Tico Culture

Ligia invited me to a little get together with some friends and I thought that quality time without any Americans would be great, and it was, sort of. First of all, ticos are really sweet, friendly people if you meet them in the right situations. For example, the kids I go to school with want nothing to do with us gringos. I finally asked some random guy in line next to me what the story was and he said that ticos thought that gringo students were stuck up and thought they were better than the costa ricans. Not true at all, but that's how the ticos see it. Tica girls HATE American girls, they're super rude to us. And customer service here is non-existant. Maybe it's that they're on their own time, maybe it's that they don't like Americans but do not expect courtesy from people around here who don't know you.

However, if you're lucky enough to meet some ticos through other ticos, they're super friendly. Back to the party, everyone was really friendly and very welcoming, which is very characteristic of Latinos. Unfortunately also very characteristic of Latinos is closemindedness. In the span of three hours I heard a woman tell a story of how she was outraged that her hospital let someone with AIDS work the ultrasound machine. Mind you this person had virtually no contact with the patient and definately wasn't working with blood, but she was still furious. Then I had people talk about how wasteful the United States were, how we threw away perfectly good things when there were people here who were so needy. Then I heard about how the people in the United States had no idea what hard work was, that's why they were all in therapy, when Latinos just knew how to cope with a tough life. Next in line was gay bashing, insulting immigrants to Costa Rica and finally ended with the men talking about how they all lied to their girlfriends and wives.

Damn. I had to try really hard to remember that I was in a very conservative country that didn't have as many civil rights movements as in the US, nor was it as aware about equality. Still, as many times as I've regretted being an American due to our foriegn policy, I was so excited that in a few weeks I get to go home to a country where I can be seen for a person, not a disease, my race, my gender, and where I can expect a lot of respect if I'm willing to earn it.