It was May, I think. Or was it June? I was not sure of the exact date,
or even the month as I walked through the tropical rainforest of Costa Rica (Costa Rica's Homepage). Using my
machete, I
cut, then I crawled a little bit. I stopped, and then cut some more, and
then I hacked... and then walked for a distance. Then I cut some
more. It was tough going. The 95% humidity did not help matters... and
when you're under the thick canopy of the tropical rainforest, there is
no cooling breeze to dry the sweat drenching your clothing. I rested
for a few minutes on the butress of an old tree. I wished
that I had left the heavy leather coat and hat at home. I remembered
that the great French mathematician, Fourier, had believed that the
human body should be kept warm. He thought that people were smarter in the heat. This belief caused him to move to Africa and
bundle up in winter clothing, eventually he cooked himself to death. I
took my coat and hat off and threw them away. I could get another, no sense
being fashion conscience at a time like this.
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Brushing a spider the size of a large mouse off of my pant leg,
I decided to press on... As I looked behind me, I thought to myself that
the group of students following
the trail I was blazing were probably getting hungry and tired by now...
Wait a minute. Where did these people come from? They looked familiar
to me, but they had not been there only moments before... Some of them
had been on the trip to Monteverde
with me during the previous weekend.
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But now, I wasn't able to recall
when they had joined me here. For that matter, I couldn't remember how
I had gotten here either... One of the others began to shout to me... "Chuck,
Chuck!..." "...Chuck, Chuck wake up." It was
Howard, a classmate at the
Intercultura Language School.
"You fell asleep again...You were mumbling something
about Fourier Transforms. We are still working on the subjunctive, pero
no es muy importante, nadie usa el subjuntivo en vida real."
"Ud necesita pagar mas attencion en esta clase." Vanessa was not happy... I
don't think she liked me as a student. Dooh. When I asked her about
it, she said it had something to do with the piropas that I had been
trying out on her. "Por que' tan mucha ropa?" I had asked her once, reading
from a list of these flirtatious comments. She gave me a look that
could kill.
