My brother lords it over me when we are growing up: I was born in Costa Rica and therefore can never become President of the United States, but he can.  He was born in California, and in our minds, when we are 8 or 9, being President is a realistic goal. And it is an enviable one at that. The U.S. holds a mystique for us — we love the music, the surfer slang, the brand-name clothing, the fun treats and gadgets we don’t have access to in Costa Rica in the eighties.

*****

My father, a staunch Democrat, pulls us out of school so we can go hear Dan Quayle speak at the U.S. Embassy. A few months later, we go back to hear George H. W. Bush speak. I get out of trigonometry. My own political views are still muddled and taking shape. We wave American flags. All these years later, I have tremendous respect for my father for believing that listening to what our leaders have to say is important, regardless of one’s own beliefs.

*****

I see the President of Costa Rica walking down the hallway of my high school one day. I walk up to him and shake his hand, and it is no big deal.

*****

I wear my blue-and-white school uniform to the acto cívico and march in a parade on el 15 de Setiembre. My parents help my brother and me make our own lanterns for the desfile de faroles the night of the 14th. I go stand in front of my Spanish teacher when called and recite el Himno a Juan Santamaría, el Himno del 15 de Setiembre, el Himno a la Anexión de Guanacaste. We have a well-thumbed copy of Lo que se canta en Costa Rica at home for reference. At school, we change the words to the songs to make them funny.

*****

I always feel beyond privileged to walk past the U.S. Capitol Building on my way to work. I always get choked up when I look out the window of the plane and catch my first glimpse of my Costa Rican mountains. I’m always comforted by the familiar routine of the Immigration official in Dallas or Miami stamping my U.S. passport and saying, “Welcome home.”

*****

My parents take us to the U.S. Embassy on the Fourth of July. We eat hot dogs and have sack races and are surrounded by English speakers. I take my sons to the Costa Rican Embassy for el quince de setiembre. The place is loud, small and crowded, exactly the kind of place I avoid taking my autistic, noise-sensitive sons.  And it’s the only place where I make an exception and ask them to go anyway. It is important to me. We eat arroz con pollo and tres leches, and I have an overpriced Imperial.

*****

I don’t register my own children as Costa Rican citizens, for the sole reason that I know if I do, getting them out of Costa Rica after our yearly trip will be a hassle involving trámites and an autorización and timbres. I have heard about it from friends, and have been advised against doing it by airport officials. My boys have until they are eighteen to do it, which sounds good to me.

*****

I fill out long forms and am interviewed for security clearance. I am asked questions about my dual citizenship. I have chosen the United States, I say. My children were born here. My  home is here.

*****

I hear Sting, Peter Gabriel and Tracy Chapman perform at the Human Rights Now! concert, my very first one. My next concerts are Alejandra Guzmán, Luis Miguel, Ricardo Montaner and Ricardo Arjona.

*****

I go to a bar in my mother’s beach town with my husband and am immediately pegged as a tourist by a man who is trying to sell us something. I finally show him my cédula de identidad and he brings it down quite a few notches.

*****

My brother tells one of my sons that if he becomes a Costa Rican, he can go to school there someday. He starts to cry. Mama, ¿no soy de Costa Rica? I try to explain that it’s a formality, and that I am Costa Rican, which means that he is, too, but my words carry no weight. He is not buying it, and I end up feeling guiltier than I ever have about just about anything. I consider just filing the paperwork at the Registro Civil and dealing with the autorización.

*****

The woman at Migración tells me to get in the shorter line for nacionales next time. I don’t have a Costa Rican passport anymore, I tell her. Mine expired at least two decades ago and I’ve never renewed it. No importa, she says. She turns my U.S. passport around so I can see it, and points.Place of Birth:  Costa Rica. Aquí dice.

{Image by  macsflickr}

Almost a month has passed since el quince de septiembre, Costa Rican Independence day. That weekend I set up a meeting point with a good friend, also a tica, gathered up my sons and our Metro cards and we trekked up to the Costa Rican Embassy in Washington, D.C. to check out the festivities, the third year in a row we’ve done so.

I can always bribe my children with a ride on the bus or the Metro, because there are few things they love as much as taking the Metro somewhere. So they were excited to go this year…but not as excited to stay. The embassy isn’t really big enough to accommodate the crowd that gathers every year. There were tons of people and no room to walk around. The music was loud. The line for the food was unbelievably long. For my two autistic boys, it was simply too much. Secondo spent most of the time we were in line humming to himself loudly in order to block out the noise. Primo dealt with it by occasionally sprawling out on the ground and staying there — and I let him.  We got our food, and I got my much-needed Imperial beer. We stayed long enough to sing the himno nacional and then headed back home.

