.S, and how much faster it is than a car. They do not have trains in Costa Rica.
Their son, coincidently, lives in Lancaster! I practically leapt out of my seat. "That's right near Philadelphia!" I said. "And right near where I grew up!" (Well, I said that, but in Spanish. Sort of.) He is in Lancaster working at a restaurant, apparently. We talked a little about the Amish and had a funny conversation in which I tried to explain that Philadelphia and Lancaster are both in Pennsylvania. They do not really have states here in the same sense. Monteverde is actually in the state of Punteranas, but no one would ever say "I live in Punteranas" if they lived in Monteverde. The state lines here are mearly lines on a map.
The conversation about the Amish was interesting. The mom talked about how hard the Amish must work in order to farm... quoting a story her son told her about a young Amish boy farming using some sort of horse-driven implement. I found this an interesting statement, since she herself had just finished explaining to me that her parents are milk farmers in San Luis who take their milk to the Monteverde Cheese Factory every day on horseback. Not too long ago, life here was not so unlike the Amish.
Not so long ago, they did not have any roads at all.
This family I was visited, incidently, are from the Leiton family, one of the oldest in the area. They are one of the few families that pre-date the Quaker settlement (it is a Costa Rican family). People joke around here that there are just three or four families in all of Monteverde...and everyone is related. It is true. Every class in the school has at least two or three Leitons, one Guindon, one Vargas, one Rockwell, and perhaps two or three Salazars. And everyone is someone else's cousin.