°°°Tico Customs°°° By Laura! =P

Despite the fact that I’m very proud of being a tica, I must admit that there are certain customs that people in this country generally have.

You’ve got to have the latest cell phone and it doesn’t matter if you can’t pay for it or if they kill you for it, you have to show it to the whole country. On the bus they call you and you answer very loudly “aló, diay mae todo bien” (hello, hey what’s up man) so that every single person in the bus notices that you have a call. You call a person who lives near you just because you are too lazy to go there and talk. You have your thumb in great shape from sending so many messages and you get depressed if at 3:00 pm you haven’t received at least 50 messages. If you leave it in your house you MUST go back immediately. It’s a number one priority.

When you go walking down the street it’s almost 100% sure that some guy will scream something weird at you. You keep on walking and you hear from the next block the motor of a guy’s car that thinks he’s some one from the fast and the furious movie with his sun glasses and his very loud “reggaetton”. On the next block you hear from a house the “merengue” and the maid trying to catch the little kids and from the other one the maid watching the soup opera while she’s cleaning the house. You have to be careful if you’re going to cross the street because very few people know the courtesy to let you cross and when you do it they will honk their horn. You see crashes every where because they don’t respect the traffic signs.

We arrive late every where. It’s almost a law called “la hora tica” (tico time) that says that it’s ok if you get somewhere half an hour or an hour late, so if they invite you to some activity at 3:00pm you know that actually it will start like about 5:30pm. The only two things that start on time, the news (which all they talk about is dead people) and the football games of course. You make up excuses for everything! Traffic jam! My grandma died! My dog was sick! Etc…

There are queues for everything! For the bank, for the supermarket, for the hospital, for the movie theater, for the food, for the stores and even for the bathroom!

But even though we have all these interesting customs I think we are a very nice, helpful, and friendly people who enjoy living in Costa Rica.