I have many memories of my parents going to great lengths to make U.S. culture, history and politics come alive for my brother and me when we lived in Costa Rica back in the eighties. We often spent the Fourth of July at the U.S. Embassy, where we sang “The Star-Spangled Banner,” ate hot dogs and ran sack races. We all got to break the No-TV-During-Dinner rule and watch CNN if a major story was breaking. My father — a staunch Democrat — dragged us out of school and took us to the embassy so that we could hear both George H. W. Bush and Dan Quayle speak on official visits, because there was no way we were going to pass up the opportunity to hear the President and Vice President speak.

I’ve always dreamed about doing similar things with my boys. We are lucky to live in an area with such a wealth of cultures, where embassies hold all kinds of events and it seems like a festival is going on every weekend. And while I knew that doing these things would not be feasible at first, with two babies and a bulky double stroller, I looked forward to the day when we could do them.

Once the double stroller and diapers were history, we started going places…with mixed results. An afternoon at the Museum of Natural History ended with an epic meltdown within minutes of our arrival, so we played outside instead. And now the meltdowns are fewer because Primo and Secondo are increasingly able to express themselves more articulately. I recently showed Secondo a flyer advertising a Hispanic Heritage Month event. Music! Dancing! Typical foods! it proclaimed. Secondo looked at it for a moment. “No quiero ir,” he told me.  “There will be too many people and it will be too noisy.” I was shocked — for years I’ve struggled to guess what he’s thinking and what he wants, and this time his wishes were crystal clear. I’ve longed for communication like this more than just about anything. Needless to say, I respected his wishes. We bagged the Hispanic Heritage Month Festival.

I hope as they get older they will find these events more enjoyable. They may or may not. As for the embassy next year, although there was something I loved about singing the himno nacional together, I’ve decided we won’t go if they don’t want to. But I will dig out my old copy of Lo que se canta en Costa Rica and maybe we can learn the himno at home.

{photo by  thombo2}

Our family was fortunate to have had the opportunity to once again immerse our children in Spanish by traveling abroad. You may remember that last year we spent the summer in Peru. This summer was spent in Costa Rica. There really is nothing like travel to enhance your child’s language skills and to provide them with global and cultural understanding. Such trips require planning and effort, but the work is well worth it.

Since I do not have family living in a Spanish speaking country, a lot of research is involved with putting together an adventure that will be both fun and educational for the entire family. Months prior to the trip, I am looking at schools, possible homestay arrangements, and tourist destinations that will be interesting. Having now been through the planning, traveling and living abroad experience twice, I feel that there is some advice of value that I can pass on to families that would like to embark upon similar journeys.

Homestays

In both Peru and Costa Rica, we lived with local families. The homestays in both countries were arranged through the schools that we attended while abroad. There is no better way to be immersed in the language and culture of the country than to actually live with a local family.

Be careful! Our experience in Peru was wonderful! We ate with the family daily, and they went out of their way to help us get to know the city where we were living. The family enjoyed having students come to get to know their country and culture.

Unfortunately, we did not have a similar experience this summer. It was obvious that our Costa Rican family had us only to make money. The television was on constantly, and there was very little interaction with the family. The single mother was gone three nights a week, and we were left with the three children and a teenage babysitter. The house was also dirty, and we were often hungry because there was not enough food during the meals. Although my husband complained in writing at the school, nothing changed.

No matter what country you are visiting, homestay experiences will vary enormously based on the family and their motivation for taking in students. Have a back-up plan if the family does not work out. Be sure that you can either change families or living arrangements, if you find yourself in a situation that is just not the right fit. Try to avoid paying for the entire stay so that you have the freedom to make a change if your living arrangements are less than ideal. It is also a good idea to have a back-up plan to avoid being stuck in a home that makes you uncomfortable.

School

In Peru, my children studied Spanish with a Peruvian teacher. They learned songs, read books, played games, and did art projects with their teachers. While in Costa Rica, they attended a Waldorf School.

Working with individual teachers was far more conducive to the language learning of my sons. The teachers were able to specialize their instruction to best meet the needs of my boys. They were also exposed to excellent Spanish and were required to speak with their teachers without using English.

The Waldorf School provided very little teacher directed instruction; rather the kids were encouraged to play. While the boys did use Spanish to play with their peers, since they were only 2 and 4 years of age, the Spanish was limited and not very complex. While peer interaction is important, we were easily able to meet other young children by just taking a soccer ball to the park with us. There is nothing like having a teacher work with your child individually to further their linguistic skills.

