Birthday (Part 2)

The first entry about my birthday was earlier in the morning and I wanted to do another post because the rest of my day merits sharing.

I was a little uncertain how the day would actually go because birthday´s can sometimes be depressing especially if you´re away from family and friends, but this was definitely not the case for me. Though of course I missed people back in the U.S. and where ever else they may be, everyone here made me feel quite at home.

Lunch was great! We had some very traditional Guanacastecan food called "arroz de maiz," which is actually an oxymoron because it literally means "rice of corn," rice with chicken (also very Tico) and for dessert we had my cake with milk. It was interesting because I encountered a very unique cultural difference between United States and Costa Rica in that I asked for milk to be served with the cake. They were a little surprised by this but everybody knows you have milk with dessert. It was a bit odd for them perhaps but they humored me for my birthday and in the end, I think I didn´t matter at all.

Later that night I went out to dinner with Jan and then headed back to the same bar as the night before. We met up with a couple people there both work and non-work related and like the night before, it was decided that tequila was to be the honorary drink of my birthday. This time it was not of choosing but nevertheless, I ended up having more than a couple shots plus other drinks, which is both the up and down side to any birthday.

Also, as anyone who has ever been a country where they are not a native speaker could attest, alcohol does wonders for your ability to speak up to a certain point. For some reason words seem to flow better and everything is great until you reach the zero barrier and it falls off precipitously. Fortunately, the drop off did not happen to me (or at least that´s what I remember... the jury´s still out) and I ended up having a great night.