Fasten Your Seatbelts

Currently, I am writing from the Maximo Nivel center for language in San Pedro, Costa Rica, reporting from the inside. I can feel my house keys digging into the thin skin of my hipbone, a reminder to keep all things valuable as close to your internal organs as humanly possible. A reminder that I have been raised with a slightly skewed view of the world. It is not as safe as I would have hoped it to be.
The 12 am red eye flight arrived in the San Jose airport at 5 am. The passengers struggled, bleary eyed, to hold on to the precious few hours of sleep that would, hopefully, get them through the day. Not I. I had been awake since the voice spilled out through the airpline intercom, asking us to prepare for our arrival in San Jose. I peered out the small window to my right, fogging the pressure proof plastic glass with my hot breath, obscuring the view below. Strings of blinking lights outlined the skeletone of the city, the backbones of the main roads and clusters of houses. It appeared that the tightly packed towns bordering San Jose sprawled across rolling hills and crept up mountains like some intruding species of plant. A toxic weed slowly establishing roots in the natural darkness of Central America. I was transfixed, literally glued to my seat as my heartbeat began to accelerate and my palms broke out in a cold sweat. One of the disadvantages of the window seat, I really had to pee. I can promise you that this did not help me to collect my cool. This is it. I had arrived.
Nervously, I stood in line, waiting to go through immigration, internally debating whether or not to throw away my lukewarm cup of water that was supposed to be refrigerating my typhoid vaccination pills. Panicked thoughts finally won me over. So, in order to remain inconspicuous and avoid suspicion, I sprinted back through the line of weary passengers, opening up a McDonalds cup and tearing a plastic baggy dripping wet, containing one large bottle of pharmeceuticals from the dewy styrofoam. I hurredly wiped my hands on my jeans and crept back into line, avoiding the eyes of those who had seen me stumble passed them, portraying the cliche of dear in the headlights to a T. The line throw immigration moved swiftly, the airport police to drained of energy to do much more than reach for the passport, never making eye contact, before sending people along their way. After baggage claim, the people at customs decided that the x ray machine wasn't quite worth the time it would take to herd all of the passengers through, collected our papers, and pushed us towards the exit, rats in a maze. All I had to do was find my cab.
In Costa Rica, stop signs are yield signs, yield signs don't exist, and most traffic lights are studiously ignored, at least by cab drivers. We cruised down the curving innerstate from the airport to my host family's house at a comfortable 100 mph. It was terrifying. I gripped my seat cushion, wishing for the reassuring feel of something solid beneath me as the wheels barely seemed to touch the ground. Turning signals also turned out to be for show. After around twenty minutes of experiencing the warpspeed tour of Costa Rica, we made it to the house of my host family. The houses on this street were painted bright blues and pinks and greens. Fittingly, they resembled easter eggs, or square cut gems, or pastel candies, easily ascending the gently waving hills of the city streets. The cab pulled up right outside of a white house with forest green trim, where we were met by my host mom, Ana. She welcomed me inside and I followed her gratefully to a room painted the pale blue of the sky and the sea as the two elements kissed on the far horizon. I sank gratefully into gentle slumber, burrying myself in the waves of covers. After everything, every minute of planning, countless emails, and mountains of stress, I had finally made it to the ocean. Allow me to correct myself, almost to the ocean. I had journeyed over boarders and cultures and mountains and lakes and cities filled with families to be right here. Wrapped up in my sea blue room, waiting for the heat of the day to wake me.