Activities

In Peru, I arranged play dates with other Peruvian children, but in Costa Rica, I signed them up for music classes and Tae Kwon Do. The structured martial arts and music classes were so much fun for my children, and they were a great way for the boys to get to really know other Costa Rican children. These enrichment classes enabled the boys to both further their language skills and to experience different activities that they can continue to pursue in the future.

Travel

We did travel while we were in Peru, but I wished that we had done more. This year I scheduled extra travel days into our Costa Rica adventure.  The boys loved exploring the rainforests and beaches, and they were particularly interested in the animals and wildlife. To make our travels even more educational, we would hire guides who would take us on nature walks helping us to spot animals and telling the kids about what we were seeing, all in Spanish. We would have the guides use Spanish with the kids and us. While learning about the animals and nature around them, the kids, my husband and I were also hearing and using our Spanish.

An immersion experience in a Spanish speaking country is a great way to reinforce the Spanish language. Not only will your child gain linguistic skills, but they will also acquire a greater understanding of some of the different customs and cultures of the world. Planning a trip abroad can be challenging, but the efforts are worth the time and research.

I hope that my experience and advice helps with your plans to take your kids to another country to speak Spanish, become familiar with the culture, and to get to know another country and its people.

{photo via marinakvillatoro}

Two or three weeks ago, my boys and their father went on a much-needed road trip to visit family in Kansas City. When they came back, I overheard Primo and Secondo talking about how they’d eaten rice and beans while they were away. “Rice and beans?” I asked my husband. “Where did they eat rice and beans?”

“At my brother’s,” he answered matter-of-factly.

My husband’s Midwestern family traveled to Costa Rica for our wedding nearly ten years ago. They’d never been there before, and like most of our American guests who were there for the first time, they loved gallo pinto, the Costa Rican version of rice and beans, doused in local Salsa Lizano, often served with sour cream, eggs and tortillas for breakfast. And like many of our guests, they came back to the U.S. and gallo pinto immediately went into their regular breakfast and dinner rotation. Some brought Salsa Lizano back with them, others were excited to realize they could find it locally. Some add mushrooms, roasted red peppers, and other non-traditional ingredients.

This is an area in which, I’m ashamed to admit, my children’s bicultural education is sorely lacking. I make delicious tamales at Christmastime and I’m often asked to take my refried beans to parties. But really, that’s about it. I don’t remember the last time I made gallo pinto or arroz con pollo.

It’s partly due to the fact that I never really learned to make a lot of these traditional dishes. When we lived in the U.S. in the seventies, my Costa Rican mother — a great cook — learned to make taco salad, chicken-tortilla casserole and three-bean salad, and these were staples of my existence even after we moved back to Costa Rica. If we wanted white rice and frijoles molidos, we had lunch at Abuelita’s or at one of my aunts’.

So my children aren’t exposed to all that many of the traditional foods I grew up with, because I don’t make them. If anything, they eat food from other Latin American countries—buñuelos drizzled with honey after Spanish school, pupusas, empanadas and salteñas, all of which are cheap and plentiful in our area, and also delicious.

I should probably experiment a little more, get away from quesadillas and fish sticks a bit and make things like arroz con pollo and Caribbean-style rice-and-beans like I used to. I realize, though, that I’m not going to magically become the cook my Abuelita was, that work keeps me busy and out of the kitchen, that my reality is just different.

Still, though, I’m trying to incorporate some simple foods that remind me of my childhood. We eat gallos — avocado, refried beans or scrambled eggs, you name it, stuffed into a corn tortilla — on a regular basis, and it’s the simplest dinner ever. And I’ve become a bit obsessed with panela (the brown, unrefined sugar that I knew as tapa de dulce), which was one of my favorite things when I was growing up.  I make a syrup out of it and use it on pancakes, drizzle it over oatmeal, and  I even use it instead of honey or maple syrup when I make granola or peanut butter cookies. The flavor never fails to evoke mornings at camp, where after a cold shower outdoors in the dark 6:00 a.m., we were rewarded with a steaming tin cup full of aguadulce. A hot beverage never tasted that good.

So I try to add some of the Costa Rican foods of my childhood, but I don’t feel guilty when we break into the fish sticks. My children are not me, after all, and they will have different memories when it comes to food, different memories from my own. And that’s okay, because although when I think of gallo pinto when I remember my childhood, I’m just as likely to think of chicken tortilla casserole.

{Image via Labiascovegmenu}